LearnShifting

 The Blue Microphone Company makes a wonderful product called the Yeti microphone. Their standard version which sells for about 220 delivered in Australia provides really simple setup on Mac or PC, high quality audio and by the weight of it you would think it was made of gold. It would not look out of place on Larry King's interview desk. But rather than waffle on about it, check out the links and listen to my mini podcast which is actually using the Yeti to record.

We are looking at it as a studio replacement for some of our more expensive solutions that run in the thousands of dollars.

The price of this produce compares favourably with the Pheonix Duet and looks more like a microphone than a large retro shaver.

This entry was posted on November 3, 2011 at 7:38 PM and has received 116 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry. Download attachment.

 When we think about teaching something, we will normally look, from a formal sense at the outcomes required and then apply a treatment or method of delivery that will hopefully engage the intended audience. Some may call that contextualisation if they have a VET background.

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This entry was posted on June 22, 2011 at 8:36 AM and has received 320 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry. Download attachment.

A friend who lives on Elcho Island sent me an email asking "I am wondering do you know if it is possible to change a FLV to MP3 or MOV file?"

The answer is Yes, but you probably want to convert it to an mp4 file. A free way to do that is to download VLAN which is an open source video player and converter.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Here is a link to a small camtasia movie on how to convert FLV files to mp4 or mov format... Remember that the mov format (quicktime) and mp4 format is simply a "wrapper" that encases the h.264 encoded video file so it can be played by the player.

http://ourcourses.ntschools.net/file.php/321/vlc/UsingVLC.html

You can of course also save as an mp3, but you will just get a sound file with no video.

Why might you want to do this? Although it appears that Apple are relaxing their stance on playing FLV video on the ipad or iphone, there still is a need to convert videos to a format playable on the Apple platform until that is enacted.

Which one is better? Both are good... and once Apple permit the playing of flash video we will be able to use both without problem. Industry is suggesting though that the mp4 format, which itself was under a potential licensing cloud is now the codec of choice for encoding videos.

This entry was posted on September 14, 2010 at 1:37 PM and has received 233 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Every so often I get asked about where to get music without breaking copyright. Creative Commons tagged music is a good start for me because it tells me immediately what I can do with the music (or video, picture etc) without having to ask the author.

Anyway here are some links to "free" sites. If you have more, please add a comment to this entry. Update:- because of this blog's inbuilt spam filter, posting a comment can sometimes be rejected. The trick appears to be to leave out the http:// part of the url, so just type in www.somewher.com

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This entry was posted on July 28, 2010 at 9:06 AM and has received 346 views. There are currently 2 comments. Print this entry.

The one challenge that seems to face us as we create our eLearning pieces is capturing good audio. You may remember I recreated a "studio" from packing foam which goes a long way to removing street noise if you recording from home and the sound of a fan overhead (if you live in the tropics like me). I have since found a couple more blog entries from audio experts that really are worth reading.

These links teach you everything from how to get great audio from ordinary equipment and I have chosen them on the basis that the tips need to satisfy two of three criteria - good, fast or cheap.

So if you have a need to be heard clearly through your youtube video, elearning moodle piece or juiced up podcast then read on...

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This entry was posted on June 5, 2010 at 7:29 AM and has received 268 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

The DUET speakerphone is a USB powered speaker and microphone combination that sells for around 420 dollars Australian and can be purchased from http://www.duetaudio.com.au/

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This entry was posted on May 27, 2010 at 2:01 PM and has received 266 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

 I filmed two speeches the other day and used my reflecmedia greenscreen (which is actually grey). The way it works is that there is a lightring that fits around the camera lens which emits green light. This green light is reflected off the millions of little crystals embedded into the reflecmedia screen creating a consistent green that can be keyed out using After Effects - or rather Keylight.

In addition to the using the green screen, I used a great piece of software which I have mentioned before called podcast autocue which allows our talent to read speeches and prepared material from an autocue. What I need to do is connect up an external monitor and locate it behind the camera so that the talent's eyes are reading the text looking into the camera, not looking down as they did in this piece.

This was all shot in a 4*3 metre office which we hope may become a mini TV studio.

From DET - Green Screen

From DET - Green Screen

From DET - Green Screen

This entry was posted on May 13, 2010 at 4:48 AM and has received 268 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

We like SharePoint (although we do have our bad days with it) and we like podcasting/vodcasting/blogs. We have established blogs in SharePoint and I have mentioned how impressed I was with the integration of MS Word as the editor and the ease of publishing content to a SharePoint blog.

We had discussed integrating the beta version of the SharePoint Podcasting Kit into our schools environment and although we really want to do it, we needed to make sure that whereever these files are stored we have indexed them, provided enough computer power to deliver them and ensured they have both the quality and clearance for delivery via our networks. This blog entry is a revisitation of this request and options available.

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This entry was posted on December 29, 2009 at 2:46 PM and has received 1065 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

In the version of this post sent out I included a link to an older version of the driver. The correct drive link is included below.

Using the very cool and free audacity to create and edit audio for inclusion in Moodle and Presenter you can export as an MP3 file but you have download a dll file and then get audacity to point to it.

Although this may seem like a pain, it only takes a minute if you follow the instructions and use the link below.

Don't worry, it asks you the questions.

Anyway, the point of this post is to let you know that rather than searching all of google and installing x number of LAME encoders to get this file, you can download the file directly from http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/  and I would suggest that after unzipping it, you put it in the same directory as the audacity program file.

Voila, exportable mp3 files.

This entry was posted on August 28, 2009 at 7:32 AM and has received 239 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.