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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – advice on mobile reporting

Sarah Marshall — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:30:33 +0000

Sky News correspondent Nick Martin has some advice for journalists using a mobile phone to record video.

He shared his tips at last week’s news:rewired journalism conference.

According to this post on three pieces of advice for journalists reporting using a mobile phone, Martin advises:

1. Practise

2. Don’t panic!

3. Use mobile reporting only when it was appropriate, explaining “that it is not worth setting up a tripod and XLR cables for an iPhone when the cameraman is just five minutes away”.

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link– we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.Similar Posts:

Tool of the week for journalists – Spool, an Instapaper for video

Sarah Marshall — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 08:45:06 +0000

Tool of the week: Spool

What is it? Spool is like Instapaper or Read it Later for video. It allows you to to save videos to watch later.

How is it of use to journalists? How many times have you come across a video on a news site or YouTube when you don’t have the time to watch it?

Spool allows you to save videos you’ve found during the day for viewing later. And what is great about it is that it records the video, allowing you to watch it offline, perhaps on the train home from work.

It saves it in HTML5 so videos or documents that started as Flash can be viewed on an Apple device.

Spool is not just for video – it allows you to save any webpage – but it is video that sets it apart from similar platforms for saving news articles.

You can also add the option of saving the videos, articles and documents to Dropbox or Evernote.

Spool has iPhone/iPad and Android apps to access your saved videos and to allow you to save more.

It is still in private beta and requires you to apply for an invitation. These appear to be sent out almost immediately.
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App of the week for journalists – Voddio, for slideshows and video

Sarah Marshall — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 09:52:03 +0000

App of the week: Voddio

Operating systems: Apple (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad)

Cost: Free (you will need to pay £2.49 to unlock the sending and sharing functions)

What is it and how is it of use to journalists?

Voddio allows you to record and edit audio and video in multitrack and produce audio slideshows.

It is the latest app from Vericorder, which makes apps for journalists, and combines the functionality from its other paid-for apps – 1st Video, VC Audio Pro and Showcase – in a single app, which is free to download.

Voddio has has the ability to produce richer slideshows than earlier app Showcase, introducing titles and transitions for images.

After testing and creating audio, video and slideshows users can then opt to pay to unlock the sending and sharing functions.

Reviews

There are not enough ratings to display an average star rating.

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.Similar Posts:

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – recording a better interview

Sarah Marshall — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 10:11:43 +0000

Video journalist Adam Westbrook has shared a presentation online with 10 tips for recording a better interview.

Written for students at Kingston University, the tips are aimed at broadcast journalists.

Tips include:

Know your character before starting your story
Ask warm up questions to make interviewees feel comfortable
Be enthusiastic – but silent
Ask double-barrelled questions

Westbrook’s 10 tips for recording a better video (or audio) interview are at this link.

Adam Westbrook will be presenting in a session on online video at news:rewired – media in motion on 3 February. The news:rewired agenda is here.

Tipster: Sarah Marshall

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link– we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.Similar Posts:

#news2011: Russia Today on raising awareness through its FreeVideo platform

Rachel McAthy — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 10:19:03 +0000

After the second day of sessions focused on business at the Global Editors Network news summit, including paywalls and paid-for app, it was fitting that during the third and final day of presentations we heard about projects offering content and platforms for free.

One such project came from Russia Today which outlined its FreeVideo platform, described as an “English language video agency”. The website, which should be of interest to journalists worldwide, provides free video footage that journalists can download, edit and reuse for their own projects and output.

Answering a question from the floor about the business model, Alexei Nikolov, managing director of Russia Today, said it was to “promote the channel” on a global scale.

The site includes “stock footage” as well as video covering specific news events. Xenia Fedorova, head of the department of promotion and development of media projects for the broadcaster, explained that all the footage comes with multilingual scripts and shotlists.

She added that the website has more than 9,000 news channels already registered and using footage “on a daily basis”.

I spoke to her more at the end of the session about the decision to go down the free distribution route, their attribution methods and to find out whether there are plans in the pipeline to monetise the platform.

There are of course other platforms out there offering video content to journalists, such as the UK-based Video News Agency and also in 2009 Al Jazeera opened up its footage under creative commons licensing.Similar Posts:

App of the week for journalists – 1st Video, to record and edit video on your iPhone or iPad

Sarah Marshall — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:17:02 +0000

App of the week: 1st Video

Operating systems: Apple (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad)

Cost: £6.99

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? Shell out for this app and you will have a video editing suite in your pocket.

