How to Improve the Audio of Your Videos Without Breaking the Bank

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The success of your video will depend in part on good audio, which will require a decent microphone. You will need a good microphone during filming with a video camera as well as for doing voiceovers during editing. Which microphone you need and can afford will, of course, vary with your situation. Although there are many microphones that provide excellent audio quality, these are often quite expensive and may be out of reach for students and scientists with limited budgets. If so, there are some inexpensive options that will improve your audio, which I will emphasize here. In this video report, I demonstrate a few ways to improve the quality of your audio without breaking the bank.

Most camcorders and other cameras that shoot video have built-in microphones that will work fairly well–as long as the speaker is close enough to the camera, and there is not a lot of background noise. Many of my videos were filmed using the built-in microphone on the camcorder or digital camera. This approach works fine when the speaker is stationary and speaking directly to the camera from no more than a few feet away. If the speaker is moving around or standing a distance from the camera, however, then it’s best to use some type of external microphone to boost the quality of the audio. The lavalier or lapel microphone is likely to be what the scientist videographer will find most useful. These are tiny microphones that clip onto the lapel of the person speaking and are connected via cable or wirelessly to the camera or a separate recording device.

Unfortunately, not all video cameras come with receptacles for microphone jacks. One of my favorite point-and-shoot cameras, which shoots outstanding HD video, has no option for attaching an external microphone. My solution is to use my iPhone as an audio recording device and an external microphone with a jack designed to work with the headphone receptacle.

The other situation requiring a good microphone is when doing voiceovers for your video. If you rely on the microphone on your computer or an inexpensive external microphone, your voice will likely sound “tinny”, and the overall quality of the audio will be noticeably poorer. I invested in a studio-quality microphone with a USB cable to connect to my computer. The better microphone has made a huge difference in the quality of my videos.

How to Make a Video Abstract for Your Next Journal Article

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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:

Download (PDF, 42KB)

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:

Download (PDF, 54KB)

New Gear for the Solo Science Videographer

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I’ve just gotten some new gear to assist with making solo science videos with a Smartphone….for those times when you don’t have anyone to help you. In the following video, I introduce some accessories (microphone, cable, monopod) that will facilitate filming alone with your Smartphone and will also make your videos look and sound much better.

If you like the tip, please leave a comment!

Links to where you can purchase this equipment are given below the video.

The microphone you will need:

Edutige EIM-003 i-Microphone

The cable you will need:

Smartline (ESL-001) Extension Cable

The monopod you will need:

iStabilizer ISTMP01 Smartphone Monopod

 

Who Has the Scallop Balls?

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Here’s an amusing video about a scientist who studies reproductive success in sea scallops. I’m not suggesting this as a model for all science videos, but it does offer an example of how to use humor to tell a story about science (it helps to have a narrator with a voice like this one). Thanks to Mark B. for the link.

What Comics Can Teach Us About Making Science Videos

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Huh? Comics? Are you serious? You probably think I’ve taken leave of my senses….but bear with me.

One of my favorite non-fiction books is Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud. Despite its age (published in 1993), this book is one of the most creative and entertaining books I’ve ever read about visual storytelling. In this book, McCloud covers the history and theory of comics, using the comic book format brilliantly to make his points about this under-appreciated art form.

And did I mention that I don’t even particularly like comics? That should tell you just how great this book is.

I happened to see a reference to it somewhere (many years ago) and was intrigued by comments about how deeply the book explored the form and substance of storytelling as well as the history of “sequential art”. I ran right out to the nearest bookstore and bought it. I was not disappointed. I’ve reread it several times over the past twenty years or so and often recommend it to people.

Forget whatever you think you know about comics. Anyone who engages in any type of visual storytelling can learn something from this book…and be entertained at the same time.  Even though it was first published twenty years ago, the content is timeless and perhaps even more relevant now, in the digital information age. Despite its topic and engaging delivery, Understanding Comics is a serious book. At its core, this book is about creativity. The information McCloud presents goes far beyond comics and can be applied to virtually any creative process, even those not involving visual formats.

The idea to use the comic format to write a book about the comic art form was clever and, moreover, was executed flawlessly. McCloud appears in the book in the form of a cartoon image with an engaging “voice”, which we (the readers) immediately accept as our guide through the world of comic art. We very quickly realize, after the first page or so, that the view of comics as simple-minded cartoons is based on very superficial features and not reflective of the artistic and intellectual processes underpinning the medium. As any writer or artist knows, creating something that tells a complex story but appears to be simple is very, very difficult. McCloud dissects the process of stripping things to their basic elements and reassembling them to tell a compelling story through the medium of “sequential art”. He articulates several theories and develops models about visual storytelling, such as the concept of  “closure” and the six steps that comic book artists (and other artists) take in going from an idea to the final product.

If you care even a little about how the creative process works, you’ll like this book (and if you like comics, you’ll love it). For those of us interested in making science videos, however, books such as this reveal a lot about how we see things and how to convey abstract ideas so that others can also see them. Learning how to turn the abstract science concept into something concrete (and at the same time be entertaining or compelling) is one of our biggest stumbling blocks in creating effective science videos. Scientists also have particular difficulty in turning what they want to say into something a viewer wants to hear (and see). Understanding Comics provides a peek into another storytelling medium that can show us how we might overcome these barriers….or at least inspire us to try.