JVC GY-HM 100u and Final Cut Pro and the Basics

Camera with lavaliere receiver for remote recording.

There are many possible tools and techniques to create multimedia. First the simple stuff that is cheap but often overlooked.

Probably the most important tool one should use is a tripod. Nobody appreciates images bouncing sickeningly around a screen. A steady image is key to keeping your audience.

While not a tool, you need to have the light source to your back. Videography like photography is painting with light. Full light makes your subject look sharp and the colors rich. Evening and dawn give the best light and like the sun over your shoulder it is free.

Once you have dealt with light the next issue is sound. Sound is at least half of the video. While an image is lineally acquired, sound is omnidirectional. It is problematic. You need to either get close or get technical. Close is cheap, but not very dramatic or interesting. By moving away from the subject you can capture a wide range of effects, angles, and moods. Technology can simplify both the production and post production process. Sound technology costs, but to improve the quality of your video it is one of the most important things you can invest in.

After creating a number of videos it felt like time to move to a prosumer level. The heart of the system that I use is the JVC GY-HM 100u video camera. It records to the native Final Cut Pro (FCP) codex. Final Cut Pro is the industry standard for video editing. The JVC also records onto cheap SD cards which means that your files can be simply dragged into FCP to be edited without any rendering. This tapeless system is the way of the future.

The JVC accepts XLR equipped microphones. I use two types of microphones. A very unidirectional microphone that cancels out extraneous noise and a remote lavaliere body microphone that I can wire the talent with and transmit to a receiver attached to the camera.

With these techniques and tools it is possible to create a professional product at a relatively modest cost.

Notes from the Multimedia Trenches

A good day to build and fly dreams.

 

To create we take in experiences and give back an interpretation of that experience. Lately I have been trying to cut the time down between the experience and the interpretation. Speeding the process up requires both better techniques, and tools. I have listed some of the resources used this week.

• Good Creative Commons music is hard to find. Jamendo is one of the better sites for free music. I have used it to find music for several videos.

 

http://www.jamendo.com

 

• It is time to upgrade my multimedia tool box. The Panasonic Lumix GH1 is on the top of my shopping list for July 1^st.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/technology/personaltech/30pogue.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

 

• Journalism is the place to go to learn about multimedia software and hardware used in storytelling. Journalists are inventing the genre. Adam Westbrook is a respected name in the industry.

 

http://adamwestbrook.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/great-free-apps-for-multimedia-journalists/

 

• I started to get excited about the idea of having one device that would accomplish all my multimedia needs, especially for video, sound and images. Here is an article that has got me thinking.

 

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2345163,00.asp

 

• Twitpic from the Tweetdeck

 

I began to use Tweetdeck at the VSS conference and am continuing to discover its many features and general usefulness. I also have been using Twitpic to share photos. These two applications are incredibly easy to use.

 

• I have been using this Firefox add on to download video clips. It’s great for public domain material.

 

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006

 

• Jing allows a user to capture and annotate multimedia content. It is free and relatively easy. It is good for creating mash-ups or explaining concepts to others. It’s made by the company that makes Snagit.

 

http://www.jingproject.com/

Better Sound

Recording High Quality Sound

 

 Sound quality is always a problem around a school. With hundreds of kids stuffed into a small space, singing, running and shouting, it is hard to imagine a worse acoustic environment. When you stir into the mix a noisy climate control system, it is enough to drive a video production crew to distraction.

The solution is video very close to the action and speak very loudly. When recording a soundtrack the kids know they have to use their ‘outside’ voice. Occasionally, we will use a shotgun microphone or a Lavaliere mike recording to the Marantz, but recording to a separate audio device means a lot of extra time in post production editing. Usually we bite the bullet and shoot the scene in the quietest place possible, with the students at their maximum volume. In Adobe Premier Elements there is a degree of control over the audio and if all else fails we work in Adobe Soundbooth.

There are a couple of technological tricks that I am considering to improve sound quality. The Camcorder XLR Adapter allows you to turn a regular consumer camcorder into a sophisticated audio recorder by providing the professional inputs necessary for high quality microphones. Another tool that seems to work well and doesn’t cost the earth is the portable sound room. http://digitalproducer.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=89503 This is a DIY project which promises a richer sound.

The bottom line is that audio represents 60% of your video production. Searching out solutions to the many obstacles to capturing good sound is worth the effort.

Some useful links:

http://mediastorm.org/submissions/gathering_audio_2.htm
http://www.bbctraining.com/onlineCourse.asp?tID=2508&cat=3
http://www.vermontfolklifecenter.org/res_audioequip.htm

Cayoosh Kidz Content Slideshow

In keeping with the theme of multimedia, today’s offering is a slide show that was created in Adobe Premiere Elements. The process of making a slide show goes much better if you first lay down the audio track and then add your visual and other elements. All the images in the video were created by the kids in my class.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=YmoMyyG6RjI

Why are these the best times to tell multimedia stories?

•  We are seeing undreamed of possibilities for sharing our creations. Through web 2.0 social networking via the internet we can have an audience of thousands and possibly millions. All this with no real cost. Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, WordPress and Del.icio.us provide us with infinite possibilities for meaningful exchange.

