Make your own science videos and share your knowledge with the world
Category Archives: Science Video Tutorials
I produce tutorials showing how to make science videos, for example with an iPad. Other tutorials include how to do animations for your science video project, how to use the rule of thirds in video composition, and many other aspects of videography.
We are talking about how to create a media trailer for a book, which is designed to attract potential readers. In the previous posts, I described my own experience creating a trailer for my recent book, The Scientist Videographer. I explained that you need to study other book trailers (step one), identify the central message you wish to convey and elements from your book to include in the trailer (step two), and visualize and acquire the media to use in your trailer (step three).
In this post, I describe the fourth and final step, which is to compile your material and produce the trailer with a movie-editing application. You may be thinking at this point that movie editing is too technically challenging. To create my book trailer, I used the desktop version of iMovie and built the trailer from scratch. However, I will show you a really easy way to create a book trailer using iMovie for mobile devices. This application has an option for creating movie trailers, but it can be modified to make a book trailer. iMovie has templates and instructions that make it super easy to combine your video, still images, and text to produce a professional-looking trailer. iMovie does most of the work; all you have to do is drop your media into placeholders and then render the video. I used my iPad for the demonstration, but you can use an iPhone to shoot and edit your book trailer.
As you will see, I walk you through the iMovie 2013 app (for iOS) and show you how to create a book trailer. (be sure to select the HD version and full-screen for best viewing):
As you saw, the iMovie app is easy to navigate, and the movie-trailer templates provide a structure to guide you. You should be able to find one to fit your book type. If you don’t like any of the trailer templates, you can still use the basic movie editor in iMovie 2013 to create a book trailer from scratch, as I did. In fact, with this app, you can create several trailers for your book, each emphasizing a different aspect of the book or targeting different readerships. If you are working on a series of books, it would be easy to produce multiple trailers to advertise each one. There are a lot of possibilities once you learn the basics of movie editing.
If you want to learn more about planning, shooting, editing, and sharing videos to promote your work, check out my book, The Scientist Videographer (it’s not just for scientists).
In an earlier post, I talked about reproducibility of scientific studies and how video might help improve replication of results by showing methods in greater detail than in a text-based description. In this post, I wanted to elaborate on the idea of using video to show scientific methods—either as a stand-alone information product or as supplemental material to a journal article.
Although it’s possible to repeat someone else’s method based on a written description, actually seeing them perform each step in the process is usually helpful, especially for those who are less experienced (students, for example). When I started out making videos, I had not thought too much about how the medium might help others understand and use my methods. Before getting into videography, I had not realized that there were students and other researchers who wanted to use my methods but who could not visualize what I did or how I did it—no matter how detailed my written description was.
A few years after I had published a few science videos, someone told me that they had watched a few of my videos, which had helped them understand exactly how a particular method was done. They had read my papers in which I had described a method in words but had never considered trying it themselves—until they saw me actually using the method in my video. And we’re not talking about rocket science (or gene sequencing) here. The method involved taking peat cores in a mangrove forest with a type of coring device. Like any method, however, there are things that a novice needs to be shown—even a fairly simple sampling procedure.
The value for some researchers—particularly those with limited funds to visit other laboratories for training—is that video can be an inexpensive way to learn a new technique. For an author, a methods video clearly depicts what you did. You not only can show each step, you can explain in your own words what you did and why you did it. In addition, you can reach a huge audience with video—many more people than could be trained in your laboratory or in a workshop.
I’ve since heard from a couple of other people who also said that they had been inspired to try a method after seeing one of my videos. So I’ve been thinking about various approaches and designs for methods videos. If the objective is to produce a visual summary to augment a more detailed written description, then it is very easy to put together a short video to show key steps and how they are carried out.
To illustrate, I’ve created a brief methods video with some old footage and other media I had used previously in conference presentations. As you will see, this video demonstrates a method I used in connection with a relatively old publication (2007). Because there are few such videos on this topic, it will be ranked high by search engines and ultimately direct viewers who are interested in the topic to the publication.
Note that I was able to depict all the essential information in 3 minutes (select HD and full-screen for best viewing):
As you saw, the video is divided into three parts: a beginning in which I explained what the video would show, a middle in which I showed each step in the coring process, and an ending in which I briefly showed how the method might be used. I used freeze-frames to pause the video at key points. Because a lot of mangrove researchers work in other countries and may not understand spoken English well, I decided not to use a voiceover to narrate and instead explained everything in text. The viewer can pause the video to read more slowly if necessary.
You’ll notice also that I used the publication citation as a watermark in the video. This not only marks the video as intellectual property but directs the viewer to the published paper.
I also decided to try out one of the musical sound tracks offered by YouTube (uploaded by an artist). This was a good opportunity to investigate this option and see whether the process would be easy. After selecting the audio icon, I was able to search for tracks with a similar length to the video. There is an option to limit the search for tracks that match your video’s length and to music without advertisements. You can search for types of music (instrumentals, R&B, etc.) or for a particular artist. It was easy to preview the music tracks alongside the video as well as trimming the selected track. There is also a button to revert to the original if you change your mind. So if you have run out of iMovie jingles to use in your videos and don’t have any musical talent (to create your own), this may be a useful option.
Videos like this one could be submitted as supplemental material for a journal article or published as a stand-alone methods video.
