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By: stu | Posted: Thursday, January 26th, 2012
Fit your videos into their web player perfectly, every time.
Getting your video to fit perfectly into a web player, without spacing bars (black bars) filling in part of the player is a common stumbling block that has simply become an accepted malady of web video.
UNTIL NOW! Uploading video to your web site shouldn’t be a difficult process. Our collection of dashboard tools are well known in the market place for doing the heavy lifting of common web video tasks, and fitting a custom sized video into a player is no different. The Auto Detect tool found within the PLAYER SETTINGS > EDIT window allows for an automatic handling of each video baesed on its height and width.
Customer Success Manager Stu Marks interviews Company President and Web Video Guru Clint Pollock
Video Notes
- Black bars reduced or eliminated
- Video for any ratio handled—even vertical and exotic custom sizes
- Video sources handled include mobile devices, pro cameras, home cameras
- Various originating codes handled can be Windows, Mac, and virtually all conventional non-proprietary video file extension
- Handles “special” settings as well as standard settings from software and cameras
- Actual control panel demonstration
- Video ratio automatically detected for vertical and landscape orientation
- Height fixed at desired value
- Vertical fixed at desired value
- Optimized bandwidth
- Business and real life applications
- Amazon CloudFront
For more How To tips on Video On Your Web Site, under real business conditions, check these links;
By: stu | Posted: Thursday, January 5th, 2012
Web causes, or local computer issues? It is usually neither.
You are working feverishly to finish the final touches on your project video because people at both ends; your co-workers and your customers, are waiting to see it live. You are watching it upload. Finally, the last quarter inch of progress bar makes the distance to the promised land, and as you wait with baited breath for the expected web application to switch screens and show you the sought after “100%; Upload complete” award, nothing happens. After fifteen seconds of just hoping this is normal, you finally resign yourself to the fact that the dreaded Hanging Upload has hit you. Your video isn’t going to make it during THIS five minute segment of your professional life.
What are the most common causes of this malady? Is it the video management service on the web side, or is it simply my computer?
A video’s inability to upload is often connected to its ability to play smoothly over the Internet. But the bottom line is that you need a video file that is optimized for video on the web. This article will list the most common causes of your video file’s inability to make the distance to the promised land of your host server or CDN. And, none of them have to do with your CDN’s settings. (CDN=Content Delivery Network).
-Video Codec
There is a best case video codec for web video. It is h.264. There are others that technically work, but where flash is concerned, and even html5 for mobile, utilizing h.264 is still the best. For html5, it begins with a good picture and compression, while providing the same for directly playing in a Flash environment for desktops and other mobile devices that are still using Flash. If your video file is not using these best practices settings, then it could take a noticeably longer time to upload.
-Video File Type
Also, the best all-around file type makes a difference. MP4 is the web video file type king. It handles the visual and audio packaging very precisely as well as providing for correct placement of the moov atom which is the part of the video file that communicates to flash players what is contained inside the file and where to find it all. Our transcoding system makes sure to properly place the moov atom at the front of the file.
-Render Depth
Render depth is the setting you are manipulating when choosing how many megabytes per second (MB/sec) to render the video. 1.5 to 2.5 MB/second is a good range for videos that are not expected to be HD. It is very presumptuous to expect a large number of long, feature videos to arrive at viewers’ screens maintaining a true HD delivery because of the variability of so many technical limitations like viewers’ screen settings, Internet connections, etc.. But, virtual HD is standard on. Basically, the visual difference between actual, high end HD picture and virtual HD is difficult to detect by most viewers, given the condition of a broad array of technical limitations currently dominating the home web video viewer. A well-handled, upper end standard video can look very crisp and run smoothly.
Notice the settings in my above image of the Bitrate Settings from the Adobe Premiere CS5 Export Settings window. These TARGET and MAXIMUM bitrate settings are well over the 1.5 – 2.5 range I suggested earlier. But the 3.0 TARGET and 6.0 MAXIMUM settings work here because the video is only 1:52 seconds in length. A short video can enjoy the luxury of a higher render setting because the overall file size will still be relatively small. But, I still wouldn’t necessarily want to push the limits and render at a massive setting like 14MB/Sec.; not when I want the video to play smoothly on as many different computers and Internet connections as possible. The more medium or optimized the settings, the better balance one achieves between clear picture and sound, and playability over the Internet.
