• Lack of high-quality audio in informal recording – this can be easily addressed by using a lavalier (clip-on) microphone – makes all the difference if people can hear what’s being said.
• Not realizing the benefits of editing 2-hour videos down to 5-10 minutes (that is, not allocating the resources to do so) – most long videos can be distilled down to 5-10 minutes of vital content.  When planning your videos, try to budget in the time or resources to edit your videos down to “the good stuff” and you’ll find your viewers will stay around to watch more of your video.
• Not thinking about videos only in terms of archival uses rather than shareable uses – recording a video for the archives is great, but most people want to see what’s relevant now.  Making a video available as soon as possible after it occurs increases its appeal and when you record a video, take this into account.

“I’ve edited and promoted maybe a hundred audio and video recordings and seen dramatic differences in listener-ship/view-ship when following these tips. It can be the difference between 100 and 1000 hits.”

Andrew Whitacre
Communications Director
cms.mit.edu | civic.mit.edu | gambit.mit.edu

If you have more tips to share, please send them our way – techtv@mit.edu

http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/code-of-best-practices-fair-use.pdf

The MIT Libraries participated in the focus groups leading up to the creation of this document. This code joins a group of successful best practices in fair use documents coordinated by Peter Jaszi and Patricia Aufderheide in association with the Center for Social Media at American University:

http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/fair-use/best-practices

For more information, contact Ellen Duranceau, Program Manager, Scholarly Publishing and Licensing , MIT Libraries.

Some of the new features include:

• a streamlined sign-in process (after initial setup)
• administration of multiple MIT TechTV accounts/collections through single sign-on
• the ability to Protect Collections and restrict viewing access

As always, please let us know if you have any questions, comments or how you like MIT TechTV in general – techtv@mit.edu

Fair Use is one of the areas of Copyright Law used in making educational and other material.  Take a look at this video on the subject:

Included in the playback support is also the option to make your MIT TechTV external embeds to have the same HTML5 backup player support.  Simply check the box in the Embed window to enable the HTML5 mobile player support.

1. Recording:

• Be aware of your lighting:
  - make sure your subject is well lit by any lighting means at your disposal, even a desk lamp can help
  - avoid having a bright light source behind you/your subject
• Tripod:  always use when when available, when not available, try to use some other fixed object to help steady the camera
• Audio:  be aware of background noise and try to mitigate unwanted noise as much as possible.

2. Editing:

• The trick is to keep it short and sweet.  Give just enough information to get your point across but not too much to bore or drive away your audience.
• Once you have finished recording, get your footage from your camera or other recording device into your computer and use an editing program (such as iMovie on a Mac or Windows MovieMaker on a PC).
• Save your project on a regular interval.  Editing programs can be fickle and crash from time to time so frequent saves can save your project and your sanity.
• When you’re finished editing, save or export your project

Compression for the web:

• Compression is an important step that takes your video from a very large file size and screen size and can help reduce it to a much smaller file size (and potentially screen size) to allow for faster uploads and user-friendly viewing on the web.
• Many editing programs can do this for you under an Export, Save For Web, or Share selection/menu.
• There are other free programs that can help with compression as well such as MPEG Streamclip (for Mac and PC – some guides to use MPEG Streamclip  – www.moviesmac.com or google search)
• Once your video is compressed, you can upload it to MIT TechTV (if you have any mit.edu email address) or other video sharing websites.  To upload to MIT TechTV, go to the home page and click on “sign in” in the top right corner and after you’ve signed in, click on the “Upload” button that will appear and follow the page instructions. If you don’t have an account yet, go to the MIT TechTV home page and click on “create account” in the top right corner and fill out the form to sign up.  The website is currently moderated for obscenities and copyrighted material.

Computer recordings: you can use software such as Quicktime Player 10 on newer Macs to record your videos directly with your computer to a file on your computer.  With Quicktime Player 10, launch the program, go to the File menu and select New Movie Recording.  Record your video and then save it by going to the File menu and select Save For Web.

Please send us any questions or requests for other information you’d like to see on this posting by adding a comment below.

Thanks, Kris @ MIT TechTV

If a video has [CC] applied to it, it will increase the video player in height and the captions will play underneath the video so you don’t have to worry about any of the video being covered up.  To enable and disable captions for a currently playing video, simply click on the CC button (highlighted in red in the picture to the right).  By default, any video with captions applied will have captions turned on to start.

To apply a .srt file to a video you must be the owner of the video. First log in to your MIT TechTV account and go to the video’s page.  Then in the gray box to the right of the video you will see a selection for “CC File” as noted in the picture to the left.  Click on “Change” and you will be prompted to select your .srt file.  “Save” and you’re done. The page will refresh and your captions will be applied.

We have also enabled you to be able to embed your video with captions in external websites as well.  you’ll see a new option on the Embed window to allow you to select one of our players with or without captions.

You may be wondering how to make or get a .srt file for your video.  You can create one from scratch, use a program or website to help you make one (such as universalsubtitles.org), or have someone do it for you (MIT TechTV can provide subtitle creation service for a fee – contact us at techtv@mit.edu for more info).

For some great additional resources and links to captioning tools, check out the MIT Adaptive Technology Information Center (ATIC) website.

Help us provide more accessible videos by adding captions to your videos.  If you don’t have your own videos on MIT TechTV but would like to volunteer to caption some of your favorite MIT TechTV videos, please contact us at techtv@mit.edu.

You only have a few weeks left before any old video embeds and download links will stop working. What does this mean for you?

- October 31st, 2010 is the last day that we will receive service from our old vendor that will keep your old embed codes and links working – Please fix your websites before then to prevent any loss of service.

- What’s affected by this – Any embed code or download links copied and used prior to August 23rd, 2010 are affected.  Anything done after this date is not affected and does not need to be fixed.

- Embedded videos – these are videos where you have copied code from TechTV and put in your site to make a TechTV video show up in your website.  What you need to do to update your embed code is to go to the video’s page on MIT TechTV, click on the red “embed” button below the video, choose your settings for your video on the window that drops down and then copy the new code provided.  Then go to your website and in edit mode, replace the old embed code with the new embed code you just copied.

- How can I tell if my embed code is old or new? If the video embedded on your website has the MIT TechTV logo on your video itself, it is using the old code and needs to be updated.  If the MIT TechTV logo is in the bottom right corner of the video player itself and is not covering any part of your video, then you are using the new embed code and you do not need to change anything.

- Download Link – If the owner of a video has allowed for their video to be downloaded, on the video’s page on MIT TechTV, there will be a gray box to the right of the video with a line for “Formats”.  Next to this, you will see the formats available for download.  To replace old download links on your own website with new ones, simply copy the download link found with the appropriate format and replace the old download link with the new one you have just copied from MIT TechTV.

- How can I tell if my download link is old or new? If your download link contains “viddler.com” in it, it is old and needs to be replaced with a new link.

If you have any questions or concerns or need any help, please don’t hesitate to contact us at techtv@mit.edu.

Thanks, MIT TechTV

We have some very exciting news that requires your attention and participation.

MIT TechTV is undergoing some major changes as you read this to allow us to make the site bigger and better suited for your needs (more details below).

What this means for you:

•    Any MIT TechTV video(s) that you have currently embedded (placed in your own website – all non-MIT TechTV pages) will need to be replaced with the new code after the site upgrade on Monday, August 23rd, 2010.  This doesn’t have to be immediate, but please don’t forget.  We will leave the old code working until the end of October 2010 to give you plenty of time to update your sites and to tell your friends to do the same.

•    Also, any video file download links copied from MIT TechTV pages (the gray box to the right of a video under the title of “Formats”) will also need to be replaced after Monday, August 23rd, 2010 and before the end of October 2010.

•    In the unlikely event of a change of schedule, we will send out another email with more details.  Also, keep an eye on the MIT TechTV Blog for more info and updates – http://scripts.mit.edu/~techtv/blog/

•    That’s it!  Everything else will continue to work; your MIT TechTV page links, accounts, emails, etc.

Why are we doing these changes? We are migrating to a new system that will allow us to expand the already rich feature set further to meet your demands.  Not only will we have a more robust website, but we will also be able to provide the following functionality in the very near to near future:

•    A new video player that moved the MIT TechTV logo off of the video so you can put your own group logo as a watermark on your video without ours getting in the way
•    Closed Captioning support for your videos
•    Integration with MIT’s Touchstone system to allow for easy course and other security systems and sites on campus (Stellar, etc.)
•    Web-based video editing to allow you to edit online without the need for your own editing software.
•    Direct recording function to allow you to record from your web-cam or other camera plugged into your computer directly to your collection
•    And much, much more coming in the future

As always, please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions, concerns, suggestions or need any help.

TechTV@mit.edu

Thanks,

Kris Brewer

———————————————————————–
Kris Brewer
MIT TechTV Webmaster & Community Liaison
MIT Video Productions & Digital Technologies
MIT Libraries: Academic Media Production Services

http://techtv.mit.edu