Publishing & Uploading Videos: April 2009 Archives

Often I get asked about converting student PowerPoint slides into a video format for sharing on the web or onto DVD.  There are many options here, but I find the easiest way to accomplish this is through using Adobe Visual Communicator.

Since Visual Communicator allows you to drop a PPT project right on the timeline, most settings like slide timings, transitions, and even some sound effects are all preserved when importing the PPT show into Visual Communicator.

See this example video below of a student PowerPoint created as a commercial we broadcast on our April 30th 2009 morning show:

Now take a look at this Ask Mr. Z Episode showing how PowerPoint can be used with Adobe Visual Communicator:

Submitted Question:

We want to load our newscasts onto our school website. They run 2 to 5 minutes in length. Several kids have edited movie-maker clips as well as photos. Any suggestions on the best way to tackle this task?

SchoolTube.com is your answer.  Take a look at a past Ask Mr Z episode that shows why.

You will be able to grab the embed code and paste it onto your site, blog, etc.

Here is an example of just that:

Submitted Question:

When we edit on Win movie maker and drop it into VC3 it takes over 8 hours to publish. The edited film is only about 2.5 minutes long. We have an older model Canon camorder. What can we do to shorten this process?

I'm going to guess that the exported video from Win Movie Maker is too high bitrate, and/or the computer is having a tough time processing it, making Visual Communicator re-encode it which takes a long time.  Look at how you are exporting it from Movie Maker.  Can you instead export (or publish) it as AVI?  This is less compressed than WMV which might make it more compatible with VC3.  Also defrag your hard drives too which is necessary every few weeks or sooner if you do lots of editing on your computer.

Let us know if that helps by leaving comments below...

Submitted Question:

I was wondering if there was a way to record a green screen segment on VC and add it to a new segment. The problem is we only have one camera so we need the anchors to report from that one. But I would love to add a pre-recorded weather segment with green screen as the background...Is this possible?

Sure, its something we do all the time.  When you see our morning shows, the Caring Message segment for example is a previously recorded show made with VC that we pull back into another show as a WMV video in a tray...

This workflow can be good for giving the illusion that you have more than 1 camera, but still only use one camera in your setup. 

Example workflow:

1.  Record a show in VC.

2.  Publish show as DV-AVI format (or WMV format if you use the custom preset)

3.  Create new VC show, and insert the previously published video file from above as a tray that sits on the timeline.  Smart position where appropriate.  See the help menu (F1) to learn more about the "Smart Position" feature (which ALL users really need to know about!)

I cover these steps in my training DVD Volume 2 and show how to reuse clips and trim, fade audio, etc.  Lots of options exist once you know where to find them.

Hope that helps, let us know below in the comments area.

Submitted Question:

We have made great progress down here in CT and we are successfully
doing school wide broadcasts with VC...We have also set up a free SchoolTube channel
and we are trying to put our broadcasts up.  Here is my question.
When you publish or export your videos from VC to put them up on
SchoolTube.... what procedure are you using... What format... etc.  ?
We have exported the videos as WMV... then used Quicktime to export
them for Web  use as M4V videos. 

No need to publish multiple versions if I understand you correctly.  We publish our shows only once as WMV in the custom profile size.  The only change I made was the bitrate.  The default bitrate is 1000 kbps I believe, and I lowered it to 800kbps.  The SchoolTube folks tell me that their system re-encodes your files anyways at a max bitrate of 800k anyways, so no need to encode any higher than 800k.  See their encoding recommendations on their site here. 

From memory, here are the specs on that custom WMV encoding profile I use:

640x480, 800kbps Constant Bitrate, single pass.  Audio is 128k, 44khz constant bitrate.

With that method, we can keep our shows under 100 meg (SchoolTube's upload size limitation).  I'd say a 100meg file would be a show arund 12 mins or so?  Our shows are usually 7-8 mins each day.  Now onto your next question...

The video plays fine on our
computer... everything is great.  When we upload it to School Tube...
the video is all there and so is the audio... but they are out of
sync...
Our School Channel page address is as follows

http://www.schooltube.com/user/Northwestern

I have spoken with the School Tube folks and they seemed to think it
was an issue on my end.  Any help would be appreciated.  I see your
videos are perfectly in sync.

I'm guessing this is related to your microphone connection.  If you read through this blog, you'll see plenty of references on how to connect your mic(s) properly to avoid any sync issues.  Connecting your mic (or mixer's output if using multiple mics like we do) should be fed into the firewire camcorders mic input jack.  Then you tell VC that the mic input is on camera 1, not on the soundcard.  You should avoid connecting any mics directly to the soundcard.  Instead, mics connect directly to the camera (assuming your camera has a mic input jack like the camera model I recommend).  This is covered in chapter 5 of my Training DVD volume 1 in great detail.

Hope that helps, let us know below by leaving comments or questions.

This past week, SchoolTube.com introduced a very cool new feature called "channels".  It's a way for a school to showcase all their projects in one place.

See our Amherst Middle Tech TV channel on SchoolTube as an example.

What I like best:

1.  Free!

2.  We can choose the "main page" video and change it as often as we want.

3.  Makes it easy for parents and kids to access all our videos.

4.  Videos are arranged chronologically.

5.  Not blocked by our district website filters like YouTube, etc.

6.  Option exists to allow comments and/or show them publically.

To setup your channel page, login to SchoolTube.com and you'll find it under preferences...

Share your thoughts below on this new feature!

Submitted Question:

Mr. Z do you burn DVDs for your students so they can take home their class video projects?  Seems like a lot of time involved if you or the kids need to burn so many discs, who pays for the blanks?  Or is ther a better way?

Whenever possible, I choose the FREE and less time consuming options.  In this case, I want kids to share their video projects with Mom and Dad too, but we have opted to upload videos to SchoolTube.com for sharing.  This way, kids can share with friends, long distance relatives, etc.

We have a form that goes home for a parental signature explaining this procedure.  I'd say about 98% of forms come back with an OK from parents, as they know that SchoolTube is different from other video sharing sites because it is moderated, and we can remove the video at any time in the future.