Two days remain to log your votes for Varsity845's Smashmouth Awards

I can't get enough of Varsity845's Smashmouth Awards. Please, if you haven't seen it yet, head on over and cast your vote for your favorite plays while watching some pretty entertaining video (if you like football, of course).

I know I gave this pretty high praise during the weekly online editors call on Monday, but for those outside this blog's primary audience who do not attend that call, please allow me to share with you what I sent to Jennifer Saba, Shawn Moynihan and company at Editor & Publisher earlier today to create some more industry awareness around this extension of Varisty845:

The folks at our Hudson Valley Media Group in Middletown, NY, have put together a pretty compelling feature that is the next generation of their award-winning Varsity845 product. It's very entertaining to watch the clips, and the voting element, of course, is a great way to engage the audience and truly involve them in the event.

Even better from an operational point of view was at the project's base was a library of video clips we already had, leveraging the season-long hard work that went into capturing as much video footage as they did of area football games throughout the fall.

In the first week, it generated nearly 30,000 page views, which I always use as my monthly baramoter of whether a project was worth doing. I think the audience has shown us this one was worth the effort.

UPDATE: Thanks, Jennifer Saba, for the pickup and the praise.

YouTube melds in some Google Analytics to beef up video stats

YouTube recently announced on its blog that it was rolling out more robust analytics reporting (thanks to paidContent for surfacing the post, given that I hadn't subscribed to the YouTube blog... that will change today).

I haven't posted any videos to my personal account in almost a year, so those of you with more recent videos will have to report back what you think.

So far, the stats must be viewed for each individual video:

As for now, you can find currently available metrics by clicking under the "About this Video" button under "My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos."

It took me three tries to figure out that instruction. Here's a screenshot that I hope will help you fumble around less than I did (e-mail recipients will likely have to go to the blog to see the image):


Who knew that my kids and their friends having a pillow fight at a reunion last spring would be most popular in Germany?

Tiny tripod

Ewan's Video Recorder - Yes it is a phone
Originally uploaded by CC Chapman

Maybe I'm late to this party, but as I was perusing C.C. Chapman's SXSW 2008 photos, one in particular caught my eye: A Nokia N95 being held by a tripod.

The phone I covet has a tripod to match? Color me even greener with envy!

Here's a video that shows how easy it is to operate, and how the clamp can fit on any other tripod in your arsenal:



Or you can make your own, such as YouTube user stretch138:



(These embedded videos may not make it into the e-mail to the Ottaway Online Editors listserv when this items gets posted to the blog, so if not, click through to the blog itself.

That got me poking around the Internet some more, where I discovered that Flip Video -- which I know at least the Pocono Record is using -- sells a handy portable tripod, too.

San Joaquin and Hudson Valley multimedia projects praised

Our San Joaquin and Hudson Valley staffs have received some accolades of late. If you haven't seen the projects that these clippings tout, set aside some time to check them out. They are riveting examples of the great storytelling we can accomplish by combining the strengths of the online medium with the outstanding reporting and writing skills within our newsrooms.

• San Joaquin: "And a song shall carry them home: The journey of the Brothers Fermin"
• Hudson Valley: "Lebrew Jones and the Death of Micki Hall"

Don't just take my word for it. People more eloquent than I had this to say about the projects:

• San Joaquin
  
  • Pauline's Picks via Editor & Publisher:
    "This is a piece where the multimedia elements are needed in order to best tell the story. True, it could have been done purely in print, but the photos and videos give the story depth and a much better idea of what the brothers' trip is like, not to mention the beauty of southern Mexico."
  • Cyberjournalist.net:
    "Note The Record’s excellent online slogan, 'News worth sharing online.'"
• Hudson Valley
  
  • Pauline's Picks:
    "The project feels like a real-life episode of Law & Order.... The case has so many movable parts that the only way to really understand it is online, where you can see the taped confessions, the interviews with Hall's family, not to mention some of the graphic crime seen photos. So settle in and prepare to see a fascinating story."
  • Al's Morning Meeting via Poynter:
    "This is not just excellent journalism; it is a great example of how online interactive storytelling can make a story stronger, clearer, deeper and more memorable. Bravo."
  • Jon Marshall's News Gems via SPJ:
    "[Christine] Young employs a narrative style to humanize Hall and Jones and present the troubling facts of the case. The tremendous multi-media package, produced by John Pertel, comes with videos that accompany each story segment along with a timeline of the case, crime scene map, links to the case files and a 'where are they now' of the key players.
  • Advancing the Story:
    "Pertel and Young are... comfortable constructing stories with narration and on-camera segments, so the pieces are easy to watch and understand...."

YouTubeHD?

An update from Gizmodo for those who are hoping the YouTube video quality might improve: What YouTubeHD Might Look Like.

As indicated in the post, the stream is choppy (understatement), but it's nice to see that there's work afoot and potential quality improvement on the horizon.

Brand Your YouTube Page

As more of you use YouTube for video distribution and promotion, I wanted to suggest that you switch your accounts from the default YouTuber to Director. This FREE change in what YouTube refers to as Channel Type will allow you to add custom items and logos on your Profile page. Basically it allows you to make your YouTube homepage consistent with your overall branding.

To make this switch, simply sign into YouTube and then go to the "Channel Info" section (http://www.youtube.com/my_profile) of your account and click on the "change channel type" link.

Don’t forget to press the Update Channel button before navigating away from the page otherwise your change won’t be registered.

Make sure that you have given your channel a title and description. This information is entered in the Channel Info page. Your description can be something as simple as RCA Record’s:

The latest videos from RCA Records!

If you want to promote all your products you can provide a description similar to that of the Universal Music Group:

Universal Music Group (UMG) Music Video Channel.

Universal Music Group consists of record labels Decca Music Group, Deutsche Grammophon, Interscope Geffen A&M Records, Geffen Records, Island Def Jam Music Group, Lost Highway Records, MCA Nashville, Mercury Nashville, Mercury Records, Philips, Polydor Records, Universal Music Latino, Universal Motown Records Group, Universal South Records and Verve Music Group as well as a multitude of record labels owned or distributed by its record company subsidiaries around the world.

This is also where you can include a link to your homepage or other portions of your site or even contest or event. For example if you visit the NBA’s YouTube page, you’ll see that they are currently looking for people to vote for the Fan Plays of the Year.

Channel Design allows you to customize the look and feel of your homepage in addition to delete or add the types of content visitors will see. At the very least, I would encourage all of you to upload your logos, make the color scheme visually consistent with your own sites and remove content options that might just clutter your page.

To get some ideas of how other sites are customizing their pages, check out some of these links.

You could even do something like what Al Jazeera English did on their page, and get the most out of your background image.

Once you’re done designing your YouTube page, don’t forget to upload your videos and for that I encourage you all to use HeySpread since it will post to YouTube and 15 other video sharing sites. For more on that, see my previous posts here and here.

If you have any question or comments please don’t hesitate to reach out to me and once you’ve completed your page, please share it with everyone.

Another Thought on YouTube

With all the talk last week about YouTube, copyright, credibility and impact I thought it was interesting to look at how UC Berkeley was treating the site.

For those of you familiar with the University, you likely already know that it has long embraced the web, since last year it has offered podcasts of its lectures on iTunes and earlier this month it went a step further and started publishing lectures on YouTube.

At http://youtube.com/ucberkeley, you’ll find a heavily customized page that takes advantage of the functionality that comes with a “Directors Account” -- including custom items and logos. Videos on their page include tours of campus, full lectures and interviews with staff. Currently the topics of study featured include chemistry, physics and biology.

The university explained its decision to post to YouTube this way.

"UC Berkeley on YouTube will provide a public window into university life, academics, events and athletics, which will build on our rich tradition of open educational content for the larger community," said Christina Maslach, UC Berkeley's vice provost for undergraduate education in a statement.

I don’t know how they are gauging success, but these are their posted YouTube stats:

Subscribers: 4,580
Channel Views: 340,889 (the channel seems to have gone live in May)

Now obviously we’re not running colleges or universities, but I think some of that “public window” that Maslach spoke of above rings true for what we do as well.

More then anything else, I hope seeing the way UC Berkeley, the various Presidential candidates or CBS.com are turning to YouTube and using it will help you all work through some of your concerns about incorporating the site into your overall strategy.

Animoto - Remix

So Animoto let me remix the photos, select some as "featured," choose a new starting point in the music, or replace the music entirely. Now it's not as fulyl featured as I might like, but for those just wanting a quick way to create a video-like experience with only photos and a soundtrack -- and the ability to plug it into Blogger, Facebook and other places -- this is not a bad way to go.

Test drive of Animoto

Trying out Animoto (www.animoto.com), a site that allows you to upload photos -- or pull them from Flickr or other apps -- choose some music, and voila... instant video! On this first one, I didn't see anywhere to play with the pacings or transitions. Will go back in to read the directions more carefully now....

CapeCast IS on YouTube

Shows what I know! Greg was kind enough to point me in the right direction toward CapeCast on YouTube.

PAULINE'S PICKS: Cape Cast Keeps Cape Codders Informed

Congrats to the Cape team for the recognition they received yesterday from Pauline Millard at E&P, who highlighted CapeCast as one of her "picks."

By the way, if you haven't seen Eric Williams' "Hey, Potential Buyer" yet, you're missing out.

