10 Dec 2012

Times Opinion on Tumblr: The 10 golden rules of Twitter

timesopinion:

image

David Aaronovitch

No week seems to pass without some tweeter or other having their handle felt by officers of the law. So if you don’t want to be one of them but you do want to communicate in 140 characters, here are my 10 Golden Rules:

  1. Twitter IS publishing. Putting it out there…

2 Nov 2012

We’ve just ventured in to the realm of live streaming with an iPad mini and iPad 4th gen live Q&A with Which? experts.

(Source: youtube.com)

16 Oct 2012

Bodyform - You lied to us

No this is how you do agile viral marketing.

Bodyform’s response to a very humorous Facebook post is genius in it’s tongue-in-cheek humour and speed of response.

It does have a wiff of being pre-planned, but lets not allow that to detract from some great planning and very brave marketing.

Read the Facebook post first here, then watch the video:

28 Sep 2012

AntiMap - Sync geo data to video

Antimap has just been nominated in the Guardian Information is Beautiful awards and what an impressive collection of software it is, allowing you to sync all the sensor data from your phone to the video you’ve shot.

The principle is simple really, but the execution is very nicely done. Essentially you start the video recording, then start the app recording and then use a desktop tool to sync the two elements together giving you a very impressive display of all the data associated with what you have just shot.

The possibilities for this are quite significant, but check out the video they’ve shot to demonstrate the system with a snowboarder.

27 Jul 2012

What makes good online video - BBC News

The BBC College of Journalism has just put up a great post on what makes good online video, which highlights how they chose what content gets used on the BBC News website.

Click the link to watch the full video, but I’ve pulled out a few of the key findings below. They are well worth paying attention to and are very close to the criteria we use at Which? to decide what videos to produce.


All best content has same things in common, they are:
Succinct, visually powerful and focused. They use the very best pictures to tell a story with a beginning, middle and an end.

Piece should have:
Clear simple headlines focusing on a single idea or sequence
Clear strong images (the piece should be visual)
It should be easy to sell

Audience wont put up with anything vague and wont click on anything that says ‘news’ or ‘headlines’

There are four types of video content that go up on the BBC News website:
1 ‘The moment when’ – the most dramatic pictures of a news event
Rough and ready clips, no production, most important thing is speed and impact.

2 Authored ‘show and tells’ – a correspondent’s own impressions of a story
Stand alone video with it’s own content that needs no other story to make it work, plenty of movement with little post production. Tour of a situation.

3 Contextual video – background analysis or discussion of a story
Gives context to a text article. Could be demonstration images or a case-study. element of the story that is best delivered in video.

4 Highly produced interactive multimedia content.
Highly interactive. Video is part of images, stats, graphics.

20 Jul 2012

Ken Bloc Gymkhana is a great example of how to do viral video

DC Shoes has become synonymous with the Ken Block Gymkhana (Very loud, fast, smokey stunt driving) and it really shows how a well produced video can have a significant impact, but that the video doesn’t have to be associated directly with your product.

For those interested in the stats, the previous four versions of the 10 minute video (Gymkhana 1-4) have garnered some incredible numbers, including 135 million views on Youtube - 24 million more than the 2012 Super bowl - 2 million shares and 85k comments. Click here for the full infographic.

For those that just want to watch a madman drive really fast around San Francisco and see the most extravagant use of GoPro cameras I’ve ever seen, watch it here:


27 Jun 2012

Every wondered why Youtube counts pause at 301 or even what constitutes a Youtube View. This video explains all.

27 Mar 2012

This is a really interesting example of how engaging well with your users can really reap rewards.

The latest video for the band Blood Red Shoes was posted on Youtube on March 12, 2012.

Now this is something usually managed by the record label while the band go off and do ‘press’ but on this occasion one of the band members responded personally to a comment/criticism about the sound of the track in such an engaging way that he has not only made a personal connection with one commentor but has also really engratiated himself with the fans ( as can be seen by the combined 44 thumbs up of his comments).

It has also given a very unique insight in to the making of the song that you would be unlikely to get from any other source.

All this from 10 minutes spent replying to a post on Youtube.

9 Feb 2012

Beautiful video and beautiful song.

(Source: vimeo.com)

10 Jan 2012

How many SEO experts do you need to change a lightbulb lightbulbs buy light bulbs neon lights sex porn

— (via clientsfromhell)

14 Sep 2011

Youtube search is down - Watch our Frankfurt Motor Show videos here

It appears that Google’s video search (both on Youtube and on Google) is down, so currently the only way to find the wonderful videos were are churning out at the Frankfurt Motor Show 2011 is to subscribe to our channel or watch them all here.

