Dean is talking again about sharing. Heck it’s in his name so its perfect, and worth listening when he says/tweets “I have something to share(ski)”. Take 25 minutes and watch his video Sharing: The Moral Imperative created pre-conference keynote for the 2010 K-12 Online Conference:

The kinds of stories Dean shares ought to be moving more and more from exception to norm.

But another thread stuck out for me.

Dean share(ski)-ed Dan Meyer’s path from experimenting with blogs as a form of mental outboarding (thinking out loud) to the explosion that happened around Dan’s sharing of his math graphing videos — Graphing Stories. George Couros, an elementary school principle, wrote an entry in his own blog about an activity his school put on, one that he in fact borrowed from elsewhere, but others were moved by the outcomes George shared about Identity Day so that schools from far away took it one themselves and connected over the shared power of the idea. Jabiz Raisdana who blogs in many spaces, e.g. Intrepid Teacher, decided when his daughter was born to create a blog to document her life from the start. Noting her interest in photography, he began posting Kaia’s photos and then they posted a video on her blog of a story they created as a video– on sending it out on twitter, her post was flooded with comments and colleagues elsewhere had their kids create video stories in response (argh, help me Jabiz, I cannot locate that first story to add a link! Thanks, added it above!).

Do you see the thread? These three stories all shared different things, but they were all shared in a blog.

When you blog, you leave a mark, a permanent link (if you keep up those hosting fees), but it can last forever (or as long as the internet does). Yes twitter and facebook enable connections, but they are ephemeral. Twitter and facebook can amplify and spread a message, but without a blog reference to hang onto, they will fade into the scroll pile. Just try and find a twitter message you said a few months ago. I’ve seen tweets fade from twitter search in a matter of weeks.

It’s not one versus the other, but these stories that Dean share(ski)s still pounds the message to me, that despite the claims of blogging being dead, that it is as vital and important as ever as making your mark, as your own personal think monitor.

From Dean’s videos were Dan Meyer’s words that the gaps in his blogging correlated to the same periods where he felt his teaching was perhaps more flatlined.

You cannot build and maintain a history in twitter. Yes I know there are tools to do this, but its not the same as having something more meatier and built out as a blog post, where you work out the ideas like kneading bread. And own them. Forever (or as long as….).

Call me old skool, but I will say til my last death grip post, the blog is where its at.

I also have to commend Dean on the multi-camera style he did for his video, very pro. I was curious where the clips where going showing him set up equipment, and that sly Shareski was share(ski)-ing subtly how he did his video, down to the iPad as teleprompter.

But do yourself a favor and watch the video and of course, share(ski) it and more…

But as I watched it, I was mesmerized first by its elegance. Not being a film critic, the simplicity of its form (no music, no spoken words beyond the ambient), the detailed closeups impressed me. But more than that, if there was not a title on the video, and I just watched it, there is a smartly created sense of mystery as to what is happening, slowly revealed.

Done straight up documentary style, with an opening credits sequence, hip music, and some professional announcer voice, it would have no magic or charm.

Thankfully, it was not done that way.

I only wish they would have not titled the video in a way that totally gives it away. I could have done something to mask it, but imagine you have not seen the title…

If I were teaching video or storytelling, I would most certainly use this video as one example of a powerful style. Sure one could copy it, but there are elements you can use in other pieces, be it the slow unveiling of the action, or the edit cuts, or the use of detail, lighting, camera angle.

And woah, 2380! Wow.

I can remember the riveting teen age moment when MTV first launched- it was radical, different, spoke to me– and it felt at the time like a game changer (not that I knew there was a game)- and I was there from the start. It was like maybe how future people will be writing about their first experiences with the web or YouTube or … It was jam packed with media. It had a fast pace, It had edgy graphics, and had I know it was a word then– it had snark.

And it felt so personal- the first “VJs” were all young(ish) and unknowns (quick, how many can you remember? I failed too, had to look it up).

I think it was Martha Quinn who was my favorite- so perky…. They were… different from everything else on TV.

