Tag: Video Posts

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Blog Tips Video Posts

Don’t buy that HD video camera till you read this

Aaaarrrrgh! (courtesy hnnhlh14 on Flickr CC)I just finished a post over on my Sheila’s Guide to the Good Stuff blog, about why tourism organizations might want to hold off using one of those neat pocket video cameras that shoot in HD (high definition) unless they have access to some rather sophisticated editing software and a pretty powerful computer.

Here is a quick summary of my own painful recent painful videographer learning experience as outlined in “Look before you leap into HD video:”

If you’re thinking of shooting HD to take family travel video, be aware of the following issues:

  1. The file extension is different and may not be recognized by your video editing software.  My PC’s installed version of Windows Movie Maker can’t “see” the new .MP4 files from the FlipHD Mino, and the latest version of Movie Maker (that can work with MP4) won’t work with my Windows XP. Technology awesomeness!
  2. Technology crises always happen at 9 pm on a Saturday night when you’re alone – at least, they do with me.  When I saw I had a mess, I put a call out to my video-savvy Twitter followers, who quickly gave me software suggestions.  Hurray for helpful networks.  No, I can’t “call the IT people” because that’s me.  Freelancer awesomeness!
  3. Adobe Premiere Elements was recommended by several (thanks, Dwight Silverman at the Houston Chronicle‘s TechBlog) but I found it crash-prone (corroborated in several user forums.) I never could even launch the 30 day free trial and finally had to uninstall it.  The real problem became clearer when….
  4. ….I then bought (for about $100 at Best Buy) and installed Pinnacle Studio Ultimate HD (thanks for the tip, Omar Gallaga – he’s the Austin American-Statesman Digital Savant.)  Pinnacle didn’t crash and nicely corrected several problems in a few of my video files – harsh sunlight, funky audio – but playbacks kept stuttering and everything just seemed “gummy.” Turns out that when I actually read the Pinnacle system requirements (d’oh!) my laptop has insufficient RAM and the processor is too slow.
  5. To handle the two videos (plus lots of B-roll) that I’ve shot in HD, I’ve now installed the Pinnacle software on my family desktop PC, which has a more powerful processor (but the same amount of RAM as the laptop, so cross your fingers for me.)  I’m copying all the HD files on my laptop onto a 500G-capacity Seagate external hard drive, then dumping them from the Seagate onto the desktop so I can try to make everything work properly on a better platform. You can’t transfer such big files by email or sticking them on a thumb drive (without losing your mind) so I went with the big digital shovel.  Tech logistics awesomeness!

Bottom line? If you want to roll with HD, it’s not enough to shoot it. That part is deceptively easy.

You need a high-powered, fairly recent computer with capable software to edit those HD files unless you’re always going to be content to upload directly online (i.e., can shoot without error and never want to change it much.)

I’m dropping back to my lower-resolution Flip Ultra for now, so before you drop any serious coin on video toys, research what you’ll need to edit your footage.

Do as I say, not as I already screwed up….

Categories
Blog Tips Video Posts

Need a laugh? Low-cost airline spoof video had me rolling

Y’all know I can be pretty tight-fisted, right? I’ll happily spend money when it makes sense to do so, and for things and experiences that are special, but when it comes to transportation and hotels, I’m okay with your basic clean versions.

I simply want to get back and forth and have a decent night’s sleep and shower while I’m there. My best experiences are usually OFF the aircraft and OUTSIDE of the hotel.

So, while living in Europe, my family and I did fly the notoriously cheap Ryanair a few times, because how else could I get from the Netherlands to Pisa, Italy and back for a family of four for about US$150?

The wise traveler must know what he/she is getting into with cheapo airlines, however, which is why I think this video spoof of discount airlines is so funny. They pack in almost every problem you’ll run into – surprise extra fees, ground tours that may suck, fees for luggage (especially checked luggage) and of course satellite airports that are MILES from their namesake.

Continue reading “Need a laugh? Low-cost airline spoof video had me rolling”
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Blog USA Video Posts

Kansas Underground Salt Museum: the tornadoes can’t get you here

Hutchinson Kansas Underground Salt Museum, Salt Queen photo (courtesy KUSM)You won’t believe what’s going on 650 feet underneath those Kansas wheat fields (about the height of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis from top to bottom.)

It only takes 70 seconds going straight down an elevator shaft to see one of the 8 Wonders of Kansas.

A mining museum  —  the Kansas Underground Salt Museum in Hutchinson, Kansas.

A working salt mine  —  although museum visitors are not anywhere near any blasting or ongoing work.

And Batman costumes  —  because at a constant 68 degrees and 45% relative humidity in 325 feet of solid salt, the already-mined sections are a perfect home for the Underground Vaults and Storage company’s long-term records and artifact storage, including a bizarre variety of Hollywood’s goodies and film masters.

Continue reading “Kansas Underground Salt Museum: the tornadoes can’t get you here”
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USA Video Posts

Hey kids, be a Human Gyroscope at the Kansas Cosmosphere

cosmosphere-apollo-training-moduleThere are a variety of “space camp” operations around the US, all promising to offer kids a chance to experience astronaut training, preparation and space exploration concepts.

While it may seem that your family would have to travel to NASA facilities in Houston or Florida for such an opportunity, in reality one of the most established programs is in Hutchinson, Kansas at the Cosmosphere and Space Center.

It’s the Future Astronaut Training Program, one of many camps and hands-on programs offered at “the Cos” (including a 5-day residential camp for grandparents and their grandkids.)

To check it out, your kids might like to investigate the Cos online. They have a UStream video show – What’s Up at the Cos? – and they’re on Facebook and Twitter (President and CEO Chris Orwoll is @CosmosphereCEO and educator Joel – seen briefly strapping me in below in the video – is @CosED.)

During my recent blogger’s familiarization tour around the city, I had an opportunity to get ahead of the kids and climb into one of the training devices myself.

It looks like a gyroscope, but the formal name is Multi-Axis Trainer.

You can hear me hollering as my body goes in multi-axis directions. Don’t worry….I threatened to hurl coffee and coffeecake, but you’re safe in viewing it.

If you can’t see the video embed box, here is the URL directly to the video on my YouTube channel.

(Update June 2009 – I’ve decided that my Hutch posts warrant an additional disclosure line since some readers might not understand the term “blogger fam tour.” The Cosmosphere and Hutchinson CVB paid for my lodging and expenses while I was in Hutchinson. They did not tell me what I could or could not write about. I paid my own airfare to/from Kansas.)

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Asia Blog Video Posts

Video: the Beijing to Shanghai overnight train

During the China 2.0 Tour, our blogger gaggle took the “soft sleeper” overnight train from Beijing to Shanghai, China. We left at about 7:30 pm at night from Beijing and arrived Shanghai at 7 am.

In China, perfect strangers share four-person compartments (both men and women together) but we re-jiggered compartment assignments as much as we could to have at least a few of our 2.0 Tour bloggers in the same compartment.

I shared with two very nice Chinese passengers and the ever-buoyant and enjoyable David Feng.

We had dinner aboard the train and I slept like the proverbial log. Something very soothing about that clickety-clack….

For my RSS readers and anyone else who can’t see the video box below, here is the URL for the video on YouTube.

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Blog USA Video Posts

Put a bow on Kansas City

This quick video was taken at a fun display in the Hallmark Visitors Center in Kansas City, Missouri.  It’s a free facility run by the Hallmark greeting card/gift company, a Kansas City institution.

My Iowa guest blogger friend Jessica was with me, and she said she always loved looking at this machine when she was a kid (never mind how many times we pushed that button to make bows before I said, “Oh yeah, I can shoot a little video of this!”)

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Blog Video Posts

Socializing on social media

I had about five minutes worth of thoughts on social media and Web 2.0, but first I had to overcome technical hassles and keep the cats out of the litter box….

(and here’s the YouTube URL for it, in case the video box is acting squirrelly)

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Texas USA Video Posts

Happy New Year from Family Travel

Note:  Family Travel is taking a blogging break until Monday, January 7 2008 in order to whittle down the “Honey-Do” list before Sainted Husband returns to work. Thanks for your patience.)

This is a six-minute video clip that I filmed at First Night New Year’s Eve celebrations on December 31, 2007 in downtown Austin, Texas.

We had a great view of the yearly parade down Congress Avenue; it was almost entirely people-powered, with lots of bicycles and pedicabs and creative good humor.

Happy New Year, Family Travel!

(For those who can’t see the embedded box below, here is the direct link to the video on YouTube:  First Night Austin

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Photos USA Video Posts

Video of the week: the original Little House in Kansas

I’ve posted previously about my stop in Independence, Kansas in summer 2007 to visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder “Little House on the Prairie,” which was reconstructed on its original site using traditional materials and layout.

As I played with my disposable video camera and finally reviewed its contents, I found that I’d made some clips when I visited the Ingalls home with my daughter.

After some minor wrestling with Microsoft’s Movie Maker on my laptop, this is what we saw on the prairie (although it was too dark to film the interior, I can assure you that the one-room house had a couple of beds, a table and chairs and a few cooking items, and that was it for amenities.)

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Blog Photos USA Video Posts

Video of the week: Colonial Williamsburg

Earlier this year we took a family press trip to Virginia’s “Historic Triangle” (Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown) and our tourguides gave us a disposable digital video camera to play with.

The CVS disposable costs about US$30 and then another US$12-13 to develop, but it did motivate me to film without my usual over-analyzing and artistic angst. Once I show you the good clips from it, I’m going to start using the video mode on my Kodak digital camera, for better video quality.

I’ve never had a video camera, so I made all of the usual newbie mistakes: panning/moving the camera too fast so that the resulting video induces vomiting, simply forgetting that I had the thing in my purse, and then not getting around to getting the clips off of the camera and onto my computer.

With great fanfare, I’d like to announce that in addition to filming a little video clip of me with a laptop camera, I actually drove over to my local CVS pharmacy yesterday and got the contents of the camera onto a DVD. I popped the DVD into my laptop and voila — a whole lot of “OMG, I forgot I filmed that!”

So, here is my first attempt at doing a little travel video work for Family Travel’s Photo/Video of the Week — it’s a short narrated clip from July 2007, taken on Duke of Gloucester Street in front of the King’s Arms Tavern in Colonial Williamsburg.

(1/12/08 – The original video seems to have somehow disappeared, so here is a link to it on YouTube in case it drops out again….)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uAza9uCLKM