26 Mar 2011

Sony NEX-FS100 - Close to the perfect small camera

Sony has finally launched what could possibly be the perfect camcorder, the Sony NEX-FS100, which combines a Super 35 sensor with interchangable lenses and full video controls and all for under £4000.Sony NEX-FS100

Since the start of the video DSLR revolution I have, along with everyone else, been amazed by the quality and look of the footage that these cameras could produce but I have been consistently put off getting one because of their usability for everyday video production.

I’ve been biding my time until someone could come out with a camera that combined the ease of use of my Sony EX1 and the image style of the Canon 5D and it looks like it might finally have happened with the Sony FS100

The FS100 body looks like a scaled down version of the EX1 with all of the usual controls you would expect on a video camera, all easy to hand, including the all important dual XLR input and audio controls.

The front of the camera however is designed to take Sony’s proprietary E-Mount NEX lenses which can also take Sony A-Mount DSLR lenses with a simple adapter offering a wide range of DSLR style filming options.

On first look there are a few problems with the FS100 like the lack of built in ND filters and the fact it records in AVCHD which is still a pain to edit even on the most top end systems. These can be worked around easily though (with lens mounted filters and using the 4:2:2 HDMI out) and I think they impact the quality of this peice of kit too much.

In the fast paced production environment that I work in with myself and my team producing up to 10 web videos every day, then the Sony NEX-FS100 really could provide the solution to providing us with the look we want without having to sacrifice usability that could impact our work flow. It is definitely on my shopping list for the next year.

Den from Fstopacademy.com has already used it on a pop promo and the results are impressive. Check out his video review and the resulting film in the video below.

NEX FS 100 Video Blog from Den & James on Vimeo.

18 Feb 2011

When I tell everyone I’m going to Barcelona they think I’m going to have great fun seeing the sites so I made this time laps over four hours to show just part of a typical evening of editing which usually takes place after a full days filming at a trade show.

10 Jan 2011

Canon XA10 professional camcorder hands on

At the CES show in Las Vegas for the day job and I spotted this just unveiled Canon XA10 while filming some of the consumer cameras on the Canon stand. 
Canon XA10 professional camcorder at CES 2011After a quick demo from the guy on the stand I got to play with the Canon XA10 for a few minutes and I was very impressed. 

I’d been looking for a compact pro camera to replace the aging Sony A1 for a while and recently settled for the Sony MC50E. Now, I do like the MC50 but it is too close to the consumer camcorder it is based on and the manual controls are quite infuriating, even if it does shoot nice images. 

The XA10 however has pretty much all the manual controls you could want plus proper XLR audio inputs with physical independent gain controls. 
This is real professional camera that just happens to be small.

The specs are impressive as well with 64GB internal memory and two SD card slots, full 1080p recording (MC50 is i), 10x zoom which starts at a reasonably wide angle and full shoot assist functions like zebra and peaking. 

On top of all of that control your also have a very compact chassis. The handle and audio inputs come completely off after unscrewing three thumb screws leaving a body as small as the MC50 but still with access to a 3.5mm audio jack.

All of the manual controls are accessed through the touch screen except for the manual focus ring around the lens. This slows things down a little but it’s leaps and bounds better than the MC50 which doesn’t allow you access to the manual controls independently, instead it opperates in a kind of apperture priority mode with all of the settings you are not changing adjusting themselves to compensate for what you are doing. 

The only limitation of the XA10 that I can see is the AVCHD codec. It is recording a high 24mbps which is fine for quality as far as I am concerned but experience with the MC50 has shown that editing that footage is a serious pain in anything except the most powerful systems. 

All in, the only thing that disappointed me about the Canon XA10 is the fact that Canon didn’t launch it 6 months ago to stop me buying the MC50. Now I need to find valid excuse to spend another £1500.

22 Oct 2010

Green screen keying is harder than you think

When Which? was given and exclusive first look at the Samsung Galaxy Tab we all got very excited but to be honest the Samsung Euro QA lab isn’t the best looking location to film. Brainwave, greenscreen. Well that’s what I thought.

We already had a Reflecmedia Litering and reflective screen that I’d used for a few short videos but this was going to be a 20 minute behemoth and boy did it test my video editing hardware.

Now it wasn’t a complex edit but with two After Effects compositions doing the keying for the presenter and the cutaways Premier was really struggling.

Now I run a pretty serious 8 core HP workstation with CS5 taking full advantage of the Nvidia Cuda and Mercury playback engine but I was still reduced to playback at the rate of one frame every five seconds which made editing very difficult.

I’m happy with the result and it would have looked alot worse if we didn’t use the green screen but I may have to rethink my methods the next time we try something like this, or maybe just leave double the time I’d normally expect.