YouTube Goes HD

If you haven't already heard, YouTube has been busy upgrading. First they switched to a new 16:9 (widescreen) video player a few weeks back and now YouTube supports uploading of high definition videos. If you want to start uploading your videos in high def, YouTube has a guide to optimizing your video uploads.

Why Blip.tv is the Best

In my opinion Blip.tv is the absolutely best place to host your videos if you are producing puppet podcasts (or any other kind of video podcast). The basic account is totally free and they offer a great set of features, including the ability to make a little money and can automatically post your videos to other popular services like iTunes. What I like best is that they are first and foremost focused on hosting shows and serving creators. Several puppet podcasts are hosted on Blip, including dotBoom and JigSaw. I started hosting my old Bear Town videos there recently too and I've been very impressed with Blip so far.

If you put videos on the web, give Blip a try. I don't think you'll regret it.

Update: I just noticed that Blip is having a problem with visitors to their homepage being prompted to download an executable file called XPantiVirus (don't do it). Give them sometime to fix the problem and try out Blip tomorrow. They really are great, they're just having a bad day today.

Quick Green Screen Tips

I spotted these green screen tips from Brian Richardson (he of WhatTheCast and Dragon*Con TV) in the famous Yahoo Videoblogging Group. I think they will be helpful for anyone doing puppet podcasts who is a little mystified/frustrated by the green screen process:

• The main trick is even lighting across the screen and the people in front of it. Much like a Babylon 5 episode, shadows are the enemy.
  
  
• Try using four lights on your screen. Two 1,000 watt softboxes are good to light your green screen and two 500 watt umbrella lights can be used to light your subject (if you're not familiar with the difference between these types of lights, try Googling them).
  
  
• A learn what colour temperature is. All of the light bulbs in your setup should use the same color temperature (I use 3200K).
  
  
• Don't get too close to the green screen. Once you get within three feet of the screen, shadows start to form and they will mess up your key.
  
  
• Another trick is to take your camera off of automatic. Letting the camera adjust color/white balance in the middle of a green screen shot might cause problems editing (the value of "green" will change as people move in & out of the scene if the camera tries to adjust).

Want to try creating some green screen effects, but don't have the right software? Check out this green screen tutorial on Instructables that explains how to create green screen effects using Debug Mode's WAX (it's free to download).

Miro: The Best Way To Watch Puppetry on the Web

The open source Miro video player (I last wrote about it back in June when it was still called The Democracy Player) is out of beta testing and it's a fantastic application. Miro can automatically download, manage and play videos from RSS-based "channels" and popular video sharing sites like YouTube. It's a great way to watch videos online and best of all it's completely free! If you love to watch video on the web download it today and give Miro a try.

Quick Podcasting Tip: Use Video Feeds

Using video RSS feeds is a great way to help promote video podcasts.

If you create a puppet podcast - or any other kind of video podcast at all - you should make sure you make use of Video RSS feeds. They work the same as the RSS feeds (or "newsfeeds") that blogs use, except that they contain video. They make it easy for your audience to subscribe to your videos using iTunes, the super-cool Miro player (in my opinion Miro is the best way to watch and download videos online) or just about any other program that supports video and RSS.

There's a good guide that explains how to properly shoot, edit and publish videos for the internet at Make Internet TV.

Democracy Player: A Great Way To Watch Video

I recently started using the open-source Democracy Player (it will soon be renamed the Miro Player) and I really, really like it. Not only can Democracy play just about every kind of video imaginable - Quicktime, WMV, MPEG, AVI, XVID, etc. - it helps you find some of the internet's best video podcasts via its built-in Channel Guide. You can also use it to download, save and watch BitTorrent files as well as videos from sites like YouTube and Google Video. It even supports high-definition video too!

For those of you who already produce a puppet podcast or are thinking of starting one, Democracy offers video creators a number of helpful tools, including one click video subscription buttons, Broadcast Machine (for publishing videos on your web site) and Make Internet TV (a guide to shooting and editing video for the web). Even if you don't want to use the Democracy software yourself, you can submit your show's RSS Feed to create your own Democracy Channel to help you attract new viewers.

