Making Movies for the Internet: An Educational Perspective

The production process involved with making a digital movie for the Internet may be broken down into 5 stages

• Collecting or shooting the video
• Digitizing the video
• Editing the video
• Compressing the digital video
• Producing and integrating it into a Web site
• How-to hand-outs

Stage 1: Collecting or shooting the video

When you are producing a digital movie, your source material is very important. Whether you select video which has already been shot or you decided to shoot your own video, the higher the quality of this inital source, the better the digital movie. BetaCam SP is your best choice for an initial source, but it is an impractical suggestion for those in education. These cameras are usually too expensive for purchase by a school or district. A good alternative is S-VHS or Hi-8. These choices are reasonable for schools although they are still pricey cameras. However, many schools have purchased these cameras for class use. One thing to keep in mind is that S-VHS or Hi-8 tapes are costly. When considering what to use as your initial source, you must factor in the price of blank tapes. VHS is a poor choice for an intial source, although it is the most prevalent platform in schools. VHS recording produce too much "noise" which does not compress well. The final product often looks very grainy or pixelated. However, if VHS is your only resource - it is still worth using, but you need to be more selective of the material you choose to digitize. Whatever camera you choose to use to record your video or if you are selecting sections of previously recorded material, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Lighting: The lighter the image, the better it will be for compression. Many codecs that are available for use in the schools (like Cinepak) do not compress dark images well.
• Movement: Although paning and zooming make for more interesting video, try to avoid them. Any additional movement makes it more difficult for the computer to compress the file and makes the final product a bit more jumpy. Another good habit to get into is to use a tripod. Hand-held video tends to be shakey. Again, this will result in a poor final product.
• Backgrounds: Keep backgrounds simple. Things that seem too distracting are even more distracting when a video is compressed because it is difficult to discern details. This is especially true if you are shooting an interview. Avoid busy backgrounds. Keep detail to a minimum.

Stage 2: Digitizing the video

Once you have collected your video, you may begin digitizing. Digitizing is sometimes referred to as "capturing" video. To digitize, you will need an AV Macintosh computer or a compture with its own capture card. Macintosh machines can either come equip with a capture card as is the case with AV machines or you can purchase capture cards to install in your machines. PC machines all must have a capture card installed in them. There are no AV PC machines. Capture cards can be as inexpensive as $300 or more than $10,000. The cheaper the card, the poorer the capture quality. Media 100, Avid Media Composer, Radius and Truevision Targa 200 are more expensive cards, but the produce high quality videos. Cheaper cards include Miro Motion DC-20, Truevision Bravado, and those cards in AV Macs. Adobe Premiere, VideoFusion, & Strata VideoShop are popular digitizing and editing software packages. There are many dimensions to digital video. Click here to learn more.

Stage 3: Editing

Adobe Premiere is one of the more widely used editing packages, although it tends to be somewhat pricey for schools to purchase. A good alternative is Avid VideoShop which is usually shipped with AV Machines or MoviePlayer, which is free off the Internet and comes with most systems. The trade off is that you do not have as many options for editing and the movie edits can only be simple. Other popular, hgiher end, editing packages include Avid Cinema and Strata VideoShop. Most of the software packages work on a timeline metaphor and are easy to learn. Some things to consider when editing:

• Practice, practice, practice! Don't try to learn how to use a editing package when you need to get a project done. Practice becoming familiar with the program when you can play around with the features.
• Avoid a lot of transitions. Although videos edited for television and films tend to rely on transitions as special effects or to move a story line along, transitions will make compression more difficult and produce a larger file.
• Make sure you have enough RAM. You will need at least 12 MB RAM to edit. The more you have, the better off you will be.
• Make sure you have enough hard drive storage space. When working with digital video, 1 Gig is not an unreasonable suggestion.
• Save your raw digital footage. Athough raw digital video files are quite large, you should find a way to archive them for future reference. External storage devices like Iomega Zip & Jazz drives or Magneto Optical drives are good sources for archiving materials. The zip/jazz drives are a more reasonable cost alternative for schools. The drives are not that expensive (under $200) and the disk, while they are costly (~$15), hold more data than your average floppy.
• Make sure you save the movie in the right format for playback.
• Read the user manual to discover any nuances your particular software package or capture card might have.

Stage 4: Compression

Compressing your movie files is key to being able to play them on the Web. You need to get the smallest file possible which permits faster download or easier streaming. There are several compression programs. The Codec (compression/decompression) you select is a crucial step in determining what your final product will look like. Compressing a video file takes time. Make sure you have enough time to compress you file and that you can keep your computer tied up for the duration of the compression. In lab settings, this is often a difficulty taks. My recommendation is to compress files over night. This way students don't loose access to a high end machine and there is less of a chance of someone interferring with the compression process. If you do compress overnight, make sure all back-ups for that machine are shut down. Backing up the system will interfer with the compression process. For more information on Codec, click here.

Stage 5: Integrating a digital movie on your Web site

Digital video files, even when compressed, tend to be large. This makes transfer over network difficult. Data rates can range from about 50 Kilobytes per second for high bandwidth connections to 2.5 Kilobyters per second for low bandwidth connections, such as modems. Standard movies playback from a modem speed is usually very poor and not recommended. Today, many developments are being made for the improvement of digital video on the Web. In the past, digital video had to be completely download to the computer before playback. Fast start options now permit playback as the movie is downloading. To integrate video file into your web page, you will you embed tags. The most simpliest line of code will read, <embed img src="name of file.mov">. For more information on the variety of tags you may use with digital video on the Web, visit Apple's QuickTime site.

Streaming audio and video files is the most recent advancement made in terms of digital video. Streaming video is never fully downloaded onto the computer but is streamed from the server, temporarily stored on the hard drive and then eliminated. Streaming video tends to work within the bandwidth limitations. Examples of streaming solutions are Vosaic and VDOLIVE.

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