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8 Ways To Make Professional Looking Video Blogs That Will Attract Users And Keep Them Coming Back

Browsing through Darren's ProBlogger website got me thinking about one aspect of blogging that I use to take part in: video blogging or vlogging. As a video professional, I love this media and find it appealing and easier to use in regards with tutorials or commentary. I understand that a lot of users still like to read at their own pace but after reading this article you might find a few ways to cater to your old and new users with captivating video blogs.

1- KNOW YOUR TOPIC

A pretty basic idea that also works for normal blogs. Understanding fully what you're about to explain, comment on or give a tutorial on. Most well known vloggers don't just stick a camera in their faces and start yapping. You must have a concise plan, a sort of script to work off of. Do your research, plan ahead and write down major points so you don't find yourself doing: "hummmm, then uh.. hmmm... heuuu"

2- WATCH YOURSELF AND YOUR SETTING

Are you about to record yourself in your bathrobe? Are you slouching in your chair with the kids running around behind you? If you want to be taken seriously, you must take the necessary actions. Be presentable; think of your vlog like a real presentation in front of thousands of people. That doesn't mean you must wear a suit and a tie and stand behind a podium but you need to show an image that will convey approachability and professionalism. A good way to achieve that is to clean up the clutter on your desk, be careful as to what shows up in the background. If need be, drop a nice neutral colored drape behind you (not directly behind you, about 5 to 10 feet is perfect). Don't sit with your back to a window since that will create an awful effect known as backlighting. No matter what your backlight button on your camera says, it still will look horrible. Wear neutral clothes, don't use bright colors unless you really have to show your crazy side. Focus your eyes straight at the camera while speaking and do an effort and smile now and again.

3- LIGHTS

No need to go buy LED light boxes or fresnos for a vlog shoot. Use the light sources in your home or office. Simply direct it in a way where you, the subject, will be lit evenly. To make sure you have an even light, you can diffuse it using a white cotton sheet in front of the light source (not too close, don't burn it). The best way to use this technique is to use a flood light (the ones that point straight up to the ceiling, usually 100 Watts) and direct it downwards. Rest it on a chair or a table and make sure the center of the light hits your upper body. Place the light 5 feet away. Without the diffuser, your face will probably be "hot" (hot spots on the screen are also referred as blown and happen when a subject is overexposed). Place the sheet in front of the light and extend it so light can go through. You will see right away the difference, the light will now be diffused and will hit the subject evenly. You can also use a background light to make you stand out a little from the background. To do so, use a directional light source like a spotlight and place it on the floor or above the subject but just in front of the background directed at you. That light is usually less bright than the main one and not widely used for vlogging but you can experiment.

4- CAMERA

So many webcams are available on the market nowadays, some great and some amazingly horrid. You do not have to spend too much money to get a decent camera that will have good enough resolution and frame rate (the number of frames in one second, i.e. 10 frames a second will show a little lag in your video, the more frames a second the better) to do your vlogs but then again you don't have to use your webcam either. For the most part, vlogs are a quick way for users to get the information they need in a video format, right? You obviously don't want your visitors to sit around and wait for the video to load because it's badly compressed, right? Keep in mind that you're not trying to compete with Diggnation and other web shows that use HD cameras worth thousands of dollars (their shows are in general around 180MB to download and last more than 30 minutes). If you have a digital camcorder (or Still Camera with video function) lying around like most people do these days, use it. The difference will be huge. These real cameras have a much better lens and capture light and colors in their true form without cutting corners like most webcams.

I used to shoot some of my older stuff with an iSight camera and had great success with it. My clients were happy with the tutorials and the quality of them. I wasn't. I knew I could do better and keep up with the changing technology. I've since shot some using a 1chip Digital Camera and saw an instant difference. Since I was shooting full DV (frame rate of 29.97 frames per second), I could then compress the vlog into 24 or 20 frames a second - which is much higher than the webcams and still keep the great resolution that the DV gave me. (more about compressing under point 7)

5- ACTION

Speak clearly, enunciate and don't go too fast. It's hard not to stress over how we look or how we sound and feel natural when in front of a camera, that's why being calm is the number one state you must be in. Don't move to quickly in front of the camera, your movement will be blurred out at this level of compression and is not recommended. Use more punctuation than normal, make sure your voice doesn't get boring after a while.

6- CUTTING YOUR WAY THROUGH THE COMPETITION

As your shooting your vlog you should already know if you'll be using video inserts of an image you're talking about or a snippet of another video you'll be reviewing or commenting on. Editing makes it all happen. Editing is key to putting together a vlog that has a "to the point" mentality. Use visual bumpers to separate your points. Add titles to stress the important part of your commentary. Add music at the end and beginning with a short title sequence presenting your vlog. So many different editing tricks you can use to make your vlog more snappy and enjoyable to watch, instead of the boring monologue it could become. Be careful though, editing can also be an ugly poisoned apple if badly used. Too many cuts will make the viewer look away. Too many titles will make the viewers spend less time listening to you and more time trying to decipher all the text. Music can become annoying if used throughout the vlog as a background bed. All in moderation for a better production.

I use Final Cut Pro on the Mac but it is definitely not the tool to use if you're simply creating vlogs. iMovie for the Mac is a great alternative and brings a bunch of great features and ease of use to the vlogger. On the PC side, MovieMaker and a slew of other consumer softwares are great at what they do as well. Remember, the point of making a vlog is to be visually enticing but without wasting too much time. You don't want to create a 5 minute vlog that took you a full day or production. The first one might take you longer but as you get better at it you will see an immense improvement in your timeline. I can now write, shoot, edit and compress a full 5 or 10 minute vlog, in less than an hour.

