Video editing and production just took a huge leap forward thanks to a company called Kaltura. How?

Imagine 100’s of people being able to upload a video through this page and then being able to edit the ‘finished’ video to produce a derivative video.

Well imagine no more. It’s now a reality.

I’m not 100% sure how it all works (or even if it will work on this page) but I’m giving it a try. Why?

Because the uses and potential are … huge.  Here’s the first video I’ve uploaded.  You should be able to edit it and add to it – if I’ve got it right.

[kaltura-widget wid="nkhzin9jco" size="large aligncenter" align="l" /]

]]> http://www.mutualadvantageupdates.com/video/video-editing/kaltura-community-video-production-and-editing/feed 7 http://www.mutualadvantageupdates.com/video/video-editing/camstudiopro-screen-capture-software http://www.mutualadvantageupdates.com/video/video-editing/camstudiopro-screen-capture-software#comments Sun, 17 Aug 2008 14:17:52 +0000 Kevin Polley http://www.mutualadvantageupdates.com/video/video_marketing/camstudiopro-screen-capture-software

Producing screen capture videos used to be quite expensive with Camtasia being the software of choice for many PC users. At over $300 it was not affordable for some. Well that’s all changed.

Watching video online has become as normal as watching TV and for some , watching video online is even more popular than TV. Let’s face it, your choice is vast. This shift in perceptions is one of the reasons a few software developers started to come up with free and low cost screen capture alternatives.

Camstudio is probably one of the better known free offerings in this software sector but as you would expect it has a few weaknesses compared to paid for products. Well Dave Guindon has now improved some of them making it a good place for marketers to start producing training or marketing videos of their own.

From the marketers perspective two of the main flaws of CamStudio were
1. The flash videos output by CamStudio didn’t work in Firefox or Netscape (just a minor problem … eeek ). and
2. There was no “Redirect to URL” option once the flash video has completed.

Thankfully Dave’s Cam Studio Pro solves these issues making it worth investigating. Another real bonus from Dave are his video tutorials. He doesn’t just show you how to use CamStudio Pro, he shows you how to get the best out of it and how to leverage Cam Studio Pro (or other videos) for maximum profits.

If I have one complaint it’s minor. To me it looks like he’s used Camtasia to produce his training videos. Still, that shouldn’t stop you checking it out now as he also has a few interesting bonuses as part of his package.

http://www.mutualadvantage.co.uk/camstudiopro

BTW. Another alternative is to use the free version of camstudio to capture your screen and then use other software to edit and produce the finished result. The downside to this is it can be time consuming and your workflow will suffer as a result.

For your first attempt at screen capture try Cam Studio Pro.

Ever wondered how Amazon process so many orders?

Ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of one of the world’s best known online retailers?

Here is a link to a great video from the BBC where Alan Lyall from Amazon.co.uk gives an exclusive look at what happens inside one of the etailer’s huge warehouses. A video tour of Amazon’s distribution centre.

I was really impressed at seeing the high level overview of how the pieces fit together. The investment in technology is plainly there to see. It made me remember that even with the best online or digital sales & ordering systems, it stills boils down to human interaction to make it work.

Something about the video made it flow and easy to understand. Its a really informative and worth watching for anyone involved in selling online. The overall order to delivery process for most businesses won’t be too dis-similar and if you are just starting out you could do worse than see how it works in practice and scale down.

For all of that, personally I won’t be ordering anything fragile from Amazon – watch the last five seconds to see what I mean ….

The script is the effectively the engine that drives your video production and should be considered the most important part of any video.

The script tells the story or message you want to get across and pulls together the pictures of the overall image you want to create for your viewers. When it comes to video marketing tactics get your script right will make the biggest difference to your profitability.

One thing not to forget is that a scriptwriter writes the way he envisages his words will be spoken. This means that when you see your script for the first time don’t think that you’ve got to correct bad grammar. In a script “that’s it” will have more flow and rhythm that “that is it” – Can you feel the difference? If not just try reading those two things out loud.

