Month: August 2007 (Page 2 of 3)

For some reason, talking heads don’t run in sync with their audio in Camtasia output. Some videos get a worse case than others. It ranges from “noticeable” to “annoying”.

Solution: write the audio to an mp3, then pull it back in as track 2. Use the pip audio to get your new audio roughly lined up, then kill the pip audio. Now, by trial and error, adjust the sound back on the track so that it is even or slightly behind the video.

Think about it: because light travels faster than sound, we humans are accustomed to seeing someone talk before we hear their voice. The further away they are, the greater the differences. So if the video is slightly ahead of the audio, I’m guessing that most people wouldn’t even pick up on it.

But having the sound arrive first is something we never experience in real life, so use this trick to avoid it in your videos.

Bonus:

Are there advantages to using FLV video over swf – apart from image quality ?

FLV is much more tolerant of high-motion and length, yet it takes a lot longer to encode.

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The idea here is that you put a consistent color in the background of your video and then replace it later with a still or moving image, thus creating more interest and eliminating the need for studio sets.

A “real” green screen is expensive, as is “real” greenscreen paint, but the good news is you can do it yourself more cheaply.

Simply obtain a hard, smooth surface and paint it a color which will never appear in the foreground. This is why hot blues and greens are favored — they tend not to appear on the clothing or body.

Recommended board types would be hardboard, then MDF, then sheetrock or plywood. Simply prime them and paint on your hot, non-matching color.

Lighting of the screen needs to be very even and so you want the person/object as far away as possible from the screen. You will need lights for both the subject and the screen. 1000 watt lights with diffusion material such as “ToughSpun” are recommended.

Another tip: lighting the subject’s head from above helps with the “dark halo” problem.

1. Make notes and collect pictures
2. (If you intend/need to use zooms/pans) Put the pictures into some format where they will stay put — perhaps just go ahead and get the zooms “saved as” to a different image.
   1. how much resolution will we lose by just filming at something very big, zooming to 100% resolution, then saving the entire thing back down to something smaller for the web?
3. Get the video camera set up for PIP filming
4. Begin screen-capture recording in Camtasia, using the desk microphone. Simultaneously record with video camera.
   1. Compare audio from video camera to the audio from microphone
   2. If the audio from video camera is lame, then kill it in an initial editing pass, then bring it into the new video as ??
   3. Also clip off the excess in beginning and end
5. Now bring the PIP into the main video clip and synchronize them.
6. Now edit out dead sections so that both videos get edited together.
7. Check that synchronicity is maintained.
8. Add bullet lists, title screens, etc.

See “Aug07 optimal video creation method” under “Camtasia Flash and WordPress”