Hey, Cape Cod, when are you going to make the daily push of that feature to your YouTube account? No pressure, of course....

Just How Far Can a Video Go?

As a follow-up to my recent post on the video “sneezing” site Hey!Spread, I wanted to share with everyone the results from just one site.

I uploaded two videos, the “How Not to Break a Baseball Bat” video from Southcoast and latest of the “Golf Course” videos from Pocono and after barely four days on MetaCafe, the baseball bat video has been viewed nearly 300 times and the golf course video about 2,000 times.

Across all the sites that Hey!Spread distributed to, the Baseball Bat video was viewed nearly 600 times and the Golf Course video 2,500 times. And all I had to do was upload the videos just once.

So if you haven’t already, check out Hey!Spread. And, if you have the time, explore the sites it distributes to as they each have their own features, some of which you might find valuable. For example, Blip.TV has its own distribution effort that will further the reach of your videos (they’ll even post to your twitter stream when you’ve posted a new video).

Have fun and if you have any questions or thoughts, give me a shout.

A Video Site That's Nothing to Sneeze At

Ok, so I know you’ve all been hearing about the importance of video and how you should try to post your videos to sites such as YouTube and/or Myspace. I also know that your time is limited, that you have many, many competing demands, so I was excited when I learned that the first video “sneezer” site had been created.

Hey!Spread takes your video and distributes or “sneezes” it to 10 popular video-sharing sites including: YouTube, MySpace, Google Videos, Yahoo Videos, Dailymotion, Blip.tv, Photobucket, Metacafe, Bolt and Putfile – as long as you have registered with each of them (they’re free). While Hey!Spread isn’t pretty, using it is easy.

You complete a simple form including your video’s:

• Title – This should not necessarily be the headline, while that sells the story (if the video was with a story), it may not do a great job selling the video itself.
• Description - Remember to include your site address in the description as a place where people can go for additional information. I found that many video-sharing sites will make links in descriptions active.
• Tags – This is completely up to you and while not all the sites use the tags, most of the larger ones do, so give this some real thought. You might even want to find a similarly themed popular video and see what tags it has.
• Categories – Their category list is pretty basic, so look for the best fit.

You then point to your video file (I found that many of the sites do not accept the flash format, so stick to the unprocessed formats) and move to the next screen.

Hey!Spread then has you enter your usernames and passwords for the video sites (you only have to do this once) and then it takes over. Depending on your connection speed, it might take a minute or two to upload your video. Hey!Spread will send you an email listing all the links once the video is posted. If your video was rejected or there was a specific problem, they will note it there as well.

I tested the service with a couple of files (which is how I learned about the flash format issue) and was pleasantly surprised. Files upload and were “sneezed” pretty fast. And in the time that it took me to visit each of the links the video was already being watched and commented upon.

Some of the sites Hey!Spread reaches will allow you to add additional information about your video, but visiting each site kind of cancels the idea of the “sneeze.”

Make sure that when you do register for theses video-sharing sites to make your sites’s own profile robust – include a photo, your web address and some fun details.

So give Hey!Spread a shot and let me know how it works for you. I think one site that gets our videos out to 10 can only be a good thing, so try to include it in your workflow.

Any questions, give me a shout.

Time-saving software

While teaching a photo gallery/video production session at the Cape Cod Times yesterday, I mentioned a few pieces of software I've collected in my arsenal over the years that I have found to be great time-savers for a multitude of Web production tasks. So now sharing with a broader group (and so Gene can share the list with the class participants):

• NoteTab Light
  Text editor on steroids. Has an invaluable Pasteboard feature that allows the user to collect a series of CTRL-C/copy commands in a single document for handy pasting later. Best of all, it's freeware.
• Picassa
  Picture organizer from Google. Has some basic editing features (cropping, toning, etc.), but best of all for our purpises is it's Web-page creation capabilities that will batch resize photos -- which eventually leads to a much faster upload process for Saxotech photo galleries. I'll post a how-to on the DevCenter soon. This software is also free.
  
• VideoZilla
  Video converter that can aid the encoding of Flash video for use in Saxotech sites. Got an old Quicktime or Windows Media file that you want to put into your new Saxotech-enabled video player? This program worked great for me when I tried it on some old Southcoast Safety at Sea special report videos to ready them for the new site launch. My favorite feature? It installs an option whereby in Windows Explorer you can right-click on the video and start the conversion right from your computer's file and folder view. Again, how-to coming soon. It's not freeware, but at $29.95, how can you live without it?

Note: That Southcoast link is on their staging server, so you have to be on our network to view it... when the site launches next week, the special report will be more widely availabe here.

StuandMikey

Here is the car review video Fred was talking about yesterday: