Trey's Birthday Vid in FlipShare and File Sharing

My brother-in-law and I spent all day working on my FlipCam video in Windows Movie Maker with no luck.  We could never get it to publish.  And if you can't publish, you can't upload to YouTube or anywhere or ever have a chance of burning a DVD.  So later... at the July 4th parade, I thought, since I was sitting amongst all my very devout family members, that I would pray.  So I did.  I actually prayed that I would be able to publish, and see!  It worked :).

So when we got home, I simply went back into the program that comes with my FlipCam called FlipShare.  I figured out how to trim clips multiple times and then save them under different file names.  This way, I can get all the good parts from every video clip.  I can even add one file of my own audio for background or foreground music/sound.  In this video, you can hear the classical selection playing in the background.  So I guess if I wanted more than one song, I would have to combine the songs into a single audio file, maybe in Audacity.

Unlike my video production software at home called Vegas, which is extremely complicated and perhaps made for film majors?  This FlipShare software is more accessible for stay at home moms and kids who want to do something quickly!  You won't have all the bells and whistles that Vegas does, but it's a good starting point for my students.  They won't be bogged down by so many options and get bored and frustrated by the process. 

Interestingly, it took 4 hours to upload to YouTube which I felt was excessive.  And then the quality of YouTube isn't that great.  We'll see how it turns out (if it does) in Blogger.

Another thing I learned about during this process was file sharing.  So since the router Ry and I hooked up creates a network, we had to use that to copy files from my computer to his.  Basically, I had to login to the main server so that he could see my computer.  Then I had to copy files to the Public folder so that he could see them and work with them on his computer.  We had to do it this way because the video files were so big, and I only had a 1-gigabyte thumb drive.  But I think I need to make a trip to Best Buy to remedy that problem!

Podbean

I have been working all day figuring out how to allow people to get podcasts from my Blogger blog...sad to say, unsuccessfully.  If I knew one person in my life who podcasted, I would have called them by now. 

So I went to Podbean.com and started playing with that and have had some success.  For instance, if you copy this link, http://eldemmert.podbean.com/feed, and go to iTunes, you can subscribe to my podcasts under the Advanced tab in iTunes.  Now, remember, right now, I am merely experimenting and have very boring and silly podcasts with the kids, but at some point I will say, "Hey, Jessika and Becky, the only two people who care, here are some podcasts worth your time!"  So be ready.

I am currently dug in to my room right now working, but I can hear Trey out there calling for his cousin, "Amille, Amille, Amille!"  Her name's Camille, Trey.

Trey's Prayer

This started out as an Audacity file which I exported as an MP3 and then made into a short video file in Windows Movie Maker.  Then I uploaded it to YouTube, copied the embed code and pasted it into the HTML editor here.  Sounds fancy to some of you, but it's actually easy.

So basically I want to learn how to use Audacity which is a free audio recording program.  There are many things my students can do with this.  We can create podcasts in journalism class, for one.  Students can also create PPTs or other media and add their own voice to it.  We can't afford Adobe Presenter, so Audacity is it.  But I'm finding that Audacity is easy to use.  My middle schoolers will probably be teaching me all about its features soon. 

Basically, what I'm learning I have to do to post audio to my blog is I either have to store my audio in a host server (I can't quite figure that out yet) or turn my audio into another kind of media file like this "movie" which I can embed.

I bought an MP3 recorder at Best Buy the other day, but I don't really know if I will need that now.  I haven't opened it, so we'll see.  I have some time to think about it.  If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.

So to get back to Audacity...I first uploaded their newest BETA version but couldn't install the LAME plug-in with that which allows you to export the recorded files that you are producing into MP3.  So I went back to Audacity's download site and just uploaded the regular version of Audacity, installed the LAME plug-in and voila: I turned Trey's prayer into an MP3.

By the way, this was my first try at using Windows Media Player, and it was so much easier than using Vegas (my Sony moviemaking software)!  But Ms. F. says that in her filmmaking class, she has to convert all of her movie files into something else in order to use WMM.  I'll ask her about that later.  When she told me I had already had a glass or two of wine.  So I don't really remember what she said.  I think she uses a Sony handycam, and that's the problem.