-File Origination.
The type of file the video was originally created as can play a large part in how it renders out for the web. We have found problem videos to be generally optimized for smooth web playing by simply converting the video to an AVI before rendering it as the h.264/MP4 file. The why of this working procedure is for another, longer article. We know that it simply works. Like changing some MOV files into an AVI before rendering into an h.264, or the same with some WMV files. It just usually works. I will at least reveal that compression is a factor here. Converting a video into an AVI is a way to fool software and firmware imaging handlers into thinking that the file is uncompressed which allows for rendering into a smoother playing h.264/MP4.
-Your Machine Causing Time Out?
+ Computer going to sleep? We have not set a specific time-out in our application, but the settings of Zencoder and Amazon might be a different story. So, one area to check would be to go into your computer’s power management settings and disable the auto off commands that shut down the hard drives. This is not difficult and can be reversed when you are finished uploading a larger video file.
+ Screen Saver? You might also want to shut off your screen saver. When in doubt, it never hurts.
+ Too many other apps running? To make sure that your computer is not starving the video uploading task of enough working memory, you could shut down everything but the browser operating that task. Microsoft Office tools can be memory hungry as well as other email clients, spread sheets, photo and video programs and players.
+ Your Internet Connection. You might conduct a Speed Test. “High Speed” isn’t always as high as we’d all like it to be. Just because it isn’t a dialup connection, doesn’t mean it is lightning fast. Anyone can conduct a safe speed test with this reputable web site: http://www.speedtest.net/. I have no problems uploading rather large files from my office in north central Illinois in a town with the population of about 4,000 and the nearest larger metropolis about 40 minutes away. My local Internet upload speed averages just a little over 1.2 MB/sec. I am paying for 1.5MB/sec, so even though this is subpar for my cable package, it is not a subpar connection speed for uploading videos to EZWebPlayer’s server. I commonly create and upload videos several days/week with no problems.
Want more info on Rendering for the Web?
-How to export High Definition video files to upload and stream on your website.
-Rendering Video for the Web Best Practices.
By: stu | Posted: Tuesday, October 18th, 2011
When adding videos to your website, it used to be that we were locked in to where the video could be positioned. When designing a web page, you could never put a video anywhere in a vertical side bar. But now, even a video can go in the side bar. “How”, you ask? “All videos are the wrong shape to fit in a vertical space”, you might add. That used to be true. But what if you could output a custom sized and shaped video from Premiere, and had a video management console that allowed you to create a custom shaped player?
The sample below is a real vertical video created in a standard version of Adobe Premiere. Then hosted on EZWebPlayer.com. Check it out. Click anywhere on the image below to start the video playing.
Both the size and shape of the vertical player are completely customize-able. So, regardless of your vertical space requirements or limitations, you can easily choose a vertical player that fits your needs. But this isn’t even the best part.
Up in the video, you can click on the top image and take your viewers to an ordering page or anywhere your heart desires, because the ad image is programmable for the next URL you want them to see. I easily set the image to pop-up 15 seconds into the play.
How To Customize Your Video Size and Shape
VIDEO EDITING APPLICATION
In Premiere, after opening up a new document, in the startup window before you click on anything else, click on the GENERAL tab.
Then, you’ll notice the dimension values. You can insert values here to suit your needs.
EZWebPlayer SETTINGS
Edit player settings and change the ASPECT to CUSTOM, and the dimensions to that of your edited video. Don’t forget to save your settings before leaving that window.
How To Create Embedded Image Advertising
For the pop-up ad,
you’ll need to upload your image in EZWebPlayer’s ADVERTISING setup by choosing ADD NEW ADVERTISEMENT.
When browsing for the image on your hardrive, don’t forget to change the file type from VIDEO FILES to IMAGE FILES.
And then in the Video Settings Editor, choose that advertising image and enter the pop-up time and destination URL.
To try yours, simply sign up for a free 7 day account (no credit card needed) at EZWebPlayer.com.
Have a video that you want to share now? Click on the “Sign Up Now“, or “Try it Free” buttons.
Get daily tips on creating & uploading videos!
