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Tutorial for posting video comments on MySpace. [back]
We have a podcast in iTunes as well as a blog on myspace and both contain the same content. The nice thing about the MySpace version is that it can have comments posted to it. So we have created this tutorial about video comments in order to allow people to post video comments in reaction to our episodes. And of course you can use this tutorial for any other video comment needs anywhere else on the web.
1. Decide what you want to say, do you have a simliar story, do you have more information to add, did you have a thought you wanted to share, or do you have any similar footage you want to share. Also it's okay to plug your own video blogs, podcasts, music or whatever creative endevor you think our audience might appreciate checking out.
2. Hook up a DV
based video camera to your computer using a firewire cable.
An Apple iSight
will also work as well as the new iMac that has a built in camera.
3. Download and install quicktime
7 pro. This is $29.99 but will come in handy for a bunch of things in this tutorial..
4. Launch Quicktime
Pro 7 and choose "New Movie Recording"
or "New Audio Recording" from the "File"
menu.
5. Record your audio or video and then hit the stop button.
5. Then use these little triangle things to select only the part that
you want to use. These are like in and out points. Then hit "apple+C",
"apple+N", and then "apple+V"
[Those are the short cuts to copy, create a new quicktime window, and
then paste into that new quicktime window]. You could then record other
sections and paste them into your audio or video file, but if more editing
needs to be done you might want to use Final
Cut Pro , Final Cut Express or iMovie.
6. Now choose "save as" from the "file"
menu, select a title and save your recording to a spot you will remember
on your hard drive. If you are using iMovie then I think that you can
choose share or publish on your .mac account.
7. Then use any FTP application to put the file on a server. If you
don't have a server, you can use archive.org
for free hosting or a new site called zippyvideos.com
You can also use www.putfile.com
. Now some people embed the video into a myspace page but we've noticed
that makes profiles take for ever to load. So our new system is to basically
post a jpg that says, "check out my video comment" and that
will launch a new window that will show your comment. This is really
a better system for a lot of reasons.
8. Copy the URL
where your video comment is hosted and paste it into the code below, replacing
the text, "PASTE YOUR MEDIA LINK HERE". Be sure to leave
the quotation marks in place.
You may also change the Still-Image button that appears to a frame from your video by replacing the following url in the HTML: "http://foureyedmonsters.com/v_comment.jpg."
If you leave that part the way it is, our default image (below) will appear. To create your own image, Read This
9. Then copy all of the text in the box and paste into a comment field,
or anywhere you can put HTML
for that matter, like a blog or in the about me section of your myspace.
If these possibilities get you excited, you might want to read the tutorial
for creating a MySpace Video Blog.
Note: Other people will need to have quicktime
7 to view this comment which is a free download at www.apple.com/quicktime/
People only need the pro version if they will be recording and editing.
I should note that iMovie,
Final
Cut Pro, and Premiere
Pro are all other ways of recording video content directly
into the computer. The nice thing about quicktime
pro is that it is cheaper and records into the file format you will
be putting on the web rather then some large format you would then have
to "compress," or shrink down. So
quicktime
is where it's at. VideoEgg
is good to experiment with if you have a PC. We use mac so we haven't
had a chance to work with it yet. We should also mention that
a lot of digital still cameras record video files at a very small file
size that in most cases are small enough to just post online. Use put
file to post the file, get the link and then plug into the text box
above, use that code and your done.
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This is a tutorial on creating a Video Blog on MySpace. [back]
Note: These instructions are for embedding a Quicktime movie. There are other forms of movie files, such as "Windows Media" and "Real player" movies, but we do not recommend them. Quicktime is the best.
1. Log into MySpace or join if you haven't. It only takes a few moments and its free.
2. Go to "Blog" which is in the top row of buttons in MySpace.
3. Select "Post New Blog"
4. Steal this HTML text and paste it into your blog entry. Don't worry. It doesn't look like much now, but it will.
5. Now find the place in this HTML crap where you see this: "PASTE YOUR MEDIA LINK HERE".
As implied, you need to paste the direct link to your video between the quotation marks. Make sure the "http://" gets pasted in and make sure none of the other HTML gets interrupted. Be careful to not delete the quotation marks.
You may also change the Still-Image button that appears to a frame from your video by replacing the following url in the HTML: "http://foureyedmonsters.com/tutorial/images/OPTIONAL_STILL_IMAGE.jpg."