Previously, I described how time-lapse films can be very useful to illustrate certain biological or physical processes that occur too slowly to be viewed in real time. I provided a few examples of time-lapse videos as well as a tutorial of how to create one using a series of still images captured with a camera and by editing them in a movie-editing program such as iMovie.
In this post, I want to point you to an app for mobile devices (Smartphone, Tablet) called Lapse It Pro. It can be purchased in the App Store for $1.99. You can try it out by downloading the free version (which lacks some key features, such as high resolution selection). To make this work with a Smartphone, you also need some accessories to ensure a stable platform.
In the following tutorial, I provide instructions for setting up your phone and how to use the app to capture a time-lapse series of images. The app settings allow you to easily change the frame capture rate (for example, one frame every minute). The free app will only capture images at 480 p. If you have the pro version of the app, your phone can be set to capture high resolution images (720 or 1080 p, depending on your mobile device version).
Note: This article provides basic information about how time-lapse videos are created and includes a tutorial (at end of post) showing how to use still images (taken with any camera) to make a time-lapse video with iMovie. If you are looking for detailed instructions for producing a time-lapse video with a GoPro (and GoPro Studio), see this article and video tutorial: Time Lapse Tutorial for the GoPro Hero 3+. Another video tutorial shows how to use a montage of still images instead of video footage to make a video: How to Make a Video without Film Footage: Montage Revisited.
Time-lapse photography is a technique whereby a scene in real time is sped up to play in a much shorter time-frame. An example might be a shoreline experiencing a tidal cycle in which the tide rises and falls, covering and exposing a mudflat, over a 24 hour period. A film of such a scene in real time would be too long to watch, and it would be difficult for a viewer to see the gradual changes in the water level. Instead, if the scene were sped up to play in a shorter time period, the change would be obvious. Hours of change would be compressed into a few minutes, i.e., lapsing time.
The time-lapse technique is particularly useful for displaying biological, chemical, and/or physical processes that are naturally too slow for the human eye to see in real time: a seed germinating, a flower unfolding, a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, colors changing seasonally in a deciduous tree, a glacier melting, a shoreline eroding, storm clouds gathering, and many other events that take hours, days, or weeks to unfold. If you wish to study or display such changes on film, you must know how to create a time-lapse film.
Below is an example of a time-lapse of decaying fruit.
To begin to understand how to capture and edit a time-lapse film, let’s analyze how the above film was created. A single photo was taken (from exactly the same position) of a bowl of fruit every 40 minutes for 74 days. This means that 36 photos were taken per day, and 2664 photos in all would be captured. If each photo represents a 1-sec frame in a film and all 2664 photos were played at 30 fps (frames per second), then the final length of the film would be 1.48 minutes (the actual length of the film was 1.37 min, perhaps because the frame duration was set to slightly less than 1 sec or not all photos were used).
Note that you can also create a time-lapse film by speeding up a video clip; however, this approach is usually limited to short-duration events (e.g., an hour) that can be filmed and later sped up to play in a few seconds. You can also splice together film clips shot at brief intervals throughout an event and then time-compress during editing by shortening the duration of the final film. In the video below, a decaying pig carcass was filmed at the bottom of the ocean over a 9 day period; the film appears to have been created by splicing together short film clips captured each day.
However, the creation of a time-lapse film with still images is the most common (and easiest) approach. To create a good time-lapse film, there are a few important points to keep in mind:
1. Use a tripod to ensure that all photos are taken from exactly the same position/angle. Otherwise, the resultant film will not be smooth.
2. Shoot the photos in manual mode; otherwise, the camera will try to automatically adjust for changes in light levels, etc.
3. Carefully calculate the time interval needed between photos. This calculation will depend on the process being filmed, how fast the changes occur, and how smooth you want the resultant film to be. The more photos per unit time, the smoother the result (if you want to create a jerky effect, then scale back). If you are shooting cloud movement, you might take one photo per minute. If you are filming something that unfolds over days or weeks, then you might take only one photo per day. For example, filming one year in the life of a tree might require only one photo per day (365 photos in all). If each photo is played for 2 sec at 30 fps, the resultant film would be 24.33 sec in length.
4. Be sure you have sufficient battery life and memory to accommodate all the photos. Use jpg and adjust the size so that you get optimum quality without running out of memory.
5. Before you launch into your project, do some test shots to make sure everything is set up correctly and you are getting what you need. It’s a good idea to take a few photos and edit them to get an idea of how the final version will look and to spot any problems.
In the tutorial below, I show how to turn a series of still images into a time-lapse video using iMovie (direct link to video on YouTube).
I used a point and shoot camera to take the photos manually, but you can use any still camera and purchase hardware and software that will automate the shooting for you. Also, you can even shoot time-lapse photos with your iPhone; there are apps that will help you do this (note: I’ve not tried all of these, so can’t attest to their quality or ease of use):
Lapse It Pro will record photos and render the time-lapse film (this is the app that I use–see this post in which I test it out)
iTimelapse will take the photos and assist in rendering the final film (note: some customer complaints).
Gorillacam will only do the shooting; you have to do the video rendering yourself (note: some customer complaints).
Are you interested in learning more techniques like this? If so, you may be interested in my ebook, The Scientist Videographer, which is an electronic guidebook packed with information, tips, and tutorials and designed for the 21st century scientist, teacher, and student. Available in iTunes Store (fully interactive version for iPad, iPhone, & Mac), Smashwords (text version), and Amazon Kindle (text version).
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):