Just click here for our Facebook or follow us on Twitter!
For more How To tips on Video On Your Web Site, under real business conditions, check these links;
- Upload Web Videos With No Black Bars and Auto Upright Vertical Videos
- EZWebPlayer, CES, and the Pawn Stars?
- EZWEBPLAYER Launches Unlimited Video Player at CES
- Why Won’t My Videos Upload Smoothly?
- WEB VIDEO PLAYER ALERT Pacific N.W. Video Viewers Get Big Speed Boost
By: stu | Posted: Thursday, September 15th, 2011
There’s more to getting your message out there than simply putting video on your website. The video you put on your website needs to be effective, and that means that there needs to be more than just a talking head. The talking head needs to deliver the goods.
Clint Pollock speaks on Biscayne National Park in Florida in 2007
There are many How-To’s out there on guiding the amateur on coming off professional sounding in front of the camera, but most of them leave out the most important element; and that would be rehearsal. Yep, it’s that simple. Like the individual who reads about dieting by researching the latest fads and techniques of weight loss, when they finally lose weight and slim down, it’s done the old fashioned way; by eating less calories than one burns. And delivering dialogue in front of a video camera is no different; one must practice to be perfect.
The masterfully confident professional who can step in front of a camera and speak from the hip, providing a smooth delivery the first time, every time, actually is still rehearsing; they just rehearse differently than the novice speaker. By the time the pro speaks in front of the camera, they have thought about the information and even delivered it many times before. Therefore, they are comfortable with the phrases coming out of their mouth.
Some individuals additionally have the uncanny ability to rehearse new phrases in their mind split seconds before delivering them. The human mind has the ability to assemble words many times faster than it takes to actually speak them, but few exercise this ability and actually work it into an everyday talent. The rest of us normal people either rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, or teleprompter!
Think about anything that you have had to learn; doing it over and over again changes you from a novice to a pro. And, anyone can be a pro at something, it just takes practice. Look at the children who are winning national awards for skateboard and bike tricks. These teenagers have been rehearsing these tricks and jumps since they were old enough to dream about shaving one day. And we find them on ESPN Extra Crispy, performing for the world as recognized masters of the sport.
So yes, even you can deliver a topic that you know, smoothly and expertly in front of a video camera. And remember, you only have to deliver one good recording.
Here’s how you do it.
Now, make sure that you don’t stop reading as soon as you see the first step, because I’m going somewhere that you may not have thought of, so stay tuned.
1) Write an actual script, word for word. This gets you started and is only a beginning point of reference.
2) Place the script close to the camera lens as if you had a teleprompter. A really simple trick that helps you kill several birds with one stone is using a web cam and a word processing application like Word. Write your script and then enlarge the font to a really giant size, like 24 or 32 pixels. Place the Word window at the top of your screen and minimize the tool bar so you can make the words appear as close to the webcam as possible. Scroll the words as you read each phrase so that the words appear on the top line throughout your dialogue.
3) Practice saying one key phrase at a time in the order of delivery, while staring into the glass lens. Do this over and over again with each phrase.
4) As you are rehearsing each phrase, you may come up with better ways to convey these thoughts. Go ahead and switch to the new phrases.
5) You will begin to learn this script so well, that you no longer have to read it like a teleprompter. This allows your mind to focus on delivery instead of content. You can relax and use expression. Think of the camera as people who are hungry for your information; you are merely giving them what they want, in a friendly, confident manner.
Obviously this works better with shorter scripts.
Mike Pudlo captures Porter County rescuers in an interview during a training exercise on Lake Michigan in 2008
Closing tip. If you are accustomed to making speeches, you might be able to get away with bypassing most of the steps above, and basically just remember to keep eye contact with the lens at all times. If you think about it, on camera delivery is actually easier than speaking to a crowded room because making eye contact with a one-eyed camera has to be mechanically easier than all of those sets of human eyes in a crowded room.
Stuart Marks
Executive Creative Director
Business Video Applications
Affiliate Liaison
The no-tech solution to placing videos on your web site.
Get daily tips on creating & uploading videos!
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BIO
Stu Marks is a contributing editor for several online forums including Adventure-Crew.com, Chicago Examiner and IncreaseSalesWithVideo.com. He has a fine arts degree from The Chicago Art Institute/Illinois Institute of Art at Schaumburg and specializes in business videos for the web. He began his career as a TV cameraman in southern Oregon in the mid 1970′s, and has worked at network affiliates in both TV and radio on the west coast and in the Chicago market. He is an accomplished voice over talent, media designer, graphic artist and photographer.
Link to Stu’s profile at LinkedIn.
For more How To tips on Video On Your Web Site, under real business conditions, check these links;
- EZWEBPLAYER Launches Unlimited Video Player at CES
- Why Won’t My Videos Upload Smoothly?
- WEB VIDEO PLAYER ALERT Pacific N.W. Video Viewers Get Big Speed Boost
- Video SiteMaps; Create Them Automatically with EZWebPlayer
- Advertising Video in that Vertical Web Space? Absolutely!
By: rbouchez | Posted: Wednesday, September 14th, 2011
How to videos can be an amazing asset for any website and, if you’re an expert, adding (and staring in) a web video on your site may just be the perfect low cost solution to increasing credibility & generating leads. So when I ran across the following question being answered on USAToday.com I couldn’t help but chime in….
Question: I am a professional makeup artist and have to shoot a promotional video on how to apply makeup.
I have to explain the steps and techniques in
detail. I have done this many times in front of customers, but the
camera shoot makes me a little nervous.How can I lead a presentation that will convey a professional image?
The secret to looking comfortable on camera.
There’s only one way to really look “at ease” while demonstrating something on camera and that’s through proper preparation. First, figure out what you want to do and what you can do in the time you have to do it… once you figure that out practice it over and over and over again. Don’t worry about mechanics, just practice the “what” and, for the most part, everything else will fall into place. When you’ve got it down pat, feel free to tweak.
So, that’s it… that’s the secret – practice. Yes, it really is that easy!
Live or timed demonstrations.
Here’s an additional tip for live on camera appearences (or similar): Give yourself even more time than you think you’ll need for your demonstration. Even if you feel like you’re coming up short! You’re actually better off coming up short because you won’t have to rush the ending and you won’t risk running out of time and getting cut off. You’ll actually have a little time leftover for chit chat and when it’s all said and done you’ll look even better!
All that said… while he definately glosses over the need for practice, Mchael Crom does do a great job of answering this question so if you’re looking for something more technical check out Ease in front of camera is key to creating memorable video. You certainly can’t argue with his tip “Be confident of yourself and your skill” …he’s right, of course, but I still say the best way to build confidence is through practice.
Got a trick to looking natural on camera? We’d love to get your advice, just post to to the comment section below.
Thanks for stopping by!
Social Media Specialist for EZWebplayer.com
For more How To tips on Video On Your Web Site, under real business conditions, check these links;
By: stu | Posted: Thursday, July 14th, 2011
Customer testimonials are an extraordinarily powerful sales and marketing tool because they help people who are considering buying from your company develop the trust that you will deliver what you say you will.
Customer testimonials can be used to power-up your sales efforts in almost every sales venue — in print, on TV and radio, in presentations, at tradeshows, and in video on your website. But before you can USE customer testimonials, you have to CAPTURE them. Here are 6 proven ways to build your own library of great customer testimonials.
1. PUT CORPORATE EMPHASIS ON TESTIMONIAL-GATHERING
Talk-up the importance of testimonials in staff meetings, team meetings, task force meetings, quarterly and annual meetings. WHY are testimonials important? Short answer: because they can boost your business. For more detail on specifically how testimonials will help increase your business, click here.
2. RAISE INTERNAL AWARENESS OF YOUR USPs
Unique Selling Points (USPs) are what make your company, product, or service uniquely different and better than any other. If you expect your people to note testimonial leads, you’d better teach them what to listen for: any current customer praising you, especially when they speak about one of your USPs.
3. READ CUSTOMER FEEDBACK
Do you use warranty or customer feedback cards or forms? Do you read them when they come back? You should. Not just because they tell you what your customers think but because what customers write can become customer testimonials.
4. PLUM ASSIGNMENT: TESTIMONIAL CHIEF
Using testimonials can have an excellent long-range effect on your sales and marketing programs, but gathering them can get pushed aside by more urgent day-to-day tasks. What to do? Give someone in your organization the specific task of gathering and cataloging testimonials.
5. ENLIST EVERYONE WHO CONTACTS CURRENT CUSTOMERS
Who in your organization has one-to-one contact with existing customers? Your people in sales, customer service, and parts do. But don’t overlook reception, shipping, agents, and anybody else who comes in contact with customers. A casual customer comment at checkout can turn into a powerful testimonial.
6. PUT E-MAIL AND YOUR WEBSITE TO WORK
If you e-mail past customers, send a note from time to time asking for their thoughts, comments and suggestions. Consider putting a customer blog or posting board on your website. These can be rich sources of testimonials because they make it EASY for your customers to jot a note.
Continue on to part two - Six TIME-TESTED TECHNIQUES for capturing GREAT CUSTOMER TESTIMONIALS; Part Two of Two
Please join us on Twitter, Like us on Facebook or follow our RSS feed to make sure you get part 2 of this article which will be post next Tuesday.
Clint Pollock
President | EZWebPlayer.com
The Non-Tech solution to putting videos online
www.EZWebPlayer.com
By: stu | Posted: Tuesday, June 21st, 2011
You don’t need to step outside of your well designed and smooth running web video player page in order to offer an audio file to your viewers. The EZWebPlayer can very easily play an audio feature. Simply render your audio file as a convenient video file like MP4, and upload it like a standard video.
Either create a single frame of video for the visual, or put some more effort into it and turn your audio file into a Power Point, changing up titles and graphics that support the audio track.
You’ll need to start by importing your audio file into a video editing application like Adobe Premiere CS5. Many audio formats are supported. If your current audio file extension is not supported in your video editing application, simply go online to find a conversion application. These are more often than not either free or very affordable; we’re talking $20 or less.
In the sample player attached to this article I have also enabled the simple URL Page GOTO function so that the player sends the viewer to the URL of my choice in a new window when the audio file is finished playing. Ya, I know; pretty cool, huh?
There’s also advertising options fore and aft of the audio file, just like a video. Which means that I could also insert a video or another audio file at the beginning or end of this feature audio file.
And, if you want the full effect of an audio player, there’s always this.
This player is created by simply changing the player setting to CUSTOM and choosing a 25 pixel height setting. At 25 pixels high, we are simply cutting out everything but the controls.
Have a video that you want to share now? Click on the “Sign Up Now“, or “Try it Free” buttons.
Stuart Marks
Executive Creative Director
Business Video Applications
For tips on Video On Your Web Site, under real business conditions, check these links;
Executive Creative Director
Business Video Applications
By: stu | Posted: Tuesday, May 10th, 2011
Just yesterday I was having a discussion with a business partner in Chicago who is shooting a talking head video for a specific market segment. We were talking one camera, maybe a light (maybe not). The camera has an onboard microphone. He’s shooting it himself; alone. Even if my friend had to go out and purchase the gear retail, he’d only be out less than $500 for a top-of-the-line HD web camera. A conventional TV ad production would involve tens of thousands of dollars and several human components.
The point is, that placing videos on your web site is so affordable and so powerful in its compelling connection to viewers, you shouldn’t need more than one reason to start shooting your own videos tomorrow. But, here’s six reasons.
- Uniqueness. Only you can appear as you in front of a camera, exposing the high points of your unique selling points directly to your market.
- Personal and Intimate Directness. There is no better way to talk directly to your new customers on a grand scale than a custom video.
- Compelling Message. Custom web videos on your web site are just as compelling to your market as TV to the masses.
- Masses Reached for less. When talking ROI (Return On Investment) there probably is no better value than Custom Web Videos. It is a medium that enjoys minimal production cost with an enormous return in value.
- Versatility. Web videos can be geared for national as well as local deployment. Major production houses and TV stations are not set up to produce large quantities of the unusually unique and intimate format that a custom web video represents with its simplicity and inexpensive technical requirements. They’d all go broke if they were forced to compete directly with web advertising campaigns, and some have.
- Web video advertising is unique to The Web because it is not a medium that can easily be crossed over to from the TV market. A TV advertising platform is inherently geared to mass advertising because of the way that broadcast and cable TV is physically engineered, and therefore is locked into some rigid requirements that makes a TV commercial less forgiving and more demanding in both production and delivery. Web advertising, however, is much more agile and can have several iterations employing many different technologies simultaneously; all supporting each other for the call to action, the tracking of responses, and the almost immediate adjustments to market response that TV advertising is without.
-Response Tracking. The response tracking alone is a huge advantage of web video marketing. Shoot it today, post produce it tomorrow and release it with tracking software already in place with an application like EZWebPlayer. As a matter of fact, it is possible to employ the powerful market environment of this web video giant for free; an unheard of arrangement.
For additional information see the below articles:
- Upload Web Videos With No Black Bars and Auto Upright Vertical Videos
- EZWebPlayer, CES, and the Pawn Stars?
- EZWEBPLAYER Launches Unlimited Video Player at CES
- Why Won’t My Videos Upload Smoothly?
- WEB VIDEO PLAYER ALERT Pacific N.W. Video Viewers Get Big Speed Boost
Stu Marks
Executive Art Director
Business Video Applications
By: rbouchez | Posted: Tuesday, April 5th, 2011
We are always looking for great tips on shooting video for web and it’s a bonus when we we find a well shot video that gets right to the point! Check out the shooting tips video above and let me know what you think in the comments, have you tried the bungee cord trick? Does it work? I’m skeptical. Here are a couple great how to video tips from the EZWebPlayer team.
Thanks for stopping by!
By: stu | Posted: Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
History Says it All.
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”
George Santayana 1863-1952
Ask any recognized marketing guru. It’s true; the strongest marketing tool is an organization’s record of sales and marketing efforts and the response they actually drew from the target demographic. All that means is that you will learn how to get a strongly favorable response from the public at large by observing how they responded to your marketing efforts in the past.
Marketing communications are a one-way street right up until one gets a response from the target audience. Then, the marketing becomes a function of sales. We want all marketing to turn into sales. Without the sales aspect, marketing is a useless function and a total waste of resources.
The issue is knowing for sure that one’s marketing efforts are generating a positive sales response. Any positive response from a member of the demographic is a sign of a good marketing asset, and a buying signal.
What is a buying signal? The buying signal goes way beyond an actual sale and shows up way ahead of the actual shipment of product. Questions from the audience about the product are good buying signals. And beyond that, any audience time spent taking in product information is also strong buying signal stuff.
If one is displaying a marketing or promotion video 120 seconds in length that is only getting 20 seconds of play time from ¾ of the audience, it would be much better to find that out earlier rather than later.
If a poorly performing video only needs minor tweaking instead of total replacement, this can be discovered by looking at when the audience is bailing out of the offending materiel. Are they leaving the video early on? If this is true, then maybe just making the intro more dynamic would fix the problem. Knowing what part of the video that is causing yawns and the killer “NEXT” button to be stroked can be worth thousands of dollars in resource time.
What would happen if you could break your video into three parts; INTRO, BODY, CALL TO ACTION? Can you imagine how much more simple it would be to precisely tweak a marketing video that is already rolled out and online? This isn’t just a new or refreshingly good idea. This is standard marketing procedure that corporate professionals use to release the marketing genius of their high dollar advertising agencies. Team A works on the concept of the attention-getting introduction of the video, Team B works on the informational body of the video, and Team C works on the powerful call to action of the video that gets the target market to take action immediately upon watching the video.
Your video in three parts
Anything less than a three part video design is virtually an unfinished video.
One thing I have found that helps streamline this established business video process is choosing a video player that gives one the opportunity to add an introductory video clip at the beginning and a closing video clip at the end of each video. EZWebPlayer is actually the only web player I could find that offers this as a standard feature. It seems that the guys over there at EZWebPlayer understand a lot about marketing video on the web, not just the technical web part, but the actual marketing science behind all of the techy stuff.
By: rbouchez | Posted: Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011
Rule #1 in post production is to finish for your final target audience. On what size monitor will they be viewing this? An audience of one or many? Expansive sound system or desktop speakers?
Obviously, since we are producing for the Web, these questions are not easily answered. One is forced to prepare for the worst but hope for the best. Therefore, some special Web Video Guide Lines should be kept in mind.
AUDIO VOLUME should be somewhat compressed to bring the lows up and the peaks down, shooting for an average around 0 VU without peaking into the red.
AUDIO FREQUENCY depth should likewise be somewhat flattened and tip towards the higher crisper end, but avoiding too much “essing” (In the English language, the letter “s” is very easily over emphasized in electronic reproduction. There are even tools called “De-Essers” in many audio mastering environments.) Making dialogue lean towards the crisp, avoids muffled words and accentuates articulation. If your video was playing in a continuous loop on a projector in your trade show booth amongst a handful of other like situated booths, yours would be the one easiest to understand without being louder, while still punching through the ambient noise confusion. This sound configuration also plays best on the broadest spectrum of home desktop speakers as well as laptops and headphones.
MUSIC. If you have any music playing under the voice, make sure to follow all of the hard and fast rules of voice-over dialogues that allow clear language intensification. Also remember that music is one of the strongest subliminal advertising elements. Do not choose your music lightly. Its feel will color your video, your message and your overall company image.
TITLES. Choose title fonts to be easily read so that both small and large screen displays can benefit. Avoid tiny fonts.
BELLS & WHISTLES. The talking head video needs bells and whistles. But don’t overdo it, and do some research into wipes and animated transitions before spending a lot of time using them. One of the set-apart differences of a classy video production is the judicial use of effects. Animations and effects must make sense. If nothing else, they should be consistent. Choose one type of wipe for the entire video and only change to another type if there is a substantive reason to do so.
BETA CRITIQUING. Render out a finished copy and play it for some trusted staff who can lend some perspective. Set aside the project for at least overnight and watch it with your target audience’s point of view hours later. Being the sole source of judgment on one’s web video is a dangerous place in which to operate. Get advice.
By Stu Marks: Chicago Area Media Designer & video consultant.
By: rbouchez | Posted: Thursday, February 17th, 2011
The best lighting of a talking head, whether Hollywood produced on a sound stage, or in a living room with a web cam, boils down to the same basics. Good lighting produces pleasant video.
Hollywood three-point lighting is not always possible; the most difficult of the three points being the back light that highlights the hair and shoulders. But, a cool trick can simulate great, three-point lighting.
The basics; you’ll need three light sources. A Key, Fill and Backlight. The Key and Fill are directed towards the talent with the Key light being the one that is brightest. You don’t want even lighting. You want some depth, thus the varying light levels produced by the brighter Key and the less bright Fill. These two lights should be far enough away to produce softer shadows. Using soft white bulbs will help.
The backlight is the trick. This usually is achieved with a special boom tripod that suspends the light behind the talent and up high, shining down on head and shoulders. Simply placing the talent under the living room or dining room light fixture can achieve some of the effects of a proper backlight. Make sure to position the chair such that the talent does not have weird looking shadows falling down their face from the ceiling light.
Since the ceiling light fixture is pretty “fixed” in its position (it ain’t going anywhere) setup the chair location under that light first. Then set up the Key and Fill.
Positioning Key and Fill should be something near a 45 degree angle to the line of lens to talent, on either side of the camera. Everyone has different facial features that cast different profile shadows. Experiment. The 45 degree angle is just a starting point and is not even a hard and fast rule.
Some things to watch for. America is in the middle of a culture war right now regarding our source of light bulbs. Even though we are told that the fluorescents are “greener”, they are being produced in less than desirable conditions overseas without green laws forcing them to protect the environment, not to mention the dangerous mercury issue inherent in all fluorescents. Silly, I know, but there it is. So, my opinion is that the jury is still out on this one. Until we find out who wins, we all will be caught in lighting situations from time to time that mix different colors and temperatures of lights; from fluorescent to incandescent, from day light to cool white.
Compounding this challenge is the reactive response that individual video cameras have towards the automatic white balancing firmware onboard. Testing is really important. Make sure that your talent doesn’t have pink and orange skin tones from the mixture of real daylight from the open curtains and the mixed lighting in house. If weird looking colors show up, you are probably mixing light sources somewhere.
Choosing one color of light for all fixtures is the quickest way to success.
By Stu Marks: Chicago Area Media Designer & video consultant.
Photo by silkolive
By: rbouchez | Posted: Tuesday, February 15th, 2011
Producing a video for general release that gets results is serious business. Thus, one would want to follow Best Practices standards to make sure that the finished tool appears professional. A common problem is that technology and applications are changing so fast that the all-powerful Video Gurus haven’t had time to make out their list of what those practices might be.
So, we’re all somewhat on our own; which is really a good thing. We can each choose cameras that produce good looking video compared to other talking head videos which are already out there. No one need purchase $50k cameras and complex lighting and audio gear. Most talking head videos will do just fine being recorded with a late model, higher end, HD web cam; with a couple of caveats.
The standard web cam setup clips on one’s computer monitor which is usually too close to the talent. More distance is required from lens to face in order to avoid Big Nose Syndrome. Big Nose Syndrome is what the curvature of the lens does to a human nose when the face is too close to the lens. But, simply rolling the desk chair back away from the computer monitor on which the camera is clipped also moves the speaking voice further from the mic than was intended. Thus, echoey noises and unclear dialogue.
Backing off just enough to reduce the Big Nose Syndrome, yet stay close enough to the mic for relatively clear audio is the trick. Like all things new, run some tests to see how you do. If you have an alternative audio source that will work simultaneously with your web cam, it would better to use it instead of the webcam’s onboard mic. A headset mic, or shotgun mic from off camera are almost certainly to produce better quality audio than the webcam’s mic. Because the point of talking head videos is more the dialogue than the visual element, more care should be taken in making sure the audio is clear.
The head can either fill the screen (not my personal choice) or portray a head and shoulders shot.
To save time, you could go out and purchase a camera that renders its finished product in web ready file extensions like FLV, MPG, etc. We simply upload virtually any video we shoot to the EZWeb server and let the embedded EZWeb Tool render out the best current format. This certainly simplifies things.
By Stu Marks: Chicago Area Media Designer & video consultant.
First photo credit to ashley rose,
Second photo credit to ewanr
By: rbouchez | Posted: Thursday, February 10th, 2011
One element that all successful talking head videos have is the intimate degree of communication available. Whether the video is viewed online, one at a time on a computer monitor, or on a large screen projector at a trade show, each viewer is exposed to another human looking right into their eyes while talking.
We have used two main methods to achieve our goal; 1) Memorizing, 2) Teleprompters
Memorizing is the absolute best way under most circumstances. It allows the talent to speak directly to the camera lens, from the heart. The reason that I say “under most circumstances” is that sometimes the talent still delivers dry, feeling less dialogue regardless of different recording techniques. Some individuals just do not have it in them at the time of recording to grasp the difference between normal, conversational dialogue, and reading scripts in a monotone fashion. It has always been my practice to dissuade clients from delivering bad video to their market. This is a case that screams “No video is better than bad video.”
So, after arriving at who this smooth-talking spokesperson might be, see if they can deliver straight from memory. If not, teleprompter it is.
Teleprompters can be extremely expensive because they are hardware based. It is a multi-component system placed in front of the camera lens through which the camera shoots. The talent is reading written dialogue off of the glass which is reflecting at a 45 degree angle to the computer screen which is scrolling the script.
The least expensive retail teleprompter that I’ve found is from the realm of products like ProPrompter; marketed for the lower budget operators who don’t have unlimited resources like Barak Obama. This is a true through-the-glass prompter. There are even setups that will accept iPhone and Blackberry as the script generating devices. $1,000 and up.
Many who find this cumbersome or too expensive, use a next to lens system. Above, left of, right of, or below the lens, the prompter is nothing more than a laptop or some other device that has a display large enough to present the script to the talent at the necessary distance from the camera. The talent needs to be far enough away that they appear to be looking at the lens. The talent is reading form a laptop or other monitor placed close to (touching distance without touching; think paper sliding between) the camera lens.
We have used this many times with great success. Software designed specifically for this can be found at here as well as many other places. The linked sample here is only $60 for the software. This free-to-try software gives an operator full control over the scrolling action and can be used on mirrored, or un mirrored systems. We’ve found it best to place the laptop below the lens level.
The bottom line is to deliver sincere dialogue. Apparent eye-to-lens contact is completely necessary to achieve this.
By Stu Marks: Chicago Area Media Designer & video consultant.
First photo credit to By ginozar
