Anchoring: Creating, Uploading, Making Sure it Works...

From ControlsWiki

Authored by: Kyle Goszyk, Fall 2007

1 Introduction to Anchoring
2 How to do it
3 The tricky part
4 Once you have it coverted
5 Sage's Corner

Introduction to Anchoring

To give a brief introduction of your assignment to anchor, the following text was taken from the Fall 2007 syllabus. Contact Peter Woolf [1] for an original copy of this document, or wait until the first day of class…

Anchor: Group of two people that produce a 3 minute narrated PowerPoint presentation of a topic associated with a wiki article and post it online. This narrated presentation could cover a confusing issue, work through an illustrative example, or describe an important extension from the work. The presentation should not be just reading the wiki. The goal is to add to the content, not just repeat it. These presentations will be the basis of the golden globe valve awards at the end of the semester. Your peers will grade anchor presentations.

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How to do it

Using MS PowerPoint, it is a fairly simple operation in recording voice over a presentation. The easiest way to begin doing this is by having a finished presentation at hand, writing a script to this power point and recording it through your computer. Again, it is essential that after you finish your presentation, write a script! Most anchoring groups waste more time improvising the script, messing up and having to re-record than writing out a script and recording it once or twice.

1. In the toolbar, go to Slide Show -> Record Narration

2. The record screen comes up

3. Apply the proper settings

4. Your presentation will record

5. Speak into your microphone, loudly and slowly

6. You can change the slides just like you are giving a presentation -- with the mouse or keyboard

7. You can see the recording…In the slide sorter

8. Go to File -> Make Movie

9. You can change some of the settings, although it is really unnecessary

10. Name the file and export the movie as a .mov file

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The tricky part

Uploading your newly created movie is essentially the biggest challenge anchorers have. In order to do so, the movie needs to be compressed into a smaller file (as a mpeg4) and then uploaded to a web-based video streamer (YouTube [youtube.com] or Google Video [video.google.com]). It is not recommended to upload the movie to the Controls Wiki, for it will most likely exceed the uploading size limit (6 Mb).

Compressing the movie

This is the second hardest part. To do so, there are a few really good movie conversion programs you can download on your computer for free.

Windows based

1. Xilisoft Video Converter. This program is technically shareware, which means its functionality is limited until purchase. The limitation, however, is that you cannot convert videos longer than 5 minutes. This suits our needs, for we should only have anchoring movies that are around 3 minutes long! [2]

2. llok MPEG4 Converter 4.1. This is another shareware program that allows you to convert videos for 30 days for free. Then you have to pay the $35 price tag if you like it. [3]

3. Ultra iPod Movie Converter 2.0.2. You might question why an iPod converted would be useful in our situation: iPod movies are mpeg4’s! Try it for free for 30 days. [4]

Mac based

1. iSquint. Perhaps the best (because it works well and is free) for the Mac OS. [5]

2. Video Converter for Mac. This is not free, but pretty versatile if you need to convert all kinds of videos (maybe for other projects outside this class). [6]

3. iMovie. This usually comes for free on Mac OS X. This has had problems accepting movies from PowerPoint, but occasionally it works.

If nothing works

If all of these programs fail to convert the video you want (for what ever reason), you can always go to the GroundWorks Media Lab in the first floor of the Duderstadt Center. Check out the link below for more info:

GroundWorks Website [7]

There, you can ask for help to record or convert your videos. There are a plethora of ways to do so, and everyone that works there is very knowledable and helpful. You should not wait until the last minute to go to GroundWorks, for it might get crowded in the evenings.

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Once you have it coverted

In order to post it on the wiki, you need to upload the video to YouTube [8] or Google Video [9]. You will need to make an account for each website in order to upload videos.

After you upload the video on each website, you need to check whether everything worked. In the past, videos on Google Video have been rejected a day after being uploaded due to copyright infringement (if you used a copyrighted picture in your video) or other strange reasons that are beyond me. YouTube and Google Video require you to edit the details of the video to become available online. Make sure you follow through with this also.

Once the video is completely uploaded, you can post it (embed it) in the Controls Wiki. The syntax to do so is below:

The Number... holder is where you paste in the number code from either site, which is given when you upload it. This is essentially the hyperlink for the video file.

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