Video

Today I feel pretty good about getting some media online over the weekend. I know it is not particularly good media, but it is something and it is practice. Eventually, I'll get the editing thing down. There is a time for jumps and a time for fades. There is a time for audio and a time for text.There is a time for sampling and a time to make a face.

Transitions, a fade or wipe or whatever, from one scene to another has become unnecessary on the internet. Having a jump from one sentence or sentence fragment to another is the norm. For goodness sake, cut out the boring bits and just leave it so it looks edited. It is an honest 'normal' thing to do. If you use transitions in media intended for the internet and not something that is supposed to be a professional production, people think you are trying to hide something. It seems that timeliness is more important that spending a long time editing. Get the Vlog up and people will watch it.

A vlog entry is expected to be free flowing thought with the boring bits cut out. A production is expected to be edited and full of transitions.

Text is a real conundrum. I hate text because I hate reading it in a video. Nothing pisses me off like a bunch of text over the action, a bunch of text put up on blue screens between scenes with some opinion or explanation that breaks up the action. Credits are cool. When well done, it can help set things up and even help the flow of the action. Most of the time it is just in the way. It should be used sparingly and only after practice.

Logos are a pain in the ass online. Movies and TV shows play a logo of several production companies at the beginning of shows and they carry this over to the internet. Big mistake. Play them at the end. Make them appropriate to the content. FailBlog does a good job.

You can now annotate your videos. This is a pain in the ass too. They are great for pointing out what part of the screen to watch for some action or to correct a misspoken fact. They are annoying when used to beg for 5 stars or thumbs up in the rating system or to poke fun at someone in the video. Again, these functions should be used sparingly and with practice.

You can now put links on your videos. Please allow me to say this with the sarcasm knob turned to 11. "yay." This step was inevitable and at the moment only applies to YouTube. I'm already sick of hosts pointing out the quarter of the screen to click on to go to some page they are hocking. This feature has not even been fully implemented and I'm already sick of it. I much prefer links in the "dooblydoo" (This is the sidebar that is now below and to the right of the video screen on YouTube.).

There is an automatic translator with subtitles choice on many videos. This is awesome. I have not gotten it to work yet because it is not available on the videos I wanted to try it out on. That will change soon. YouTube says this feature will be on all videos some time soon. There is now a way to add subtitles to your videos. You can put up a text file that contains what is said and the auto time feature will automatically time the words to the spoken bits of the video. Nice, if it works as well as advertised. I haven't tried it.

There is a reason they have 49 takes of every scene in movies. In real life it is all first take. Second takes really suck and they go down hill quickly in quality from there. The quality curve here is a cliff. Asking someone to hold that thought while you dig for your video camera is death. Spontaneous video needs to be spontaneous. The solution is to shoot everything and take care of it in the cutting room.

Special effects can  be really cool. they can more than get in the way of things. Recently a vlogger used a green screen to add a dinosaur in the background of just some random shot where they found a green wall. This was while the group was just playing around in a theme park.That was a fun example. The addition was obvious. It is much easier to get people to imagine the special effect and far more difficult to fool people. It really has gotten to the point where you can do some very interesting effects with free software on a notebook. That doesn't mean go nuts, but have fun.

Practice, practice, practice. I need more practice. Expect some text soon. I know I complain about it, but it is an important tool and I want to get some practice.