Video Production

Status

At a workshop on online video production documentation at the event Transmission.cc in 2006 summer, Rome, Italy, some people decided to adopt this abandoned sub and develop it...

Independent Cinemas, Community Screenings and Pirate Tv

For issues that are not covered in the corporate media, using a network of community screenings, Independent Cinemas and Pirate Tv is a good way to get your film or documentary out there.

A global screenings Network

There is a proposal from Transmission to create global screeners database to make it easy to contact screeners to make them aware of your film. This is due to be launched in autumn 2006.

Satellite Television

Social Justice video on Satellite

It is possible to submit Social Justice video content to Free Speech TV which covers every state in the US. One very successful use of FSTV is Deep Dish TV, a New York based part of the network which collates the work of Independent Video producers and grass roots activists and puts together professional shows which are uplinked to FSTV. They are also recorded locally and retransmitted by over 200 local TV stations and cinema/community screeners. In this way the costs and time of copying and networking physical tapes and disks are reduced.

FSTV also accept content from outside the USA, for example programmes from UK based Undercurrents Productions and the European Newsreal

In Europe it is possible to rent the time of satellites without paying for them all the time. This may be useful to network programmes for retransmission to local TV stations and collectives. One company that does this is listed below.

Figen KAPLAN Bilge Uplink Services Istanbul / TURKEY Tel: +90 216 335 32 62 Fax: +90 216 329 02 99

Video Production

Resources:

Movie Credits Making Software

http://www.ElectricHappiness.com - Videotagger

mac and pc ourvideo.org resource

http://www.ourvideo.org/toolkit/

Internet Video

This section is a help section on how to watch and create Video on the Internet and how to become active in uploading video content yourself

Introduction to using Open Source Tools for Video Production and distribution

Different Software is used for the many stages of the Video production process. Depending on what platform you use there are various different levels of effectiveness and ease of use of the open source solutions.

This is a section of notes on interpretations of the scope and ease of use of different Free and Proprietary software.

Mick Fuzz's notes on Windows & Mac platforms and Free Software solutions

Watching Video on the Internet

Subscribing to a Podcasts [Media RSS]

Itunes

I-tunes can be used to subscribe to a Video as well as an audio podcast.

Subscribing to a Podcast in Itunes

Democracy Player

Democracy player is an open source way of subscribing to video podcasts. It also has a Channel Viewer which makes it easy to find new content.

Subscribing to a Podcast in Democracy Player

Fireant Player

Fireant -

Subscribing to a Podcast in Fireant

Watching Video files in a media player

To watch a video from the internet you need to have certain software installed on your computer that will enable it to play the video. If you already have something installed, this could be windows media player (pc), quicktime (mac). Even so, you might have trouble watching some films, so why not download and use:

There is some infomation explaining container and codecs here. http://video.indymedia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=encoding

Why can't I play this video file?

Maybe the Media player application you are using doesn't support the file container you are using. For example Windows Media player won't play a .mov file. The mov container isn't supported.

Or maybe you don't have the codec used to encode the file installed on your computer. For example you may be able to play some .avi files but not other .avi files. If you open them up in Windows Media player it may even say Missing Codec.

You can install codecs on your computer by downloading them from the internet.

On windows you can use a program called Gspot to find out what container and codec have been used to encode the video file. there is a help file here.

Below are links to useful programs and help filed to make sure you can watch your video files.

Cross platform

• VLC Free software programme for linux, mac and pc that will play most video formats:

VLC

There are a list of formats that it will play listed here. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html You will see that it will play just about everything apart from real player format.

If you install this program hopefully all of your problems viewing files will be solved.

Windows

Gspot tell you how a video file is encoded and what container it is using. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/v26x/quick_start.html

other help for viewing video files

VideoGuys

Videohelp

Video izlesene

Working out what kind of Video File you have

If you are uploading a video file and you often need to know what type/ codec it is to allow people to be able to make the correct choice to download it.

