Video sequencing with music performances

Music performance pieces are always challenging to edit. Even performances that only involve music are pesky. Take a children’s ballet recital: I was pretty satisfied with this piece. The project’s director provided details and the girls provided emotion. The piece had music and a variety of interesting shots, so it was interesting to watch. And [...]

You can put Google Maps in Flash now

I can’t count the number of times I’ve wanted to do this and wondered if it were even possible. Well, it seems it wasn’t — until now. Now you can embed Google Maps in Flash applications thanks to the Google Maps Flash API. HT to Google LatLong via Journerdism. I’m kind of surprised this took [...]

Town Hall video: An audio dilemma

I’ve twice been on assignment to shoot town hall meetings, special gatherings where residents can voice concerns about targeted issues. These are some situations where the video could be good, say if everyone goes mad and chaos ensues. But they also have the propensity to be pretty average. In such case, I have to create [...]

Newspapers would be great … if they were magazines

So newspapers are going ker-plunk. But magazines are doing dandy. This is odd to me because I think most newspaper writing styles show a magazine envy. You’d think newspapers would just follow their noses. That’s what Pat Thornton thinks will happen anyway: Print can be a great medium when it concentrates on its strengths. The [...]

Don’t worry, it’s OK to scroll

Now your Web design 101 notes are even more outdated. Turns out people don’t mind scrolling anymore (at least vertically, I’d venture to say). This from Polish researcher Michal Pryslopski via this E-Media Tidbits post at Poynter Online: Eyetrack research showed that conventional wisdom was changing — his audience had become more inquisitive than previously [...]

My use for Twitter, and my not use

I was very reluctant to jump on the Twitter bandwagon. I read Paul Bradshaw’s posts about how media orgs could use it as a distribution tool, and much more. It really depends on who you are as to what will make it useful. When all of the new media douchebags (Ha, I just saw that [...]

Good Web videos: YouTube or Discovery Channel?

I was going to submit this video on two car show rivals to the NPPA monthly contest, but um, oops, the deadline was yesterday. (The embarrassing part was that I exchanged e-mails with the Webmaster thinking a glitch in my account was preventing me from entering. D’oh.) It’s OK, the video probably wouldn’t have won [...]

Multimedia producers need to report, too

Along the same vein as my post yesterday, but in the other direction: Reporters need to think multimedia, but multimedia producers are capable of thinking multimedia for them. Sometimes. Reporter Susie has been assigned a big, complicated court case with a long history. That sucker sure could use an interactive timeline. “No way!” Susie opines. [...]

Maven video player rocks on Gannett’s GO4

I can’t wait until we get the new Maven video player. Gannett and Maven made their pact in November and now we’re finally starting to see fruit. The Maven player can be embedded at story level and can play videos on the front page. It’s so much better. app.com (left), desmoinesregister.com (right), 4/14/08 The player [...]

CMS and social media team up

I already knew about SAXOTECH’s content management system and Pluck’s social networking platform teaming up in the online news world. The partnership is a big part of Gannett’s GO4 design for its papers’ Web sites. But I missed this story last Friday. The SAXOTECH-Pluck partnership is a big part of the crowdsourcing strategy Gannett implemented [...]