Back in the dark ages, my parents subscribed to Showtime. Before a movie that was closed-captioned would air, their house announcer would intone, “The following presentation is closed-captioned for the hearing impaired”. They would then jokingly say “what?” But this was also back in the day before televisions shipped with closed-caption decoders built-in. And not a moment too soon, as my wife and I have noted: the kids these days are playing their loud booming cars ever louder, to the point where we are thinking it’s time to invest in hearing aid manufacturers. (No, we’re younger than we sound; we’re not sitting on our front porch, drinking lemonade and swinging our canes at the kids to get off our lawn.)

Ahem. But the innovation of the day comes from YouTube, who is using the power of having a ton of servers to create subtitles (which they are technically incorrectly referring to as closed captions; but then again, people know what closed captions are) for some education channels and all Google channels. You can also add your own captions from a script; YouTube will automatically work out the timings for you, so you won’t need to provide any timecode data. But, once your video is subtitled, you can download the timecode data that YouTube has calculated with all of your subtitles, so this could theoretically help you add captions to other types of media that you’re going out to (DVD or Blu-ray Disc, anyone?)

There’s also language translation capabilities here that appear to work well in the videos we’ve played with, but even Google admits that they’re not quite perfect (though they are often better than nothing, particularly if you don’t know the language being spoken in the video you’re viewing.)

We got an early release of Motorola’s new Droid phone and took it for a quick test drive to see if it’s got what it takes to be a competitive camcorder.

Charlie Fulton, our Tech Guru had the chance to play with the phone and was surprisingly pleased with the quality of the video it recorded.  The Droid can upload video directly to YouTube, so when you shoot it now, you can share it with the world in only seconds, a cool feature if you’re the first one to catch the return of Elvis from an extraterrestrial spaces-ship. Now that’s a video the world will want to engage in! Read the rest of this entry »

On the surface, it certainly seems like you could put anything onto your favorite video sharing site. It seems like we’ve seen just about everything that could possibly be seen on video sharing sites over the past few years. The primary demarcation point, when it comes down to it, is whether a video being posted is a one-off production of a remarkable event, or something episodic.

We got a very nice mention from ReadWriteWeb a while back from regarding our just-completed Basic Production Techniques webinar. They reminded us of a few of the flagship episodic videos out there, including the venerable Ask a Ninja and iJustine, though there are a few that we’d add a few to that list too. Video sharing sites, at that point, do their best work in that they serve as a springboard to encourage viewers to subscribe to feeds in a somewhat more convenient way (though you can certainly subscribe via the sharing site itself, and that is certainly easy.) But it also lets you find new, related videos as well. And as we see it, the biggest coup one could hope to accomplish is to have an episode of an episodic series go viral, exposing viewers to a goldmine of previous episodes which might result in the clicking of the big golden “Subscribe” button. And that could mean ad revenue sharing…

It’s true, though, that YouTube comments are some of the most brutal things on the internet, right up there with having a comment disemvoweled on Boing Boing or any number of things that might appear on any political web site…

Don’t forget, sign-up for the joint event we’re producing with YouTube. We are going to give you some tips on shooting, lighting techniques, and the best way to record audio.

We’re reprinting the original post from YouTube’s blog as posted by Mia Quagliarello, YouTube’s Community Manager. Read the rest of this entry »

Can you get more people to take the stairs by making it fun to do? That’s the question asked in Piano Stairs, a new viral video that has reached well over 2.5 million views on YouTube in just under two weeks.

Piano Stairs is part of a Volkswagen viral video marketing campaign called “The Fun Theory.” Their theory? “Fun can change behavior for the better.” They set-forth to prove their theory by turning plain, old stairs into a fully functioning keyboard and filming the public’s reaction to it. Not only is the video an interesting approach to creating social change, but it’s fun to watch, as well.

With an abundance of internet video-sharing sites, such as YouTube and Vimeo, it’s becoming easier to share our own thought-provoking videos with the world. All it takes is one question, a camcorder and a little bit of work, and you, too, could have the next viral video.

Are you thinking about using the general public in your next video? Be sure you’re Keeping it Legal with Location and Artist Release Forms.

I’ve been having an interesting conversation with school instructor Dylan Bennett over a blog post I made on Monday about a viral video on YouTube.

The video is a well choreographed piece by film students in Montreal using a popular song.

Mr. Bennett was commenting about how, as a video production instructor, he strives to teach his students not only the video producing skills and techniques but also the rules and ethics that go along with being a video producer.

We often write in Videomaker about how legally and ethically one shouldn’t use copyright music without permission,  and how, even recently, YouTube has taken down people’s fun videos because they used 10-seconds of a song without permission from the copyright holder.  But, apparently, the rules are changing.

Mr. Bennett sent me this blog post that Google put up this week, saying it’s OK to use copyright music, TV shows, or other approved media on YouTube… “if”… and it’s a big IF.  If the record company/TV network/copyright holder sees a financial benefit to them.

Read the rest of this entry »