Kevin Epling & Al Moreno -- Part 4 of 4
Uploaded by webdevcafe on 23.03.2010
Transcript:
That's all I wanted to say.
And we will get to those.
But one of the other things I wanted to comment on is the biggest drawback
if you think you're going to use anything that's consumer
is your audio.
And Al mentioned it.
I mean
that's the thing that will get you caught every time
is your audio. Because a lot of these little devices do not have
external audio input.
And when you start rolling you are going to get
everything that is happening around that person
and then you are going to post that
and that's a reflection on you
and that's a reflection on your department and the university.
Al was talking about the production that goes into some of those spots;
Doug was talking. If it's important
to you, hire
someone
to help you.
This is probably not the time
to try to go and figure something out
especially if you're doing something that has a grant on the line,
or anything that's attached to it,
you really need to be thinking that way.
Do your research,
look into it,
find people who use it,
bounce a call or e-mail to
Al or myself or somebody at WKAR.
Is this going to be usable,
and what is the longevity
of what you're going to purchase?
That's one of the big things.
Our technology is now changing at the rate of every six months something new is coming out.
We just
retrofitted
you know, and built the first really HD facility on campus.
There are now
two new series of cameras
beyond the ones we just purchased.
Yea and decks, WRAR just bought the latest deck.
So things are constantly changing.
If you have somebody who wants to be on the web
practice,
test it out.
Make a test repording, put it up on a website that nobody else sees.
Put it up there, put it up as private on YouTube so you can actually see what happens. You're going
to see if you're aspect ratio is off,
if your audio is not coming
through clear. Do that.
And the easiest one, if it looks bad,
it is.
Okay, if it looks bad
it's going to be bad and it's only going to get worse.
Because when you upload it to YouTube, YouTube is actually going to start to compress that.
And other people when they start grabbing it,
and if they are recompressing it,
it's just going to go downhill from there.
I can't emphasize enough,
if you're going to be on camera, if you're going to want to do this, you have to be practicing,
you have to know the craft, you have to know the equipment, you have to know the technology
as you move along.
On YouTube
I know Bill was going to touch on it, but there is a spot on YouTube that does gives you a
YouTube handbook about shooting a couple things,
some basic tips.
You can check that out.
I mentioned the UR YouTube,
and as Jim said, MPEG.
This is what we came up with, Al and I. We looked at a lot different things, we tried
H2 64, some different things.
We've found that the MPEG-4 for video and the MPEG-3 for audio works
really well.
And the aspects ratio size
I talked about earlier and Al hit on:
16:9. We use 864:46 and then a 4:3
with 640:480.
You know those are things
that should be
pretty much standards.
If we use those numbers
we shouldn't have any problems it goes for everything. And that's what I meant about aquiring standards. It will play everywhere.
And this standard, as I mentioned earlier, we have that head graphic and tail graphic
that we put on everything. So that everything is identifiable with Michigan State University,
they're also set to these standards.
Now you send us something that is off a little bit,
it's not going to work and we kind of put those two pieces together.
Now interesting enough
I looked at YouTube just today
and video formats they list, which James said, the H2-64, the MPEG-2 or the MPEG-4
are prefered.
Their aspect ratios
actually have gone down.
They went down to 640:360 and 480:360,
so they changed that.
Bill and I were talking the other day but now they're also having something where they want you to
upload
at the highest quality.
So everything kind of keeps changing.
Thirty frames a second,
their maximum file size used to be 2 gigs, now it's a gig,
so they're they're constantly changing.
So
interestingly enough since we're having this discussion,
I just got this
web video,
and you can get this online.
It's all about companies that are shooting for the web.
And right in the middle of the article
there's the bad news: "there are no agreed upon standards
for resolution, aspect ratio or anything else".
Ok there are standards, there are guidelines.
And the guideline is the closest we can actually give you. And what we came up with
and an ally tested actually between the H2-64, the MPEG-4 and the
MPEG-4
was much better looking,
it held up much better to uploading
than the H2-64 did. And that's where we follow along the line of YouTube
and that's what we wanted to use.
I actually contested every single compression
they show.
I spent two days testing absolutely every single ratio to get the optimum of our HD movies.
And H2-64
is okay
but the contrast and the color is not anywhere near MPEG-4.
So I
tested all of that at length.
And the reason there is no standard is because there is sort of an agreed-upon;
pretty much all the professionals use the same type of
numbers.
There's no agreement because there's so many variables of people and you can't get everybody
in this giant arena to agree. Because on one end somebody with a little mini dvd or flip camera
and you've got the other end with
somebody with a film
or an HD camera doing the Kobe Bryant comercials which are made to look viral.
So
we've got this whole gamut. We're somewhere in the middle where it's like the highest quality takes the least
time to compress
because some of our shows are half an hour.
And so
yea I can make that a 70 gig movie or I can make it a 400 megabyte.
And so
all those numbers are really
really crucial. We
just came to somewhat of a medium ground
and I tested every compression ratio that we have. Everything keeps changing.
And then on top of all this I mean they are still formats and codexis you need to be thinking
about. Is it Quicktime, are you doing AVIs, Windows Media files, all those various things, MPEGS.
MPEGS that maybe Windows won't
play
on max;
they're not transferable. So sometimes they won't do that. You could make an MPEG-1
in your windows
moviemaker.
Try to upload that to YouTube, it's not going to take it.
You know
there are subtle differences.
I won't even get into it.
Interlacing, frames per second, bit rates. Whether
it's HD or SD.
In this article most of them
are all doing
SD.
Everything that's HD they're putting into SD and that's what they're putting out there.
It's just easier.
Just because he can
just go back to it
doesn't mean you should.
