Tom Cotton’s 8109

Huzzah it’s done. Not smooth sailing but have got there in the end.

There are many learnings in digital video recording the Second Life event.Critiquing the SL video:

The first cut of the video showed how much is was an unexciting talking heads are in SecondLife. May as well as have a simple audio file with a few pictures. I changed this using two techniques:

1. I heavily edited the video from 27 minutes down to 7 minutes. Should have been even more brutal. One of the losses was a loss of all the personal thank-yous. Why? A wider audience is not likely to know this and it also interrupted the interesting narrative that came out of each presentation.
2. The SL video was spiced up a bit with a few sequences of ‘action’ complementing the commentary. SecondLife is about doing and sharing. One snippet I liked was a recording of the party goers gradually appearing & being dressed in second life.

Unfortunately I edited the video first. I should have exported the audio and edited that in Audacity first. Audacity’s envelope feature allowed me to counteract the different speakers voices fading in and out as they moved away from / closer to the microphone.

Some problems with the videos:

• The light was different in different sessions (afternoon vs noon)
• The clips were not from the context of the speaking (see the very first clip & Greg Black does not appear)
• The me.edu.au SL box was obscured
• The names of party goes obscured the view in some clips
• Some avatars got in the way of the shot
• The camera dude (Teskat Teskat) got in the way of the shot, fell asleep (inactive) and at times poorly positione
• Boring clips

So Second Life recording tips in a nutshell:

re Pre Production

• Tech setup - use the best computer available, well tested.
• Have an second avatar recording just audio. The video recording machine will possibly crash with out of video memory / 2nd life crashes - under the load of 3D & video.
• Test audio setup ~ experiement with the ambient sounds / music / chat.
• Test the network setup:
• is firewall or proxy settings blocking chat
• what effect of your proxies
• firewall policies: do they ‘timeout’?
• Test the recording software. I used Camtasia 4 but there are free alternatives eg debugmode’s Wink or the new Jing from TechSmith (makers of Camtasia)

re the Shoot

• Avoid talking head presentations: plan a variety of set sequences.
• Think creatively & scout good camera locations
• Keep your video avatar awake and active.
• Master the keyboard controls from 1st person view to camera view.
• Keep lighting consistent

re Post Production

• Process and edit audio first, then add video second. Add cue points as necessary.
• The audio will determine the video shots required.
• Use a real video editor - not Camtasia.
• Set aside time to edit.
• Think about the output formats and end users. I’ve uploaded two versions to http://blip.tv/ one for viewing & one for editing. Unlike YouTube, you can download & mash these videos.