Here is a quick guide to working out that information

If you have windows you can use a programme called gspot Guide to Using gspot - http://www.headbands.com/gspot/v26x/quick_start.html

Or you can have a look at this quick guide below (to come)

Encoding Video for the Internet

Before putting a film on the internet you have to transform it into a special format that can be easily transmitted along wires. This process is called encoding. it can be very complicated, but there are people who can advise if you get stuck, the first thing you need is to download and install a software programme which will encode the video format you have into the video format that will be suited to your online distribution needs. There are a few popular ways of encoding video using commercial solutions but here are some free options

Macintosh

Intro: Many of the Tutorials below use a Quicktime DV file as a starting point. A Quicktime DV file is the default file to be created on your hard drive when you capture from your camera, or via your capture card to Video editing programs like Final Cut Pro or iMovie. When you finish editing you can also save your project as a Quicktime DVto your hard drive. It may take up a lot of space as it is very high quality. Tutorials which take a step by step approach to saving as a Quicktime DV will follow.

capturing to your hard drive using iMovie

Capture Tutorial

Unofficial FAQ

Apple tutorials

creating xvid / mp4 using ffmpegx

ffmpegx is a Mac OS X graphic user interface designed to easily operate more than 20 powerful Unix open-source video and audio processing tools. http://homepage.mac.com/major4/

creating flv Flow Video using ffmpegx

ffmpegx is a Mac OS X tool most suited for making a flv file to embed in your page. No expensive flash server technology is needed.

http://homepage.mac.com/major4/

creating xvid / mp4 from a DVD using Handbrake

If you are starting from a DVD, one easy way to encode to mp4 and divx avi is with the program Handbrake
Tutorial: There is a clear tutorial on using handbrake here handbrake tutorial

creating mov / mp4 from files using Quicktime Pro

Quick Time Pro is common way of creating mov and mp4 files. There is help file for creating video to be compatible with iPods here http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/creatingvideo.html

creating mov / mp4 from files using Quicktime Amateur

Apparently Quicktime Amateur can do the same job but it is free. http://www.mikeash.com/?page=software/qtamateur/index.html

creating mp4 from files using iSquint

Aimed specifically at creating mp4 files for iPod - requires 10.3.9 or more http://www.isquint.org/

Windows

Intro: Many of the Tutorials below use a DVavi file as a starting point. A Dv avi file is created on your hard drive when you capture from your camera, or via your capture card to Video editing programs like Premiere. When you finish editing you can also save your project as a DV avi to your hard drive. It may take up a lot of space as it is very high quality. Tutorials which take a step by step approach to saving as a DV avi will follow.

Free capturing tools - Windows

WinDV - Freeware http://windv.mourek.cz/ WinDV gets rave reviews from users who have had dropped frames from other products. http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=WinDV Will split video by recoding timestamp.

STOIK - Freeware http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Multimedia_and_Graphics/Video_and_Animation_Tools/STOIK_Capturer.html STOIK Capturer allows you to capture video from DV camcorder through IEEE 1394 FireWire interface or any analog video source such as TV tuner card, video card, webcam etc. Options to split by size, use temp file to avoid drop frame.

Windows Movie maker - free with XP http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/moviemaker2.ms "With Movie Maker, you can create, edit, and share your home movies right on your computer."

Creating a DV avi file from a DVD

One good way of doing this with a short film or clip is to use Virtual Dub Mod

Tutorial >> Basic Vdub DvAvi

Saving a DV avi from a Premiere Pro

Tutorial >> Save dvavi from premiere pro

Saving a DV avi from a Premiere 6.x

Tutorial >> Save dvavi from 6.x

Creating a Mpeg files with Tmpeg Encoder

Mpeg1: Tmpegenc This is a application suitable to make Mpeg1 files, which are very compatable across different operating systems.

Tutorial >> Using tmpeg

Creating a xvid / divx / wmv and other files with Media Coder =

Media Coder MediaCoder is an open source universal audio/video batch transcoder (converter), which puts together lots of excellent audio/video codecs and tools from the open source community into an all-in-one solution, capable of transcoding among different audio/video formats.

Tutorial - to come

also along the same lines is SUPER © Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer. A GUI to ffmpeg, mencoder, mplayer, x264, mppenc, ffmpeg2theora & the theora/vorbis RealProducer plugIn.

http://www.erightsoft.net/Superdc.html

Creating a xvid / divx files with Virtual Dub =

Virtual Dub is a free software way of taking one video file (and DVDs) and creating an encoded video file suitable for the Internet. It is commonly used to create Mpeg4 files / Divx's and Xvids.

Tutorial - Creating Xvid files from a DV Avi File. Here is one help file which gives step by step instructions to use Virtual Dub Basic Virtual Dub Xvid

Creating an ogg theora file with ffmpeg2theora =

ffmpeg2theora is a free software way of taking a DV avi video file and creating an ogg theora file.

Tutorial - Creating ogg theora files from a DV Avi File. Tutorial Ffmpeg to theora

Creating a wmv and other files with Windows Media Encoder =

Windows Media Encoder An easy to use encoder for Windows, free if you have a registered version of Windows.

Tutorial - Creating Windows Media player files Windows media encoder tutorial

Creating a flv file with Riva Riva FLV Encoder 2 =

Riva FLV Encoder enables you to encode video files to Flash video (.FLV) files. It currently supports the most common video formats, including AVI, DV, MPEG, MOV, and WMV,

Link to freeware download : http://www.rivavx.com/index.php?downloads&L=3

Creating a xvid from a DVD in one application =

Simple divx can take a DVD and make a xvid file ready for the internet. There is a simple tutorial here

http://www.simpledivx.org/main/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1 and the home page is here http://www.simpledivx.org

auto gordian knot http://www.autogk.me.uk/modules.php?name=TutorialEN

Tutorial on using auto gordian knot

Videora iPod Converter to make mp4 files from other files

Videora iPod Converter is a free video conversion application developed by the creators of Videora. It allows you to convert your regular PC video files (avi, mpeg, etc) into the proper video format that your iPod understands(mp4 with h264,mpeg4 video and aac audio). GUI for ffmpeg.

http://www.videora.com/en-us/Converter/iPod/download.php

guide: http://www.videora.com/en-us/Converter/guides.html

Shareware DVD / File to ipod converter

http://www.topvideopro.com/dvd-ripper/dvd-to-ipod-tutorial.htm

Cucusoft iPod Movie/Video Converter

Cucusoft DVD to iPod Converter is the easiest-to-use and fastest DVD to iPod converter software for Apple iPod Movie and iPod Video. It can convert almost all kinds of DVD to iPod Movie / iPod Video format.

Detailed Tutorial

SuPer - Free Software encoder

SUPER, Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer. A GUI to ffmpeg, mencoder, mplayer, ffmpeg2theora & the theora/vorbis RealProducer plugIn. If you need a simple, yet very efficient tool to convert (encode) or play any Multimedia file, without reading manuals or spending long hours training, then SUPER © is all you need. Supports most video formats and also portable formats for PSP, PS3, iPod, Zune, PocketPC and NEC, Nokia, Siemens, SonyEricsson mobiles.

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

page on Super and link to guides - http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=SUPER_1

Linux

ffmpeg and mencoder which is a part of Mplayer, are two popular ways of encoding your video on linux. More information on command line encoding to is here in the form of a pdf from jaromil and eleonora. pdf on command-line encoding

How to make a flv file with ffmpeg

To convert a movie file (.mp4 .mov .mpg .3gp .mpeg .wmv .avi) to FLV, do following:

1. ffmpeg -i movie.(avi) -s 320x240 -ar 44100 -r 12 movie.flv 2. cat movie.flv | flvtool2 -U stdin movie.flv

How to Make a Video podcast

What is a podcast?

