Streaming Learning Center

When comparing Ogg Theora to H.264, most reviewers have focused solely on video quality. But that's only a small component of what it will take for Ogg to achieve mainstream success.

Here's a short video discussion between Lisa Larson-Kelly and myself discussing the upcoming training. If you're curious about the training, or how Oovoo works (it's pretty cool) click over to the main article. For more information on the training, click over to http://streamingflash.eventbrite.com/

Updated findings below.

Ogg Theora and HTML5 have been top of mind for me over the last few weeks, and one consistent question was how Ogg compared to H.264 in terms of quality. So, I spent a few hours this past weekend encoding and comparing. Click through to the main article to see what I found. 

This is a video from a session at Streaming Media West. In addition to the production/pre-processing and encoding tips, it's a unique opportunity to see me - Jan Ozer - as a blonde, which I was for roughly 6 weeks last year (a Halloween thing).

Click through to the main article to watch the video.

Last Friday, I produced a concert for old time band Allegheny Blue to test out the NewTek TriCaster TCXD300.  I uploaded a 720p file to YouTube to present to the band, and when I went to view the file, I noticed that the Google subsidiary had subtly changed the playback interface.

Though the update turned out more to be interface related than plumbing, there are still some interesting takeaways relating to what data rate to use for your video, and which H.264 encoding parameters. Read all about it by clicking through to the full article.

Just got off the phone with Jay Simons from Atlassian, an Australian software company specializing in collaboration and development tool like Jira, Confluence and FishEye. Atlassian has produced hundreds of screencam videos to illustrate new features of their programs and provide quick training tips, producing the screencams with Telestream ScreenFlow (click here to watch some excellent tutorials on Screencam production with ScreenFlow from Atlassian employee Mark Halvorson).

I was chatting about Atlassian's choice of Episodic as their Online Video Platform (OVP) for an article I'm writing for AV Technology, and Jay mentioned that the analytics that Episodic provided - like drop off statistics, how and when people rewind, how many people embed and forward the videos -  helped them fine-tune their screeencam production for clarity, retention and engagement. I asked for some tips, which he graciously provided. Here they are:

• Limit screencams to 90 seconds, which typically means one topic.
• Don't waste time with introductions, logos and the like. Jump in and start presenting.
• Summarize key points with text to aid retention, but pause the video when displaying text. Otherwise, folks can get distracted (as evidenced by lots of rewinds).
• Use background music to fill in the "white spaces." Make sure the mix is right - if music is too loud, viewers exit quickly. 
• Voice quality matters - buy a good microphone and pre-amp, and learn skills like pop and click elimination and noise reduction.

I produce a lot of screencams, and I'll keep these in mind going forward. Thanks to Jay for sharing, and I hope you find the tips useful.

We've all heard about Sorenson Squeeze 6, this article contains an overview of the new features, which include the new review and approval workflow, new filters, faster H.264 encoding and superior integration with Sorenson 360, Sorenson's online video platform.