Any length or format is accepted and the deadline for submissions in April 23rd.  The CMS Media Spectacle itself is being held on Monday, April 27th at 7PM.

Click here to find out more about this event!

On March 10th, we celebrated our 1500th video uploaded and over x million hits!
We’d love to hear from you! Please tell us:

• Who you are and where you’re from.
• How you’ve been using the site.
• What you like about the site?
• What you would like to see added?
• What could be improved?
• Anything else you’d like to tell us?

Please feel free to put your comments on this blog or if you’d like, feel free to email us directly at techtv@mit.edu.  Thanks and keep the videos coming and keep on viewing.  Thanks, MIT TechTV

For more information from the Center on Social Media at American University and the Fair Use and Copyright Guidelines they have been working on, see our previous blog entry.

Unauthorized use of someone else’s content — including music, video, images and other media — in your uploads is theft and therefore doesn’t fly on MIT TechTV. Check out our Copyright Policy and Terms of Use for what’s OK and not OK to upload to MIT TechTV.

Does that mean your videos have to be music-free? No way. There are lots of royalty-free music sites out there. Some have contemporary songs, mixes, and loops that are licensed by their creators under Creative Commons, or CC, and some have older songs whose copyrights have expired and are thus in the public domain.

Here are some good examples. Some of the sites below require setting up a free account:

http://www.publicdomain4u.com/
Copyright-expired songs, including a lot of good blues and jazz.

http://www.musopen.com/
Musopen takes music (mostly classical) that is in the public domain and has it recorded by individuals and college/community orchestras throughout the U.S. and stored online so it can be accessed for free through this website.

http://www.jamendo.com/en/
An archive of CC-licensed music that’s available for download via P2P. You will need P2P software (e.g. BitTorrent http://www.bittorrent.com/) to download on jamendo.

http://www.sectionz.com/cc.asp
An electronic music community that offers CC-licensed tracks from genres like IDM, drum ‘n’ bass, and ambient.

http://www.opsound.org/index.php
Music samples and links to websites of artists whose work is CC-licensed.

http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/
A collaborative database of CC-licensed sounds (NOTE: these are samples of sounds — like rain falling — not music).

http://ccmixter.org/
A community music remixing site featuring remixes and samples licensed under CC licenses. Click on the MP3 link of your chosen song and, under your browser menu, click File, Save As to save the MP3 to your computer.

http://ibeat.org/
A music production wav file archive: Loops, beats, fills, shots, samples, packs and instrumentals, available under a Creative Commons License.

NOTE: If you do your own search for royalty-free music sites, be sure to read carefully. Some sites (excluding those listed above) have hidden fees, subscription costs, or unreasonable obligations.

Make your own: Of course, you can also make your own music with easy-to-use software like GarageBand (comes with every Macintosh) or MAGIX Music Maker (for PCs, costs around $60). Here are some other resources for music composing software:

Visitor Suggested Sites:

• http://www.makingmusic.net/
• http://musicmoz.org/Computers/Software/Windows/
• Archive.org has lots of cc/free/open source music (as well lots of other cc/free/open source content).
• PremiumBeat.com - Used this site once back when I first got started. Haven’t used anything else since. (from Melanie)
• LoudFeed.com - another handy site I use regularly. (from Melanie)

Send us links to other good sites and we’ll add them.  Thanks!

Thanks, MIT TechTV

MIT’s 2008 Commencement is Friday, June 6. Anyone from the MIT community — students, faculty, staff, alumni — who has video footage of the proceedings can upload it to MIT TechTV! It’s easy:

First, create an account — anyone with an mit.edu email address can create an MIT TechTV account.

When you create an account, you’ll be asked for a “Collection Name” and “Collection Address.” Simply type the name of your choice (e.g. D. Ortiz, or Energy Club) into both fields — you DON’T have to upload any videos to have a Collection Name/Address. When you receive your confirmation email from MIT TechTV, click on the URL to return to the MIT TechTV website.

Next, sign-in to MIT TechTV with your username and password.

Finally, click Upload and follow the simple instructions.

You can send the URL of your Commencement video to family and friends or even post the video in your own blog.

Don’t have video? Upload a photo slideshow instead: You can save a slideshow of images in iPhoto as a QuickTime movie and upload the show to MIT TechTV.

To all 2008 MIT graduates — CONGRATULATIONS!

Photo by Donna Coveney