NASA'S VIDEO FROM MARS

Video from Mars - YouTube

Bitcoin at Mega, #104

From Hot Hardware, Kim Dotcom’s Mega Now Accepting Bitcoin, 3 Million Registered Users in 4 Weeks, by Ray Willington:

http://hothardware.com/News/im-Dotcoms-Mega-Now-Accepting-Bitcoin-3-Million-Registered-Users-in-4-Weeks/

Mega's website: https://mega.co.nz

Our music on iTunes: http://bit.ly/9uX8y

Follow us on twitter: http://twitter.com/Vatsek

Our YouTube videos: http://www.youtube.com/Vatsek

We are on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Waclaw-Koscielniak/100001592224566
Our favorite flickr photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25951201@N07/favorites/?view=md

Making Videos for YouTube, #89

I was asked by a friend to say a few words about video making for YouTube. Since I know a bit about it, here is my advice on that subject.

Steve,

     You can make some money making videos for YouTube, but not much. Getting lots of views takes plenty of work and dedication, almost a full time job.

First of all, you need to make videos on a regular basis, at least one per week. This takes lots of time depending on your subject. I see documentaries, commentaries, and funny stuff among other subjects. Everything funny is going to work on YouTube guaranteed.

Choosing the right subject is key, content of your video is going to determine if they become popular. Playing all kinds of instruments seems to work, singing works fine, making cover music videos with popular songs works very well.

Some people make video blogs, everyday or every other day. Usually it is something about them. Place a small point and shoot camera in front of their faces and talk about something. Some of those vlogs – video blogs, are fairly successful. Usually work better with younger people, not as good with older people.

Now technical issues. Actually the technical side of the video is not as important as some people think. Basically people watch them on their computers, the home networks are not very fast, so the larger the format, the bigger the file sizes, the worse it gets. Stick with 1280x720p format, 30fps or 60fps, stereo sound, but mono also works. Almost any camera that you can buy these days is good enough.

For vlogging a Canon point and shoot works just fine. I mount it on a monopod so it is easier to handle and can be quite sturdy if you place the monopod on the ground.

If you want to record at home with a DSLR camera, you definitely need a good video tripod. In addition, a good lighting is a must. Lights these days with color corrected bulbs are fairly cheap. If you need a white, green screen or some other color, those are also fairly cheap. You would need a small digital audio recorder with at least one or two microphones. The recorders are not expensive, the microphones can be somewhat expensive. A pair of good headphones is a must.

All editing can be done on iMac using Final Cut Pro. Learning Final Cut Pro can take some time, this is not a very easy piece of software to learn. A large external drive is needed to store all your movies. There is some basic effects software that comes with Final Cut. Additional software is available, prices vary a lot.

Open an account on YouTube, it is very important to use your own name rather than a made up name. People respond better that way. You need to be fairly active, respond to emails, watch and comment on other people’s videos. It is a very good hobby, but do not expect to make much money from it. If you have a regular job, you can only do something on weekends, it is going to be rather difficult.

Once your first video is on YouTube, let me know.

Thank you.

Regards,

Vatsek

Our music on iTunes: http://bit.ly/9uX8y

Follow us on twitter: http://twitter.com/Vatsek

Our YouTube videos: http://www.youtube.com/Vatsek

We are on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Waclaw-Koscielniak/100001592224566
Our favorite flickr photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25951201@N07/favorites/?view=md

#32, Editing Music Video

Downtown San Jose From A Distance, San Jose, California, April ‘08, artistic view.

I hope by now I have enough tape for a short music video. The weather was very nice to shoot in the early evening outside of northern part of San Jose. Last year, in about the same place, I shot one of my first videos in HDV format (1920x1080). Liked it a lot and decided to continue from then on with that format. It is less obvious if it was the best decision as far as YouTube goes, since those two black bars that show up on the top and bottom of a YouTube video window do take some important space away from the video. People who shoot for YouTube in a lower resolution, and worse quality, may actually have an advantage over those who shoot in HDV! But when you watch at home the HDV video that you made, plus the higher quality sound, you think of those other YouTube videos – "Forget It".
I wrote perhaps half of the music for the video, and have some ideas what to do with the other half. Tomorrow I will start working on the remaining part, one note at a time, my favorite way so far, although as I already mentioned previously, not the fastest one.

Breakfast: green vegetable salad with Italian dressing, ham and egg sandwiches, hash browns with Heinz ketchup, and iced tea with lemon.

#30, Sunny Day Released

Joy At Sunny Beach, Honolulu, Hawaii, September ‘07, artistic view.

After almost two days of editing, a Sunny Day video is released on YouTube. This is my very first iMovie ’08 video. Actually after an initial bad publicity, I delayed using iMovie ’08 for quite a while; now consider it to be entirely unwise. Lesson learned from "experienced" YouTube members who are quick to review and judge: forget about their opinions related to everything. The new version of iMovie is indeed easier to use than the old one.
Now back to the video. Spent about a week composing music for it, only two longer pieces and a short one for the closing scene. You may wonder why it takes so long, if you write music a note at a time, this is how long it takes. I did not use loops so far, not sure if I like the idea enough to try. Need to look around, read on the subject of composing, how others approach this subject. I do know that some people essentially hear the music, then sit down and "simply type it". I am far from that stage.
Shooting at the location is quite short, a matter of hours. Then editing, adding audio, and rearranging things around, takes quite a bit of time. I noticed that there is no easy way to find where the middle of the video is for the purpose of the middle image that YouTube uses. Is this true, or I have missed something so far?
Like more and more natural sounds that are recorded at locations. There is so much more going on around the scenes that are shot. Careful editing adds a new dimension to the final edited outcome. Next time I may try to shoot some scenes with a shotgun mike, and some with a broader pattern mike, and then compare those two methods together. Will I like the narrow pattern of the shotgun?
Lots of organic Oolong tea, and jasmine tea during editing, with some ascorbic acid added (that is vitamin C, if you wonder), not much more. A large green Granny Smith apple, sorry, almost forgot about it.

#29, Sunny Day Is Coming

Sumi-e Footprints, Oahu, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

It took me only a few minutes to decide where to go and what to shoot. A very sunny weather was a decisive factor. Why don’t I look at all places from Rainy Day – my last video, during a sunny day? So the Sunny Day video idea was born. Sunny but not hot and sticky, gorgeous you might say. Now I need to edit everything, add more music and we are going to be ready very soon.

Dinner: Way too much to eat, I am not going to go through a long list, way too many calories to burn.

#28, Rainy Day Released

Louis Italian Restaurant, San Francisco Municipal Wharf, San Francisco, California, September ‘07, artistic view.

Rainy Day has been released and received some audience. Coming from a break in making videos sets you inevitably back and your initial audience after the return is smaller than it used to be. This is understandable, a bit of cooling down occurred. Some people left YouTube, as well. However, the numbers of subscribers and friends have increased steadily even though I did not submit anything for a while. Now things are going to pick up again after this fourth release in a short time. The weather is sometimes rainy, sometimes shinny, I got some drizzle during the recording of the last video in San Francisco. Was not quite sure if I end up with something that may be difficult to watch, but that did not happen. Out of a 60 min tape, I managed to get over 6 min of good quality video and most important with a quality sound. Although there were scenes taken with raindrops on the camera lens, I could easily edit those out. And if a sound did not cooperate, a heavy and noisy truck drove by, for example, I substituted this with a good music composed by myself. Actually I spent over a week composing music for this video, and was able to use about ¾ of what was written. The remaining pieces somehow either require some more work or be placed in trash – simply not good enough.
Most of the viewing occurs in the first three days after your release according to YouTube Insight. Majority of viewers come from California, surprise, surprise, some from New York, and a smaller number from other states. Very little from Europe, Australia, or Asia.
Now going back several months ago, as you may recall, I was blocked by somebody from abroad, never learned about the real reason. Now I have been apparently unblocked, so I decided to subscribe again to that YouTube member. The very first thing that is evident is that the videos are now much better there. Will post more details on that subject as soon as something new develops. Yes, a mystery cloud still envelops that story!
Right now I am sitting and composing music for the next video, probably will not make for this weekend, because there is still lots of work to do. No subject for the video has been chosen yet.
Reading more about film scoring, actually I like the subject more and more. You should hear signs of that in my upcoming videos.

Dinner: Turnip strip buns with Spanish extra virgin olive oil (San Gallio), turmeric, curry powder, and cumin. Jasmine tea. Berkeley Farms Bulgarian cultured buttermilk. Roasted peanuts (unsalted). Raw baby carrots. A glass of Carlo Rossi’ white Rhine wine.

