Journalists' Toolkit

The new Video Resources page has been added to this site.

This is a carefully curated page with links to good tutorials for video editing software, video shooting tips, and the like. It’s intended for beginners, particularly journalism students and journalism educators who are teaching video in their classes.

Video shot with a still camera costing less than $300 is often better in quality than video shot with a video camera in the same price range.

For best results when shooting video with an inexpensive still camera, follow these tips:

1. Do NOT zoom. Ever. EVER! The quality for video on these cameras is only acceptable at the widest angle (not zoomed at all). This is true even though the zoom works great for your still photos.

2. Do NOT move the camera around while shooting. This will make your clips difficult to edit. VERY difficult. Stand completely still, like a rock, while you are recording video. Do not pan (camera moves left or right). Do not tilt (camera moves up or down).

3. Do NOT shoot inside an apartment or a house. They are almost always too dark! Some indoor settings are fine — for example, a brightly lighted classroom with the overhead fluorescent lights on.

4. DO pay attention to the light — not only the amount of light, but also the direction. If the light is BEHIND your subject, the person will be a dark blob in silhouette — and that’s not good!

5. Do NOT shoot in dark places. Video game rooms, pool rooms, bars and indoor performance venues are usually too dark for acceptable video with these cameras. A more expensive digital video camera ($600 and up) can often get decent video in low light, but most of these little cameras can’t compensate for darkness. (For exceptions to the rule, look for a camera with a bigger sensor size.)

6. Do NOT turn the camera into a portrait position (vertical) for video — EVER! Always hold it in landscape position (horizontal).

7. When shooting a video interview, DO stand VERY close to your subject. The microphone built into the camera is going to capture all the sound around you, and unless you are quite near the person who is speaking, the voice will be drowned out by surrounding noise.

More tips for shooting video: Five Shots, 10 Seconds.

Avoiding the shakes: How to hold the camera.

A new resource page here: Soundslides: A Brief Introduction.

It provides a simple overview of what Soundslides can do and how to get started with the application — which is widely used for creating simple audio slideshows for the Web.

At the bottom of the page you’ll find some helpful links.

You might also be interested in this site’s Soundslides Troubleshooting Guide, which covers the most common errors made by new users of Soundslides.

For journalism students just starting to learn video, I created two compact, illustrated handouts in fall 2010:

Basic iMovie 09 Tutorial — PDF, 9 pages, 1 MB

More iMovie 09 Tips (Part 2) — PDF, 6 pages, 552 KB

The reason I made two handouts instead of one:

In the first video editing class, I teach purely editing. I focus on how to trim, what to trim, and how to match the action. I talk a little about avoiding jump cuts. I explain how to export a high quality file.

In the second video editing class, I devote most of the time to how cutaways work and how to make them. Then I cover how to add audio, titles and credits. Adjustments to audio volume and detaching audio from video are also explained.

You can use these handouts under this Creative Commons license.

Apple’s how-to videos for iMovie 09 are here.

As an aid to a journalism training session I agreed to give, I created a short PowerPoint that is aimed at journalism students.

Windows Live Movie Maker Tutorial

Windows Live Movie Maker is quite different from its predecessor — Windows Movie Maker (not “live”). It is less versatile in several ways. To answer my own questions about WLMM, I did quite a lot of searching on the Web. To spare others the trouble and share the answers I found, I made a two-page PDF with links:

Windows Live Movie Maker Tips (PDF, 128 KB)

If you have any helpful WLMM links to suggest, please add a comment.

In honor of the brand-new Olympus VN-8100PC digital voice recorder (see it now at B&H), I made a new, very brief how-to page today:

Olympus digital audio recorders and your Mac

There are still some sadly uninformed people who claim Olympus recorders do not work with the Mac OS. They are wrong!

While I strongly recommend that you invest in the Zoom H2 recorder (see it now at B&H), if you’re on a tight budget, the newer* Olympus recorders are your next best option. I’ve been using a VN-5200PC for several years now. It’s with me pretty much all the time in my purse, and it’s none the worse for being bumped around.

* The ones that save WMA files and include a USB connection.