If you are writing your script yourself some essential things to remember are;

• Make it interesting,
• Make it flow
• Make it logical.

As with sales letters it takes time to get your video script right. So don’t be in a hurry to get it down first time. In fact use your sales letter as the basis for your script. Pick out the benefits (not the features) and look at how you can link them together in a way that excites your prospect enough to buy there and then. or at least want to get in touch with you to ask you for more information.

Keep in focus the end goal you want to achieve with your video.

• Do you want the viewer to take immediate action – if so what?
• Do you want them to just be aware of your brand?
• Do you want them to contact you for more information?
• Do you want them to buy there and then?
• Is it an informational video?

Depending on what you want to happen after someone has watched your video will dictate the script.

A good tactic once you’ve written the script is to get someone to read the it out loud. First read it through from start to finish. Did it flow?

Next read it line by line and then paragraph by paragraph to try and isolate the strong and weak points making notes as you go. Only after you have read it through out LOUD and you know where changes need to be made, should you start your first rewrite.

Apart from the obvious ’speech’ stumbling blocks (where what you’ve written doesn’t sound quite right or loses flow) also keep an eye on the amount of time it takes to read it through from start to finish. You are doing this for two main reasons.

1. Longer videos cost more to make
2. You don’t want to bore your viewers in to having negative thoughts about you or your product.

Keep in mind that if your video is for web viewing, most people tend to lose focus after three to five minutes so unless your script is highly engaging and interesting they won’t get to you punch line.

It might be a good idea to think about a 30 – 60 second trailer video highlighting all of the real benefits of your product with a link to the full length video so they can watch more if they want to. You will only know how effective this is after some testing and tracking.

The next step after producing your script is to work it into your storyboard and I’ll look at those in another article.

If you want to jump the gun a bit just read my earlier post about Celtx . It makes the whole process much easier.

If you’re a script writer please leave a comment so that others can find you. There is a true art in scriptwriting and if you can afford it … hire a script-writer.

This list of free video editing software tools makes it easy and cheap for anyone to edit and produce video to the highest quality that is ready for business or personal use.

Video has become almost a default in today’s blogs and websites. Without them a site can look almost naked. The fact is that NLE’s (non linear editors) need not cost the earth. In fact you can get some excellent video editing tools for free and I’ve put together a list of some of them here for you. This is by no means a complete list but having said that it is fairly comprehensive and as always if you think I should include another program or service let me know.

If you want to spend your cash on ‘industry standard’ applications like Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas, feel free. There are pros and cons against this thought process and the biggest pro I can think of is the sheer number of people using them makes getting help and manuals easier.

Having said that … things are changing and all of the sites and programmes listed below have very active support and development teams as well as thriving user communities. Lets just put it like this…

It could be that the big names will soon start to lose market share, I mean, why would you want to spend £300 – £600 ($500 – $1100) on a branded product when you can find free video editing programs that do virtually the same thing.

Lets look at the free video editing software available …

I’ve tried to break this list down into two different areas. Online video editing and mixing and video editing and mixing software that you download and run on your PC.

The list covers applications for Windows, Linux and Macs so there is something for everyone. The descriptions are a little sparse for two reasons. 1. each programme deserves a whole page and 2. you need to check most of them out to see for yourself which one suits your needs best.

Online Video Editing

Editing and mixing your videos online is a relatively new concept and while all of these services are free now I can imagine that at some point in time some of the companies will start to charge for this premium service. For now though all of these are worth looking at.

