Meeting tonight at 8pm - Special Guest to tell us about PodCamp NYC

[Angelo Mandato]

We're having a meeting tonight at 8pm.

Todd Cochrane from the Geek News Central podcast will be joining us tonight to talk about PodCamp NYC. We can take this opportunity to find out what made PodCamp NYC great and get ideas for PodCamp Ohio!

Tonights agenda items:

• Talk about PodCamp NYC
  
• We've received room availability from ITT. We got plenty of space!
  
• Angelo will be visiting ITT tomorrow, please contact angelo (angelo [at] podcampohio.com) if you would like to come.
• Sponsors Update
• What ever else comes up

Call in information:

Talkshoe link: http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/80720
Phone number: (724) 444-7444
Talkcast id: 80720

Thanks,
Angelo

--
PodCamp Ohio
June 28, 2008
Twitter: podcampohio
Web: www.podcampohio.com

[Mary Wehrle]

Hey Angelo,
Can you point me to a web site where I can learn about uploading videos to my blog? I'm having issues. I recorded a video that is just over 2 minutes ans is over 345MB in size  in widows media player format. It was taking over 3 hours to upload to my blog. I need to know how to get the size down to something that will upload faster. Am I even making sense?

Angelo Mandato <ang...@podcampohio.com> wrote:

Aeschylus

Out beyound the ideas of right doing and wrong doing, there is a field, I will meet you there. ~ Rumi

[Brandice]

It sounds like you need to be encoding the file in a smaller format... are you uploading the raw file from your camera?

Also, uploading a file that size and having it played on your site's bandwidth could really eat into your available bandwidth for your site.  It's good to use an online video hosting site like Viddler.com, blip.tv, or YouTube (although YouTube won't accept a file that size and has a lot of restrictive limits anymore).  I can help with Viddler setup because I work for them and have used them for about a year now, but before even uploading, it sounds like you need help figuring out the best encoding to use in Windows Movie Maker or whatever movie editing software you'll be using.

On a completely unrelated noted, I am probably going to pass on tonight's meeting.  I've had one of those constantly *on* days and am a little fried.  I'll listen to the recording for sure, though. :)

Brandice

_________________________

Viral Marketing, Podcamp Ohio

http://podcampohio.com

bran...@podcampohio.com

[Angelo Mandato]

I'm glad Brandice chimed in here, I'm actually not the best person to ask about video editing, this is one of the topics I want to attend at PodCamp. :-) I do know that, as Brandice said, the file is a bit too large and you'll want to encode it into a format that keeps the quality high but compresses the file.

I'll give Matt Fuller a call shortly and see if he has any freeware software tools to recommend. There are also some video editing tools and recommendations on the PodcastFAQ.com site that may help you out, http://www.podcastfaq.com/creating-podcast/video/

Thanks,
Angelo

[Scott Merrill]

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 5:56 PM, Mary Wehrle <mwe...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Can you point me to a web site where I can learn about uploading videos to
> my blog? I'm having issues. I recorded a video that is just over 2 minutes
> ans is over 345MB in size in widows media player format. It was taking over
> 3 hours to upload to my blog. I need to know how to get the size down to
> something that will upload faster. Am I even making sense?

Hi Mary.

What did you use to record your video? If you used a traditional
video recorder (one that uses tapes of any sort), chances are that
when you import the video into your computer it's being saved as "DV"
(digital video) format. This is a great format when creating DVDs,
for example, because no portion of your original video is ever lost or
modified. Unfortunately, the file sizes are huge, because none of the
video information is discarded.

To save space, various video codecs exist. Codecs work to throw away
bits of your video that aren't necessary without overly affecting the
resulting quality. This is all done through mathematical algorithms,
though, so what the algorithm decides is unnecessary may not match up
entirely with what yours eyes feel are unnecessary. As such, when
converting from raw DV to any other format, you _will_ lose quality.
It can be a trial-and-error process to figure out which codec (and
which settings for that codec) produce the best output for you, based
on a number of competing factors (final file size, image quality,
image smoothness, framerate, etc).

Generally speaking, you'd use video editing software to import your
raw DV file(s), and then convert them into another, smaller format.
The conversion process can take a long time, depending on your source
files, your computer, and the destination codec. One currently
popular codec is XviD. The XviD codec is freely available without
licensing fees, so you should be able to find Free Software to use to
convert raw DV to XviD. The XviD codec will produce MP4 video, which
should be playable on just about every computer (and certainly
accepted by video upload sites). Another option for MP4 video is the
h.264 codec used by Apple. This is not free, so expect to purchase
software to make MP4 files using h.264.

One can quickly go crazy reading up on all the different codecs and
container formats (AVI, mpeg, ffmpeg, matroska, ogg theora, etc etc).
If you find an easy-to-use tool, you can experiment to see what
produces output that you find acceptable. Then, as others have
pointed out, you can upload the converted video to Viddler, or
Blip.tv, or what-have-you.

I don't use Windows, so I can't speak to this application directly,
but I've heard positive things about VirtualDub:
http://www.virtualdub.org/

But see also this Wikipedia list of video editing software:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_editing_software

I use Kino on my GNU/Linux laptop, and it works a treat for me.

Also, you might consider the (relatively) new Pure Digital Flip camcorder:
http://www.theflip.com/
You can read a great review of it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/technology/personaltech/20pogue.html
It saves files in XviD format (inside an AVI container, with mono
ADCMP audio). I recently bought one, and have been really enjoying
using it. It's super easy to use, and it allows you to sidestep the
entire process of video conversion (though it does not necessarily
obviate the need to _edit_ your video!).

Cheers,
SCott

[Mary Wehrle]

You are a peach!
I did get the problem figured out last night. I recorded off my laptop camera. Right now, I'm unemployed so I can't afford to purchase equipment but your recommendation on the video camera was much appreciated. I want to start pod casting on my Z car blog and am trying to learn this stuff now before we get to far into the driving season.

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my email and offering your advice. I really appreciate it.

Scott Merrill <ski...@skippy.net> wrote:

Wehrle

Dylan(M2) Libby(conure) Tripoli (B&G Macaw) 

Ernie (cockatiel)
Mama, Holly & Rerun (cats) 
Brie (Great Dane) & Bay (German Shepherd)

The spirit of Zoe (Great Dane) 1994-2004; Amelia (Great Dane)1994 -2006

and Arrow (African Grey) 1995 - 2005

 

He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart,

and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. ~ Aeschylus