1st Video allows you to record or import video and edit in multitrack and upload the video to YouTube or transfer it to another device on the same wireless network.

It is used by the BBC 5 Live reporter Nick Garnett, according to a post by him on the BBC College of Journalism site, for broadcasting audio and editing packages. Another app, VC Audio Pro which is made by the same developer, Vericorder, and has also featured as a Journalism.co.uk app of the week will suffice if you want to create an audio only edited report.

Journalism.co.uk has a guide on how to shoot and edit video on an iPhone using 1st Video.

Reviews: It gets 3.5 stars in iTunes App Store

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – avoiding common video storytelling mistakes

Rachel McAthy — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:09:16 +0000

Multimedia journalist and video journalism lecturer Adam Westbrook has pulled together a list of what he views as common mistakes made in video production, and also offers his tips for how to avoid them. Mistakes include not prioritising audio and producing video based on television for the internet, rather than exploiting the opportunities online.

Read his post in full here.

Tipster: Rachel McAthy

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.Similar Posts:

App of the week for journalists – Capture, a single-click video app for your home screen

Sarah Marshall — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 09:29:14 +0000

App of the week: Capture [iTunes link]

Operating systems: Apple (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad). The app only works with a device with a video camera and running iOS 4 / iOS 5.

Cost: £0.69

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? Capture is a single-click video recording app that is worth having on your home screen.

Tap the app and it automatically starts recording, making it ideal for capturing breaking news.

Videos save to your photo album, where you can trim and email, MMS or send to YouTube.

Reviews: It gets five stars in Apple’s App Store

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.Similar Posts:

App of the week for Journalists – Klip, a great new iPhone app for video sharing

Sarah Marshall — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:51:27 +0000

App of the week: Klip

Operating systems: Apple – Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later.

Cost: Free

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? Klip launched last week (20 September) as a video sharing app for iPhone. There are plenty of video apps out there but this stands out for several reasons. Not only does it offer a great user experience, with fast video streaming, pleasing swipes and a phone shake action that fast-forwards through videos, it has features that are really handy for any journalist who shoots footage from an iPhone.

You can record footage directly from Klip or add a video that you have recorded using another app, then trim the video and share to Twitter, Facebook, by email or upload to YouTube. For journalists who want a quick way of trimming and uploading to YouTube, which can be embedded in a blog or news story, this is really valuable.

You have the option to geolocate the video, add hashtags and self-shoot as you can flip the camera without moving the phone and record footage of yourself.

Another useful feature is the fact that an emailed clip appears within a player in the recipient’s email. This could be a useful way of alerting the newsdesk and giving them a preview of your footage.

Reviews: iTunes has not yet received enough ratings to provide the average.

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.Similar Posts:

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – Industry insight videos offer job hunt tips

Rachel McAthy — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:37:57 +0000

If you’re looking for more information on how to break into a certain area of the industry, check out Journalism.co.uk’s new series of Industry Insight videos. The clips feature interviews with journalists working in different areas of the field – the first four in the series will look at the careers of a news reader, wire reporter, foreign correspondent and radio producer.

Tipster: Rachel McAthy

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk, email us using this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.Similar Posts:

App of the week for journalists – Bambuser

Sarah Marshall — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:18:36 +0000

App of the week: Bambuser

Operating systems: Apple (iPhone and iPad), Android, Nokia

Cost: Free

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? An app for live streaming video to your Facebook page, Twitter account or to an embedded player on your news site or blog.

It is similar to Qik, another app for live streaming video.

Reviews: It gets three stars in Apple’s iTunes store

What else should I know?

Bambuser has been around for a couple of years. It attracted media attention at the start of the year due to its wide spread use by protestors during the Arab spring demonstrations.

Over the last six months Bambuser has introduced a new hardware video encoding system. In short, it means Bambuser now has a higher frame rate, sharper video and better audio – while at the same time needing less bandwidth. The improvements are more apparent when using the most up to date smartphones (iPhones as well as numerous Android models) as well as the iPod Touch 4th Gen. The full list of 260 suitable phones is here.

Another advancement is Bambuser now automatically assesses the quality of your connection and then varies the quality of the broadcast accordingly so viewers don’t suffer increased latency.