I’m listing them in no particular order – just to keep it interesting.

http://eyespot.com/ Lets you upload, add, trim and edit your clips as well as add transitions.

http://www.jumpcut.com – upload video clips, photos and audio right from your computer, digital camera or email. Mix, edit publish and share. One of the easiest ways to create new and exciting videos.

http://www.motionbox.com/ – Combine the best parts of your videos and cut out the boring parts. No complicated software required. Premium Members have unlimited storage.

http://www.flektor.com – Make customized slide shows, polls, text, or direct and edit your own movie with hundreds of effects and next generation glitter graphics all online. You can record or even broadcast yourself live on a webcam.

http://www.vmix.com/ – VMIX is not so much an online video editing suite but mor an online community for people who like to make, discover and share digital content. Videos, Photos, Music – all in one place. VMIX is not just a video sharing website – it’s a new way of getting your work out. I’ve listed it here because you can create a custom player and take your fully- branded video player off-site. It’s also listed because of the “Human-Filtering” element that ensures better quality video and promotion.

http://www.cuts.com as they say on the site – “we don’t make movies, we make fun of them”. This site is lots of fun (you’ll see when you try it out) but there are times when I’ve had problems accessing the site and slow loading of pages etc. It’s probably due to it’s growing popularity but still a royal PITA and I’m sure it’ll get sorted soon.

http://www.muveemix.com The flash intro screen and music intro is something I’ve just about learnt to deal with (it’s my age). I’m not a big fan of forced anything online but the application is very easy to use and fun to play with. Upload your videos, mix in your music, play with the various styles and then share the results.

http://www.bubbleply.com – not a true video editing tool but you can add speech bubble overlays and get some interesting effects.

Site Deployable Video Editing

This next tool for me falls into a category all of it’s own. While it is an online video clip editor it’s also a tool you can use on your own website to give your users the functionality. Just watch your bandwidth and processor usage.

http://www.moviemasher.com/ – Enables media sequencing, trimming, transitioning and true multitrack mixing of audio and effects.

Editing features include multi-item selection, copy/paste and undo/redo history. Can be deployed on any site for free under the MPL 1.1 license to enable advanced video editing features for end users. Like other open source development projects, it benefits from ongoing community feedback and code contributions.

Downloadable Video Editing Software

http://www.jahshaka.org – open source, hardware accelerate editing and effects system for Windows, OsX and Linux.

http://www.zs4.net – ZS4 Video Editor is free to download and use video editing and compositing software which aims to provide media experts with a facility to combine a variety of media types (currently photos, videos and audio files) into one (or more) output file(s).

http://www.debugmode.com/wax/ freeware – Wax is a high performance and flexible video compositing and special effects software. The idea for Wax is to be very general purpose and flexible in video compositing and effects, so that you can compose your dream video sequence with ease every time.

http://www.virtualdub.org/ – No flashy logo but VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video.

http://www.kdenlive.org/ – Kdenlive is an open source non linear video editor (NLE) for the KDE environment running on Linux. It is based on the MLT video framework which relies on the FFMPEG project.

http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/ – Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. – Available for Linux, BSD, Mac OS, X and Microsoft Windows under the GNU GPL license.

http://www.kinodv.org/ – Easy and reliable DV editing for the Linux desktop with export to many usable formats. Check the requirements to make sure it will run on your system.

http://lives.sourceforge.net/ – LiVES is a Free, Open Source video editor *and* a VJ tool. LiVES mixes realtime video performance and non-linear editing in one application. It will let you start editing and making video right away, without having to worry about formats, frame sizes, or framerates. It is a very flexible tool which can be used by both VJ’s and video editors. LiVES is released under version 3 of the GNU Public License, the GPL.

http://www.heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3 – A movie studio in a Linux Box. Cinelerra does primarily 3 main things: capturing, compositing, and editing audio and video with sample level accuracy. The project was started in 1997 and has two main forks of development, OpenGL and H.264. The development has progressed significantly and some of the audio and video effects are well worth trying. It handles 64bit computing but read the specs.

So there you have it a fairly comprehensive list of free online video editing applications and non linear editing tools for your computer. It has to be said that most of the downloadable tools are for Linux based systems but there are some useful tools for Windows users.