Now it seems almost camp and retro. It was still packaged and broadcast. It was one to many.

That was then.

But now I am now the VJ, and I can do more than just play commercially programmed content like a jockey– I am making it. I am chopping it up, slicing, dicing, and julienne frying things into new content. The heck with the “M” being music, it is all about Me.

I have done a few of these (2?) videos which are essentially like music videos except the music is open content from really unknown artists and rather than bands parroting recordings, the images are montages of creative commons licensed images. It feels though… like a music video.

Last year I was largely inspired after seeing Martin Weller’s EduPunk video (yanked from YouTube, thank the net for blip.tv) to do my first one as a teaser for the 2008 NMC Symposium Rock the Academy: Radical Teaching, Unbounded Learning.

This all occurred to me after I spent a few hours assembling media and composing this teaser video for the upcoming NMC Symposium on the Future:

This one was meant to provide strong visuals for a mixture of the future as either utopian or the opposite, plus some things that suggested technology, alternative energy, food, and of course, a lot of human imagery.

What follows is my own process documentation…

• I scour flickr for creative commons images using Compfight searches on tags. I cannot recall all the tags I tried- likely “future”, “utopia”, “farming”, “energy”, “joy”, “protest”, “factory”, “leap”, “hungry”, “technology”….
• I download the larger image, usually 1024 x 800 some and also keep a text file with the name of the flickr image creator (for providing credit). It’s easy to get caught up in the search and not track this info, and more tedious to have to go back and find it later.
• I’m still using a 2006 version of iMovieHD (long story, but it works for me) and because of the way it imports stills (it remembers if the last one you did used Ken Burns or not), I do a single image import, then use the media editing tools to make sure it is zoomed out and NOT set for Ken Burns. Then I can drag and drop the 200+ images I collected.
• I start with a simple title edit (black background) and select a font/color to use for the rest of the text.
• Next I then start tossing them on the timeline, moving around to try and have images that go together. This is just to get the sequence about where I want it. If there are text slides between sections, I add them as well.
• I then look for a music track using ccMixter all Creative Commons licensed tracks made by people mixing other cc licensed samples. They are always unique (well, it can take a while to dind one that is not really weird or just wrong, but I have always found mine in about 20 minutes of searching and listening). I save the URL for the tracks I select- I usually choose 3 or 4 but usually stick with one). I import the audio to the sound track. If it is not long enough, I copy/paste it to the other track, and overlap the start/end so I can fade them in/out to each other.
• Now I go back and start editing the duration of the stills. I hardly ever do Ken Burns and use no transitions- I want all fast cuts. My images are on screen for anywhere from around 1-3 seconds, and try to vary the duration to generate effect- a series of staccato quick changes can be like a rat-a-tat snare drum roll or you can stretch them out to slow down the pace. I cant say I am a rhythm expert, but learning as I go. I do want it fast paced.
• Once I have music match and images set, I leave audio at the end to add the credits track, and fade the music to end at the end of the imagery.
• I think export two versions- first is a high end MP4 for YouTube with settings:
  • MPEG-4 (MP4) using H.264
  • Data rate: 1411 kbits.sec
  • 1280 x 720 image size
  • Frame rate 25 fps
  • Key Frame: automatic
  • Under Video Options- Best Quality (multi-pass)
  • AAC Audio, 44.1 kHz, 128 kbps

  and then another MP4 for playing from our NMC media server:

  • MPEG-4 (MP4) using H.264
  • Data rate: 672 kbits.sec
  • 480 x 360 image size
  • Frame rate 30 fps
  • Key Frame: automatic
  • Under Video Options- Best Quality (multi-pass)
  • AAC-L (Music), 44.1 kHz, 128 kbps

  and then upload

It is a fun thing to do, but I am also interested in experimenting more with the video end of it. Again- I keep the video dead simple- no transitions (beyond the built in fades of the title clips) and pretty much dead on stills presented in quick succession.

So that is the new MeTV.

Talkin’ Bout Open from cogdog on Vimeo.

I could not help selecting the D’Arcy Norman Bigger Than Life glare for the freeze frame!

