Video (ok, youtube) support

Not sure there are any fans of Numberphile on youtube out there? It is produced by the University of Nottingham by a guy named Brady. He also puts out the Periodic Videos on Chemistry. He is prolific, not because he is especially good, but rather he is in the midst of a lot of know-how. It’s easy to pump out a hundred videos if you are surrounded by so many creative types like in a university.

We ought to have video support. There are so many HOWTO video’s we could put out. There should be a cheapo video camera anyone could grab spontanteously at any time to record a HOWTO. Maybe do some editing later. Slap in a boilerplate DMS intro?

Essentially, if someone wants to deposit HOWTO knowledge on video, there ought to be a way to deposit it into a DMS youtube channel. But maybe this is already being done?

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This capability already exists minus the boilerplate logos and such. I’d rather people brand stuff as their own than latch onto DMS. Though they could mention DMS if they want to.

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I agree with Luke about mentioning DMS, but identifying a video as one’s own. I haven’t seen the videos you linked to, and in no way mean this as raining in your suggestion, but I believe good, effective videos aren’t simple to make. The fact that anyone can doesn’t mean everyone’s will be helpful. On a such things I find myself using an analogy to playing blues. It’s so simple that anyone can play it. It’s also really hard to play it well, and few can.

I have produced/directed/shot/edited/post everything from broadcast TV commercials to infotainment and educational content. Left that side of the industry about a decade ago, but am still in the Video Production world.

If you have specific questions, I’ll certainly answer what I can.

A small forewarning though. Quality content takes more time and resources than you might think. I’d be willing to guesstimate that the average Numberphile video has around 50-60 hours of work behind it. Fewer motion graphics could cut that down a good chunk, but for their particular videos, that’s what tends to make them awesome.

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This. An incredible amount of work goes into creating good content.

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As for what camera - there are a few at DMS that are pretty good, but I’ll honestly say that getting a regular video camera from Fry’s or whatever is really the way to go. We have stills cameras that are great at making artistic video, but sacrifice workflow and ease of use for shallow depth of field.

You’ll thank yourself time and time again for good pre-production. Make sure that you have all the shots, both A and B roll that you’ll need, then shoot a bunch more BRoll as you’ll always discover stuff in the edit that you didn’t think of. A good storyboard can help a lot, as well as having an actual script that you follow.

There are a number of screen capture applications (not sure what we have at DMS) that are pretty inexpensive, and you can ususally record off of a USB headset.

Numberphile’s animations are likely done in Adobe After Effects. I spent about 5 years working in it on a fairly regular basis (probably at least 10 hours a week in the office) to get to the level where I was no longer a newbie. It’s one of the deepest programs that I’m aware of. Some stuff is real simple, but other things take javascript, so if you’re a programmer, you do have a leg up!

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I’ve been thinking of this, too.

Camtasia is much, much easier to use than Premiere. It’s very easy to add lower third identification/branding and captions, too.

I don’t doubt that Camtasia is actually a fairly capable video editor these days, I’m just not at all experienced with it as, back in my day … it was a bit of a different landscape.

Lower 3rds and branding is easy, motion graphics are hard :slight_smile:

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Not really sure, but I’d generally assume so. I deal with ‘pro’ level cameras that are great and all, but way overkill for these purposes. I’d want one with audio inputs as a primary requirement.

It explains “This Old Tony” lag, he puts good production into his YouTube videos, Atleast I think.

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I shoot all of my videos on an iPhone and have an XLR adapter for a super cardioid mic that filters out a lot of background noise. I edit in Camtasia, which is available in Windows and MacOS. It allows multiple track editing, and you can split the audio track out and even delete the existing audio if you want.

I don’t have a mixing board for the computer, so I use the same iPhone/mic setup using Voice Recorder (part of iPhone standard apps) to do voice over, then import the new audio track.

I have a USB Yeti mic, so I could record voice right to Camtasia. but I like my Shure mic better.

Camtasia is used by most of the independent/solopreneur course creators that I know, and it does screen recording well without imposing a time limit on videos like Jing (free screen recording software) does.

@HugoSmooth, for consistency in our workflow, are you open to using a DMS windows machine? I don’t know if we’ll get approval for funds for Camtasia, but I could learn Adobe Premiere if I had to in order to keep this consistent so anyone can jump in when needed.

We also have Premier Rush in addition to Premier Pro which is specifically made to be simple easy to use for making social media videos and upload directly to youtube, facebook, instagram

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Nice! I’ll look at that.

I support this idea