 

•   The dramatic drop in the hardware costs of creating multimedia stories brings unprecedented opportunities. Not only has it dropped to affordable levels but it is set to drop a lot further! A dozen years ago a video camera with professional features would cost tens of thousands of dollars. Now cameras such as the Canon XH A1 can out perform those earlier monsters for around $3000. If that still seems too rich for your wallet, take heart; 75 000 people have viewed our 50 odd Cayoosh Kidz videos. These videos were done on a camera costing around $300.

 

• There is the availability of free, or near free multimedia editing software: software for video editing, photoshop-type programs for pictures and Audacity for editing sound. These programs ensure that we can sculpture our raw files into pleasing final products.

 

• We not only have the technical means to produce multimedia stories; we have the evolution of accessible simplified new media grammar. With radical changes in the news industry, new approaches to creating web based media have appeared. These approaches easily transfer from the news-gathering realm to the educational. Educators are under the same constraints of time and budgets as reporters. By learning to tell stories like reporters we can quickly master the skills necessary to both tell our own stories, and assist our students to tell theirs. These emerging resources can be found at sites such as Advancing the Story  or Mastering Multimedia . Here they boil down the process of digital creativity to its simple essence and provide great models to inspire us.

 

We have the tools and we have access to the techniques, now all that’s needed is the creative spark. What are we waiting for?

A Special Podcast Version of Rural Schools Blog

Not Just The Sound Of Music

 

Just writing about multimedia is a bit hypocritical when it is after all supposed to be multimedia. And so with that thought in mind today’s blog is about podcasting, and it is a podcast. I hope you find it a worthwhile and enjoyable experience. Here are the resources that I used to make the podcast.

 

http://mashable.com/2008/06/30/free-legal-music-sites/

http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/25-free-digital-audio-editors/

http://poducateme.com/guide/

http://www.multimediastories.net/sound.html

 

Ken

Audio Media Type 3

 

The next media type that we worked with was sound. We recorded radio shows, wildlife sounds, student-created music, Readers Theatre and more. Because these were items that we wanted to keep they were stored on our website. A faster and simpler solution is to use a blogging site and incorporate your audio using their interface. This works well for something like a class Christmas song that has a limited life.

 

What to Record With

 

You really need to record in a digital format. It just takes too much time to transfer recordings from a tape source. Most of our recording is done with a Marantz PMD 660 digital recorder. The xlr connections allow professional quality stereo recording and flash memory gives ease and speed when editing. Sometimes we use the sound from our video camera. We have also used the audio recording ability of a digital camera. The Canon Power Shot S3 IS can record two hours of usable sound if the recording conditions are perfect. New recording solutions are being developed all the time; the Zoom Corporation has produced a device called the H2 Handy Recorder.  I talked to several of the local broadcasters who are involved in documentary production and they raved about it, and at around $200 dollars the price is right. Finally, you can record directly into your computer, but the sound isn’t very good and it is a bit awkward to lug a computer into the field.

 

Microphones

 

When recording you need a good microphone. Not all microphones are made for the same purposes.

 

We use the Shure SM58; it’s a relatively inexpensive quality microphone that you could hammer nails with. It is a unidirectional (cardioid) dynamic vocal microphone and forgiving to use.

 

Our Rode NTG-2 is a shotgun microphone that allows us to record conversations in noisy locations. It is a super cardioid which means it is more sensitive to sounds coming from directly in front of the microphone and minimizes sound from the sides.

 

Finally we have a Shure lavalier microphone, which is used for interviews. This is the type that clips onto clothing. Because of the extra time it takes to set up, this is the microphone that we use least.

 

Headphones are a must for recording, they will help you to listen to a recording to see if unwanted background noises are present or some other technical problem has occurred.

 

For a primer on audio recording have a look at the cutting-edge website.

 

http://mediastorm.org 

http://mediastorm.org/submissions/gathering_audio.htm .

The Folklife Center has a good series of resources for making audio recordings.

http://www.vermontfolklifecenter.org/res_audioequip.htm

Improving Sound Quality

A device that works well and is easy to build is the portable sound room.

 

http://digitalproducer.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=89503

 

 

Our Community Radio Show

The Cayoosh Kidz radio program is a popular show on Lillooet’s community radio station CHLS 100.5FM. http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=dca1191308e9adc6792c

The show is rich in student-created content such as poetry, prose, news and live interviews. Because it is licensed under the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) students can also play any music they like. This is a real advantage compared to a podcast where the music must be royalty free, making it much harder to produce.

 

If you were going to make a regular broadcast you could use a podcast format which would be linked from your webpage. We created a couple of podcasts but found that without free access to popular music (due to broadcasting rules) they weren’t well subscribed. It was a lot of work and we abandoned the project to concentrate on other more popular projects. If you are curious about creating podcasts; Poducateme is a comprehensive resource http://poducateme.com/guide/. The blog host WordPress http://wordpress.com/  allows you to create short podcasts and upload them directly to your blog site. This is by far the easiest way to test the waters of podcasting.