Ultimately, users are held victim to the quality of the 3G / WiFi signal they receive. If they’re competing with 100,000 others at somewhere like Glastonbury, the end result isn’t ideal. However this is set to change in the near future with the 4G trials in Cornwall that will ultimately give smartphones the same download speed as fixed-line broadband connections.

Examples:

Given that Bambuser comes out of Sweden, many of these examples are from Scandanavia.

One of Sweden’s best know sports journalists doing a live broadcast on board a yacht;
NRK doing a Eurovision contest doorstop;
Nokia and Microsoft announcing their partnership – with live coverage of Steve Ballmer’s speech via a laptop;
This example from Tahrir square, Egypt and this example from inured protestors in Egypt

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.Similar Posts:

Beet.TV: Vook on working with ABC News to produce video books

Rachel McAthy — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 10:37:13 +0000

In this video interview on Beet.TV Matthew Cavnar, head of product at Vook, a company which creates video books, talks about its collaboration with ABC News to produce a ‘vook’ which combines its text and video reporting of significant events.

Recent publications produced by Vook and ABC News, which Cavner claims offers the “360 degree experience of a news story”, includes the capture of Osama Bin Laden and the royal wedding in London.

Cavner added that while the company is looking at extending the platform out to partners, for now it is concentrating on its uses in-house.

Right now we’re really focused on going to a media company, going to a publisher, and saying we’ve got the platform … come work with us and create 50, 100, 1,000 titles because we’ve got the ability to do it.

… We think we’re basically cornering that market of scalable quality.

Related content:

OWNI.eu publishes Wikileaks ebook

How to: Make online video storytelling work

Media Trust calls on young citizen journalists for London scheme

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Media release: BBC announces launch of web-connected TV product

Rachel McAthy — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 15:31:29 +0000

Today the BBC announced the launch of a new product for connected TVs which, according to a release will see BBC News video news clips brought to television via the internet.

The BBC News product for connected TV combines existing video and text content from BBC News Online and will initially be made available on Samsung’s range of Smart TVs. It will subsequently be made available on a range of connected devices over time.

This is part of a “value for money” strategy to re-purpose BBC Online products for a wide range of devices. Editorial teams in the BBC’s newsrooms will work to curate clips to complement the 24 news channel and to run alongside text-based news from BBC News Online. And the control of what content the user views will be in their hands, with navigation via the remote.

BBC Worldwide is also said to be launching an international version which will be supported by advertising. In a blog post BBC Online editor Steve Herrmann said in time the product will also be rolled out to other devices in the UK.Similar Posts:

News sites can remove YouTube logo for embedded video

Sarah Marshall — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 14:32:43 +0000

News sites and blogs no longer have to display YouTube’s logo on embedded videos.

YouTube announced the change on its blog, where it has published a full list of player parameters.

To remove the YouTube logo from the player when displaying a video on your site just add the code ?modestbranding=1 to the end of the URL. For example:

?modestbranding=1” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen>

A small YouTube text label will still show up in the upper-right corner of a paused video when you hover over the player.

The video-sharing site has also introduced ‘As Seen On’ YouTube pages. These pages bring together videos from news sites which regularly display YouTube videos, such as the Guardian, which now has its own As Seen On page.

A YouTube blog post explains how it does this:

By crawling web feeds of sites that have embedded videos, we’ve built dedicated pages that highlight your embedded videos. This means that there is now a place on YouTube to find videos mentioned on your favorite blogs & sites. We think these pages provide a way to find new and interesting content while helping you dive deeper into the conversation around a video.

A third recent development is HD preview, the option to add a high-quality placeholder image to a YouTube video in the hope of encouraging more viewers to be tempted to click play.Similar Posts:

TechCrunch: YouTube launches creative commons licence option

Rachel McAthy — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 12:27:33 +0000

It is being widely reported that YouTube has now launched the ability for users to choose how they licence their content through its video editor platform.

The new Creative Commons option will give other people permission to use footage, including for commercial purposes, with attribution, according to TechCrunch.

It is also reported that initially YouTube is working with content partners including C-SPAN and Al Jazeera to offer a starting batch of 10,000 videos under the creative commons license. Al Jazeera already makes some of its content available under a creative commons licence, shown in this repository. TechCrunch reports that it will not take long for YouTube’s 10,000 video store to grow.

That library will rapidly increase as more people switch their content over to Creative Commons, and there’s even a tool that will let you swap the license for a bunch of videos at once.

A request for more information from YouTube has not yet been answered, but details of YouTube’s creative commons policy can be found here.Similar Posts: