MIT’s 2008 Commencement is Friday, June 6. Anyone from the MIT community — students, faculty, staff, alumni — who has video footage of the proceedings can upload it to MIT TechTV! It’s easy:

First, create an account — anyone with an mit.edu email address can create an MIT TechTV account.

When you create an account, you’ll be asked for a “Collection Name” and “Collection Address.” Simply type the name of your choice (e.g. D. Ortiz, or Energy Club) into both fields — you DON’T have to upload any videos to have a Collection Name/Address. When you receive your confirmation email from MIT TechTV, click on the URL to return to the MIT TechTV website.

Next, sign-in to MIT TechTV with your username and password.

Finally, click Upload and follow the simple instructions.

You can send the URL of your Commencement video to family and friends or even post the video in your own blog.

Don’t have video? Upload a photo slideshow instead: You can save a slideshow of images in iPhoto as a QuickTime movie and upload the show to MIT TechTV.

To all 2008 MIT graduates — CONGRATULATIONS!

Photo by Donna Coveney

Get your videos out to more people!

MIT TechTV has recently extended complimentary sites on iTunes U (under the main MIT header) and on YouTube (youtube.com/mittechtv). If you are interested in getting your video that is up on MIT TechTV into one or both of these other locations, please contact us as techtv@mit.edu with the video name and page URL of the video/s that you would like us to consider adding.

So, you just uploaded your own video or found another on MIT TechTV that you want to put directly into your Facebook or MySpace page but are wondering how to do it?

It’s easy!

For MySpace: 1) Go to the video’s page in MIT TechTV, click on the “share” link under the video, then click on the “copy & paste” tab under that. 2) Next, it asks you “where do you want to put the video?” Using the pull-down menu to the right of this, choose “MySpace”. You will notice the code provided below changes to work for MySpace directly. 3) Simply copy and paste this into MySpace.

For Facebook: First log into Facebook and add the “My Stuff” application from Gigya (http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?api_key=f7667e9ebccf2157d6f15f991a5e3ce9) Then, follow Steps 1 and 2 above. Then copy and paste the code from MIT TechTV into the “Add Code” field in the My Stuff application and click on the “Add to Profile” button and your video will now show up on your Facebook page.

Want to get some publicity for your lab? Want to show your friends and parents what you’re currently working on? MIT TechTV is currently looking for “A Few Good Labs” to volunteer for a few hours to let us come in, film, interview and create a video highlight of your lab for MIT TechTV. Since this is a pilot program, you’ll get this video and everything done for free. If you had to hire someone to do this, it could cost you several thousand dollars to get it produced. Please contact us today if you are interested or have any questions by emailing techtv@mit.edu.

A lot of people wonder just what exactly goes into making a video. What’s the process? What’s the thinking behind it and what should I take into account before I begin filming? There are a lot of questions and a lot of answers. MIT’s Academic Media Production Services (AMPS) is a full production studio from start to finish and they have an old guide for clients, that gives an outline of the process which will answer many of these questions. This is still being updated by us to make it more current, but take a look if you are looking for some guidance on where to start and what to consider when starting your own production.

Video Production Guide

Have you found yourself wondering how to upload videos or tweak the results for your video so that it comes up during a search? Well, if you can’t find the answer in the Get Help or FAQ section, feel free to try to catch me on IM:

AIM name of “MITTechTV”

I’m usually on during most work days and sometimes you might see me on at other random times. If I am on, I’m fair game. Send me your questions, comments or concerns and we’ll see what can be done to get you taken care of.

Sure, Rihanna’s “Shut Up and Drive” is the perfect song for your solar car video. Unfortunately, unless Rihanna personally gave you permission to use her music, you won’t be able to upload a video containing her song to MIT TechTV.

Unauthorized use of someone else’s content — including music, video, images and other media — in your uploads is theft and therefore doesn’t fly on MIT TechTV. Check out our Copyright Policy and Terms of Use for what’s OK and not OK to upload to MIT TechTV.

Does that mean your videos have to be music-free? No way. There are lots of royalty-free music sites out there. Some have contemporary songs, mixes, and loops that are licensed by their creators under Creative Commons, or CC, and some have older songs whose copyrights have expired and are thus in the public domain.

Here are some good examples. Some of the sites below require setting up a free account:

http://www.publicdomain4u.com/
Copyright-expired songs, including a lot of good blues and jazz.

http://www.musopen.com/
Musopen takes music (mostly classical) that is in the public domain and has it recorded by individuals and college/community orchestras throughout the U.S. and stored online so it can be accessed for free through this website.

http://www.jamendo.com/en/
An archive of CC-licensed music that’s available for download via P2P. You will need P2P software (e.g. BitTorrent http://www.bittorrent.com/) to download on jamendo.

http://www.sectionz.com/cc.asp
An electronic music community that offers CC-licensed tracks from genres like IDM, drum ‘n’ bass, and ambient.

http://www.opsound.org/index.php
Music samples and links to websites of artists whose work is CC-licensed.

http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/
A collaborative database of CC-licensed sounds (NOTE: these are samples of sounds — like rain falling — not music).

http://ccmixter.org/
A community music remixing site featuring remixes and samples licensed under CC licenses. Click on the MP3 link of your chosen song and, under your browser menu, click File, Save As to save the MP3 to your computer.

http://ibeat.org/
A music production wav file archive: Loops, beats, fills, shots, samples, packs and instrumentals, available under a Creative Commons License.

NOTE: If you do your own search for royalty-free music sites, be sure to read carefully. Some sites (excluding those listed above) have hidden fees, subscription costs, or unreasonable obligations.

Make your own: Of course, you can also make your own music with easy-to-use software like GarageBand (comes with every Macintosh) or MAGIX Music Maker (for PCs, costs around $60). Here are some other resources for music composing software:

http://www.makingmusic.net/
http://musicmoz.org/Computers/Software/Windows/

Did you know that you can display any or all of the videos in your MIT TechTV collection on your own website or blog? It’s easy, and there are at least a couple ways you can do it:

Cross-posting
Cross-posting is the process of sending a video to a blog or other website automatically. It’s usually done on MIT TechTV from the upload form where you can check off the sites you want your video to go to. You can also set up automatic cross-posting for videos you upload from your cell phone and by FTP.

Sharing
If you have already uploaded a video and want to send it to your blog, go to your dashboard and click the Share link in the list of your recent posts, then click the Blogging tab to show the cross-posting form.

If you want to send a single uploaded video to your website or blog, go to your dashboard and click the Share link in the list of your recent posts, then click the Copy & Paste tab to show the html script you must copy and paste into your blog entry or web page. Choose the appropriate option from the dropdown menu next to the text “Where do you want to put the video?”

NOTE to WordPress users: If you are using WordPress to run your blog but your blog is located on a server other than WordPress.com (e.g. scripts.mit.edu), be sure to choose the “Most blogs & websites” option (not the “Wordpress.com” option) on the dropdown menu. ALSO: If your video isn’t displaying once you’ve pasted the appropriate html code into a post, it’s likely because you need to update your WordPress to 2.0.1 or higher.

For more info on cross-posting and sharing, read the FAQ and Get Help sections of MIT TechTV.

You can view a list of video collections on MIT TechTV in the same way that you view a list of videos. From the homepage, click the View button. The View page automatically shows a list of Popular, Recent or Random videos (if you cannot see options for sorting videos, click the Options button above the list of video thumbnails). To view collections, click on the word Collections on the tab next to the Videos tab. You’ll get a list of collections, which you can then sort in the same way you sort individual videos.

Note: It’s a good idea to upload a photo to individualize your video collection. Otherwise, a generic, visually uncompelling head-and-shoulders will display as the icon for your collection.

MIT’s 2007 Commencement was Friday, June 8. Anyone from the MIT community — students, faculty, staff, alumni — who has video footage of the proceedings can upload it to MIT TechTV! It’s easy:

First, create an account — anyone with an mit.edu email address can create an MIT TechTV account.

When you create an account, you’ll be asked for a “Collection Name” and “Collection Address.” Simply type the name of your choice (e.g. D. Ortiz, or Energy Club) into both fields — you DON’T have to upload any videos to have a Collection Name/Address. When you receive your confirmation email from MIT TechTV, click on the URL to return to the MIT TechTV website.

Next, sign-in to MIT TechTV with your username and password.

Finally, click Upload and follow the simple instructions.

You can send the URL of your Commencement video to family and friends or even post the video in your own blog.

Don’t have video? Upload a photo slideshow instead: You can save a slideshow of images in iPhoto as a QuickTime movie and upload the show to MIT TechTV.

To all 2007 MIT graduates — congratulations!

Photo by Donna Coveney