A week of online video secrets: what do you want to know?

Posted in Online Video by Adam Westbrook on August 18, 2011

Next week I fly to to the lovely European country of Moldova, where I’ll be running some workshops for the Council of Europe on video storytelling for journalists.

As well as the basics of video production we’ll also be diving into multimedia storytelling, narratives structure and more. Preparing for it has inspired me to put together another week-long series of blog posts, packed with tips and advice on producing knock-out online video.

It’ll be aimed at all you lovely readers: journalists, multimedia producers and film makers – and I want you to help shape what goes into the week.

Online video is a very broad church with everything from the technical stuff (like cameras and codecs) to the art of visual storytelling under its roof. I can’t possibly fit it all in, so what should I prioritise? Well, you get to decide.

Please take just 1 minute to fill in the survey before the 1st September – and the most popular topics will go straight into the week long special!

9 Responses

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Paul Bush (@profpbush) said, on August 18, 2011 at 2:44 pm

Adam, I’m getting a 404 page error message for the poll.
- Adam Westbrook said, on August 18, 2011 at 2:50 pm
  
  I’ve just looked at the dashboard and its not reporting any errors for me – try again and let me know if the problem persists. The survey pop up over the page (without directing you to another site) Thanks!
Icecube media said, on August 22, 2011 at 7:18 am

Hey,
yes you are right online video is great thing.
Thanks.
Mindy McAdams said, on August 22, 2011 at 3:40 pm

Hi, Adam. Just took your survey. I assume you’re on a State Dept. mission — congrats if so! They will keep you busy. I hope you know that Moldova is PAL, not NTSC — http://www.early-advantage.com/PALandNTSC.aspx

Regina McCombs and I did a couple of workshops in Bulgaria, and while we knew the standard was PAL, what we had not looked into was the dimensions! The standard for PAL is different (both H and V) for 4:3. I forget whether we looked at 16:9 (it was a while back, so probably not). It will be helpful for your handouts if you find out the dimensions before you go. I would share them, but I no longer have them.

Software already installed in PAL countries will normally be set for PAL as the default. This is especially true for low-end programs such as Windows Live Movie Maker. Even if people do not intend to export for DVD, the format choice may need to be set.
- AdamWestbrook (@AdamWestbrook) said, on August 27, 2011 at 8:32 am
  
  Hi Mindy, thanks for the heads up! Luckily we’re PAL in the UK as well; there were a few aspect ratio issues with editing but we were able to fix them pretty quickly. Thanks for taking the survey too! I hope you’re well 🙂
Natalie Bell said, on August 26, 2011 at 1:16 pm

Hi Adam,

I don’t know if you remember me? I’m still in the radio field but looking to expand my knowledge of video journalism- in the future I want to work in TV news. I’m Currently on an internship at BBC London TV so learning bits, so would welcome your creative ideas.

Hope you’re ok!

Natalie.
- AdamWestbrook (@AdamWestbrook) said, on August 27, 2011 at 8:33 am
  
  Hi Natalie, lovely to hear from you. Have a look through the ‘online video’ tagged entries on this blog – there’s plenty of TV based ideas there 🙂 Good luck!
Natalie Bell said, on August 30, 2011 at 10:16 am

Many thanks Adam, hope you’re well. Sounds like you’re doing great!!
Dog and Bird Houses » Blog Archive » Ideas for your online video production said, on November 4, 2011 at 7:12 pm

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