If I’ve missed out anything you think should be here feel free to comment or drop me a line, I’ll be happy to update this list and try to keep it current. Likewise please let others know your experiences with any of the software mentioned and subscribe to my feed.

I’m also not going to complain if you feel like Digging or Stumbling or generally Sharing this post.

Internet video advertising and promotions pre-production software.

The emergence of web video as a viable medium for advertisers and promoters over the last two years has been astounding. Advancements in compression technology and the growth in broadband usage has made high quality video streaming a reality that we dreamed of five years ago.

The available technology has led to a massive rise in the number of sites like YouTube and Daily Motion (to name just two) that have emerged. No-one can deny the popularity of user generated content, you’ve just got to think back to how much Google paid for You Tube.

Uploading your videos to these social network video sites will help begin the process of getting air play or views for your videos. There are a number of guides available that will help teach you ways of monetizing your videos or how to use them to generate a contestant stream of new and unique visitors to your business website. But before you can do that you have to create and produce your video. Let’s look at pre production planning

Planning your video or informercial.

It’s great to know that you want to film or produce a video and it’s even better if you know how to pull all of the elements together, but what if you’ve never done this before, where do you start?

Well for me the starting point begins with Celtx . Celtx is free software that is used in the pre production stage of film, video, theatre and even animation. Most people will never use all of it’s functionality but as a starting point I find it invaluable.

Why would you want to use it?

Forget that fact that it connects you to people in all walks of film and video. Forget that you can collaborate with like minded people on a project. Forget the fact that its popularity is growing day by day. Forget the fact you can get help from people who are in the industry. Just download it and scare yourself silly as you discover what’s needed for even a simple video or film production.

As I said most of the functionality you won’t need but as a tool for planning what you do need, creating a storyboard, developing your script etc, Celtx is one of your must have tools.

Celtx is being developed for the film and stage industry with contributions from directors, producers, script writers, camera people, actors. You name ‘em they are here and there is a thriving community in the forum.

For a simple Camtasia presentation you want to produce this is overkill but as your skills and needs grow you will be glad you have Celtx on your PC. If nothing else download Celtx so you don’t forget the simple things when planning your next shoot. Not getting a release document or having your actor turn up to the wrong location can be a real pain.

What I really liked about Celtx as a newbie at film making was how it opened my eyes as to what is really involved in getting great results and how it opened the creative elements in my mind.

There are quite a few different types of video programmes that today’s businesses may need or want to shoot.

In general videos can be used as marketing or sales tools as well as for product or service promotion. You can also produce Video for public awareness films, to help improve safety issues or highlight features and improvements. There is also a significant growing trend for training videos as part of an educational programme and infomercials.

In this article we look at some of the costs and resources involved in any video production.

Video programmes can involve real people as in staff or actors, animation or screen shots from your computer. A video can even be a combination of all of these things but one thing is common throughout. Irrespective of the type of video you are putting together, the resources that go into producing videos are often the same. Here’s what I mean.

A 15 minute infomercial will require approximately the same amount of resources and budget as a 15 minute training video, even though the resources in each film or video are somewhat different.

Generally this rule of thumb will apply across the board meaning a low budget marketing DVD will cost roughly the same as a low cost educational DVD. You can take this video principle and apply it to high budget, high cost DVD’s and videos as well. Why?

The common factor is that every video needs planning, scripting, shoot days and editing. With very few exceptions every video production will also need graphics, titling, post production, authoring and in some cases conversion into different formats. Especially if you want to use your videos on the web or for streaming.

Although the storyline and locations for each type of video will be different, the resources and man hours involved during the filming and production stages will be virtually be the same. If you take this rule of thumb on board it indicates that the common factors and related costs of the video production process are often similar.

Another rule of thumb that you can use is that the end price you pay for your finished video depends more on the quality you want as opposed to the type video you are making. The obvious exception to this general rule is if you have heavily animated content or lots of special effects. It should go without saying that these mediums will rip into your budget due to the time involved.