7- COMPRESSING YOUR VLOGS WITHOUT SWEARING UP A STORM

Once your edit is done and you've watched yourself in amazement, it's time to compress and let others enjoy it too. Most of the editing software you will be using wil have export features for different formats. For vlogs, the smaller the better but you also don't want to lose too much quality. Popular formats are MP4, MOV, MPEG, AVI. The ones I tend to use most are .MOV and .MP4 because they give me great quality without much video artifact (pixelized image, blurry spots and video flicker).

Here's a quick guide to the customizations I most often use.

Format: .MOV H.264

Size: 320x240

Frame Rate: 24

Key Frames: Automatic or every 50 frames

Frame Reordering: Yes

Quality: Best

Encoding: Faster Encode

Date Rate: Automatic or 250 kbits/sec

Format: MP4 - Video Improved

Data Rate: 256 kbits/sec

Optimized for Download: Yes

Image Size 320x240 QVGA
Preserved aspect ration - fit within size

Frame rate 15

8- POSTING YOUR VLOGS WITH EASE

Sharing your vlog is the whole point of this exercise of course and you can only achieve that if you find an effective way to distribute your vlog quickly and easily to all your viewers. If you have less than few hundred people a month visiting your site you can get by hosting the video yourself without much problem with bandwidth and speed. On the other hand, if you're viewership is greater than you probably will want to use a video sharing website like the very popular YouTube to post your videos. On a personal note, I don't recommend using YouTube because of their horrible compression rate when transferring your vlogs into their own Flash format. For better quality, try Vimeo.com and embed your videos directly on your site using their own player.

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Possible reasons why when adding a monitor to my laptop, it won't allow me to set the monitor as the default?

My laptop's backlight has a short and I need the added monitor as the default monitor. The monitor shows windows loading, but then when my desktop background loads, that is the only image I have on the monitor. The pointer and the taskbar disappear on the monitor.

[Assuming you have Windows XP]
Boot up your laptop with your monitor connected.

Right-click the desktop and select Properties.

Go to Settings tab.

Click the Identify button and note which number appears on which screen.

Select the number for your external monitor, in the large box. (Arrange the two numbered boxes to reflect the physical arrangement, if so be required.)

You must see a check box named "Use this device as the primary monitor". Check this (that is, put a tick mark).

You may also wish to select the box that represent your LCD and un-check the "Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor" check box. Doing so will turn off your LCD and your desktop will consist of your external monitor only (unless you boot without the monitor).

Click OK. Restart if you are asked to.

For more detailed help, see the source listed.
_______
Viva La Dvorak! - www.dvzine.org

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How to troubleshoot laptop LCD SCREEN with backlight failure

First of all, I tested this laptop with an external monitor connected to the VGA port and the external monitor worked absolutely fine. I was able to get crystal clear image on the external screen even though the internal screen didn’t light up. If the external screen works fine, then most likely there is nothing wrong with the video card. http://www.sunvalleyus.com/LCDPanel/

Notebook display assembly diagram

After that I took a closer look at the laptop LCD and noticed that the screen is not completely black. The laptop screen still works but the image is very very dull, you barely can see it. It means that the screen still gets data signal from the video card, but for some reason the backlight lamp doesn’t work.

From my experience I know that this problem can be related the lid close switch, faulty inverter board or bad backlight lamp. I checked them one by one.

If you have a similar problem, make sure the lid close witch moves freely. The lid switch is a small button located close to the LCD screen. This button triggers the hibernation or sleep mode when the screen is closed. If the lid close switch is dirty, it might get stuck inside the laptop case and cut off the power from the inverter board. The inverter board works as a power supply for the backlight lamp and if there is no power coming to the inverter board, the backlight lamp will not light up either.

In my case the lid button worked properly, it didn’t stuck inside the case. When I was pressing on the button very fast, I was able to light up the screen but only for a fraction of a second. The image wasn’t bright and it had a pinkish tone. A pinkish tone usually indicates a problem with the backlight lamp, not the inverter board.

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Even though I suspected the backlight failure, I decided to test this laptop with a new inverter board just in case. But it didn’t help. The screen didn’t light up even after I replace the inverter board. So, I was right, this problem is not related to the inverter board.

Finally, I disconnected the screen backlight lamp connector from the inverter board and connected my test backlight lamp (I removed it from another cracked screen). For the test purpose, you can buy a new backlight lamp here. Try to find a backlight with the connector already attached to it, so you can plug it into the inverter board. Make sure the connector on the backlight lamp is similar to the connector on your LCD screen.

As soon as I turned on the laptop, my backlight lamp lighted up. Yep, that’s the problem. The laptop screen has a faulty backlight lamp.

Here’s another laptop with backlight failure

This laptop video fails in a little bit different way. In this case the backlight lamp hasn’t failed completely.

The laptop starts with video on the screen but the background has reddish tone, the screen flickers and it makes noticeable buzzing noise coming from the backlight and inverter area. After a few minutes the backlight turns off by itself and the buzzing noise stops. When the backlight is off, the image on the screen is still visible but it’s very dark.

I removed the screen bezel and connected my test backlight lamp.

My test backlight works absolutely fine. The lamp doesn’t flicker and there is no buzzing noise. So, this laptop needs a new backlight lamp.

You can also buy new LCD Screens on http://www.sunvalleyus.com/Panel154Inch/

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