Thread: Hi Danielle
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Old 09-04-2015, 09:12 PM   #338
RonTheLogician
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Join Date: Feb 2014
Posts: 189
Cool Practice your video (post-)production skills with vlogs

Hey Dani,

You may recall that some time back I suggested you look at the web server logs to examine how often your vlog videos are being downloaded. If fewer folks are watching, perhaps it makes sense not to spend as much time making them. And if many are, perhaps improving their quality is justified.

But the vlogs can also be put to another purpose - showcasing and even improving your video production skills. You actually have done this already: I speak of the two videos I praised which made a quasi-montage of many scenes.

I have some specific vlog suggestions you might like to try implementing.

1. When you mention something complicated, like a Web address, it would be very useful to temporarily display same as a large caption at screen bottom, leaving it on screen long enough for someone to easily pause the video and copy it down. (You might even gild the lily and orally advise they pause the video for this purpose!) Do you know how to do this? Any decent video editing tool should allow you to combine multiple video tracks - including those bearing graphical designs and lettering - one upon the other, with control of the intensity and transparency of each. By the way, when captioning video, I favor the use of a high contrast halo around the text, both opaque, so that it is very legible no matter what the local video background.

2. You sometimes want to show viewers what a Web page looks like. Rather than use the same camera employed to shoot your own image, implement a means to directly capture it directly with electronics. For example, you might use a "scan converter" box to change the digital monitor signal into an old-fashioned analog TV signal and then use a simple manual switching box to select either the analog camera photographing you or the monitor image. A good scan converter would allow you to zoom and pan the screen; or you could use the Windows "Accessibility" magnification tool instead, so that the viewer sees the screen detail in question clearly.

Fancier techniques, such as the live (or post-production) collaging of multiple video images are demonstrated at the ASU New Media Studio web page here. I hope you continue to build your skills so that these choices are within your ready grasp!

By the way, I am really CONFUSED why you feel obliged to "catch up" with missed vlog videos when there is a long spell within which none are produced and published. I would have thought the ESSENTIAL idea of the vlogs was as a MARKETING STRATEGY, to provide a regular, free supply of video content, so that folks return to your Website on a regular basis and don't forget about you. If this is so, the dry spells are deadly, and the catching up serves no end! Don't get me wrong - I ENJOY following what you are doing through your vlogs, but I am just concerned if making them eats up your time to no profit.
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