Some of you have asked for more detailed information on the video production process I use. Here are the answers:
Q: “Are you taking video off of your digital camcorder directly into Windows Movie Maker?”
A: I actually abandoned the camcorder a while back. Getting video off of it was just too much of a hassle. When we got the SD600, I found it was easier to just flip it to video mode. This has forced me to take shorter clips which are easier to edit and getting the clips off of the SD card is a snap.
Q: “How long did it take you to produce this?”
A: Keeping in mind that I find a lot of fun in doing this and that I do most of the editing while watching TV, don’t laugh when I tell you it takes me about 30 minutes to an hour for each finished minute of video.
Q: “What’s the video format?”
Windows Movie Maker only exports wmv files. Ugh. So I use Adobe’s Flash Video Encoder to convert the files to flv format. This allows the files to stream, which means you can start to watch the first part of the movie while the rest of it loads (versus having to wait until the whole huge file loads before starting to play). Zamzar and other free online converters do admirably, but the quality isn’t quite as good.
Q: “Where did you find the funny music that made it like an America’s Funniest Home Video?”
A: Choosing the “story” (theme) and music is truly the hardest part of the videos. The music I basically just wrack my mental playlists for a tune that fits the theme I’ve chosen. For the “Star Whirls” video, the opening crawl and Star Wars theme song were an obvious fit. The Cantina song (also from Episode 4; when Luke and Obi enter the bar) was my second choice. It seemed to fit perfectly with the light nature of the clips.
Q: “What plug-in did you use to embed the movie?”
After the flv file is uploaded to the site, I embed it within a post using the Viper’s Video Quicktags WordPress plugin.
Leave additional questions or ideas in the comments section!
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