Why create one? Video podcasts are a good way to distribute your Video. They can be seen in programmes like i-Tunes, Democracy player and Fireant. If you get the format of you video file right they can also be downloaded onto portable devices. They can also be featured on other people's websites often as a list at the side of their pages. This is called syndication.

What do you need to do to make one?

Get you audio or video ready for the internet. (see encoding notes)

Essentially you have to make specialised a text file available on your website. This file is written in a simple Markup language which gives details about your video. It part of it might look a bit like this.

<tag></tag>

You can if you choose hand code this file, but there are automated ways which make it a bit easier. This next section examines the different solutions.

Using Blogger and Feed burner and Archive.org

Once you have created your audio / video files, you can use these 3 free tools to create podcasts.

Step one: put your media up online with archive.org / ftp to a webspace

To do this you first need to sign up to be an archive.org member. Go to the front page, click join us, and follow the instructions.

You can then download a free tool called ccpublisher. http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CcPublisher (pc, linux, mac)

With this tool you can upload your music / video file to the archive.org site, and choose a copyright licence to go with it. You will then get a page where the link to your file is displayed.

Or if you have some webspace that you can upload your files to. Use an FTP client to do this. See help for how to do this with Smart ftp here, http://www.clearerchannel.org/clearertraining/ftp/ftp.html

blogger.com

You can create a blog quickly and easily at blogger.com - A blog is a simple web page which is diary like in format listing the latest posting first (just like a podcast does).

In the settings panel of blogger.com you can adjust the formatting tab so that you can include a link with every post. In the link field we need to paste a link to the uploaded media file on achive.org.

feedburner.com

blogger.com creates an RSS feed for all your entries, but it is not a Podcast. You can't use a programme like iTunes with it yet. We need to use a service called feedburner to change the feed into a Podcast.

To do this we need to click an option on the feedburner settings called smartcast.

Overview http://blog.forret.com/2004/10/how-to-podcast-with-blogger-and-smartcast/

Using a Video Content Management system

Ourvideo CMS - (not a big community of developers)

Ourvideo CMS is a Media content management system running on MySql and php. It is aimed at community and low budget groups and can help them achieve their aims at a lower cost in the following ways. There are minimal changes to the standard server environment to help groups that don't have access to a high level server administration resources.

http://ourvideocms.sourceforge.net/

Demo site http://www.clearerchannel.org

Loud Blog website

Loudblog is a flexible and easy-to-use Content Management System (CMS) for publishing media content on the web. It automatically generates a website and multimedia distribution via Podcasting.

Loudblog needs to be installed on a webserver and requires systems administrator level skills for install and setup. It will allow you to host your own website with integrated audio and video distribution support.

You can upload your audio/video via ftp, via web forms, by fetching external links - thus hosting them on your server, or linking to external files.

It is designed for audio, and creates a flash audio preview. This is also possible with some video files. So the web presentation of your media is pretty good. It takes the form of a blog.

It creates a podcast with iTunes categories. http://loudblog.de/

Disadvantages:

• This is set up for audio files, so while the podcasts do work for video files, you get unsuitable messages on the wen pages, like "listen now"
• The RSS podcast doesn't have images associated with it yet. It has no "media:thumbnail" element in the feed.

Word Press CMS

The wordpress content management system has a very simple approach to podcasting.

How It Works

• Create audio or video that you want to share (usually MP3 or MP4)
• Upload the file to a server
• Link to the file in a post in your weblog
• Wordpress automatically Includes a link to the file in your RSS/Atom feed
• Listeners "subscribe" with podcast client application to your RSS/Atom feed and download new files automatically.

WordPress creates all the necessary links for you!

Disadvantages: Archive.org can be used to host podcast audio files but archive.org uses re-directs on the file paths it publishes - this confuses WordPress, and consequently, the Podcast publication fails (missing enclosure tag error).

To avoid this error, if you are hosting your audio files on archive.org, you need to add a Custom Field called "enclosure" and paste the full URL for the mp3 file in the Value field.

more info http://codex.wordpress.org/Podcasting

There is also a more advanced podcasting options. http://www.mightyseek.com/podpress/

Rss editor for Windows

If you don't want to enter details in to a Content Management system, or don't have the technology to set one up. Then there is an alternative. If you have ftp access to your website. You can enter the details of each podcast item into a programme called rss editor and it will alter and upload the RSS file you need to have a podcast. There is tutorial below.

http://www.rss-info.com/en_rsseditor.html

Tutorial >> Rss editor for win

Notes on Media RSS / Podcasting specifications

Unfortunately the Media RSS specification used by Democracy player and Yahoo isn't the same as the Podcasting specification used by iTunes. The solution is to avoid things that will make your feed unreadable in either.

Here is a summary of how they are different. http://www.tnl.net/blog/2005/06/29/rss-and-media-cant-we-all-just-get-along/

Distributing Video on the Internet

sites to host your video

• Commercial sites to host your Video
  • revver
  • you tube
  • google video

• Non Commercial solutions

Archive.org - This is an excellent resource. A FAQ for how to contribute your movies is here. http://www.archive.org/about/faqs.php#223

offlineTV you can post good quality video to the open scratch channel which creates and seeds a torrent.

• Collaborative projects to Distribute video on the Internet

There are many Video collectives working together outside of corporate media - the following page lists some Independent Online Video Distribution

Tactical use of the Internet to distribute Video

Here is a proposed model of how groups could work together to create and distribute content via the Internet Convergence and collaboration model This includes recent reflection and thoughts on the European Newsreal Project.

Here is a work in progress for how to distribute a video file as widely as possible Wide distribution

• Collaborative projects to create Video content using the Internet

Asia 247 Online contributions are picked up by an editorial team who collate the material and contextualise it for daily podcast transmission. They are active in training video producers from across Asia in using this technology.

European Newsreal The European newsreal is a half hour magazine whose production and distribution is decided in a decentralised way with the use of email lists and online collaborative tools like wikis.

• Resources

Guide to Digital Distribution featured in the NGO-IN-A-BOX linux toolkit.

Appropriate Use of Video released over the Internet

Appropriate use

Some thoughts on specifying the appropriate/ethical uses of online video.

Content Management Systems and related tools for Video on the Net

Plone is one system that can be used, Engage Media are working with other plone developers on multimedia aspects of this set of tools. A sample site for this is Engage Media http://www.engagemedia.org/

Drupal is another popular content management system (CMS) that can be used to manage your video online. An example of a site that uses Drupal to manage video is Ourmedia, although the code to that doesn't seem to be published, see http://drupal.org/node/19904

Some work has been done on aggregation sites which really maximises the capacity of Drupal to import and manage RSS or RDF data.

One example of this is the V2V site which outputs data in RDF form which can then be imported into a CMS. v2v software page

Media RSS or specialised RDF to share content

It should also be possible in such an aggregation site to search the contents and the keywords of distributed content by searching the contents of their RSS feeds or RDF feeds if the information required isn't contained in the RSS feed. Would a new search tool have to be written or is there one in existence?

Media RSS is a very useful tool for more than the use mentioned above. Wikipedia Media Rss entry

The media RSS specification is here http://search.yahoo.com/mrss and the yahoo group for discussion is here http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rss-media/

One question that came up at the Transmission 2006 gathering, Is Media RSS with its category and keyword section enough to create a shared search tool for distributed content? If so how should we collaborate on standard categories and keywords?

One idea which was posted to the Media RSS yahoogroup: If Media RSS included a "group" tag, then partners could tag this with a shared discreet tag like "transmission" and search capacities could pick up only entries tagged as transmission.

• Asia 247 use iTunes categories which are right at the bottom of this page http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/techspecs.html
• One World TV uses categories/keywords set in an RDF dataset called SOMA
• There is also a very basic yahoo category set used in the Media RSS specifications http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/category_schema on this page the invite people to get involved and add more. There is a fairly flexible keyword tag used too.

Subtitles

Subtitles and transcripts are different: a transcript is only the text of the video, whereas a subtitle file includes the timecode as well. Subtitle files have a variety of formats (.srt, .sub, etc.), but they are compatible with each other.

Importance of subtitles in the production/distribution workflow

It is very important for independent video producers to make available subtitle files (or at least transcripts) when they are distributing their work. Furthermore, it is highly beneficial for online video distribution projects to include an option to upload subtitles/transcripts with the video files, even as a way to raise awareness on the issue. Without a subtitle file in the original language, it is much much more difficult to translate a video, which highly limits the possibility of its distribution.

Subtitle / Translation related projects

DotSub - Any Film Any Language: a set of unique browser tools for subtitling film from one language into any other language a catalogue of films subtitled into multiple languages using our tools.

Documentary Videos - A web page which makes available Transcripts and subtitles for indymedia type videos.

Sub Video - a collaborative resource for international video accessibility and exchange.

Indymedia Translations Project Only text, volunteer-based, with workflow management.

Babels Translation Collective They currently have a section on their forum for translation outside of the Babels network http://www.babels.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=35. It may be desirable for video collectives to build a more structured dialogue with babels translators including a workflow including subtitle files.

Applications and Tutorials

Creating / Editing subtitles

Cross Platform

Editing a subtitle file with a text editor:

Creating a multi-lingual matroska file which uses http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/

http://www.jubler.org/ - java based subtitle creator

Windows:

Subtitle Workshop Home Making subtitles in subtitle workshop (PC)

Creating subtitle files from DVDs (PC)

Mac

Miyu

Pdf tutorial - http://www.fluffalopefactory.com/miyu/files/Miyu-0.9-Manual.pdf

Linux

mencoder -idx" - mencoder is a command line video encoder tool that can be run with the -idx option to generate an index file which can be used as a starting point for a timecode

http://gsubedit.sourceforge.net/ G SubEdit, or GNOME Subtitle Editor, is a tool for editing and converting DivX ;-) subtitles. It currently features read/write of SubRip (.srt) and MicroDVD (.sub) subtitles.

Viewing subtititles

Viewing subtitles using VLC and Direct VobSub including Matroska Files (pc and mac)

Workflow

This is a suggested workflow that would make translation of your video or dvd much easier. It avoids the problem caused by networking transcriptions of Video features without the time code, which is that each transcript then has to be timecoded for each language. With co-ordination we should be able to avoid this.

There is a project and sample workflow for subtitling here

http://www.network23.org.uk/node/79

This includes a suggested Workflow for translators helping video collectives with subtitle translations

Work that needs to be done.

Building a network of translators familiar with the use of Subtitling software that can read, edit and create *.srt subtitle files

Creating DVDs

Windows

How to convert a DVD VOB format back to an mpeg2 file for reauthoring

http://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=224833 has a list of ways

http://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=224833#dvddecrypterdemultiplex is a reccomended one

or DVD2MPG is good but needs a .NET microsoft framework which takes a while to download if you don't have it installed.

A Free tool to make DVD's with audio files and subtitle files

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/GUI_for_dvdauthor

Mac

HOW TO MAKE A DVD WITH SELECTABLE SUBTITLES ON MAC OSX WITH FFMPEGX

http://ffmpegx.com/dvd_sub.html

Linux

How to make a DVD in Linux

http://www.archive.org/about/faqs.php#260

Lesson Plans

Lesson Encoding Video for the Internet

Lesson DVDs with subtitles

Save dvavi from premiere pro