Think back, remember what I showed you earlier
Do we really need data to fix
just because someone can fix it?
The dangers of YouTube.
And we will get to those.
But one of the other things I wanted to comment on is the biggest drawback
if you think you're going to use anything that's consumer
is your audio.
And Al mentioned it.
I mean
that's the thing that will get you caught every time
is your audio. Because a lot of these little devices do not have
external audio input.
And when you start rolling you are going to get
everything that is happening around that person
and then you are going to post that
and that's a reflection on you
and that's a reflection on your department and the university.
Al was talking about the production that goes into some of those spots;
Doug was talking. If it's important
to you, hire
someone
to help you.
This is probably not the time
to try to go and figure something out
especially if you're doing something that has a grant on the line,
or anything that's attached to it,
you really need to be thinking that way.
Do your research,
look into it,
find people who use it,
bounce a call or e-mail to
Al or myself or somebody at WKAR.
Is this going to be usable,
and what is the longevity
of what you're going to purchase?
That's one of the big things.
Our technology is now changing at the rate of every six months something new is coming out.
We just
retrofitted
you know, and built the first really HD facility on campus.
There are now
two new series of cameras
beyond the ones we just purchased.
Yea and decks, WRAR just bought the latest deck.
So things are constantly changing.
If you have somebody who wants to be on the web
practice,
test it out.
Make a test repording, put it up on a website that nobody else sees.
Put it up there, put it up as private on YouTube so you can actually see what happens. You're going
to see if you're aspect ratio is off,
if your audio is not coming
through clear. Do that.
And the easiest one, if it looks bad,
it is.
Okay, if it looks bad
it's going to be bad and it's only going to get worse.
Because when you upload it to YouTube, YouTube is actually going to start to compress that.
And other people when they start grabbing it,
and if they are recompressing it,
it's just going to go downhill from there.
I can't emphasize enough,
if you're going to be on camera, if you're going to want to do this, you have to be practicing,
you have to know the craft, you have to know the equipment, you have to know the technology
as you move along.
On YouTube
I know Bill was going to touch on it, but there is a spot on YouTube that does gives you a
YouTube handbook about shooting a couple things,
some basic tips.
You can check that out.
I mentioned the UR YouTube,
and as Jim said, MPEG.
This is what we came up with, Al and I. We looked at a lot different things, we tried
H2 64, some different things.
We've found that the MPEG-4 for video and the MPEG-3 for audio works
really well.
And the aspects ratio size
I talked about earlier and Al hit on:
16:9. We use 864:46 and then a 4:3
with 640:480.
You know those are things
that should be
pretty much standards.
If we use those numbers
we shouldn't have any problems it goes for everything. And that's what I meant about aquiring standards. It will play everywhere.
And this standard, as I mentioned earlier, we have that head graphic and tail graphic
that we put on everything. So that everything is identifiable with Michigan State University,
they're also set to these standards.
Now you send us something that is off a little bit,
it's not going to work and we kind of put those two pieces together.
Now interesting enough
I looked at YouTube just today
and video formats they list, which James said, the H2-64, the MPEG-2 or the MPEG-4
are prefered.
Their aspect ratios
actually have gone down.
They went down to 640:360 and 480:360,
so they changed that.
Bill and I were talking the other day but now they're also having something where they want you to
upload
at the highest quality.
So everything kind of keeps changing.
Thirty frames a second,
their maximum file size used to be 2 gigs, now it's a gig,
so they're they're constantly changing.
So
interestingly enough since we're having this discussion,
I just got this
web video,
and you can get this online.
It's all about companies that are shooting for the web.
And right in the middle of the article
there's the bad news: "there are no agreed upon standards
for resolution, aspect ratio or anything else".
Ok there are standards, there are guidelines.
And the guideline is the closest we can actually give you. And what we came up with
and an ally tested actually between the H2-64, the MPEG-4 and the
MPEG-4
was much better looking,
it held up much better to uploading
than the H2-64 did. And that's where we follow along the line of YouTube
and that's what we wanted to use.
I actually contested every single compression
they show.
I spent two days testing absolutely every single ratio to get the optimum of our HD movies.
And H2-64
is okay
but the contrast and the color is not anywhere near MPEG-4.
So I
tested all of that at length.
And the reason there is no standard is because there is sort of an agreed-upon;
pretty much all the professionals use the same type of
numbers.
There's no agreement because there's so many variables of people and you can't get everybody
in this giant arena to agree. Because on one end somebody with a little mini dvd or flip camera
and you've got the other end with
somebody with a film
or an HD camera doing the Kobe Bryant comercials which are made to look viral.
So
we've got this whole gamut. We're somewhere in the middle where it's like the highest quality takes the least
time to compress
because some of our shows are half an hour.
And so
yea I can make that a 70 gig movie or I can make it a 400 megabyte.
And so
all those numbers are really
really crucial. We
just came to somewhat of a medium ground
and I tested every compression ratio that we have. Everything keeps changing.
And then on top of all this I mean they are still formats and codexis you need to be thinking
about. Is it Quicktime, are you doing AVIs, Windows Media files, all those various things, MPEGS.
MPEGS that maybe Windows won't
play
on max;
they're not transferable. So sometimes they won't do that. You could make an MPEG-1
in your windows
moviemaker.
Try to upload that to YouTube, it's not going to take it.
You know
there are subtle differences.
I won't even get into it.
Interlacing, frames per second, bit rates. Whether
it's HD or SD.
In this article most of them
are all doing
SD.
Everything that's HD they're putting into SD and that's what they're putting out there.
It's just easier.
Just because he can
just go back to it
doesn't mean you should.
Think back, remember what I showed you earlier
Do we really need data to fix
just because someone can fix it?
The dangers of YouTube.