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: science communication
iMovie 11 Tutorials
Some time ago, I promised a tutorial on iMovie 11, and I finally got around to it. Instead of one long tutorial, I’ve divided it up into six parts, each three to four minutes in length. Be sure to select the HD version under “settings” and full screen for best viewing.
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.
Some Guidelines for Science Video Reviewers
Constructive criticism helps us improve our individual communication products as well as our overall communication skills. If you plan to publish your video, either on a video-sharing site or as online supplementary material with a journal article, it’s a good idea to first get some feedback from potential viewers.
Many of my science videos have gone through a formal peer review process, which involved comments from at least two colleagues, followed by review and approval by officials at several levels in my agency. You don’t have to go to this extreme, and, in any case, there are few mechanisms currently in existence that offer peer review of videos comparable to that of scientific journals. And, not all videos require peer review. You certainly don’t need a formal, collegial review of a video tour of your laboratory facilities to put on your website. However, you do want to know if your tour video is likely to attract prospective students and postdocs, for example. In that case, you might want to show it to a few students and ask them what they think. If their response is not what you expected, then you’ve gotten some useful feedback and perhaps need to rethink your video.
Similarly, if your video is to be submitted to an online journal, it would be wise to show it to a couple of colleagues first. Or, if your target audience is the general public or some other non-specialist group, you might want to ask members of that group to preview your video before you publish it. Your goal is to determine if the content is understandable and interesting to your target audience. You (and your colleagues) probably are not the best judges of whether your video is engaging and whether the content is presented in a way that is easily understood by a non-specialist. The only way to determine this is to solicit feedback from your target audience.
If after viewing your video, a target viewer expresses confusion over a key concept, then you know you’ve still got some work to do. Or, your student reviewer might say, “I really liked the part with the students collecting samples; I wish there had been more of that instead of the scientist talking about the carbon cycle.” Again, this would be very good feedback. In response, you might want to change your video by intercutting more footage of students working while the scientist’s voice is heard explaining how what they are doing relates to the carbon cycle. That would be an easy editing job, and the change will likely make your video more appealing to its target audience.
However, I find that some of my colleagues are uncertain about how to review a science video and, consequently, fail to provide useful feedback. They either try to review it like a journal article or want me to change it to something that will not appeal to my target audience (usually by adding citations or data). Because this is such a new area, there is virtually no guidance available to aid reviews of science videos. To help potential reviewers out, I’ve compiled a list of questions to help guide the review of a science video.
Here are twenty questions designed to provide useful feedback (and perhaps stimulate other comments) for your science videos:
1. Are all visual media (e.g., video footage, photographs, animations) of high quality (i.e., in focus, well-composed)?
2. Is the audio clear throughout and not obscured by extraneous noises?
3. Is all text legible and easily read within the timeframe provided?
4. Are all graphs, diagrams, or other illustrations of good resolution (not pixelated) and clearly labeled?
5. Are interviews (with scientists, students, others) professionally done?
6. If music or sound effects are used, are they appropriate and effective?
7. Are there any additional media that might improve the video?
8. Are sources of all external media (e.g, historical footage/images, music) clearly acknowledged?
9. Are proper safety procedures followed throughout the video (e.g., are laboratory personnel wearing lab coats and appropriate footwear, safety glasses, etc.)?
10. Does the video address an important issue or interesting topic or provide useful instruction?
11. Does the title of the video accurately reflect the content?
12. Is the scientific content accurate and appropriately attributed?
13. Is the length of the video appropriate? If not, where might it be cut or expanded?
14. Does the video clearly identify a central question, objective, or concept?
15. Does the video capture the viewer’s attention early and hold it throughout?
16. Does the video have a clear storyline or logical path that is easy for the viewer to follow?
17. Will the video be understood by the target audience? If not, which parts need to be revised?
18. If for a non-specialist audience, is scientific jargon minimized and are all essential technical terms defined or explained?
19. Does the video achieve its stated or implied purpose (inform, instruct, engage)?
20. Do you have any other suggestions for improvement?
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: