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EQS Presentation - Efficient and Effective Social Media
May 28, 2008 05:12 PM | GeneralTom Coffee, Software Development Specialist
Efficient and Effective Social Media
(best practices for creating video for the Web)
This presentation was given by Cody Hanson, Technology Librarian, University of Minnesota. He focused on creating video for the Web including screencasts and vlog casts. He went into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to make video for the Web including issues such as video consuming too much time, quality of presentation vs. how much investment it is worth, and looking at video in terms of cost vs. gains. A library could spend many hours creating a video only to have it viewed very few times. The presenter mentioned that video should be an extension of the library’s central purpose, not just done for technology’s sake, or for marketing.
Some of the tools he discussed include:
- Jing Project – a free cross platform screen capture tool. It’s from the people who created Camtasia.
- Screencastomatic.com – Web browser based screen capture tool. Very bare bones, but very slick.
- YouTube – discussed as not being polished/professional, but does allow for ease of hosting.
- Vimeo – this site hosts HD video. Requires large bandwidth for uploading and downloading.
- JVC Camcorder – a new model from JVC is $350, and allows for one touch uploading to YouTube.
- Flip Video Ultra – it can record up to 60 minutes of video and has some positive reviews.
- Vado – this recorder is from Creative and shoots YouTube quality video.
- YouTube’s Quick Capture Function – could be used to vlog the new books that came into a library, etc. Quick and easy tool to use.
Also, the presenter discussed accessibility for video. Because of government funding, and liability, accessibility needs to be incorporated into video content. At a bare minimum there needs to be equivalent content presented for video, a text transcription for example. The best case scenario is to have captioning for the hearing impaired synched up and displayed with the video.
This was a very informative presentation. The information could be invaluable for any library that wants to get into video, and avoid some of the pitfalls. The presenter mentioned when he first started making video he was involved in creating a feature length film. It cost $20,000, recorded 80 hours of raw footage, and totaled 1000 hours for all of the production. All of that was for a 2 hour film. For every minute of film, the presenter estimated, there were 8 hours put into it. Some food for thought. Thanks again for reading. Take care.