You can download the latest version of the Democracy Player via www.getdemocracy.com.

Puppets on GodTube

Good Friday seems like an appropriate day to mention puppets on GodTube (link via TechCrunch), a new video sharing site dedicated to Christian audiences. There's only a few puppet videos posted so far and the quality is middle-of-the-road, but hopefully this site will provide an opportunity for the Christian puppetry community to showcase some really great work.

The Competition Wants To Steal YouTube's Stars

Despite all the great puppetry content on YouTube, there still hasn't been a true breakout puppetry star emerge yet. It's probably a matter of when not if that happens and with that in mind it's interesting to read that the newest wrinkle in the online video wars is that apparently YouTube's competitors are trying to poach talent in an effort gain market share.

This is a smart strategy, since user generated content is one of the big two forces driving YouTube's traffic (the other one, pirated content, is probably going to start drying up very soon). I wonder if sites like this will become like networks or studios and ambitious users will start pitching them content in an effort to get better deals?

Monday Morning Inspiration: The Wit & Wisdom of Phil Vischer

Phil Vischer is a pretty inspiring guy and anyone who dreams of being the next Jim Henson or Walt Disney can learn a lot from him and his experiences.

Phil founded Big Idea Productions in 1993 with the motto "Sunday morning values, Saturday morning fun" and the idea that he would teach the Christian bible and moral ideas to children through a bunch of crazy, singing vegetables. Phil's "big idea" ended up succeeding beyond his wildest dreams; Big Idea's first project - Where's God When I'm S-Scared? (the first widely distributed 3D animated movie - released two years before Pixar's Toy Story) - launched the insanely popular Veggietales series and transformed the face of Christian entertainment.

Big Idea shone brightly as a Christian media superstar in the 1990s, but ultimately ended up in bankruptcy in 2003 after a series of financial missteps. It was a wild personal and spiritual ride for Phil, who went from being an independent Christian filmmaker working out of his spare bedroom to the head of a multi-million dollar animation studio to bankrupt entrepreneur in the span of about a decade. Phil relates the story of the rise and fall of Big Idea in a wonderfully frank, brutally honest article on his web site called What Happened To Big Idea?

Like a surprising number of animation people, Phil started out in puppetry, working in Christian puppet ministry. Since the bankruptcy of Big Idea he's gone back to his puppetry roots and his new company Jellyfish produces the semi-regular podcast Jelly News that's mentioned here frequently and last year he was rumored to have some other puppetry-related projects in the works.

Naturally, Phil has great insight into the Christian entertainment market and he's recently wrapped up a series of posts on his blog about the past and present realities of the Christian video market and the possibilities for the future:

• So you want to make your own Christian videos?
• So you want to make Christian videos, part 2
• So you want to make Christian videos, part 3

These are written with would-be producers of Christian media in mind, but the trends Phil discusses apply to just about every other type of niche-related video content out there too.

Finally, as if the man wasn't already prolific enough, Phil has just published a book about his life and his spiritual journey called Me, Myself, and Bob: A True Story About God, Dreams, and Talking Vegetables. So far the reviews have been good with more than one reviewer noting that much like the format of a Veggietale video, the book is unapologetically Christian, but not explicitly scriptural until the very end. I haven't read it yet myself, but I'm looking forward to it.

Viral Video Online Puppetry Festival

The excellent Spanish language puppetry site Titerenet is sponsoring their first ever Viral Video Online Puppetry Festival. The only rule is that to eligible for the contest your video must be made with a puppet. Awards will be given for the most watched video, the highest rated video, the most commented video and the most favourited video.

Prizes include:

• Annual registry of a domain name (.com .org .net)
• A professional annual subscription to the titerenet directory
  
• Four copies of Puck magazine translated into Spanish
• Engish language puppetry books

To submit a video to the contest simply upload it to YouTube and add it to the Titerenet group. The contest is open until February 28th, but obviously the sooner you enter the better chance you'll have in several of the categories.

