This chapter will be dedicated to creating and editing videos for our course, from grabbing excerpts of video DVDs and making screencasts that record our screen actions to proper video editing and stop motion animation or even broadcasting an online TV. We will also learn how to download videos from online video sharing services and convert these to other formats.
In this chapter we will cover the following topics:
- Using a set of software tools for common procedures in video creation, editing, and broadcasting
- Publishing and downloading videos from online video sharing services
- Converting a video format into several others and vice versa
- Integrating video in Moodle
Wikimedia Commons and the Internet Archive (for example, http://www.archive.org/details/moviesandfilms) are usually a safe option for downloading and using videos in our video projects. Although these are very useful, they are not the only services available; we can find many others with particular interest to teachers and trainers. YouTube (http://www.youtube.com) is well known and has lots of useful stuff, but there are many others.
However, before we check reference websites where we can find interesting videos and embed them in our courses, let's first have a look at the basics of video formats.
With video, things start to get complicated concerning formats. Rates, bitrates, codecs, formats, sizes, frame rates, and on top of this, all the audio varieties can overwhelm us. We should know some of these formats:
- AVI with Xvid or DivX: AVI is a common video format using the Xvid or DivX codecs, giving a good quality/file size for movies converted from DVDs.
- MPEG-2: MPEG-2 is a DVD video format. If we explore a DVD filesystem, it contains VOB files, which are containers of video, audio, subtitles, and menus in this format.
- MPEG-4: MPEG-4 is now a common format for online video used by YouTube.
- MOV: MOVE is an Apple multimedia file format. It also contains videos, along with other information such as subtitles.
- OGG: OCG is an open source format that is worth checking.
- WMV: Windows Media Video is a format developed by Microsoft with a good quality-to-size ratio. It can be edited and exported easily in Windows operating systems and uploaded to online video sharing services.
Remember that audio is a very important part of video and sometimes, when we use cheap cameras, we can have a good video and bad audio quality. We can solve this by either buying a proper digital camcorder or capturing the audio separately and mixing it with the video later on, with video editing software.
Webcams, mobile phones, and digital cameras use a certain video resolution (and also formats but that is another story) that reflects the size of the video in pixels (160 x 120, 320 x 240, 640 x 480, 720 x 576, and so on); so keep in mind that for screen playback, a size of 640 x 480 or above is the best. Whenever possible choose this one, as it will also work well with online video services if you want to share it. Now let's see where to find some nice videos for our Moodle courses.
On Instructables (http://www.instructables.com), we can find and share short tutorial videos on how to do things, from cooking to art and from origami to robots.
TED Talks (http://www.ted.com/talks) are short, usually 20-minute conferences, by thinkers and doers from around the world, such as scientists, philanthropists, artists, philosophers, and many others. The TED Talks motto is Ideas worth spreading.
Vimeo (https://vimeo.com) is an online video sharing service created by filmmakers that has many interesting videos with a focus on image quality.
TrueTube (http://www.truetube.co.uk) is a place for debating social issues, such as culture, ethics, environment, society or economy. The main idea is to have young people discussing and posting their videos and views. It also makes lesson plans on these themes available.
On Academic Earth (http://academicearth.org), we can find many lectures from top scholars around the world, including those from the Khan Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org).
