Producing Participatory Media
Week 3 - February 3

Topics:

  • Video Blogging
  • Basic Production
  • Aggregators


  • Video Blogging
    aka: vogging, vlogging, vodcasting, video podcasting and so on..

    Just like audio blogging is the posting of audio to your blog, video blogging is the posting of video.

    From: videoblogging.info

    From: vlog 3.0 [a blog about vogs]

    See: Vlog - Wikipedia

    Some Video Blogs (to get you started)

  • Momentshowing
  • Ryanne's Video Blog
  • Rocketboom
  • Steve Garfield
  • Kong is King.net | King Kong | Peter Jackson's Production Diary
  • We Are The Media


  • Video Blog Aggregators and More

  • mefeedia: video blog browser
  • FireANT
  • Blip.TV
  • Our Media
  • YouTube


  • Other Resources

  • Freevlog: Tutorial
  • vloggercon and Vloggercon 05: Conference Sessions Online
  • Video Blogging Yahoo Group
  • NODE101 :: NYC
  • Internet Archive: Moving Image Archive (Open Source Movies) (Create Account)
  • Creative Commons Publisher
  • Yahoo Video Search


  • Interesting Ideas

  • GeoVlogged Video Map - GeoTagged Posts, Navigate videos by map..
  • Talking-Head Video Is Boring Online (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)


  • Basic Production

    QuickTime

    QuickTime, with it's support of MPEG-4 (now very much a standard) is probably the most universal tool in use for video blog creation. Of course, most other plugin based media players are able to be used but for now we will stick with QuickTime.

    QuickTime Pro is by far the most useful tool for creating QuickTime movies but any capture/editing software that supports QuickTime should be able to do it.

    Super Simple Capture and Export

    QuickTime Pro can be used to record directly from a camera (Firewire and DV are directly supported). Choosing File: New Movie Recording brings up a recording window that you can capture directly into.



    The next step is to export the video in a manner that can be published on the web.



    File: Export: Movie to QuickTime Movie: Options: Video: Compression MPEG-4: Bitrate 600 kbits/sec. Sound: Format: AAC Sample Rate: Recommended: Bit rate 64 kbps. Prepare for Internet Streaming: Fast Start - Compressed Header

    Following this, you should be able to publish your video on the web in the same manner you do with any other file. Upload it to a webserver and create a link to it. (As with podcasting, you should include the full path to the file: http://itp.nyu.edu/~sve204/ppm_spring06/test.mov instead of just ppm_spring06/test.mov.

    Here is a test file: http://itp.nyu.edu/~sve204/ppm_spring06/test.mov

    Simply posting the link to your blog should make it available as an enclosure in your RSS feed (as long as you have WordPress or MT with the MTEnclosures Plugin).

    Embedding Movies

    QuickTime players can be embedded in a webpage.


    There are many advantages to doing this:
  • Precise Layout Control and better user experience (no annoying ads and branding)
  • Integration with other web based components such as Java applets, images and text
  • Simple interactivity of your own design (through JavaScript or VBScript)

    The main disadvantage is that it can take a while to load video and multiple videos on one page make the page heavy and sometimes unusable for older browsers.

    To Simply Embed a QuickTime player in a page utilize the following HTML:

      <OBJECT CLASSID="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B" WIDTH="160"HEIGHT="144"
      CODEBASE="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab">
      <PARAM name="SRC" VALUE="sample.mov">
      <PARAM name="AUTOPLAY" VALUE="true">
      <PARAM name="CONTROLLER" VALUE="false">
      <EMBED SRC="sample.mov" WIDTH="160" HEIGHT="144" 
      AUTOPLAY="true" CONTROLLER="false" PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/">
      </EMBED>
      </OBJECT>
    You will notice that there are really two things going on here. The first is the "Object" tag and associated "Param" tags. These are included to support Internet Explorer and other browsers that support ActiveX controls. The second is the "Embed" tag. This is included to support browsers that utilize the standard Netscape plugin architecture. In order for your embedded player support the range of browsers available you need to include both. Also, both tags should include the same set of information. For instance, if you are going to change the height of the plugin you should change it in both the "Object" tag and in the "Embed" tag.

    There are quite a few tags that you may utilize when you use a QuickTime embedded player. A full list is available from Apple by following the For more information: QuickTime Embed Tag Attributes. Some of the more interesting ones are: AUTOPLAY, CONTROLLER and HIDDEN.
  • If I wanted to make sure the movie plays as soon as it is able, I would set the AUTOPLAY to true.

  • If I didn't want a controller to be available on the page I would set CONTROLLER to false (better make sure that AUTOPLAY is true in this case). When you have a controller you should increase the size of the movie by 17 pixels in height.

  • I could even hide the movie completely by specifing HIDDEN which is perhaps good for audio streams or ambient music. Here is an example of a movie without a controller.


  • For more information:
    QuickTime Embed Tag Attributes


    Aggregators

    Just as there exists software for subscribing to podcasts there are several new pieces of software for subscribing to video blogs.

    iTunes
    FireANT
    I/On
    DTV

    Each of these pieces of software have their own set of features and formats that they support. It is interesting to track the development of each, especially as they add things like Tagging, Integrated Directories, BitTorrent support, Sharing and so on.