Whether you are a newbie to making videos or know quite a lot, a website on campus has been recently updated to help everyone out.  The TeachTech website has a new section on Video Recording and Delivery where you can find some help on a DIY video or even links to resources on campus that can do part or all of it for you.  Take a look when you get a chance and keep those great videos coming.

Greetings MIT TechTV Users!

We have some very exciting news that requires your attention and participation.

MIT TechTV is undergoing some major changes as you read this to allow us to make the site bigger and better suited for your needs (more details below).

What this means for you:

•    Any MIT TechTV video(s) that you have currently embedded (placed in your own website – all non-MIT TechTV pages) will need to be replaced with the new code after the site upgrade on Monday, August 23rd, 2010.  This doesn’t have to be immediate, but please don’t forget.  We will leave the old code working until the end of October 2010 to give you plenty of time to update your sites and to tell your friends to do the same.

•    Also, any video file download links copied from MIT TechTV pages (the gray box to the right of a video under the title of “Formats”) will also need to be replaced after Monday, August 23rd, 2010 and before the end of October 2010.

•    In the unlikely event of a change of schedule, we will send out another email with more details.  Also, keep an eye on the MIT TechTV Blog for more info and updates – http://scripts.mit.edu/~techtv/blog/

•    That’s it!  Everything else will continue to work; your MIT TechTV page links, accounts, emails, etc.

Why are we doing these changes? We are migrating to a new system that will allow us to expand the already rich feature set further to meet your demands.  Not only will we have a more robust website, but we will also be able to provide the following functionality in the very near to near future:

•    A new video player that moved the MIT TechTV logo off of the video so you can put your own group logo as a watermark on your video without ours getting in the way
•    Closed Captioning support for your videos
•    Integration with MIT’s Touchstone system to allow for easy course and other security systems and sites on campus (Stellar, etc.)
•    Web-based video editing to allow you to edit online without the need for your own editing software.
•    Direct recording function to allow you to record from your web-cam or other camera plugged into your computer directly to your collection
•    And much, much more coming in the future

As always, please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions, concerns, suggestions or need any help.

TechTV@mit.edu

Thanks,

Kris Brewer

———————————————————————–
Kris Brewer
MIT TechTV Webmaster & Community Liaison
MIT Video Productions & Digital Technologies
MIT Libraries: Academic Media Production Services

http://techtv.mit.edu

During this past IAP 2010, I gave a four part series on “How to make a video”.  These four parts included:

• Shooting & Lighting
• Audio
• Editing
• Compression & Delivery

We recorded the workshops so if you are interested in viewing one or all of them, please feel free to click on the section above to watch.

MIT TechTV offered two workshop sessions on creating your own videos for the Web and MIT TechTV. The hands-on sessions, offered by Kris Brewer, were held in the MIT Libraries’ Digital Instruction Resource Center (14N-132) and are open to the MIT Community only please.  We recorded the sessions so if you missed them, please follow the links below to view these sessions and other helpful information.

Introduction to Video Making for the Web

Questions: Contact Kris Brewer, MIT TechTV Webmaster & Community Liaison, brew@mit.edu, 617-452-3157

Video Recordings of the Sessions:

• How to make a video: Production, Part 1
• How to make a video: Production, Part 2
  
• How to make a video: Post-Production, Part 1
• How to make a video: Post-Production, Part 2
  

Resources:

• Standard MIT Video Release for Permissions (PDF – download and print)
• Online Video Production Guide
• A helpful video from MIT Libraries on Fair Use
• View the Presentation from the first session on Video Production
• View the Presentation from the second session on Post-Production (editing, compression, posting to the web)
• Check out our blog for Want Music for your Videos

MIT TechTV’s vendor (Viddler) is currently trying out a Beta of an HD video feature.  We have it plugged into MIT TechTV, so if you want to try it out, just upload your videos with the following settings and the rest should take care of itself.

• Format: h.264
• File Extension: .mov, .mp4, .m4v (m4v is the only format we could reliably get to work at this time on a Mac using Final Cut Studio Pro applications)
• Resolution: any seem to work for us
• Bit-rate: 500Kbps – 4Mbps

For Audio, we just found out that PCM formatting won’t work.  We know that AAC formatting works just fine though.
Please send us any feedback you may have to techtv@mit.edu so that we can help perfect this new feature.

If you haven’t heard yet, MIT TechTV officially became part of the MIT Libraries on July 1st, 2009. With over 6.5 million videos viewed on the site since it’s inception in April of 2007, MIT TechTV allows you to reach out to the world with it’s Content Delivery Network serving your videos globally and efficiently. With this transition, MIT TechTV continues to be a free resource for the Institute and the MIT community for video publishing, hosting and sharing. Keep those great videos coming! For more information on the site, see the About MIT TechTV page.

To find out more about MIT TechTV, download a copy of a recent PowerPoint (.ppt) presentation on the site.

MIT TechTV has jsut joined the revolution.  Follow us at http://twitter.com/MIT_TechTV to find out the latest little things that are happening with the site.  Anything from some cool videos that are just uploaded to thoughts and updates on what’s happening with upgrades, bugs and outages.

The CMS Media Spectacle is in it’s 11th year at MIT.  It’s a chance for students, staff and faculty to have their films/videos screened in front of a faculty jury.  There are also substantial cash prizes awarded to
the winning films/videos.

Any length or format is accepted and the deadline for submissions in April 23rd.  The CMS Media Spectacle itself is being held on Monday, April 27th at 7PM.

Click here to find out more about this event!

MIT TechTV is turning two in April, 2009.

On March 10th, we celebrated our 1500th video uploaded and over x million hits!
We’d love to hear from you! Please tell us:

• Who you are and where you’re from.
• How you’ve been using the site.
• What you like about the site?
• What you would like to see added?
• What could be improved?
• Anything else you’d like to tell us?

Please feel free to put your comments on this blog or if you’d like, feel free to email us directly at techtv@mit.edu.  Thanks and keep the videos coming and keep on viewing.  Thanks, MIT TechTV

If you were unable to join us for the Educause Web Seminar “Copyright Balance and Fair Use in Networked Learning: Lessons from Creators’ Codes of Best Practices” with Patricia Aufderheide (Professor and Director, Center for Social Media, School of Communication, American University) & Peter Jaszi (Professor of Law, American University) you can see the archived event on Educause’s site here as well as download the .PPT.

For more information from the Center on Social Media at American University and the Fair Use and Copyright Guidelines they have been working on, see our previous blog entry.