(by 12 people)
Everything you always wanted to learn about video blogs, but didn't know where to go to ask.
Hi. Steve Garfield here.
I've been video blogging since January 1, 2004 when I made a New Years resolution to try and figure out how to make it easy to put video on a blog. Since then, it's gotten a lot easier.
My video blog features Vlog Soup a regular free tour of video blogs from all over the world.
Vlog Soup is my video compilation of some of my favorite recent video blogs. As I watch video blogs I make a note of which ones I enjoy most and assemble a little show featuring them. It's my way to help provide a filter to the avalanche of new video blog content that is being created every day.
Last year I created The Carol and Steve Show, here's Episode 1. I ended up doing one show a week in 2005. The show continue in 2006.
In The Carol and Steve Show, my wife and I share what we do on the weekends. I take the fleeting moments of our lives and edit them into what some people feel is an entertaining way to spend a few minutes. It's all long tail and democratization of media stuff going on here. The show is even playing on Akimbo, listed right in the same lineup as CNN and the BBC. That's an amazing breakthrough.
Using RSS 2.0 with media enclosures, I use FireAnt, a desktop video aggregator, to have new videos delivered to me for free. Videoblogs are also more than just videos on a web page. The integrated commenting feature of blogs allows viewers to participate in a conversation with the video maker and other viewers. You don't see that on TV!
With videoblogging, channels are people. I subscribe to people.
Here are some of my favorite people and their video blogs along with a ton of helpful links to get you started.
Favorite Videoblogs
With videoblogging, channels are people. I subscribe to people.
- Steve Garfield's Video Blog
- Steve Garfield's Video Blog. Featuring The Carol and Steve Show - 'Real' reality
TV, and Vlog Soup - a video tour around the vlogosphere. - Josh Leo
- Josh Leo tells stories. HIs videos are more than just random shots. Josh shares with us his feelings about life and the things that are interesting to him. With a good eye for shooting and editing, it's a pleasure to spend some time with Josh each time he makes a new video.
- Ravi Jain's DriveTime
- My good friend Ravi produces his videos in a car during his daily commute. He picks up guests who are traveling in the same direction as he is. Watch for the endearing glimpse of real life as Ravi and his wife/co-host Sonia banter between each other prior to picking up their guest/passenger. Priceless.
- Welcome to Amyville
- Amy is my vlogging neighbor. Amy comes to vlogging from an artist's point of view. She seems to be very popular in Germany. I think it's because sometimes she tells her stories without speaking.
- Tiki Bar TV with LaLa
- Shown on stage, along with Rocketboom, by Steve Jobs at the introduction of the video iPod, Tiki Bar TV is one of the few well done fictional videoblogs, and the star LaLa is very entertaining.
- Chuck Olsen's Secret Vlog Injection
- Chuck Olsen is always entertaining too. Right now he's featuring Vlog Santa on his popular Minnesota Stories daily vlog. Secret Vlog Injection provides a place for Chuck to be creative. It also gives us a glimpse into his life with one of my favorite recurring episodic vlogs, The Honey's. We met this year at the Woods Hole Film Festival. In person, he's just like he is on his vlog. Authentic, quick witted and funny.
- Rocketboom
- Daily internet news show featuring Amanda Congdon. What I love about Rocketboom is the fact that the content is so varied. As a correspondent, I can submit a piece about a new HD video camera or web spreadsheet, and it doesn't matter that a majority of the audience won't be interested. What matters is that we're doing something that is not televison. It's not geared to please the masses. As long as someone finds it interesting or entertaining, I'm happy.
- Ehrensenf with Katrin
- Ehrensenf is a daily vlog from Germany hosted by Katrin. With a larger screen size than most vlogs, sharp picture quality and good sound, Ehrensenf is one of the best produced vlogs. Featuring news from the internet, Katrin makes Ehrensenf my daily addiction. I might even be learning some German.
- It's JerryTime!