These quotes from colleagues near and far were taken from the 34 longer interviews I collected for Amazing Stories of Openness, and the full stories will be made available after the presentation next Wednesday.

I got the videos in a variety of ways; in person with my Flip Mino (the best quality); Skype video interviews (doh, guess who did not mute his mic and ended up sounding like a wheezing phone pranker), response videos to my YouTube Call for Stories video, ones people just sent me, audio recordings I set to images, even from my little Canon pocket camera at a dark bar in Hawaii with subjects lit by LED flashlight.

I actually did all the edits in a 2 version back copy of iMovie HD (the one before the really bad version)– I have a pretty good technique for lifting out video so I can insert voice overs of screens (and hopefully not too much Kens Burn nausea).

It’s gonna be a fun show! I’ve got a few surprises up my dog collar. I am sure you are not going to miss Open Ed, eh? Go buy a plane ticket and register, willya?

This video was pretty much right from the camera uploaded to flickr (I deleted in QuickTime Pro the first minute which was not so exciting, to get it below the 500Mb flickr limit).

Right after this my cable internet blinked out for about an hour, leaving me to suck the net through the straw of my mobile wireless card (which seems to like hanging up at random intervals of 1-4 minutes until you cuss it out). Of course, I should rewind back a few years, when my internet here was a 24kbps dialup to Payson.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

The rain dumped like a bucket, and my accurate wheel barrow gauge marked exactly… about 1.5 inches of rain.

Bring it on, the thirsty trees and plants around here did not get enough of the stuff.

Today was the day seven years ago my grandmother passed away. When exactly she was born (sometime in 1905) is a matter of fuzzy record, as she herself told, as her birth into a family of 7 siblings raised by her father in Newark, New Jersey was certified more 50 years later through research into the census records, so it was celebrated on October 15.

“Granny” as I kiddingly called her, was always special to me- she had lots of spirit, drove fast in her red Rambler (“I don’t want anyone behind me complaining about being stuck behind an old lady”), took me to see Johnny Unitas and the Colts play in Memorial Stadium, and was always keen to go jump the big waves at Ocean City, MD.

I had also kidded her about she had to stick around til she was at least 100- she did not make it, but got very close. I always loved hearing her stories about growing up in the early 1900s, her father the chess champion, learning to drive in a Model T, etc.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

During a 1994 visit back east, at a stop at my sister Harriet’s house, I decided to capture some of the stories on this vintage micro-cassette, which I’ve been hanging onto, although the recorder/player stopped working. So this year, I invested a whopping $19 to buy a new micro-cassette player so I could digitize the tapes, which I have as about 35 minutes of digital audio.

When I visited my Mom in April, I managed to scan a lot of old photos, and combined with ones my sister provided (and a few representational nes snagged from the net), I have been planning to turn it into a digital story.

Woah, Neo, this is going to take more time than I thought. I’ve gotten through 2 of 13 tracks, and even with trimming, it was a few hours to come up with this 6 minute segment doing some really basic editing in the old iMovie.

Granny Part 1

And once this is done, Mom, you are next- I have an hour of your recordings and a pile of photos!

But this one’s for you, Granny, Happy Birthday.

Before going about it again, I sought out (via the Oracle) suggested settings for getting good quality video out of YouTube (you definitely want something bigger than 320x24o since YT makes it bigger. I found what looked like reliable info from the YouTube Community Forums — Here’s Help for Perfect YouTube HD Video Settings!

“Perfect” would be nice, my standards are not quire that high.

So for the latest video in my previous post, these are the settings I ran through QuickTime Pro (actually via the expert settings exporting from iMovie HD):

• MPEG-4 (MP4) using H.264
• Data rate: 1411 kbits.sec
• 1280 x 720 image size
• Frame rate 25 fps
• Key Frame: automatic
• Under Video Options- Best Quality (multi-pass)
• AAC Audio, 44.1 kHz, 128 kbps

This brought my 76 second video in at 13.9 Mb!

I don’t profess these to be the absolute best, Nor am I saying that there are not tools to do this work for you– but so far so good (one video!)

it seems so web 2.0ish.

I’m having problems with what looks like fine MPEG 4 video on my computer upload to YouTube and end up with the voice and video way out of sync, like the badly dubbed Godzilla movies, so here it is hoisted on my own server.

It’s still a call for responses, so please reply to the bad synced version on YouTube or post a comment here with a link to your video response. And I have to admit, I need some diversity- so far (self included) my cast mostly all white guys. C’mon ladies and folks from outside the US? But I am not picky, white guys are still welcome.

call for amazing stories (quicktime)

In my first cut of shotting the video, I used the laptop camera on my MacBookPro and spoke audio into my headset mike. The audio was pretty shabby, and started out out of sync.

So I redid my monologue, using my Flip Mino sitting on a GorillaPod. With no one at home, it was a bit of trial and error (out-takes not) to get the shot aimed right. I edited it quickly in iMovie (I am still using the 2 versions back one). I add titles, and I like to separate the audio track to I can cut and drop in some still images. I also went to ccMIxter for some background music- Happyhappyrainbows by colab.

I save mine as broadband high quality MPEG-4, which comes in at 640×480. I uploaded to YouTube, and the web version was way out of sync. I redid it at medium quality and same result. I don’t understand what YouTube is doing in the processing, but it is borked. I give up.

Sometimes, you just have to say, it ain;t gonna work, and move on.

You can also send me some details on your story via the Google Form at the bottom of http://cogdog.wikispaces.com/AmazingStories. I am really excited about the bits I got so far, and I have a fun reto idea for the presentation in Vancouver.

So I stretch the stereo type of “traditional” academy, but it’s all in fun. And it is all open content. Speaking of fun, that was looking for historic videos and footage at the Internet Archive and the Library of Congress American Memory Collection as well as the usual compfight searches of flickr creative commons, and just biuncing around my feeds and friends for screen captures. Plus I did some rapid googling for screens related to the presentations on our program.

There may be a slight weighting of edupunk visuals just cause it is easy to find, fun, and it is Jim. And I did not plan this, YouTube chose the screen for the preview, again landing on the Reverend and definitely related his Tom, and Brian’s session on The Revolution Will Be Syndicated.

Actually, I had almost the most fun finding music, which took literally about 15 minutes to find the two tracks- going to the 78 RPMs & Cylinder Recordings collection on Internet Archive, and hitting the first page on the Orchestra Tag for Carmen March by Edison Symphony Orchestra, 1902. The “rockin” tune again was found almost right away on ccMixter, under the “rock” tag, a mix appropriately titled Dropping Out of High School Remix by Soundphile.

I was going to have the transition be a mashup of appropriate lines form some favorite songs (“For Those about to Rock” and “Rock the Casbah”), evein mixing in Audacity a short stuttering riff of the key lines.. but I dropped it since it is really not open content, and the song I had just fit perfect with a cut transition.

All of the editing was done in iMovie (the previous version which does not suck as much), no cheesy Ken Burns or transitions. All rapid cuts.

Be there November 4-6 to rock out!
http://www.nmc.org/2008-fall-virtual-symposium

As an aside, I just love accidental finds. Leaving this for a future post, if you are a tech blogger, you want to be able to discover things that are not all covered on all the big named tech blogs like Mashable, engadget, etc which seem to carry the same stories. You want to find things not many have looked at (its nearly impossible to be “first”, but the web is wide enough to be new for your readers). Oh, now this is sounding like a different blog post.

Back to Veeple- it is a cloud-based video service that does more than provide flash video in an embeddable player; it allows you to add custom graphics, images as overlays,a s well as text annotation, and each one can become a clickable item in the video that allows viewers to see some more info and/or follow a link to another site… and I think there is some build in the tool to add comments to video.

As you look at the site, it starts my gag reflex with that word.. “monetization” (which thankfully comes up as a wrongly spelled word in spell check)

Does this language speak of potential to educators or anyone outside of sales geeks?:

The next generation web service making any video clickable, empowering web publishers to monetize their content.

