Translations - the short course description

One of the issues that we're going to have to get right is translating ideas that work in one medium into new ideas that work in another.  All of the work that Rick and I have done together to date has been face-to-face, usually workshops. I wouldn't say it's an easy option - it takes a lot of energy - but we do have a lot of tricks up our sleeves.  In this course we're going to have to find new ways to do old tricks and find some entirely new tricks to make the most of the opportunities that online distance learning offers.

Another conversion to make is between the task up until now - explaining what the course is about for the sake of the university - and explaining the opportunity to students.  We're teaching that audiences are important after all, so it won't do to forget that in the text of the course and elsewhere. So after years of describing the course in terms of learning outcomes, financial costs and benefits and strategic directions for our teaching, it was a real pleasure this week to sit down and knock out a short description of the course for students.  This is what I came up with:

The Digital Film School is your chance to join the millions of people around the world who make and share video every day. The explosion of film-making for websites and mobiles gives people and organisations the opportunity to tell their stories and show what they have to offer, at low cost. The course is practical, hands-on and fun, built around simple tasks based on real-world briefs and a strong culture of mutual support between students. Our experienced team of film-makers will show you some of the craft secrets that underpin good film-making, and how the professionals stay up to date.

The trick now is going to be living up that.

Testing the waters

We started our notional 5th day of course production explaining ourselves to friends and colleagues - a hand-picked group of experienced teachers, the wider course team and some of the people we thought might have an active interest in the publicly available media and teaching resources we'll make.

The idea was to present what we have so far a bit like a dress fitting - enough shape to suggest what the finished article is going to be like, but not something you'd like to walk around in.  We get some expert feedback on our ideas at an early stage and some nice internal publicity for what we're doing.  Another big advantage is the pressure it put on us to get our ideas into a form we could present to someone else, at an early stage.

Something I've really enjoyed since is the number of people there or have heard about it afterwards who've said they'd like to take the course.  It's a really good sign.

Here's some links for presentation:

A video of the presentation:  http://podcast.open.ac.uk/pod/L1-DigiVideo-20110112

Presentation notes: Handout

The bounteous well of online tutorials

An example of the sorts of resources I was talking about in my last post.

Just as Rick arrived yesterday I was talking to Gusztav, a friend who's been struggling with a new camera because his current editing package doesn't read the files it produces.  I was getting a little boggled by the .mts files he was looking at and not linking this to an issue I know about - which is that older kit really doesn't like AVCHD. Talking to Rick I realised that this was what the  issue was.  So I managed to google a few solutions and suggest them - I don't know if it helped.  

Anyway, last night I searched on "AVCHD to AVI conversion tutorial" and found a some relevant resources.   I liked the look of http://www.winxdvd.com/how-to-convert/avchd-to-avi-converter.htm, which promises up to 15X real time conversion rates.  The tutorial is more of an advert for a piece of software, but download the software and you get 15 days to try it out before it starts watermarking the output, and it's only $30 for the licence.  I had to try it - it is fast, writing 60-80 fps at 1080p.

Another option comes of out searching "avchd to avi freeware", which turned up http://www.brothersoft.com/free-avchd-converter-download-236601.html, which is from a company I've heard of.  No idea if the perfomance is better or worse, but two options has to be OK.  Well the truth is that there are hundreds of programmes out there.  It also looked like you could use Handbrake which is a good open source program I've used on a Mac.

Now's the interesting part - you can look at people using the thing in action.  So there's a tutorial for handbrake at: 

and another for the edit package I have (Vegas Pro):

These don't have amazing production values compared to something slick like this Apple seminar http://www.seminars.apple.com/seminarsonline/newsandsports/apple/index.html?s=203&locs=us_en, but they don't need to. The point is I learnt enough from watching them to see another 2 solutions to Gusztav's issue, and as a bonus on a click through from one of them picked up something in the comments thread that really made sense too.  Not bad for half an hours digging, and really I could have stopped after 10 minutes. I don't know how long I could have gone on for, but my feeling now is that this is a very, very bounteous well to draw on.