- It's JerryTime! is a video blog that I recently set up for a friend featuring true tales from the life of Jerry. When I saw the first episode, Who's That Guy?, I knew that it was going to be a big hit. It's JerryTime! is animated in a scrapbook kind of way adding pictures to the sob stories that Jerry tells. You've probably never seen anything like it. It's truly unique.
- Living with Fallas
- Juan and Ximena are living in LA and posting vlog updates for their family in Colombia. They use the vlog to show their family what their life in LA is like, it just so happens that we can watch along.
- Spices of Life
- I work with cookbook author Nina Simonds to produce this food, health, lifestyle videoblog. For many of the shows we use a Nokia N93 or N95 cellphone to record the video. It's a fun show.
- Galacticast
- Spoof Sci-fi videos by my friends Casey and Rudy.
- Jet Set Show
- Fun kids show by my friends Zadi and Steve. Recently featured on Vlog Soup, I love all the work they put into it, shooting, editing and special effects.
- Minnesota Stories
- Chuck Olsen collects videos from Minnesota and has a new one every weekday.
Videoblogging Links
- MPEG Streamclip
- You can use MPEG Streamclip to: open most movie formats including MPEG files or transport streams; play them at full screen; edit them with Cut, Copy, Paste, and Trim; set In/Out points and convert them into muxed or demuxed files, or export them to QuickTime, AVI, DV and MPEG-4 files with more than professional quality, so you can easily import them in Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Toast 6 or 7, and use them with many other applications or devices.
- Embed Videos
- A nice web based HTML generator that allows you to embed videos in your blog post.
- Join the community
- Join over two thousand videobloggers, from around the world, in our Yahoo! group.
- Video Pop-Up Link Maker
- Joshua Kinberg's little 'embed the video' wizard writes the code for you to generate pop-up windows with embedded videos. Paste in your video URL, give it a title, and paste an image URL if you'd like. Then copy and paste the generated code into your blog entry -- Shazzam!
- Jen's Videoblogging Resources Page
- Jen Simmons' website is chock full of links to resources around the internet cool tutorials, invaluable tools, sources for free media you can use in your projects (video, audio and images), free services for hosting your website, places to ask for help and meet new friends, etc etc. Surf these sections to discover how easy and cheap it can be to make videoblog and broadcast your films to the world.
- Testing Grounds
- TestingGrounds was created to build upon the work done by Deirdre Straughan to review video hosting service providers. Comment on and add to the reviews.
- Videos Playing in Place
- With the vPIP (video Playing In Place) utility you can write in HTML a link to a quicktime video, windows media video or flash application with the clickable target for the link. When the target (usually an image acting as the image poster) is clicked, the movie will be embedded in it's place and available to play.
- Digital Media Learning Center
- Ourmedia's new Digital Media Learning Center. They are building out a rich, up-to-date educational resource for everything you wanted to know about personal media.
- Editing with QuickTime Pro
- Tutorial on how to edit with QuickTime Pro.
- FreeVlog
- Michael Verdi and Ryanne Hodson's site to help you kick-a** at videoblogging.
- Automatic Inline Player Script
- David Meade's script is designed to find all media links on a page and give them an inline (embedded) player.
You dont have to do ANYTHING special. Just link to media file in your post. - iSquint
- iSquint is an iPod video conversion app for Mac OS X.
- Keep Vid
- Keep the video you are watching.
- Visual Hub
- Universal Video Converter for Macintosh from the makers of iSquint.
Fast conversion from nearly every video format to iPod, PSP, DV, DVD, AVI, MP4, WMV, MPEG and Flash.