Ustedes pueden leer la información en español aquí.

Using Puppets To Pay The Bills

Muppets Harry and Professor Madcliffe help sell Esskay Meats in a commercial from the early days of television.

As long time readers of the blog know, two of my big influences are Scott McCloud and John K. Neither of them are involved in puppetry, but their respective art forms (comics and animation) have traditionally faced a lot of the same challenges as puppetry and many of their ideas can easily be adopted by puppeteers. Both John and Scott have been at the forefront of trying to figure out how independent creators can harness the internet to actually make a living doing the work they love.

In the mid `90s I first got interested in the internet's potential as a distribution channel for puppetry when I saw John's pioneering web series The George Liquor Show. One of the neat things John did with that series - which was the first-ever professionally produced Flash cartoon - was go back to the early television practice of having the show's characters act as pitchmen for the show's sponsor. John was a little a head of his time and the concept didn't really gain traction, but now a decade later he's started experimenting with it again. He discusses direct sponsorship in two recent posts on his blog (click for part one and part two).

(Note: This is a long post so I am test-driving a new feature...to continue reading this article on the main page of the blog just click on "Read More" below, otherwise keep scrolling down for more puppet film and video fun)

Some puppetry artists feel that using their work to sell products and services is too crass and commercial. I respect that point of view, but puppets pitching products was a common practice in early television...and it was often really entertaining too! It's how the Muppets paid most of their bills in the 1950s and 1960s. I don't see why it can't work for web video. Actually, I know that it can from my own experience.

Back in 2000 a few puppetry friends and I did some experimenting with a directly-sponsored web series called The Marshall and Buck Show. Looking back now the show itself was very crude, but the business model did work. Although it didn't last long enough to turn a profit (our sponsor was wiped out when the dotcom stock market bubble burst about four episodes in), it did pay enough to cover the rent on a small studio and take care of small production-related expenses. If the online advertising market hadn't imploded who knows what might have happened?

Right now there are puppet web series are popping up all over (just check the list in the sidebar) and I know of several more on the way. Most of the creators doing these would love to make their show a full or even part-time job. Could the classic direct sponsorship approach enable that? I think it can, but it has to be the right show delivering the right audience to the right sponsor.

This is a big, complicated topic with lots of questions that nobody can answer yet. If you're interested in reading more about the financial possibilities of web video I highly recommend Scott Kirsner's excellent new ebook The Future Of Web Video.

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Update: John K. has just posted some additional thoughts about making direct sponsorship work in Direct Sponsorship Part 3.

Quick thoughts about putting video on web pages

Today while I was working there were five videos I wanted to see on the web. They were all formatted as Quicktime videos and while I wanted to watch them very much, clearly the creators didn't want me to. At least that's what it seemed like because it was nearly impossible to watch them in my web browser.

The lesson I took away from that experience was how important it is to make video as accessible as possible. Here's a list of dos and don'ts I've put together for myself for the next time I am adding video (puppetry related or otherwise) on a web page:

1. Do use Flash video to embed video on a web page. It loads faster and requires smaller files than QuickTime and (cringe) Windows Media. Flash video never seems to crash web browsers, QuickTime does sometimes and Windows Media does it often.
   
2. Don't make videos play automatically when users land on a page. That can be very annoying.
   
3. Do remember to include video controls if embedding a video on a web page. After all, what good to is a video player if you can't control it?
4. Don't presume to know the way your audience wants to watch your video.
5. Do offer download links to the video in different sizes and even multiple formats (Quicktime, iPod, PSP, etc.).
   
6. Don't use Windows Media (seriously, it sucks).
   
7. Do offer visitors an RSS Feed (if you don't know how RSS works go ask Google about it and find out).

While as a general rule Flash video should be used for in-browser playback and other formats like DIV/X, QuickTime, etc. should be linked to for downloading, lots of people prefer using QuickTime to embed video. If you insist on doing that be sure to read this article for some tips on how to it properly.

End of rant.