If you leave that part the way it is, our default image (below) will appear. To create your own image, Read This
6. Now preview the blog. If it's good post it. Now send messages to your friends giving them the hyperlink to subscribe to you're video blog. To get this URL you need to subscribe to your own blog and when MySpace asks you if you are sure you want to subscribe you have to steal that URL. That is your subscribe URL. Copy this text in this box and paste it into a message to a friend, then replace whats in the "PASTE YOUR SUBSCRIBE LINK HERE" and you'll have a message ready to send to your friends. You can also post this on your profile and in bulletiins, emails and other sites.
7. Now if you have this content on MySpace you should also put it in iTunes to give people another way to subscribe. Check out the tutorial: Creating a podcast that is iTunes-compliant, to make that happen. Also if you wish that someday it was just automatic, send feedback to MySpace telling them you want them to add media enclosures to the MySpace blogs. Trust us on one thing, they read their emails.
Note:
Really you can use this tutorial to turn any blog into a video blog. We just think MySpace is the place to do it because of it's awesome social networking abilities and the ability for people to subscribe with out handing over their email address which people are so affraid to do these days. But if you already have a blog someplace else you may want to send feedback to MySpace that you are interested in the ability to submit you're RSS feed from you're other site and have your posts show up as MySpace blog posts. Just send a message to Tom.
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Making a Still Image Link For Your Video [back to Index]
If you like, you can use our default image. If you are using HTML from one of the other tutorials on this page, skipping these steps will result in our default image appearing.
1. Go to your Movie's url, for instance, http://your_server/your_movie.mov. Your movie will load in an otherwise empty browser window like this
2. While the video is paused, scroll to a frame of the video that you think represents it. On a Mac, press "shift" + "apple" + "4." This will turn your curser into an "X," allowing you to draw a box around your movie. The area you draw a box around becomes an image saved to your desktop called "Picture 1.jpg." You can rename it whatever you like. It's a good idea to include the control-bar, like in the image below, so that people will know this is a link to a movie when they see it. We're not sure how to do this on a 'pc.'
3. Upload the image to your server, .mac account or Flickr.
4. To get the image's url, go to where you uploaded it, control-click on it and select "Open Image in New Window." Then copy that url and paste it into the appropriate part of the HTML you are working with. Note: Be careful not to delete the quotation marks from the HTML you are working with.
Here's the default image that appears if you use the HTML we provided in the MySpace Video Blog tutorial:
Here's the default image that appears if you use the HTML we provided in the Video Comment tutorial:
[back to Index]
This is a tutorial on compressing Video for the web. [back]
MPG4 also known as .m4v is very good quality with small file sizes but until Quicktime 7 becomes a little more adopted (6 months to a year) we are going to stick with sorrenson pro with 2 pas VBR. This codec doesn't play on the video iPod (as far as we know) but don't worry we will explain how to double your content up in that format below.
If you have quicktime Pro 6 or later then you can create videos in this codec but this tutorial assumes you don't think that is high enough quality and that you want to use cleaner 6.0 and create sorrenson pro videos which look a lot better because they do a 2 pass VBR.
1. Export from your editing software a self contained movie, in FCP 5.0 we choose "export quicktime movie" and we check of self contained. This doubles as a way to back up your video.
2. Launch cleaner. Drag the video into the layout. Double click on the area just below where it says settings.
3. If your video is shot at 29.98 (most video is) then choose NTSC and "medium progressive download." But if your video is shot in 24p and you edited in 24p then you choose the film category "medium progressive download." My advice is to change the frame rate to 12 which will help each frame be higher quality. Also make sure you are using 2-pass VBR and the "Sorenson Video 3" codec. And if your video was edited on a 16 by 9 timeline you can hit the "image" tab and choose 16:9 and the dimensions will change as needed. Also in the "begin/end" tab you can choose an ending url which is a nice way to direct traffic back to your site or include a subscribe link. When everything is set hit apply. (Later you can come back and what ever you named your settings can just be clicked once and then hit apply and your set.)
4. Hit the green play button. Choose a name for your file and when you are done, FTP the file to your server. Then get the direct link to your video and your all set. You can now use our MySpace Video Blog tutorial, post a video comment, or create a video podcast.
Using the iPod (320 X 240) Codec: [back]
If you have are just trying to get your videos on your iPod for personal use then there are a few free applications out there, we don't have an iPod so I haven't used any of them, but just do a google and you'll find stuff. This tutorial is for creating an iPod codec video that you will share with the world in the podcasting section of iTunes.
We are going to assume that your video has been edited in Final Cut Pro (or another video editing application)
1. Create an in and outpoint on a timeline in final cut that contains the entire video you will be creating.
2. Choose export with quicktime conversion from the file menu.
3. Click options.
4. Click "settings" and then match your settings to the below
settings.
5. Then click size and create the custom size of 640 by 480.
6. Un-check prepare for internet streaming.
7. Hit okay and then hit save (make sure you know where it's going)
8. After a couple minutes (less then 10 usually) it will be done and
you can open the resulting file by control clicking on it and choose
open with QuickTime Player
9. Now go up to the file menu and choose export. Then choose "Movie
to iPod (320 by 240) and wait much longer then earlier.
10. When the computer is finally done you'll have pretty good looking
video that looks amazing on the iPod screen and pretty good full screen
on the computer. This video is ready to add as an entry to your RSS
feed so you can create a video podcast. We also have
a tutorial on doing that. If the video is just to go straight to
your video capable iPod then just put it into a playlist on your iPod
and it will play.
Creating a Podcast That will be iTunes-compatible: [back]
1. First use the tutorials above to create a sorrenson version of your video and an iPod version of your video.
2. Put those two videos on you're websites server or .mac account. If you don't have a website or want to prevent going over you're allotted monthly server bandwidth you can use these free solutions: archive.org, www.putfile.com, zippyvideos.com We sort of recommend using your own server because these sites can be slow and with your own server you can have an accurate count on how many views you get and so that you are not limited to certain file sizes. You can get server space with hundreds of companies but we currently use ixwebhosting.com and they are pretty fast and have decent statistics about who is coming to your site and what not.
3. Get the direct url to those two movie files, if you have your own
server it will be www.YourDomainName/NameOfVideo.mov (.m4v for the iPodc
codec). If you used .mac
or these other services you may have to "control+click"
on the page they are on and select "view source".
Then in the "Edit" menu, choose "Find"
or hit "apple+F" and type in ".mov"
(or .m4v). Your search results should take you to the part
of the web page's code where they give you the exact URL
of your movie. For example the movie file for episode 1 of the video
podcast is: http://foureyedmonsters.com/video_podcast/FEM_E1.mov
Notice how when you click on it you can see it in it's own window. Paste
your URL
into a web browsers address bar to make sure tha it video plays in its
own window. THe exception is the .m4v file which will just give you
a bunch of text on your page if you go to it's direct link. Book mark
the direct
link in a text document because you'll need it later.
4. On the mac Download the free trial version of Feeder 1.2. On the PC, google "software to create RSS with enclosures". Select the "podcasting" template and then select "create entry". Give the entry a name and give it an article link. The article link should be a blog entry that contains the video. Check out create a MySpace Video Blog above and make sure you have that working first. Then get the link to the entry that contains the video and make that be your article link. Then in the enclosure field paste in the direct link to you're .m4v iPod codec version. Then click the little gear symbol and choose Fetch Attributes from web. Make sure the "type" is set to video/quicktim.
5. Then steal all the html from your MySpace blog entry and put it into the large white area. This area can contain HTML that some blogging sites and RSS readers will display but in iTunes all the HTML will be stripped away and it will just be text.
6. The comments link can be the same as the article link because if people want to post comments about your entry they can do that on your MySpace blog.
7. If you hit preview you will see a rendition of what others will see if they look directly at your rss feed and you can test out all of the links, the main thing to test is the enclosure file,but don't be suprised when your .m4v file streams into your web browser as a bunch of code. Send a message to apple telling them to add web support for the iPod codec. iTunes and the iPod shouldn't be the only places where people can watch this high quality version of your video. But for now this is why we said to use the article link to your myspace blog. People on the web can watch that version. Also by stealing the html code from your MySpace post and including it in the RSS feed you are giving another way for people to see the video. Like in our case if people click play on the quicktime image below they will actually launch a new window with just the video playing in it. The code that explained how to do this is above in the MySpace Video Blog tutorial.
8. There are a couple other things you need to do in feeder to get up and running. You need to set an image. You should make an image 300 by 300 to be your iTunes image. Ignore the fact that feeder calls the image 144 by 144. This image also needs to be on your server or hosted somewhere online. You can control click on the picture on a website and choose, "copy image link" and then paste that link into the "link" feild in feeder.