Now I know they are likely aiming to make money for developing a technology, and I have no issue with that, but what would you limit the description of your technology? Not everyone with dollars to spend on technology are looking to “monetize” their content? I am by non means a business person, but if I have a compelling technology developed, why start out by limiting your audience to marketing?

More on this later. What does Veeple look like? It’s an embedded player- their “show room” (more salespeak, expecting guys in plaid suits) to me misses the mark by being all sales focused, so you have to put your filters in and look more at what the functionality offers, not necessarily the content. Like the “People and Blogging” one which apparently is showing how this video technology can help Playboy bunny bloggers. Yeah, just like you and me. And I guess they might get a few credit points by leading with a Waynes World clip:

Essentially, as you are viewing the clip, as you mosue over the screen, there are hyperlinks for eother the logos or sometimes text, like the Sports one with Tiger Woods:

and clicking an icon pauses the video, provides a popup with a little info, and links to either go to an outside web site or send the clip to someone else (“share”):

These to me are rather limited examples, the one I first saw was a tertiary link from a story I was reading in my RSS feeds- see the way photos are hyperlinked and various side links from The Global Social Media Network – Social Media Marketing (must be some SEO thing to get buzz words twice in a blog title- look for me to change to “CogDogBlog CogDogBlog Blogging about Blogging”??).

There are vide text annotation features in YouTube, and other sites like Viddler, but Veeple has added a few ways to link out of segments of video. This is somewhat close to what is going to be in the final six topics of the upcoming NMC Horizon.au report, called “Deep Tagging”; essentially tools that allow tagging, or marking up, or referencing specific segments within large media chunks.

And this gets to the other aspect I hope to highlight; when we do the mid-term and far-term topics in the Horizon Project we ask our researchers to look at technologies that are outside of education, in business and industry, entertainment, for ones that may have future application in education. This is prime example; looking at it now you see the technology described as:

In 2006 a group of bright and energetic software developers determined that we were at the beginning of a new era in online media, an era where the traditional “passive” experience on online video viewing was no longer relevant. The age of interactive digital media had finally arrived. So we created Veeple, an interactive video service that provides an innovative web service that enables publishers to easily add interactive and multi-dimensional content to their videos, creating the opportunity to promote, distribute and monetize their online content through viewer and customer interactions.

Veeple’s innovative tools enables publishers to identify and spot objects within video streams, or add their own interactive spots, and customize user experiences around the interaction with those objects. This exciting interactive technology empowers users to transform their viewing experiences, provides a robust monetization solution for content providers, and delivers an effective non-intrusive media vehicle for advertisers.

At Veeple we are bringing together the critical elements to develop a successful service that will truly revolutionize interactive video, offering viewers a way to interact with content in a non-intrusive, informative and relevant way that will provide unique engagement opportunities for both publishers and advertisers.

Which is 95% buzzword machine generated PR. Filter out monetization, and I see a video publishing platform for making video more than a purely sit back watch medium to one that offers some rich hyperlinking functionality, and their back end apparently can do some tracking to provide data on how people are using the media. There are many ways educators might see how to “mark up” video with these overlays.

At the same time, I push back a bit and say, this is not nearly as glossy as “rich interactive”- I always cringe when something is described as “interactivity” when really means, it provides me a limited number of clicks to choose from. That is Interactivity 1.0 – much more interactive might be ones that include response video within YouTube or something barely known if in the US; Japans’s 2channel where viewers comment directly in video — see this May 2008 article in Wired.

I am not suggesting Veeple will become a “big thing” for anyone, much less education; I do not provide technology predictions. I just have a certain reflex when i see some technologies that signals, “there might be something here” – it is not always right, but it’s what I pay attention to, even if it is draped in words like “monetization” and videos of playboy bloggers.

Veeple is a free demo until March 2009 when they will start “monetizing” it.

I cannot ever use that word without quotes! It makes my stomach churn even typing it.

So what do you think? Is this the “next generation of web video”? Where is video going?