Friday, April 18, 2008

the Blogger's Video Camera

I thought I would share with you how easily I made that... um .... interesting video. My husband, director of online communications at a college, and community and political blogger, has a little video camera called the RCA Small Wonder. You can take videos with the small camera, and then using its onboard usb port, plug it right into your computer where it is already in .avi format and ready to upload directly to youtube, veoh or your blog. He purchased several of these cameras for the college he works at to easily publish videos of events and student projects on their blog and bought one for himself when the presidential candidates came through New Hampshire to post on a national political blog. Which is of course the one I used for my little video. I just screwed it on my tripod which I have for my regular camera, set it on high resolution with the little button on the side of the camera and shot the film.

The Small Wonder costs around $95 and can sometimes be seen on sale for cheaper. There are many other video cameras like this from other brands that are probably equally as good, so keep your eye out!

The hard part was uploading the video to the internet. I wanted to upload it to youtube then embed on my blog, but since I taped it at high resolution, the 4 minute video was a whopping 64 mb and you tube didn't seem to be making any progress. So I tried http://www.veoh.com/ because I heard that it can take larger videos more easily. It also had an upload progress bar so I knew that I was still uploading and my connection didn't freeze.

I'll have an update on taking out that portrait my daughter didn't want me to erase - soon!

5 comments:

Robyn Sinclair said...

Five Star entertainment, Nicole!

laurenkim said...

I was inspired to try colored pencil painting after seeing Nicole's work in Keene, NH. I had previously used pastels. I have a question about wax bloom. Any suggestions aside from spraying a fixative? I find it still comes through with many many layers. I'm using Prismacolors. Has anyone tried spraying a varnish?

Unknown said...

Thanks Robyn!

Hi Lauren! Oh gosh wax bloom is a HUGE pet peeve of mine. You can wipe it off and spray with fixative several times and it still will come back. I do varnish my pieces on board and it works just fine - with fixative underneath. I use Krylon Kamar Varnish (I get from the craft section at Walmart). What paper are you using?

laurenkim said...

Hi Nicole,
Thanks for your feedback! I am using the Pastelbord, which allows me to build up many layers, hence the problem with wax bloom. Your work inspired me to try this. I was very impressed with your paintings. They are beautiful! I will try the varnish.

Maureen said...

Nicole, thanks for the recommendation on the little video camera -- I didn't know there were such inexpensive vcams available (I guess Im not in the shopping loop, heh!) I would like to get one someday.

btw I love how your princess portrait came out even after your challenges with the erasure techniques. I hope your daughter is happy with it now. ;-D

have a great time on the cruise!