9. You'll also need to put in the publish settings. On the left side bar there is a publish box.
10. Click on settings and you can give your feed a file name. This is the name of your RSS feed which is an XML file that will live on your server. Feeder also stores a local XML file and automatically loads the information whenever you launch feeder. In the future you will create new entries to post new videos and feeder will update your local XML file and when you hit publish the XML file on your server will update and the new video will be "posted" and subscribers in iTunes will automatically get the video. That is jumping ahead but I just wanted to clear up for those trying to understand the princapls here.
11. After you give your feed a file name hit "edit servers." Enter in your standard FTP information. If you use dreamweaver to make your site this is all the same information you put into dreamweaver. Of the free services we discussed earlier archive.org is the only one that gives you FTP access.
12. Once your FTP info entered, close the server window and hit save changes and then use the blue button in feeder to publish you're feed.
NOTE: As an alternative to having a server you can do this with your .mac account. Instead of "publishing" you will "save as" and give the xml file a name. Then in the Finder use the "Go" menu to connect to your iDisk.
Then drag and drop your XML file into the "sites" folder.
The direct url to your XML file will be: www.homepage.mac.com/your_dot_mac_name/name_of_xml_file.xml
(You can also put your video files here if you don't have a server)
13. Now back to those who have a server, the URL to your XML file is going to be: "http://yourdomain.com/name_of_feed.xml" Book mark that feed or save in a text document. In Safari 2.0 which comes with OSX.4 you can view feeds right in Safari. You can make sure everything looks right and the links work and if something needs to be repaired just go back to feeder and make changes and then click publish again. Results should be instantanious, just hit refresh in Safari and you should see the changes.
Note: You can't view feeds in FireFox or other web browsers but there is other software out there just for viewing feeds.
14. Now you have a feed which you want to run through Feedburner just to make sure it's completely iTunes compliant and to take advantage of their free promotional services to help get your feed out to other aggregators. Go to www.feedburner.com and they will walk you through what you need to do. Also there is no need to pay for the pro service because that is more designed for bloggers. Pay particular attention to anything involving iTunes while you are setting up feedburner to take your feed. When you are done you will have a new feed domain which will be "http://feeds.feedburner.com/name_of_your_feed.xml"
Note: These instructions are vague, but feedburner is very good at explaining and walking you through what you need to do. All you need to understand at this point is that you made your feed, it's on your server, now feedburner is going to make a copy of your feed and put it on their server and add certain tags to it that make it work in iTunes. It's also going to allow you to give your video podcast a description that people will be able to see in iTunes. Everytime you update your feed on your server (or.mac account) with-in 30 minutes the feedburner version of your feed will also update.
15. From here on out you publicly use the feedburner version of your feed. You link to that on your website and you also submit that to iTunes. Now this is the one part that might stop a few people dead in their tracks but don't worry there are work-arounds. Because of Apple being a huge company and playing things safe, they want to only let people submit things if they know exactly who you are. So you need to have a credit card and be in the US and have used the iTunes store at least once to buy something. This wasn't a problem for me so I want to extend the offer to anyone who needs me to submit their feed for them. Yes, thats right. Anyone can submit anyone else's feed. So just email me and I'll submit it. info@foureyedmonsters.com
Note: If your content contains excesive nudity or copyrighted material then iTunes may take it out. Yes, this is sensorship, but there is a way around it. By providing the direct link to your feed you can instruct users on how to subscribe to your feed in iTunes even though you aren't in the iTunes directory. It's basically copy the feed url, open iTunes, under the advanced menu choose "subscribe to podcast" paste in the url and the iTunes user is subscribed just as if the feed was in the iTunes directory. They'll get episodes automatically. This is also a way to have a small group of people subscribe to video that isn't available for the whole world.
16. Now every time you have a new video, use Feeder to create a new entry and then hit publish and that new video will show up in iTunes (no more then 3 hours later but usually 30 minutes) and people who are subscribed will automatically get the video the next time they open iTunes. The user will see a blue ball next to each episode they haven't watched yet in the podcasting section of their iTunes. There is also a new Video's section in iTunes 6 that will display any of the videos an individual has in their library.
17. For other aggregators,
you'll want to have this button (rss/enclosure) be on you're website
so people who use RSS
aggregators
other then iTunes
can get the direct link
to your feed
and then paste it into whatever software they want. You may also want
to submit the feed to the following directories: podcast.net, veoh,
and search "podcast directory" for more.
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If you create a cool project using this tutorial let us know at info@foureyedmonsters.com. Eventually we'll put together a list of projects that this tutorial contributed to and we'll include the links at the bottom of this page. Here are a few of the projects we know used our video podcast tutorial: Mutiny City News and Open House, and of course the FEM Video Podcast.