Creating Movies: Making Videos for the Web (on a Mac)

Paul “Pablo” Martin,

Agenda:

I.Why go through the trouble of making and posting a video?

II.A sample video

III.A brief overview of the entire production and conversion process

IV.How to produce a video and prepare it for the Internet step-by-step

V.Producing your own brief video

A step-by-step guide to producing a video and preparing it for the Internet.

I. Video Creation

  1. Using iMovie, create a new project and give it a specific title
  2. Click on the (camera icon) button to activate your iSight
  3. Click on “Capture” to record video using built-in iSight camera (I suggest practicing first and you may want to click “Stop” between takes for ease in editing later)
  4. Edit it down (follow my instructions; if you have trouble doing this later, use the iMovie tutorials—trust me, they are very helpful)
  5. Add subtitles (prepare to be frustrated!)
  6. Click on the “T” tool button and Select the title you like (I use “Transparent Black”)
  7. Drag it so that you are placing it over the beginning of your first clip
  8. Adjust the lengths of each title as necessary (5-6 seconds is a good rule of thumb)
  9. (you might opt to do steps “e-f” first) Click on the title and edit text in the Viewer Window
  10. Click on the button that says “Show Fonts” in the Viewer
  11. Adjust the font so it appears just how you like it (I adjust both lines to equal size and style)
  12. (Once the title looks right, you can copy it throughout your Project Window, this is the editing area to the right of the Project Library) Press the “option” button while clicking on the title and slide it down next to the original on your timeline.
  13. Repeat until you have titles over your entire project
  14. If you’re having trouble moving or changing the size of clips, try clicking around a few times until the cursor works for you (there’s probably something I’m missing here…)
  15. Export to QT Movie (be aware of file size)
  16. Under “Share” select either of the options below
  17. I choose “Export using QuickTime” and then I select “Quicktime Movie” again under the drop down menu next to “Export” (the demo I made is an 18.3 MB .mov file without any significant compression; you can select “Options” to make it smaller)
  18. You can also choose “Export Movie” and then specify a size (the demo I made is a 4.7 MB .m4v file when selecting the “Medium” size; my Flash program doesn’t recognize .m4v)

II. Posting to Web (using YouTube, Photobucket, or something else—this is the easiest option!)

  1. See handout
  2. Once you’ve uploaded your movie, copy the URL the service provides you and post it to your course page, email it to your students, etc.

III. Flash Conversion (only necessary if you are using Photobucket or posting video to your own web page)

  1. Select “Create New” and select “Action Script 2.0” (I believe it’s the most straight forward)
  2. Under “File” select “ImportImport Video”
  3. Direct Flash to your file (click choose to navigate there) and click “Continue”
  4. On the next screen select “Progressive download from web server”
  5. On the next screen, click “Continue” unless you want to play with the settings here (I never do)
  6. On the next screen, select “ClearOverPlaySeekMute.swf” (this is a ‘skin’ to create video controls)
  7. On the next screen click “Finish” (you will be asked where you want Flash to save the two new files it’s going to create—specify one folder, usually a specific web-folder, and then be sure to put all videos and Flash files in that folder!)
  8. In the Finder, go to the folder you specified above, and rename the .flv file to match the .fla file (Flash saved the converted movie as “Demo Intro.flv” so I changed it to “demointro.flv” to match the other flash file it created)

IV. Posting using DreamWeaver (only necessary if you are posting video to your own web page)

  1. In Dreamweaver, I place my cursor where I want my movie to appear and then under “Insert” I select “Media Flash Video”
  2. Browse to the movie file that Flash converted for you (the one that you renamed above; only the .flv files will be available choices)
  3. Specify the skin that you want Dreamweaver to use (I choose “Corona Skin 3” as it disappears when the cursor is not over it—this is important for subtitles!)
  4. I leave everything else as it is and click “OK”
  5. Dreamweaver then does the rest—it places the .fla file (and any others!) where it needs to be
  6. Synchronize your site