video

Poking Around in YouTube Insights

by David Lee King on October 27, 2011

youtube logoA couple of days ago, I was poking around in my library’s YouTube account – generally tidying up the place, adding some info to video descriptions, etc (more on that in a future post perhaps). While doing that, I started looking at our YouTube Insights (that’s what YouTube calls statistics or analytics), and discovered some neat stuff.

And I thought I’d share. The stats are from Jan 1 , 2011- Oct 23, 2011). I created four “Big Insights” that I noticed, and each insight has a Takeaway. See if you can add some takeaways or insights to my list!

Big insight #1: Most people watching our videos are coming directly from YouTube.

  • 32,929 from youtube – almost 70%
  • embedded player – 8657 – 18%
  • mobile devices – 5223 – 10.9%
  • youtube channel page – 985 – 2%

Takeaway: Youtube is its own community. If we want to grow engagement (ie., get more comments, video views, likes, etc), we need to start interacting there. Only 18% of our total video views come from the “embedded player” – which means people watching our videos from the library’s website.

Big Insight #2: Tags are really important!

Links followed to this video – 28% (13,471). This means that someone was watching a video in Youtube, glanced over at the Related Videos sidebar, and clicked on one of our videos.

Takeaway: fill up the Tags box for each Youtube video (found on the Video Information page), and use very descriptive Keywords. Doing this will help your videos be found.

Big Insight #3: Post videos about what you do.

Most viewed videos for that time range:

  • 60 second book review – meditations for women
  • interview with a photographer
  • local history info
  • our really old mysteries of the book depository
  • The mayor playing his guitar for our Air Guitar event
  • rhyme and bounce, a toddler/baby video

Takeaway: See any similarities with these videos? Me neither. The one similarity is this: all those videos focus, in one way or antoher, on our stuff. So the takeaway here (besides making good, short, watchable videos) is to consistently share what your library does via video. If you can set up a regular schedule, that’s even better.

Big Insight #4: Community exists on Youtube!

Our video viewer demographics:

  • 51% male, 49% female
  • largest age range segments – 35-44, 45-54, 55-64
  • Sharing, ratings, comments, favorites – all very low, even though we have 190 subscribers and 188,140 lifetime video views (since March 6, 2007).

Takeaway #1: Our videos are appealing to adults, so we should consider that as we continue making videos.

Takeaway #2: People are there – in Youtube – watching our videos. We need to start answering comments consistently, subscribing to other local organizations channels, and grow our community base in Youtube (if we want interaction, video views, and sharing of our videos).

What’s my ultimate point here? Use your Youtube insights – there’s some great information there. And start interacting with your Youtube community.

Oh, and make videos, too – that helps :-)

image by ukberri

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My AHA Moment

by David Lee King on September 12, 2011

Recently, the Mutual of Omaha’s AHA Moment van stopped at my library and took some “AHA Moment” videos of Topekans.

Pretty cool project! They’re on a 25-city tour, capturing people’s “Aha moments” – which they define as “It’s a moment of clarity, a defining moment where you gain real wisdom – wisdom you can use to change your life.”

Anyway – I did one – my Aha moment is embedded in this post. Mine was (in true librarian fashion) the reason I became a librarian. A couple of other people from my library did these, too – check them out!

Why show these? It’s a cool project … and one you can potentially mimic. The Mutual of Omaha is doing a national “aha moment” thing … but why couldn’t you do a localized AHA Moment? Or even better – create some “library aha moments” of patrons saying why they love your library! Show patrons sharing what rocks about your library – reading, books, free wifi even.

Either way, it could be a cool way to get your community talking about your library or organization. nothing wrong with that!

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Video Creation at the Library

by David Lee King on July 27, 2011

The video in this post is just me, playing around with a greenscreen for the first time (and playing around with the new Final Cut Pro X – nice app!). So in the video, first you’ll see me with a green background. Then I replace the green color with black, and then I replace it with a silly image.

Yay – I figured out how to use our greenscreen!

Towards the end of the video, I show off the beginnings of my library’s video studio (and I have to say – I really need to work on my video narration skills. I can do it pretty well when I do a little prep work, but not so much when it’s off-the-cuff. Yikes!).

So, our video studio. It’s really just some office space we weren’t using anymore. We cleaned it out (it had turned into storage), painted one wall with a bucket of chroma key greenscreen paint, and set up a couple of computers in the room:

  • Computer #1: A PC that we use for creating screencasts. We use Techsmith’s Camtasia.
  • Computer #2: an Apple iMac with Final Cut Pro, iMovie, GarageBand, etc on it. We use it for video editing, and for creating our HUSH podcast series.

Assuming our Board of Trustees votes our 2012 budget into existence next month, I’ll be able to buy some more video equipment next year! I plan to get a backdrop stand, some backdrops, and a lighting set. Most likely, I’ll also buy some microphones – especially some wireless mics. Take a good listen to the audio in my video – adequate, but not great. I used the internal mic on the video camera, which picked my voice up fine … it also picked up a bunch of room sound. That can be easily fixed with better mics!

That’s what we’re doing, anyway. How are you growing your organization’s video setup?

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Final Cut Pro X video tutorials

by David Lee King on July 8, 2011

For those of you that edit video on a Mac … Final Cut Pro X is VERY different from the old Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express. Interestingly enough, the new Final Cut operates a bit more like the simple iMovie, but has some very powerful features, too. Apple is attempting the best of both worlds – simplicity and powerful features. Have they pulled it off? Beats me – do a search for articles about the software, and you will find a mixture of love/hate articles on it!

But if you just want to know how to use the new Final Cut, Israel Hyman at Izzyvideo.com has helped us out. Izzy has created a set of 26 tutorial videos for Final Cut Pro X. I just finished watching them – they’re good. I’m now ready to go edit some video!

If you create videos, and want to know more about the new Final Cut (or if you’re like me and are still trying to figure it out), I’d recommend watching these video tutorials – good stuff.

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Videos are a Familiar Format

by David Lee King on June 9, 2011

Are you using video to connect with your customers? If not … Guess what? These days, most of your customers are used to connecting to people, to ideas, and to stories through video.

Don’t believe me? Answer this – have you ever cried while watching a movie? Been moved by a rather dramatic turn in the plot? I’m guessing your answer was “yes.” Some of us are even moved while watching the evening news (when a powerful story is being told).

My point? Most of us these days are used to connecting to stuff and to people through video. Video isn’t a new format at all – video, in one form or another, has been around for over 130 years. It’s just extremely easy to do now.

So dust off that camera, and start using video to share your organization’s story, or the story of what you sell or create as a business (yes, libraries are creating and selling things. Do you know what those things are?).

pic from Wikipedia

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The Daily Grape and the Daily Book?

by David Lee King on June 7, 2011

Gary Vaynerchuk, who made videos about wine at Wine Library TV and now at the Daily Grape, has a really cool idea about how to add value to his wine videos, and to help his viewers keep track of (and buy) wine they’re interesting in trying.

Here’s what Gary wants to do (from episode #1 of the Daily Grape):

  • Create mobile app-based video (and have a web-based version too)
  • Make his videos shorter
  • Make the content entertaining and usable
  • Created a mobile app (Daily Grape in the iTunes app store) that goes along with the videos

Gary noticed that he mentions a lot of wine, and some of his viewers forget about the wine after they’re done watching the video. So why not make an app to solve that problem?

Here’s how Gary’s app works:

  • sign up for a free account through the Daily Grape app.
  • Then, watch one of Gary’s videos
  • If you like the sound of a wine Gary mentions, you can click through to the video details, and add the wine to your wish list.
  • Then you have a handy list when you’re at a restaurant or a wine store.
  • You can also comment on the wines found on the app.

Cool idea, huh? Believe it or not, I think this could work for libraries, too. More wine for everybody! No, just kidding.

We have books, don’t we? My library has a collection of almost 500,000 books/videos/etc. Do you think our patrons can remember all those titles?

Right – probably not. But that’s why some of the newer ILS’s include things like wish lists, tags, and comments. I’ve seen some library catalogs that let you take those wish lists and turn them into RSS feeds, which gives your patrons the ability to embed their lists wherever they want.

That’s cool. But what if library staff did the same thing? Why not keep a running list of staff picks that can be discovered in the catalog and on the website. And on the library’s blog sidebar (since it’s embeddable). And in Facebook (with a little coding added in).

In fact, my library is already providing some of that, in the form of blog posts with links to good books that happen to be in our collection.

So – just a slightly different, slightly more purposeful way to think about content created by library staff. Be a bit purposeful, like Gary Vaynerchuk – direct your customer to good content, help them check stuff out – and provide them with ways to remember the books they want to read.

Do you do that? If so – how do you do it?

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The Glif – an iPhone Tripod Mount

by David Lee King on June 2, 2011

This video was created for the sole purpose of testing out the Glif, a stand/mount/tripod attachment for the iPhone. It works great! Here’s a photo of the Glif in action, acting as an iPhone stand.

The guys who created the Glif did it in an interesting way – they raised money for the project via Kickstarter. Kickstarter helps raise money for creative projects, and has a “unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands.” Cool way to raise money!

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Livestreaming is Easy

by David Lee King on March 28, 2011

I was just at Computers in Libraries 2011, a great conference that happens every spring in Washington, D.C.

Besides giving and attending some cool presentations (and hanging out with some awesome people), I was able to help out by livestreaming parts of the event.

Here’s what I livestreamed:

Guess what? Livestreaming is really easy these days! Here’s how I did it:

  • I used ustream.tv – it’s a really nice livestreaming service that’s free to use.
  • I used their Ustream Producer app to do the livestream. It provides a slightly easier way to adjust the controls and options for the stream, rather than using the web-based version.
  • I used a camera from work – a Canon GL2, and plugged it into my Mac with a Firewire cable. For cameras, you have many options – here’s more info from ustream on compatible cameras
  • For audio, I ran a feed from the hotel’s sound board to a small preamp (shown in the picture). This gave me a lot of control over the audio signal. I could have simplified, and used the video camera’s audio – but the separate feed gave the livestream some great sound.

And that’s basically it! Once everything is set up, there’s basically two things to do – click the Broadcast button to go live, and click the Record button to record.

Problems? Yeah – I had a couple:

  • I wasn’t paying attention on Monday, and didn’t get that Record button pushed right at the beginning of the talk.
  • I compensated for that the next two days by hitting record way before the talk started, and caught some “on stage only” banter. Nothing embarrassing, but still…
  • Looks like someone bumped the camera in part 1 of James Cameron’s talk – he’s slightly off-screen at the beginning. I didn’t notice that, because I was running around like crazy, trying to deal with the next problem …
  • … Audio – someone had accidentally unplugged a cable (probably inadvertently, with their foot). In the video, you can actually see the audio guy (who was great!) plug it back in, and then hear the audio turn on.
  • The hotel’s internet connection (not sure the Washington Hilton was ready for 1600 geeks with gadgets).

So there you go. Livestreaming is easy (even though it can be tricky at times). Do any of you use livestreaming in your libraries or organizations? I’d love to hear from you!

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5 Tips for Editing Videos

by David Lee King on February 24, 2011

This is the third video in WebJunction’s three-part series of tips on how libraries can create better videos. Michael Porter and I host the series.

Make sure to visit WebJunction’s Video Group and add to the conversation and resources there.

This video provides 5 tips on editing videos:

  1. you already have editing software
  2. buy some entry level editing software
  3. make sure to pause
  4. talk to the camera
  5. better sound is huge

So go watch the video for some great entry-level tips on making video, and make sure to comment, too – either comment on this post, or (even better) go visit the WebJunction page for this video, and start a discussion there!

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i-Microphone for the iPhone

by David Lee King on February 21, 2011

**warning** the first part of this video is very quiet, and the last part is LOUD – don’t scare your office-mates!

I occasionally shoot video with my iPhone, and have noticed that the internal iPhone microphone really isn’t all that great. Which is one reason I don’t use the iPhone video feature more often – the audio it records for video varies pretty wildly. For me, anyway!

So when I saw a link to Amazon for the i-Microphone, I clicked and read. And bought.

It’s cheap – it’s listed at $25.99 at Amazon right now. And it’s LOUD. The manufacturer’s website claims the i-Microphone boosts the audio level “up to 12 dB louder” – and I believe them!

Check out the video I made (embedded in this post). For the first part of the video, I’m using the built-in iPhone mic. Then I plug in the i-Microphone … and you can suddenly hear me. There is a HUGE difference in levels. HUGE.

So – if you like to shoot videos (or record audio) with your iPhone (or pretty much any device that can use a headphone jack plugin for audio) – you might find the i-Microphone pretty darn useful.

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