Vista Squad Talk: ADO.NET Entity Framework By Ian Smith On ExposureRoom

Talk given at the May 2008 meeting of the Vista Squad user group in London in the UK.

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All Production Elements: Ian Smith Rating: 0.00

Tags: ADO.NET Vista

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Vista Squad Tentative Video Intro Title Sequence

Silverlight UK User Group: Writing Apps with Blend and VS2008

Silverlight UK User Group: Silverlight Is Not An Island

I was watching this video and had a few comments.

1. I think you need to crush the blacks (levels) on your video, it would look 10 times better.

2. I think 58 minutes is way too long. This particular kind of video is a great candidate for chapters. We'll be introducing Albums and Portfolios soon and so I think if you break this video into chapters you can put all the chapters into one album.

I'm assuming you're driving people from your group/site to these videos and so I think they'll all prefer to be able to skip to various chapters of interest rather than having to sit through the whole thing? Just a thought.

The audio is good so that's a big change from videos of this type you normally see. I see you were using a radio mic for this. Glad you see the importance of good audio!

I completely agree with you. To be honest, I am beginning to think this is probably the worst use of the medium there is but it does give the chance for those who those who miss a meeting to get a feel for what they missed. Of the four talks I've captured to date I think this particular video is the worst (a) because there were no Powerpoint slides for me to inject directly into the video and the demo on a hi-res but weakly projected screen is hard to follow (b) I didn't have time to set up white balance etc. We walked into the room and the the talk started almost immediately so it was a case of "hit the record button running".

The exposure on this one was a real mess because of moving from the presenter to a projected screen (over-exposed) and also playing "chase the mouse pointer" when you don't know where the speaker is going to go. Later videos have got better but for this to really work presenters need to have Camtasia Studio installed so that video is captured direct from a laptop, not from a projected screen.

I need to look into the whole "crush the blacks" thing in Sony Vegas Pro - I'm new to video editing so still learning.

When I saw this video I realised two things (1) I need to just leave the camera static on the screen (boring, but at least avoids the "guess where the presenter's going to move the mouse and get it wrong" problems) and since it's HD if I have time I could always use track motion to zoom in on stuff that's otherwise inreasonable. (2) I need to manually adjust the exposure as I move from the speaker to the projected screen and back again. My most recent videos (two talks taken at the meeting after this one).

Yes, I cottoned on to the audio problem very early on and decided that HAD to take preference, especially given the fact the picture environment (dark room for projecting) is often way out of my control.

I still think in some ways the whole idea of videoing hour long presentations like this without the use of tools like Camtasia Studio and more control of the environment is on a hiding to nothing, but it's at least getting me more experience of editing video. I bought the camera primarily to produce a weekly review show and have found that my hardware just isn't up to the job of getting the sort of quality I want (lots of tracks, overlays etc which mean that I can hit 'go back one frame' and wait 5 minutes for something to happen) and can't afford new hardware at the moment.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Ian

Wow Ian, you've really analyzed this thoroughly. Yes Camtasia captures for the computer screen stuff along with your video of the presenter will make this sort of video very compelling.

If you keep the presenter further away from the projection/screen you can light her up better while still having enough darkness around the screen for people to see the projection. This is how they do it in larger presentations where it's important to see the presenter as well.

The real problem here is that presenters already have enough to deal with and "the video guy" will just be seen as an extra irritation to deal with on the day. One thing I can't do is try and insist on a whole bunch of other stuff (like "can you install the demo version of Camtasia and just hit the Record button when you start?" or "Can you keep back from the screen?") as that would just scare people off presenting.

At one meeting (a different user group) the presenter refused point blank to wear a microphone - video was just an annoyance and he wasn't going to inconvenience himself with this nonsense. You can imagine what a nightmare trying to do anything with that video was. I started trying to subtitle it but after 3 hours trying to pick up what he was saying gave up.

When my 500MB limit has returned I'll try uploading the next video (taken after this one a couple of weeks ago) and you can let me know if you think I learnt from this one and corrected some of the mistakes. I had a Powerpoint deck for that one which made it somewhat easier.

Yes, I cam just imagine how you have to be prepared to deal with and handle this kinf of. Very unlinke a planned shoot.

>When my 500MB limit has returned

I don't follow the above, but sure I'll watch your next video too. But seeing the way you've analyzed all this, I'm pretty sure you done what you can (all things considered) to improve.

So are you a techie? Are you just one of the members of this user group or have you been hired to do this for them?

I'm a techie. Been in computer software for more years than I want to remember, specialising in Microsoft web technologies (as a developer) for the last 10+ years.

I bought the Sony PMW-EX1 in January because I wanted to get into web video, specifically the antithesis of YouTube - high definition and with a tapeless workflow, although really the PMW-EX1 was way beyond my budget, especially when I added in the ReflecMedia chromakey system, some pro lighting, decent mics and tripod etc. I'd intended launching a couple of projects, based on seeing what pop17.com and indymogul.com were able to achieve - but of course those shows are typically produced during a work day rather than in spare time, and have several people available to help. I was kinda naive about the whole thing, not least how bad I am at learning facts or being on camera.

Alas, the learning curve has been far higher than I expected, not just with regard to the camera itself, but also the NLE (Sony Vegas Pro 8.0 which I've grown to love), the use of green screen and lighting that makes it work, the difficulties of being presenter, scriptwriter AND cameraman when you're not "a natural" at most of those things and last but most definitely not least the problems with getting video onto the web (not just endless problems with software like Sorenson Squeeze not rendering stuff out properly but then the inability to upload or get server-side compression to work with my video files).

I have wasted far too many weekends trying to get a short show that needed to be available on a Sunday evening each week done in a timely fashion, only to find that rendering and upload issues meant that there was no way I could do this sort of thing to the standard and quality I'd like on a regular basis. Each week I'd "nearly" get there and then have to throw it away and start on the next week's show because the material was out-of-date. Very frustrating!

I feel web video is still early days and probably too cutting edge if you want something better than bad, blurry, rambling YouTube videos (especially for PC rather than Mac users) When a 10 minute video takes a few hours to render (if Windows Vista doesn't blue screen just as it's about to finish!) only to then take several hours to upload, a few hours more sat in a queue on a video hoster's server waiting to be processed, and then take several hours to be recompressed (often only to "fail" with no real suggestions other than "try again") well it's hard to remain enthused about the possibilities, although I'm constantly impressed by what other folks are able to achieve (favourites include pop17.com, indymogul.com, spill.tv and neo-fight.tv)

I need to win the lottery so that I can move over to Mac for more stability and better hardware for a better NLE experience when working with HD. I won't buy Adobe because I don't like their upgrade policies and the hoops I seem to have to jump through every time there's a new release of their Design products (Photoshop et al) just to get the software I've paid for to activate properly. I love Sony Vegas but so few of the main plug-ins seem to be available for it and the user count is so low that when you hit problems there aren't enough folk around to help, so am thinking I need to make a change, probably to Final Cut Pro (although I'm dreading having to move from the PCs I know and use very day at work to the 'all flash and little substance' Apples!)

Since I have the basic gear, I'm trying to get involved with doing video for several user groups just for fun as I'm likely to be there anyway and I think there's demand (there are many such user groups here in London but limites on affordable venues for free activities mean people often have to be turned away) Filing user groups helps with the learning curve a little while I save up for the hardware I need to get my own projects off the ground. But alas, putting together such long videos does take away from the limited time I have to get on with my personal projects which I'd like to launch before everybody starts doing it!

So far this year I've been on a "Television Presenter's course" (I'm used to talking in front of groups of people but for some reason when it's just me and a camera I suddenly become very wooden) which was the best fun I've had in a long time and a "Single Documentary Filmmaker's course" which I felt was a very poor rip-off. So I'm having fun learning lots of new stuff, but don't seem to be getting any nearer to my goal of having regular, quality video podcasts produced to a standard I'm happy with and a frequency I'm happy with.

So how about you Shiv? What's your background? And what's the story behind ExposureRoom and who/why it was set up?

Hi Ian,
Sorry for the delay in responding. I read half of your reply after being notified by email and then got diverted and then completely forgot.

Interesting story you’ve got there. A lot of people get wooden in front of a camera. It takes a bit of practice emoting to a lens. People give you feedback using facial expressions, body movement etc. while the lens kind of just stares.

If the user group stuff doesn’t pan out to be a regular thing, you could do other stuff can’t you. I find shooting almost relaxing in a way. It takes my mind off the regular issues. Probably because I still have to do a lot of things very consciously and thoughtfully.

I’m qualified as an electronics engineer but have been in the software field for about 10 years now. A hardcore techie. I’ve been programming for the Windows platform all along. Not using Microsoft technologies until a few years ago (since .NET was introduced). I’m a systems architect and build core system frameworks as well.

I got involved in the video thing about 10 months ago. I bought a Canon XHA1 to make marketing videos for our business (We have software products and services for the New Home Builder industry). I spent a lot of time getting to grips with the camera, editing software and accessories and such and found that all this information is scattered all over the place. I’d find links to articles and videos that no longer worked.

I also found that there are a lot of people with some incredible talent that didn’t really have a platform to sell their talent. And so that was the germ that started ExposureRoom. I wanted a site that caters to the experienced as well as to the newbie. I wanted a site that captures and indexes every possible piece of information on an asset so people can find them years later and a site that provides this talent with a platform. Over a few months we worked out the high level features of the system. Everything that I saw was wrong with what’s out there had to be fixed here and everything that was good out there had to be better.

The next step was to allocate a dedicated team of 8 people (including myself) to build the system over a period of 4 months, working day and night and weekends. We went into public beta in March this year and have grown the team that’s dedicated to ExposureRoom to 10 with 5 more that we use as and when required. And here we are 4 months later with over a 1000 members.

Hi Shiv,

Thanks for taking the trouble to reply. It's very interesting to read the background to TheExposureRoom.

I haven't had the problems with bad links that you have but must admit that my wallet is suffering badly from an addiction to the stuff at digitaljuice.com - it's scary how what seem ridiculously cheap bargains which change every day can soon mount up to a lot of serious cash (not to mention lost shelf space). Need to concentrate more on film-making and less on buying eye candy!

If you haven't seen the digital juice site yet they're well worth visiting, if only because they have some excellent video training material that's free under the "DJTV" button.

Ian

Ian,

Yes, I a lot of stuf on their site. I've not bought anything from them. But I do like their tutorial/training videos and we'll have that kind of thing on XR soon (in our channels area).

Vista Squad Talk: ADO.NET Entity Framework

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