There are a number of tutorials out there to guide you in preparing and uploading a video to a video-sharing site such as YouTube. Here is my version, which concludes the series of iMovie tutorials (be sure to select the HD version and full screen for best viewing):
Tag Archives: iMovie
How to Insert a Watermark Into Your Science Video
Those of us who make science videos put a lot of time and effort into our projects. So it is very annoying when someone uses our video content without attribution. Most of us want people to use our videos but it’s important to be credited for our work, just as we expect people to credit our technical publications when they describe our research findings.
Although video sharing sites such as YouTube recommend that users credit YouTube as the distributor AND the video content owner, no one is required to do so.
One way to protect your content is to insert a watermark into your video. Inserting your name or a logo that appears in every frame in your video effectively identifies you as the content creator and owner. This will not guarantee your work won’t be taken and used without attribution, but it will make it a bit more difficult.
What should be used as a watermark and how do you add it to your video? This tutorial shows three ways to accomplish this. I will be using Screenflow and iMovie 11 to illustrate, but you can adapt these methods to any movie-editing application. Be sure to select the HD version and full screen for best viewing.
How to Make a Video Abstract for Your Next Journal Article
As I’ve tried to demonstrate in this blog, video is a fantastic way to show off your research in a way that goes far beyond the traditional text-based paper. Today, I’d like to talk about a specific use of video to augment scientific articles. Science journals are beginning to publish video abstracts along with technical papers, an approach that is designed to increase the visibility of authors and their work.
What is a video abstract? A video abstract is a brief description of a technical paper in which the author(s) explain their work on camera, physically demonstrate their methods, use animations or simulations to illustrate concepts, and/or discuss the implications of their findings. By using video and other multimedia, authors can explain their work in a way that the print article cannot, an approach that provides a richer, more diverse experience for the readership. The following is a video abstract I created with a smartphone to demonstrate how easy it is.
Example of a video abstract:
Transcript of video abstract:
Why would an author want to create a video abstract? Video allows much greater flexibility to an author in describing their work and to more effectively explain the significance of their findings. By posting a video on the internet, an author can raise the visibility of themselves and their research. Because search engines rank video high in relation to text-based descriptions, a video abstract can make an author’s work more visible and accessible to people searching for papers on that topic.
What journals or publishers accept video abstracts? At the moment, several science journals routinely accept video abstracts, including the New Journal of Physics and Cell, to name a couple. Other journals are experimenting with video abstracts but have only published a few so far. Many of these video abstracts are hosted on a YouTube channel (rather than the publisher website), which then means that the author can embed the video on their own website without worry of copyright infringement. If journals in your field do not currently publish video abstracts, you can still prepare and publish your own video abstracts for any of your papers.
How do I make a video abstract if I do not have a media specialist to help me? So far, there are few guidelines or tutorials available to guide authors in this regard. In the tutorial below, I show how to create an effective, engaging, and professional-looking video abstract entirely with a smartphone. I emphasize use of a smartphone because many people already own one and know how to use it to shoot photos and video, the quality of the cameras in smartphones is high (and getting better), and movie editing software for smartphones is cheap and easy to use. These points are especially important for scientists working in developing countries and who have limited resources and budgets.
Make a Video Abstract Tutorial:
Transcript of tutorial:
How to Create a Science Video with your iPhone
Scientists and students: How much time would you invest to learn how to produce an informative and effective science video, requiring only an iPhone or other Smartphone that shoots video? In this new 15 minute tutorial, you can learn how to plan, shoot, edit, and share a professional-looking video that describes a research project, an important science topic or research finding, or a new method.
Such videos can then be used to meet the Broader Impacts criterion of the National Science Foundation or other funding agency, as supplemental online information for your journal publications, or just to enhance your website and show off your work.
All you need is an iPhone or other Smartphone that shoots video and supports the necessary software to edit the footage. Note that this tutorial is different from the one I previously posted, which used the Videolicious app. In this tutorial, I use the iMovie app for the iPhone (download from the App Store) and briefly show how to navigate the program to create a movie project.
Check it out:
There are other movie-editing apps and, of course, professional editing software that provide more bells and whistles, but these take more time to learn and are more expensive. The iMovie app for the iPhone is designed to use video shot with the iPhone, but you can also import media shot with a camcorder or digital camera (I use iTunes to transfer files from iPhoto to my iPhone camera roll). You will also notice that I included some animations that I created with PowerPoint and Photoshop, exported as movies, and uploaded to my iPhone. See previous tutorials for more information about doing animations in Powerpoint here and here.
Even though most of my videos are shot with a camcorder and edited on my computer with professional software, I increasingly find it easy and convenient to use my iPhone to capture video on the go and to quickly edit the footage and upload to a video-sharing site. As the cameras on these smartphones have improved, the quality of the images has gotten better and better. There has even been a full-length movie shot with a Smartphone (Nokia): go here to see the trailer and behind-the-scenes footage.
I hope you find this tutorial helpful and inspires you to use your iPhone or Smartphone to produce videos about your science projects.
Tutorial: Avid Studio for the iPad (Part 2)
In this post, I’ve added the second part of the tutorial on using the movie editing program, Avid Studio, for the iPad. With this app, which costs only $4.99, you can shoot and create professional-looking videos entirely with your iPad. Avid Studio has more editing options than iMovie, which I covered in previous tutorials, but is a bit more challenging than iMovie.
Both are fine editing programs….each has their advantages and disadvantages. If you’ve learned how to use iMovie already, however, you’ll have no problem with Avid Studio. I’ve covered all the basics in this two-part tutorial, but have left some options for you to discover on your own.
So here’s the second and final part of the Avid Studio tutorial (for best viewing, select the HD version and full-screen options (see menu bar at bottom of player window):