Convert any file in three steps. Click, drag, click. - How Michael Verdi edits Alive In Baghdad
- Michael Verdi writes:
I've been working on documenting some of my process for Alive In Baghdad. I just posted about 40 minutes worth of screencasts showing
how I set episodes up in Final Cut Pro, add subtitles, export, compress for iPod, dual-pass wmv, upload to blip, and post to wordpress. Much of the info is pretty specific to Alive In Baghdad but some things like compressing for iPod and making dual-pass wmv files should be of interest to many of you. - FLV Online Converter - vixy.net
- A digital video transcode service
URL (FLV file URL or web page*)convert to:
AVI for Windows (DivX + MP3)
MOV for Mac (MPEG4 + MP3)
MP4 for iPod/PSP (MPEG4 + AAC)
3GP for Mobile (MPEG4 + AAC)
MP3 (audio only) - ffmpegX a DVD, SVCD, VCD, CVD, VOB, DivX, XviD, H.264, PSP, iPod, MP4, MOV encoder for Mac OSX
- ffmpegX is a Mac OS X graphic user interface designed to easily operate more than 20 powerful Unix open-source video and audio processing tools including ffmpeg the "hyper fast video and audio encoder" (http://ffmpeg.sf.net/), mpeg2enc the open-source mpeg-2 encoder and multiplexer (http://mjpeg.sf.net/MacOS/) and mencoder the mpeg-4 encoder with subtitles support (http://sf.net/projects/mplayerosx).
- Make Internet TV
- This guide has step-by-step instructions for shooting, editing, and publishing online videos that can be watched and subscribed to by millions of people.
Video Blog Directories
- Mefeedia
- One of the most comprehensive lists of video blogs.
- Videoblogging Universe
- A snapshot of recent vlogs with audio and video.
- Vlog Map
- A world map of vloggers.
- Vlogdir
- The Videoblog Directory
- FireAnt Directory
- A videoblog directory fromthe FireAnt team
Human Filters
What people are watching
- Vlog Soup
- Steve Garfield's vlogosphere tours start here.
- Josh Leo's Picks
- Choice cuts of great vlogs from Josh Leo.
- WatchMe@XOLO.TV
- Check XOLO.TV every week for videos on the latest news in the media blogging community, reviews of new videoblogs,video podcasts and cool filtered films.
- Ryanne's ReVlog
- Here are some videos Ryanne Hodson wants you to see.
- podguide.tv
- Podguide.tv is a new guide to the best video content available for the video iPod.
del.icio.us/tag/watchthis
Videos that people are tagging on del.icio.us as watchthis
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byNew Videos Here
- blip.tv
- blip.tv is a video sharing site whose goal is to change the world by bringing video blogging to the masses.
- vimeo.com
- Vimeo is a site for organizing and sharing video clips.
- ourmedia.org
- Provide free storage and free bandwidth for your videos, audio files, photos, text or software. Forever. No catches.
- 49media.com
- What's onthe web tonight, Honey?
- dailymotion.com
- Dailymotion is about finding new ways to see and show the world.
- youtube.com
- Instantly find and watch 1000's of fast streaming videos.
- mediatuner.com
- An easy-to-use webbased Rich Media Aggregator and Player.
- omn.org
- Broad selection of free public programs with a simple TV-style program guide. Requires a download. Macintosh and Firefox versions are now available.
- Veoh
- Veoh software, installed on PCs or Macs, creates a virtual television network, that is able to distribute TV-Quality, Full-Screen broadcast video to hundreds of millions of users with broadband internet connections.
You can also watch lower quality versions online without installing any software. - Videobomb
- Video Bomb was created to help people discover and share interesting videos. It is a project of the Participatory Culture Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Worcester, MA.
- YouAre.TV
- YouAreTV makes sharing your video to the world simple and effortless. We host, aggregate, organize, and distribute all video on our website. Through using tags, social networking, and semantic search, we make it easy for anyone to find the right content they want to see. Our focus is on user-generated content and on enabling the formation of communities around video. We believe everyone has the ability to produce. We believe that You ARE TV!
How to create a videoblog
Step by step instructions for getting started
First, get a camera if you don't already have one.
You can use a digital still camera that also shoots video. The camera I've had for a while is the Canon S400 and it's worked well for me for years. You can probably find it, or a similar model, on ebay. New versions are always coming out and a more recent model is SD630. This one shoots 640x480 at 30fps. That'll give you really sweet quality. You could also shoot at other sizes like 320x240 at 15fps too to save space on the video size.
If you want to use a miniDV camera, look into Sony or Canon.
For Canon the Optura 50 or 60 is a good choice recommended by friends who work for Canon. Things to looks for in a camera are size, quality and audio. For size, how does the camera feel in your hands? I like a little bigger camera size that helps reduce camera shake. When looking at quality, a 3 CCD camera gives you great quality. My other camera is a Canon GL/2.
The Sony HC3 also looks like a nice choice for an HD camera but you are limited to their proprietary audio components. The pro version of it, the HVR-A1U, has two XLR jacks for adding your own pro microphones.
Next, film something.
Copy your video to your computer.
Optionally edit and compress your video.
If editing, you can use a free program that probably came with your computer, Windows Media Maker for the PC, or iMovie for the Mac. I use Final Cut Pro on a Mac.
If compressing video, QuickTime Pro will do a nice job.
If you want to allow viewers to put your video on a video iPod, I've found these settings, under QuickTime Export .mov, work well:
Video: MPEG-4, 500 kbits/sec, 15fps, 320x240
Audio: MPEG-4/AAC-LC, 128 kbits/sec
You could also just choose the iPod export options.
Join a site like blip.tv which will host your video AND create a blog for you
Then you upload your video, giving your video a title.
(blip.tv figures out what kind of file you're uploading based on the file's extension. Good extensions include .mov, .wmv, .mpg and .mpeg, although others are okay too.)
Get a blog at Blogger and then you can post your blip.tv videos over there.
There are lots of choices!
You can use a digital still camera that also shoots video. The camera I've had for a while is the Canon S400 and it's worked well for me for years. You can probably find it, or a similar model, on ebay. New versions are always coming out and a more recent model is SD630. This one shoots 640x480 at 30fps. That'll give you really sweet quality. You could also shoot at other sizes like 320x240 at 15fps too to save space on the video size.
If you want to use a miniDV camera, look into Sony or Canon.
For Canon the Optura 50 or 60 is a good choice recommended by friends who work for Canon. Things to looks for in a camera are size, quality and audio. For size, how does the camera feel in your hands? I like a little bigger camera size that helps reduce camera shake. When looking at quality, a 3 CCD camera gives you great quality. My other camera is a Canon GL/2.
The Sony HC3 also looks like a nice choice for an HD camera but you are limited to their proprietary audio components. The pro version of it, the HVR-A1U, has two XLR jacks for adding your own pro microphones.
Next, film something.
Copy your video to your computer.
Optionally edit and compress your video.
If editing, you can use a free program that probably came with your computer, Windows Media Maker for the PC, or iMovie for the Mac. I use Final Cut Pro on a Mac.
If compressing video, QuickTime Pro will do a nice job.
If you want to allow viewers to put your video on a video iPod, I've found these settings, under QuickTime Export .mov, work well:
Video: MPEG-4, 500 kbits/sec, 15fps, 320x240
Audio: MPEG-4/AAC-LC, 128 kbits/sec
You could also just choose the iPod export options.
Join a site like blip.tv which will host your video AND create a blog for you
Then you upload your video, giving your video a title.
(blip.tv figures out what kind of file you're uploading based on the file's extension. Good extensions include .mov, .wmv, .mpg and .mpeg, although others are okay too.)
Get a blog at Blogger and then you can post your blip.tv videos over there.
There are lots of choices!
The realities of copyright
- Tales from the Public Domain: BOUND BY LAW?
- This comic book is a project of Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, which focuses on the delicate balance between intellectual property and the public domain - the realm of material that is free to use without permission or payment.
- Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use
- Documentary filmmakers have created, through their professional associations, a clear, easy to understand statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use.
- The Photographer's Right - A Downloadable Flyer
- Your Rights When You Are Stopped or Confronted for Photography. The Photographer's Right is a downloadable guide that is loosely based on the Bust Card and the Know Your Rights pamphlet that used to available on the ACLU website. It may be downloaded and printed out using Adobe Acrobat Reader. You may make copies and carry them your wallet, pocket, or camera bag to give you quick access to your rights and obligations concerning confrontations over photography.
- MPAA: Anti-Piracy
- Movie pirates are thieves, plain and simple. Piracy is the unauthorized taking, copying or use of copyrighted materials without permission. It is no different from stealing another person's shoes or stereo, except sometimes it can be a lot more damaging. Piracy is committed in many ways, including Internet piracy, copying and distribution of discs, broadcasts, and even public performances. Downloading movies without the authorization of copyright holders is a growing international phenomenon, and it has serious consequences.
- Creative Commons
- Flexible copyright licenses for original works.
- Free Culture
- Getting college students involved in the free culture movement.
- The Electronic Fronteir Foundation
- Nonprofit group of lawyers defending free speech, privacy, innovation and consumer rights.
- Podcasting Legal Guide
- From Creative Commons:
When creating your own podcast, it is important to make sure all necessary rights and permissions are secured for the material included in your podcasts. This is relatively easy if you create all of the material that is included in your podcast but can become progressively more complex the more you include material created by other people. If you do not obtain the necessary rights and permissions, you may get into legal trouble for incorporating third party material into your podcast and for also authorizing others to use that material as part of your podcast.
The main legal issues that you will likely face that are unique to podcasters are related to copyright, publicity rights and trademark issues.
Podsafe Music
Music you can use in your videos
- The Podsafe Music Network
- Artists allow you to use their music on your podcast and get notified when you do.
- Magnatune
- Magnatune is one of the only record labels on the planet whose music you can legally use in your podcast, without paying for a licensing agreement.
- iodalliance promonet
- Discover tracks from the IODA catalog available for blogs & podcasts. IODA - the Independent Online Distribution Alliance - is the industry-leading digital distribution company for the global independent music community.
Videoblogging Books on Amazon
Secrets of Videoblogging (Secrets of...)
Avg. Customer Rating: 
Amazon Price: $16.49 (as of 10/12/2008)
Hands-On Guide to Video Blogging and Podcasting: Emerging Media Tools for Business Communication (Hands-On Guide Series)
Avg. Customer Rating: 
Amazon Price: $24.39 (as of 10/12/2008)
Videoblogging Tools
Some suggestions for equipment
- Electro Voice RE50/B
- This is the best reporters microphone.
The best thing about this is that when it gets handled, you don't heat any noise, You can even hand it between people and there is no rustling noise. All the major stations use it.
David Tames just presented the benefits of it to us at the Boston Media Makers meeting on Sunday.
Plus you can get a windscreen for it too.
Compression and Encoding Solutions
Compression and Encoding suggestions from around the web
- Insomnia Film Festival
- From Apple's Insomnia Film Festival:
Entries must be compressed as QuickTime movies. Movies submitted should have a maximum width of 400 pixels. We suggest using the "Compress Movie for: Web Streaming" setting in iMovie or if using another tool:
* Size: 320 X 240 (or 320X180 for 16X9 projects)
* Video Compression: H.264; Quality: High; Frame Rate: 15; Key Frame Rate: 75; Bitrate: 320kbits/sec; Frame Reordering: yes; Encoding Mode: multi-pass
* Sound: AAC; Sample Rate: 32.000kHz; Channels: Mono or Stereo; Bit rate: 48 kbps
* Prepare for Internet Streaming: Fast Start - Compressed - Current Settings I Like
These are the current Quicktime settings that blip.tv recommends in their EXPORT tutorial page.
This is a really great page to go to, to learn about exporting video.
Over time, these settings have changes to create larger and higher quality videos.- Hey!Watch
- Free online transcoding.
From their site:
Grab the video sources you want
We support several video sources to allow you to encode whatever video you want:
* Online video services (Youtube, Myspace, Google Video, Metacafe, and more)
* Video Podcast feeds
* Video links (direct or from a webpage)
* Videos from your hard disk
Choose the output format you need, and you are done!
A lot of formats and devices are available to let any users enjoy their stuff:
* Formats (DVD, Divx, mov, MP4, flv, swf, asf, Real, vcd, svcd)
* Devices (Mobile phone, iPod, PSP, NDS, Archos, Pocket PC, Creative Zen) - TVersity
- From their website:
What is the TVersity Media Server?
The TVersity Media Server lets you manage your Internet and home media and create your personalized lineup of channels, or as we call it your Personal Entertainment Guide (PEG). It then serves this media to a multitude of networked devices in the home or on the go, overcoming their inherent limitations by doing all the necessary conversions on the fly, and thus making your media available anywhere, anytime and from any device.
What devices are supported by the TVersity Media Server?
TVersity is the most versatile media server and the only one that is truly universal in the range of devices it supports. TVersity can serve media to:
* Devices supporting the UPnP AV / DLNA standard (which is the de-facto standard for connecitivity between devices in the digital home). This includes devices like networked TVs, DVDs, Stereo Receivers, Digital Media Adapaters/Receivers (including the Xbox 360), Mobile Phones, Satellite and Cable set-top-boxes and more.
* Devices with a web browser (XHTML-MP or WAP 2.0) and media streaming or downloading capabilities like Mobile Phones, PDAs, the Sony PSP, and more.
* Devices with an RSS reader and media streaming or downloading capabilities like the Sony PSP, iTunes/iPod and more.
Hosting Options
- Kevin Nalty Reviews Hosting Options
- "Contrary to popular belief, YouTube isn't the definitive video-sharing site for everyone. Knowing what you want is the first step in figuring out where to share."
- Getting Paid: Sites that Help Video Producers Make Money
- Scott Kirsner gives you a free look at Chapter one of his new e-book, The Future of Web Video: Opportunities for Producers, Entrepreneurs, Media Companies and Advertisers.
RSS: Really Simple Syndication
Get video delivered to your computer for free!
Just like the daily newspaper can be delivered to you each day, RSS allows you to subscribe to a video blog and have new videos delivered to you each time a new video is posted to a blog.
- Feedburner
- Set up an RSS feed for your blog so people can subscribe.
- Feed 101
- A little background on publishing and subscribing.
- The Rocketboom RSS Page
- This page has links to all of Rocketboom's RSS feeds with a link to an explainer video.
- Democracy Player
- Democracy Player is a free video aggregator which allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds and have content automatically delivered to you.
"It's pretty simple. You get a better internet video experience with Democracy Player because you can do more and you can do it more easily. Some people call it a 'TiVo for the internet' or a 'Firefox for videos'.
Democracy Player is free, open source, and built by a non-profit organization. Our goal isn't to make money off of you. Our goal is to give you the best possible video experience." - FireAnt
- FireAnt is a free video aggregator which allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds and have content automatically delivered to you.
Download, View, and Organize any type of media
Subscribe to any RSS channel - Freevlog: Get An RSS 2.0 Feed w/ Enclosures
- From Freevlog a video to describe RSS:
Why is this cool?
---> People can subscribe and download your videos automatically.
"This is the trickiest part (and the longest video) but it's so worth it. Just set this up one time and people can automatically find out about your new stuff. This is much better than spaming all of your friends every time you make a new post!"
How To: Video Production
Places on the web where you can learn how to produce videos.
- Training Tips and Techniques Video
- Witness has produced a 25 minute-long "Tips and Techniques" video. It goes over a lot of basic information for the new video camera owner and teaches some time tested rules that you should be familiar with before you break them all.
One of the things they teach is how to how your camera using the hand strap. I almost never hold it that way. I usually hold it in my hand with my palm facing up and recently I've been using a monopod.
I'll have make a video to show my videobloggers tips and techniques.