Books: Dave Hunter, Play Acoustic, The Complete Guide To Mastering Acoustic Guitar Styles, http://www.backbeatbooks.com, with 2 CDs, ISBN 0-87930-853-2.
Fred Karlin and Rayburn Wright, On The Track, A Guide to Contemporary Film Scoring, 2nd Ed., Routlege, Taylor & Francis Group, http://www.routlege.ny.com, ISBN 0-415-94136-9.
Enya, Amarantine, Piano, Vocal, Guitar, EMI Music Publishing, http://www.halleonard.com, ISBN 1-4234-1431-4.

#22, Sleepy Evening Again

Early Evening, Princeton-By-The-Sea, California, November ‘07, artistic view.

More rain, more sleepy weather again. It is raining on and off again, and the weather makes you very lethargic. Spent some time in front of a computer during the day watching YouTube videos, commenting on some, rating, and deleting everything else that I do not want to watch. I have been getting many videos like that recently. Some people send two, three, four, and even in one case, five identical emails with attached videos. Why do they do that? It only makes me mad, and I will not watch for sure if somebody is trying to force me!
Have you noticed that the number of mean and arrogant comments is way down on YouTube? Not sure if it is just me, since I did clean my account and many people got dropped, but things are overall much cleaner. Probably the initial, tumultuous stage belongs to the past and things are going to be more pleasant from now on. Let's hope so. Or, maybe I am just dreaming, the weather is indeed good for that.
Just a single case opposite to what I just told you. Someone called me a ****head after I pointed out to a girl singing Wuthering Heights that the song was originally sung by Kate Bush! I can handle that, I guess.
Nikkei is down 4% in Tokyo, let's see what NYSE does in NY in a few hours. Apple is down to 130 from 200 high not long time ago, a very major correction. Lots of house foreclosures in the San Francisco Bay Area, house prices are going down as well.
A quick trip to a bookstore to check if there are any new titles, also checking latest travel and photo magazines, kind of ritual.
Later in the evening, chicken and spinach crepes and coffee at IHOP http://www.ihop.com. Gas for my car, violin favorites CD playing inside. We can call it a day once I submit this blog, and finish a cup of green tea.

#2, Collaboration Video

5:00 PM Pacific Ocean Sunset, California, November '07, artistic view.

Just finished my first collaboration video with a YouTube member from abroad. I shot the video, and he is going to play a flute to come up with a nice background for it. Not sure how long it is going to take, we have to wait now. Actually, it was his idea, let us see how this works out. The video will be called Beach Birds. It comes from a small place near the Pacific Ocean; beach scenes, small and large birds, boats, green plants, dry tall grasses, and sunsets. In HDV 1920 x 1080 it looks pretty impressive, loses slightly when it is shrunk to fit the YouTube window. I am trying to figure out if there is any other encoding scheme that would produce much smaller number of artifacts when converted to YouTube flash format. Is spending another several hundred dollars on Adobe Flash software the only solution? Also we ran into issues with sending video files over 100MB in size, simple thing would appear, but gmail is choking on them, and so is Yahoo email. When going through YouTube, a conversion occurs, so you end up with a lower quality video at the start of collaboration. Very nasty!
But let us finish this blog on a more positive note. I am working on a music piece for my other Oahu video which I decided to call Beach Time. Just realized that both videos use a word beach in them, hope it is not too many times.
In the last two days, I listened to Alicia Keys' latest CD As I Am and watched Shakira's DVD Oral Fixation Tour. Both were bought on Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com. A new book being read is Hearing and Writing Music, 2nd ed., by Ron Gorow. That one also came through Amazon.com.

#1, Well, It's Time to Start Blogging

California Seagull, Half Moon Bay, California, November '07, artistic view.

Well, it is indeed a good time to start blogging. I will be posting here updates on my YouTube video related activity. Since there is no good room to handle that on YouTube, other than making videos about it, which is quite time consuming, I believe this might be a better place to add comments about things that are happening around me in relation to video making. There will not be here much of my private life, this may not interest many of you. If you find my videos interesting, maybe you can stop by and read this blog, and respond or comment. How often do you expect to see new blogs? Let us see. I try to make my YouTube videos at a pace of roughly one per week, but sometimes this slips to one per two weeks, if I am busy and working on something else or traveling, for example. Since posting blogs is way faster than dealing with the videos, I hope to be at least twice as active with blogs than with my videos. Essentially twice a week, sounds about right. Or, maybe even more often! Will see how this works.