Video and audio techniques
Explanations and tutorials on technical concepts related to video and audio. How to avoid blurry movies, remove the background, reduce shaky footage, improve sound, and how to reduce background noise, etc..
« Previous ArticlesNaturalReader: voice-over software that does the talking for you
You don’t like your own voice on recordings, yet you cannot afford or have no time to hire a professional voice-over? Here is wonderful software that almost gets it right: NaturalReader. This software turns text into speech with voices that are way more sophisticated then any speech software of your Operating system. It is available [...]
How to encode a video simultaneously for web, iPhone, iPad, iPod & other handheld devices using HandBrake
You want to ensure that everyone, or at least most people can watch your video? Then you have to create a video that works on the web and mobile devices such as iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and other handheld devices. This is not evident and you may count on it that being compatible with these [...]
How to switch from low resolution video to HD automatically – part 1
In this article, I’ll show you how to switch automatically from a low resolution video to HD video on your site. Standard, the low resolution version will play and when the visitor hits the full screen button, the HD video takes over. HD switching can work on any site, whether it is a WordPress, Joomla, [...]
How to improve quality of video tutorials on YouTube
When you upload a 800×600 screen capture video tutorial to YouTube, the quality deteriorates so badly that texts in the video are hardly readable. The reason is that YouTube regards everything smaller then HD video as a free license to shrink the video to a resolution of 480 pixels wide. Viewing it full screen doesn’t [...]
Converting video to streaming MP4 for S3 Amazon with AVS Video Converter
Some video converters do not get it right when converting video to MP4 to stream on S3 Amazon/CloudFront. Especially the cheaper converters like AVS Video Converter for Windows tend to have problems. Luckily, there is a trick to fix this problem. Here you find a video tutorial on how to get the correct settings from [...]
The do’s and don’ts of the autostart feature
Autostart is an attribute of embedding code to determine if rich media should start to play automatically when a page is loaded. There is a bit of confusion about when to use this feature, so I’ve thrown a couple of scenarios on a heap to explain best practices. When is autostart a bad idea? Generally, [...]
Joomla: How to serve videos based on subscription type
Here we discuss a free Joomla plugin to serve content on your site, depending on a subscription plan. For those not familiar with Joomla, you can register new users and give them a Joomla group status, like Registered, Author, Editor, Manager, etc… just as you would in WordPress. Depending on that status, a user can [...]
TimedText and how to use it
TimedText is a convention to place subtitles in videos without actually embed them in the video itself. This has huge advantages over embedded (hardcoded) subtitles because you can use the same video while using different languages, depending where you show it. TimedText can be used in two ways: Closed Captions or Open Captions. Closed [...]
How to use screenshots for poster images
Creating a custom poster image for video and audio is quite simple. In the video tutorials below I show you how to capture part of the screen and turn it into a poster image. We also add text to the poster image to make it more clear what the video or audio is about, but [...]
How to do an interview on Skype with PrettyMay
PrettyMay is a call recorder for Skype and in this article we show with video tutorials you how to configure the basic audio settings of PrettyMay and then we do an interview with Skype. First from Skype to landline phone, then from Skype to Skype. You will notice a considerable difference in quality on the [...]
Review of a video presentation
This is not the first time I show a video from MissK, and the reason is that she is a natural performer. Let’s have a look at this video and see what is good and what is bad: Now you have seen the video, let’s review what we have seen here: The good points: MissK [...]
Recording a video interview with Skype
Sounds absolutely fantastic, recording video with Skype, isn’t it? Well, it is sort of hard to believe, even with the latest version of Skype, optimized for video and with video recording software like Call recorder for Mac or SuperTintin for PC. After installing the latest version of Skype on PC (there is no new version [...]
Recording audio interviews with Skype
For those who do not know Skype, it is an application somewhat comparable with Yahoo Messenger or MSN. You can talk with friends or business associates by using a headset (headphones with build-in microphone). It is a free service and the quality of the sound is much better then telephone. But Skype goes a step [...]
YouTube doubled the size for uploads
YouTube announces that as from today, the upload for standard videos doubles from 1GB to 2GB, making it possible to upload bigger videos at higher resolutions. New features In addition, the YouTube team’s implemented new features to make it easier to show your HD videos on your site or blog by appending &hd=1 at the [...]
VidLogo contest changed
Since so far nobody reacted to the contest on the Vidlogo watermark contest, we changed the rules. Apparently, nobody was interested or we demanded too much. Anyway, we drop the idea that you have to submit a video. Instead, we ask you to test the watermarking application and give a comment about the application on: [...]
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