video

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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