5-21-07 YouTube
About five months ago, I joined YouTube and uploaded a video of my sister singing Somewhere Over The Rainbow from a practice session she did with her old band, Zonkaraz, at the Blue Moon Cafe on 12-30-06. I had videotaped the whole practice there, before an audience of, perhaps, a dozen or so people, and ended up editing it down for my sister onto a DVD.
After I watched the YouTube clip a few times, I became very unsatisfied with the audio, and decided to try setting up the upload file using Nero Recode, instead of whatever else I had used previously. This version came out better, but by the time I had this second one uploaded, the first clip had gotten so many hits, plus a comment or two, that I didn't have the heart to take it down.
The trouble with YouTube is that it takes forever to upload a decent clip. Of course, people the world over are constantly trying to figure out why their uploads look and sound like crap. Well, the first thing that one needs to do in order to get a decent clip onto YouTube is to read the instructions. The second thing one needs to know is how to produce a decent ".avi" file in full NTSC video. The source file you start with makes all the difference in the world.
I use DV format, shot with a 3-ccd camcorder. I use MediaStudio Pro to edit and create an "avi" clip (still using DV type 1 format). Then I use Nero Recode to compress that source file down to 320x240 MPEG-4, and that's what I upload to YouTube.
It takes forever.
The reason it takes forever is because YouTube's server re-compresses what your uploading (on the fly) into a "flash" format video. I've had uploads stop and stay stopped after painfully waiting a half hour to an hour, and nearly complete, but never resume again. It's really frustrating to waste so much time and have to re-start and upload from scratch, but that's what happens (at least on this end)... and I've got a cable modem... blazing speed everywhere else except uploading to YouTube!
But I take these sort of things with a grain of salt, roll with the punches, and figure that once I've navigated these waters I can do it again and again.
A little over a week ago, I had videotaped a really nice clip of an old friend of mine, Rich MacDuffie, doing a cover of the song, "Trainyard Girl".
I really like this clip, because MacDuff is so much fun to watch performing. And, despite the fact that the clip was from an informal get-together and he wasn't so much performing as just having fun, this clip is one that I knew the minute I'd shot it that I wanted to put it up on YouTube. The guys that call themselves "The Danelectros" are all guys that I grew up with. I enjoy watching these guys play in that informal setting more than any scene in a nightclub or a concert hall because, basically, I just don't like crowds.
MacDuff, Bob Jordan, and Jeff Baskowski played last week at the Cafe Fantastique for Bob's annual birthday celebration (of Bob Dylan's birthday), where local singers and musicians do covers of Dylan's songs in a couple of hour long sets. It's a lot of fun, it's a small room, and it's a mostly over-30 crowd ...so my dislike of crowds is abated greatly in that venue. I decided to try to videotape both sets, and luckily, I succeeded.
There was one musician there who did a cover of Highway 61 Revisited, and he just blew my socks off! When I got all the video from the event captured onto the computer the next day, I went right to that clip and set it up for YouTube, converted it, and uploaded it.
BLAT!
That's when I realized that I had spelled the guy's name wrong on the clip credits! And what's even more humiliating is that the guy is one of my stepson's best friends... and I didn't REALIZE this until I had wrapped up the clip! "That's THAT Ed???" I said to myself...
Then, to add insult to injury, I put the mis-spelled last name onto the clip credits...
Oh, I gotta tell ya! Its not nice what happens to ya when ya get old!
So, I re-did the clip from scratch, correcting the spelling of Ed Barnett's last name, compressed it into MPEG-4, and tried to upload it all that day (yesterday) onto YouTube. No joy. I tried again this morning when I left for work, but when I came home for break around mid-morning... no joy. I re-started the upload when I went back to work, and when I came home this afternoon, VOILA! It was DONE.
This clip is just GREAT!
Ed's such a cool performer, I can't imagine why I haven't heard about his talent from anywhere else but my stepson. Sean has mentioned more than once that Ed's a good guitar player, but I'm an old fart... I don't like crowds... and going to some bar or under-30 concert venue just isn't up my alley. So Ed's talent has eluded my cognizance all these years that Sean and Ed have been friends.
I want to take the first Ed Barnett clip I uploaded off, once the new Ed Barnett clip has had a chance to get all the search tags into the database. That way, my mistake won't be left on YouTube for everyone to see for the rest of eternity... like it has with my sister's Over the Rainbow clips.
After I watched the YouTube clip a few times, I became very unsatisfied with the audio, and decided to try setting up the upload file using Nero Recode, instead of whatever else I had used previously. This version came out better, but by the time I had this second one uploaded, the first clip had gotten so many hits, plus a comment or two, that I didn't have the heart to take it down.
The trouble with YouTube is that it takes forever to upload a decent clip. Of course, people the world over are constantly trying to figure out why their uploads look and sound like crap. Well, the first thing that one needs to do in order to get a decent clip onto YouTube is to read the instructions. The second thing one needs to know is how to produce a decent ".avi" file in full NTSC video. The source file you start with makes all the difference in the world.
I use DV format, shot with a 3-ccd camcorder. I use MediaStudio Pro to edit and create an "avi" clip (still using DV type 1 format). Then I use Nero Recode to compress that source file down to 320x240 MPEG-4, and that's what I upload to YouTube.
It takes forever.
The reason it takes forever is because YouTube's server re-compresses what your uploading (on the fly) into a "flash" format video. I've had uploads stop and stay stopped after painfully waiting a half hour to an hour, and nearly complete, but never resume again. It's really frustrating to waste so much time and have to re-start and upload from scratch, but that's what happens (at least on this end)... and I've got a cable modem... blazing speed everywhere else except uploading to YouTube!
But I take these sort of things with a grain of salt, roll with the punches, and figure that once I've navigated these waters I can do it again and again.
A little over a week ago, I had videotaped a really nice clip of an old friend of mine, Rich MacDuffie, doing a cover of the song, "Trainyard Girl".
I really like this clip, because MacDuff is so much fun to watch performing. And, despite the fact that the clip was from an informal get-together and he wasn't so much performing as just having fun, this clip is one that I knew the minute I'd shot it that I wanted to put it up on YouTube. The guys that call themselves "The Danelectros" are all guys that I grew up with. I enjoy watching these guys play in that informal setting more than any scene in a nightclub or a concert hall because, basically, I just don't like crowds.
MacDuff, Bob Jordan, and Jeff Baskowski played last week at the Cafe Fantastique for Bob's annual birthday celebration (of Bob Dylan's birthday), where local singers and musicians do covers of Dylan's songs in a couple of hour long sets. It's a lot of fun, it's a small room, and it's a mostly over-30 crowd ...so my dislike of crowds is abated greatly in that venue. I decided to try to videotape both sets, and luckily, I succeeded.
There was one musician there who did a cover of Highway 61 Revisited, and he just blew my socks off! When I got all the video from the event captured onto the computer the next day, I went right to that clip and set it up for YouTube, converted it, and uploaded it.
BLAT!
That's when I realized that I had spelled the guy's name wrong on the clip credits! And what's even more humiliating is that the guy is one of my stepson's best friends... and I didn't REALIZE this until I had wrapped up the clip! "That's THAT Ed???" I said to myself...
Then, to add insult to injury, I put the mis-spelled last name onto the clip credits...
Oh, I gotta tell ya! Its not nice what happens to ya when ya get old!
So, I re-did the clip from scratch, correcting the spelling of Ed Barnett's last name, compressed it into MPEG-4, and tried to upload it all that day (yesterday) onto YouTube. No joy. I tried again this morning when I left for work, but when I came home for break around mid-morning... no joy. I re-started the upload when I went back to work, and when I came home this afternoon, VOILA! It was DONE.
This clip is just GREAT!
Ed's such a cool performer, I can't imagine why I haven't heard about his talent from anywhere else but my stepson. Sean has mentioned more than once that Ed's a good guitar player, but I'm an old fart... I don't like crowds... and going to some bar or under-30 concert venue just isn't up my alley. So Ed's talent has eluded my cognizance all these years that Sean and Ed have been friends.
I want to take the first Ed Barnett clip I uploaded off, once the new Ed Barnett clip has had a chance to get all the search tags into the database. That way, my mistake won't be left on YouTube for everyone to see for the rest of eternity... like it has with my sister's Over the Rainbow clips.
posted by Jeff Barnard at 4:18 PM
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