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August 24, 2006
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A series of tubes The latest unlikely Internet hero is one “geriatric1927,” a 79-year-old British widower who makes videos of himself complaining about news items and telling stories about his life. He posts little snippets on YouTube, a Web site where anyone can upload video, watch and comment on videos and waste vast amounts of time. Naturally, geriatric1927, real name Peter, delights the tweenyboppers on YouTube who ignore their own grandfathers coming to visit. He underscores his commentary with blues music, which kids might recognize as samples in their favorite hip-hop songs, and intersperses photos of motorcycles with self-portraits in his opening sequence. Motorcycles are cool no matter who you are. If an old dude like this can figure out how to post video on the Web, surely you can, right? Both YouTube and Google Video have help sections, but here are few simple ways to get started. A webcam and microphone Did I mention bundled software? Yes, virtually every webcam comes with software that lets you record a video and save it to your hard drive. Then you just have to click a button, say your piece and upload. YouTube and Google Video accept the most common video formats, including AVI, MOV, MP4, MPG and WMV. They’ll transform it into a Flash video that most every browser should be able to display. For more advanced options, you can use video editing software ... but I’ll get back to that. A digital camera Your digital camera probably has a video function. It might be a different icon on your mode dial, it might be an extra button next to the shutter button — whatever, check your user manual. If you’re lucky, your camera only limits the length of your video by the amount of storage space you have on your memory card; otherwise, you might be stuck with the first 30 seconds of your rant against liberals in the upper echelon of pop music stars. Videos transfer to your PC just like pictures do, whether you use synchronizing software or copy right from your memory card. Again, just upload it or use video editing software to spruce it up a bit. Yeah, yeah. I’ll talk about it now. Video editing software With a video editor, you can chop out the boring parts of your video and intercut different clips, either of your own, stolen from other people or clip animations. Perhaps most importantly, you can compress your video so no one has to clear space on their hard drive to watch a five-second movie of your cat running into a wall. As always, there’s a tradeoff between quality and file size, but you can fiddle until you find the happy medium. Got a video you want to share with Hippo readers? Let me know and maybe there’ll be a column of the best in the future. If I remember. Comments? Thoughts? Discuss these articles and more at hippoflea.com |
08/17/2006 More music, more places
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