WatchKnow Overview

Online Video Editing is Real?

I have recently begun consulting and shooting for a new site called www.watchknow.com. It's a great resource for kid's educational videos. It's a video wiki that was developed by Larry Sanger-a co-founder of Wikipedia. The site organizes and rates existing educational videos wherever they are hosted. Last week,  Larry put forward the idea that classroom videos could be edited online using the power of an editing wiki in which trusted editors could edit and condense long classroom videos to strengthen the content. The idea is to upload raw video footage to a web server and do the editing there, using a hosted editing application, instead of on your own computer.

Here's what I have found so far in my quest to find a solution.

Most of the online video services that have been offered over the past few years have been taken down. Many are silly 'gag video' editors or are too limited to be of use. Many are here-today-gone-tomorrow kinds of sites. This is a major limitation. We don't want things to spin out of control by depending on a weak service.
I have not had any success  finding a working example of Adobe Premiere Express on photobucket's website-or anywhere else as of yet. I am not at all sure that it still exists. It is confusing me. Although Adobe offers partnerships with sites who would like to use the editing feature on their sites. The service has been discontinued on youtube from what i have gathered. I am contacting adobe to see what their response is and will forward any info.  However since i have been unable to figure out a single basic edit, I am not ready to endorse.
I found a site called www.moviemasher.com that looks promising. It's an open source  - online editing tool that can be installed on your own server. The developer is willing to work with Watchknow as needed.

The big challenges with online video editing that I see are:
1. Finding a permanent, non-novelty oriented service that is cheap or free.
2. Assuring the ability to upload long clips.
3. One must be able to cut out sections in the middle of a clip while still preserving the beginning and end of the clip is desired. It is not enough to just trim one end of a clip. We need to be able to cut out an unwanted segment in the middle of the video.
4. The interface must be simple, and allow for preserving the original clip in case an editor makes a mistake.
5. There should be an 'undo' functionality.
6. I am sure their are more challenges!

Posted above is my video about watchknow for those who would like to know more.

Is Flash dying? I hope so.

I've been hearing for years that I should learn Flash-at least the video end of it. I even went to Atlanta (on an airplane!) to take a class. I guess I learned something-even though i had to take the class on a PC. ouch. I managed to create a couple of Flash presentations successfully. It took weeks, but I struggled through. I then proceeded to forget most everything I learned and just went back to concentrating on Final Cut Pro video editing. I can DO that. Lately, I've been making some vaguely-informed comments about the imminent demise of Adobe Flash. I have been hearing and reading that Apple has been snubbing Flash for some very good reasons. Reasons that I was unable to articulate. So now Mr. Jobs comes to my rescue. Turns out that I had it about right-security problems-crashing-power consumption-blurry video. Here's the full explanation. It's enlightening. And I hope it's right. I just want to get even with Adobe for all those obnxious auto-update windows and for how damn byzantine Photoshop's controls are. Not to mention how weird Flashworld is for an old video guy. Here's the link. Enjoy :http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

DSLR Procrastinating

I have been spending way to much time reading about and comparing all the video enabled digital still camera options. I've had Nikon cameras around for most of my life; my dad brought back a really cool Nikkormat system from Japan in the 70's. Thing is, Canon has been kicking Nikon's butt for the last year or so by bringing out more and more great dslrs with superior video formats and better usability. Accessory makers are pulling out all the stops to make them handle and focus better. The prices of the cameras are about one third of that of regular video cameras. Although they aren't going to fully replace traditional camcorders, Canon has serious filmmakers going nuts over the amazing image quality. The season finale of House is being shot on a Canon EOS still camera. Amazing. If Nikon doesn't get with the program this summer with some righteous catching up, I fear i will be mothballing all the Nikon lenses and heading to Canonland-specifically the Canon EOS 7d. Checkout DP Phillip Bloom's site/blog and www.zacuto.com for a great and exhaustive dslr comparison. (links below)

Use whatever camera you have

I have always been a fan of using less expensive, but decent quality gear to make good pictures and footage. A knowledge of the limitations of the gear and a good sense of composition and brevity go a long way to communicating well. It's really satisfying to make a great image with a modest tool, and it beats taking out a big loan for a fancy camera.
I have a lot of video cameras at hand, and it's not the best camera that get's the most use in my personal life. It's my four year old Canon Elph. I can move around with it like my body is a human camera crane. It's fun. You can put it at all kinds of wild angles and push it thru fences and trees to get cool points of view. You can hold it way up it on a monopod and shoot from 12 feet in the air.
At the top of the heap of what I could use is the Sony Z7U hdv camera. Then there's the Sony FX-1. It's an older hdv camera that is also pretty great. Then there's the trusty old Panasonic DVX-100 , which was the first prosumer dv camera that had 24 frames per second capability. Or I could use one of my pawnshop CrapCams.
The thing is, I really like shoting with the old Elph. It shoots 640x480 video at 30 fps. It has a microphone. It's small and I can take it anywhere and it happens to take good stills too. I take all of the kid movies, childbirth, pets, whatever. The first time I saw the video from it on a big hdtv, I was blown away. Maybe it's a little soft and the color could be more saturated but I don't really care. It works and it doesn't suck. Just remember to wipe off the lens once in a while.
My wife Simone does PR for the University of Memphis and needs me to shoot video interviews from time to time and sometimes I'm glad to do it. But I figured that she should be able to do it herself with an Elph (or something similar) and a simple technique. I found her a Canon G8 or 9 on ebay with four batteries for about $350. This is a sweet brick of a still camera with video too. It shoots HD also (of a sort). I told her to find a nice setting to shoot where there is some light on the subject's face and some depth behind them. Then keep close, we're talking camera mic here. Don't zoom in. Keep it wide and move in close. I repeat: this is critical for good sound with an on-camera mic. It will also improve your stability-especially if you dont have a tripod.

Simone did her shoot. She took the footage into iMovie, edited it and added some text. Then she spit out an mpeg4 for the web and uploaded it to the University's youtube and facebook sites. It looks great and sounds fine. And most importantly, I didn't have to do it myself! Here's one of her projects.

Nothing fancy but it's fine, no?

This spring, I find myself helping out with instructing a journalism class that will be using Minio Flip cams to do reporting. They can make remarkable pictures if handled well. The challenge will be to work around the limitations of those little cameras and especially the microphone, . The object is to help teach the class how to get the video thru the shooting, editing, compression and posting process and hopefully come out with a well-illuminated and audible story with a beginning , middle and an end. I think it will be fun. That's why I got into this business in the first place, right?