This advice from JISC Digital Media about ways to improve your videos is so useful that we decided to post it on our blog. For more information about the advice, guidance and services that they provide please visit http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/

Improve your Videos in 4 Easy Steps

Often the difference between’ acceptable’ and ‘rather good’ is quite small. This, in my experience is certainly the case with amateur videos. I’ve seen a lot of self-made videos, particularly in the world of education, and again and again the same problems keep cropping up, problems which are actually very easy to rectify.

Here are my top 4. Pay attention to these and you will immediately see an improvement in the materials you produce on video.

1) Bad Lighting

The advent of autoexposure systems on camera and camcorders may have simplified the process of getting a properly exposed image but it hasn’t eliminated the need for user involvement. If you still believe that you can simply point your camcorder at a subject and it will produce lovely videos, you’re in for an unpleasant surprise.

The problem is simply this: the camera doesn’t know what the subject of your video is: is it the tree on the right? The picture hanging on the wall in the top of frame? Or perhaps the person standing slightly left of centre. The camcorder will use some sort of algorithm to come up with an exposure that will work in many circumstances, but it will rarely be perfect and will often be awful.

So how can you help your camcorder to calculate better exposures? Here are a few tips.

· Make sure there’s some light falling on your subject, preferably from the front (i.e. from your side of the subject) and a bit to one side. If the illumination comes from a ceiling light, it should be behind you and to one side. This applies to sunlight as well – but beware of squinting subjects.

· If you can’t get good lighting of your subject in the current location, move to a new one! Even if you can get good lighting in your location, be prepared to move both yourself and your subject around to find the best light.

· People tend to have their desks next to the window whenever possible. Unfortunately, this means that when you shoot someone at your desk it’s very likely that there’ll be a window behind them. If this is the case, do not shoot them at their desk – or at least try to find an angle where the window isn’t behind them, because otherwise you are guaranteed to have a bad image.

2) Shaky camera

This is perhaps the most common problem with amateur videos. Oddly, it is also the most easily corrected. How? Simple: get a tripod and use it religiously. It is not possible to hand-hold a camcorder of any size for a significant length of time without introducing some sort of shake or wobble into the image. This applies to pocket camcorders as well, because it is not the weight of the camcorder that’s the problem but rather the length of time you have to hold it still.

When you get a tripod, make sure it is a video tripod, not one for a stills camera. The difference is in the tripod head: a proper video head will permit smooth camera motion (panning left and right and tilting up and down), something which is not possible on a stills tripod.

There’s really no excuse for not using a tripod, not even expense. It is possible to get little desktop tripods (not the best solution but still better than hand-holding) for as little as £3.

3) Bad sound

In order to get a good picture we want to have the camera far enough away from the subject to see them. In order to get good sound we want to have the microphone very close to the subject’s mouth. So what do we do if the microphone is built into the camcorder? Simple: we get either bad sound or a bad picture – and picture unfortunately tends to trump sound.

This is unfortunate because the sound quality of the video is usually more important than picture quality, particularly when making educational resources. Is there a solution to this seemingly intractable problem?

The best solution is to use an external microphone such as a lapel mic. Even the cheapest such mic will give results significantly better than a built-in mic. We can then get excellent sound without compromising on picture quality. There are camcorders available at all price ranges which take external mics: make this a requirement when purchasing one.

Failing this, it is necessary to find a location which can at least partially make up for the shortcomings of the built-in mic. Try to shoot your video in a room which is not only quiet but also not too bright acoustically. The less noise there is on the audio part of your recording, the better the sounds you want will come out.

4) No editing

Even a tiny amount of editing can improve the look of your video immensely. There are numerous free editing systems available nowadays which can provide you the tools to perform basic editing, and even more sophisticated free systems are beginning to appear.

The most basic type of editing is called topping and tailing. Not surprisingly, this consists of removing the bits and the beginning and the end which you don’t need.

If you want to get a bit more sophisticated than that you might edit further to ’clean up’ the video: to remove mistakes, pauses and sections irrelevant to the intended purpose of the video. In addition it is possible to import slides into much simple editing software. These can then be inserted where appropriate in the video. Not only will the quality of the slides be better than if the projected slides were shot with the camcorder, they can also be used to hide edits made during the clean up.

JISC Digital Media is a JISC Advance service which provides advice about anything having to do with digital media. All of our advice including the helpdesk, our extensive library of documents and more is completely free to any FE or HE institution in the UK.

I’ve just returned from the RSC UK 2009 conference and one of the main things that I learnt was a bit more about one of the RSCs ‘relatives’ in terms of the JISC family of services, JISC Digital Media (formerly TASI). I haven’t blogged (although I’ve continued to microblog via Twitter, passing the 500 marker earlier this week) for a few weeks but the rediscovery of this service has inspired me today… so here goes with a quick reminder of the services JISC Digital Media can offer:

• Advice on still images, moving images and audio via documents, case studies, a helpdesk …
• Training on a wide range of digital media topics. Most training costs but there is a follow up service to check how the training has helped you … and JISC Digital Media are now offering FREE online surgeries on a range of topics, the first of which was yesterday covering audio podcasts. The surgeries are recorded and archived and can be viewed by scrolling down the online surgeries page. The archived ‘Recording Audio Podcasts’ is worth watching and will hopefully encourage you to login to the others that are coming up – camera skills, using screencasting, using Flickr …
• Blog posts about all things Digital Media, including new and very useful resources, such as Aviary Software’s new browser based audio editor/mixer/recorder called Myna. I’ve had a quick look at this and managed to create a basic audio recording, which I embedded into our Moodle, all in a matter of minutes (thanks also to @SHSSTELLS for bringing this one to my attention).
• Newsletter – a new service that can be accessed as a pdf and which this edition covers mobile learning, podcasting, using Flickr and pinhole photography.
• Video Assist – another new service whereby you can apply to JISC Digital Media for specific project support for projects which involve the creation of new moving image resources. 2 projects are already underway for the first term of the 2009-2010 academic year but support for 4 more projects is still up for grabs. Visit the Video Assist pages of the JISC Digital Media website for more information, application guidance and deadlines.

A great range of services and support – hopefully you will be inspired too!

Making a document available electronically is the first step to making it more accessible, largely due to all of the handy bits of technology that are available today, which put the control in the hands of the user … text to speech readers, zoom functions, ability to change the contrast of text and background colour … etc, etc. But there is much more that you can easily do when you are creating these documents to further improve their accessibility.

I have know the theory about making Word documents more accessible for several years now (thanks to JISC TechDis’ excellent Accessibility Essentials series) and I have applied a number of these theories for some time but in preparation for a session on making documents more accessible and also to test out the relatively new Accessibility Essentials for Office 2007, I have spent an hour or so going through ‘Writing Accessible Electronic Documents with Microsoft Word 2007‘ and having a go at creating a more accessible document … and it really is much less complicated than I thought it might be, especially as I have been changing my Word defaults as I go, so that from now on a lot of the accessibility features will automatically happen when I use Word.

Rather than repeat here what I did and how I did it I have provided links below to both the Word and pdf version of the (more accessible) document I created as I went along. I think that aside from reinforcing the things I knew, like using a sans serif font in a minimum size 12, making sure there was contrast between font and background, keeping underlining and using italic to a minimum, spacing the letters and lines appropriately and using meaningful images, the main thing I have learnt is that the structure of the document is key. I admit that I knew about this before but that I have always been wary of trying it out because I thought it was complicated and difficult … but today has proved to me that it isn’t … and that the benefits to the end user of having a more accessible, easier to navigate Word (and pdf) document far outweigh my initial reticence to have a go.

Have a look at the documents below and at the excellent Accessibility Essentials resources from JISC TechDis, than have a go yourself (if you aren’t already doing so, of course!).

Creating a more accessible Word document

Creating a more accessible pdf from a Word document

As a Learning Technologist I am constantly looking for technologies that will enhance learning but that are also easy to use, engaging and free … and my latest find (thanks to Helen Davies) meets all of these criteria (IMHO).

Prezi.com is an alternative to the much used in education PowerPoint. It is web based BUT the final ‘presentation’ can be downloaded and used offline. In it’s own words, Prezi lets you ‘create zooming presentations … to talk about the big picture … and those devilish details’  and if you watch the introductory prezi about Prezi on their websites homepage you will see what I mean. For me, learning how to use it was a bit like moving from Office 2003 to 2007. I ‘got’ it but I had to think a bit before I got into the swing of using it.

Unlike a lot of ‘tools’ I look at, this is one I will definitely be coming back to again … to use as an alternative to PowerPoint when making a face to face presentation but also to use as another way of presenting information to an audience who can’t see me but who I want to interact with what I am presenting them with … like this example prezi I created to promote a forthcoming event … http://prezi.com/91941

(Hint:        and you’ll need Flash Player 9)

As always, all comments gratefully received

Last week, some of my RSC colleagues and I attended a three-day ‘Welsh for Adults’ course. This was the second we’d been to, and we very much enjoyed both – hopefully our Welsh has improved, too! The experience got me thinking about the ways in which technology could enhance the teaching and learning of languages.

      Within a classroom setting, it would often be helpful to use audio and video – using a TV & video or CD/DVD player is no longer necessary, for all audio/video files can be stored within a PC/lap-top and transmitted via a projector and whiteboard. If the PC is connected to the internet, it would also be possible to find useful pictures and other resources, relevant web-sites (for example of places of interest, local cuisine), and in the case of Welsh, watch TV programmes (eg. S4/Clic – http://www.s4c.co.uk/clic/e_index.shtml – with or without subtitles!). There are many useful online dictionaries (eg. www.geiriadur.net  for Welsh) and other online reference works.

    If the PC also has interactive whiteboard software, a wide range of interactive games and activities could be devised eg. matching words to pictures, filling gaps in a piece of text, drawing lines to connect pairs of words (note that whilst an actual interactive whiteboard is helpful, it isn’t essential for most activities – learners could interact with the board using a ‘remote’ mouse and keyboard). Voting systems, also controlled by PC, are another technology that promotes activity and engagement.
     Outside of a classroom situation, learners could benefit from relevant web-sites, and could also listen to audio files, for example on mp3 players, and receive podcasts. They could also record their own conversations and e-mail to tutors – many mobile phones have built-in recorders. Access to a VLE (Virtual learning Environment) could provide other ‘any place, any time’ activities.

Has anyone got other language-learning suggestions?

I hope that in lieu of a proper blog entry, the usefulness of this site will suffice:

How to embed almost anything in your website