All posts by nouyang

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Software/process for making videos for online learning

This past week I finally got started on my crazy half-formed ideas about an MITx version of 2.007.

Things I learned:

  1. use camstudio for screencasting on windows (free). Note that past 2gb, or less than 3 minutes using the Intel format at 50 quality (see screenshot later in post), the avi files seem to get corrupted and unusable.
    I’d looked into using ezvid, but you can only export to youtube. 
  2. use zoomit (free) to draw on the screen in windows
  3. record in a nice place, not a stone dungeon, because it reflects in the audio
  4. macs don’t like windows-formatted hard drives, so you can read but not write from non-mac-specific external hard drives
  5. MIT specific: the “scratch” folder on the building 26 new media / macathena clusters is per-computer, so you have to log-in at the same computer to access those files. I panicked when fcpx froze and I logged in on another computer and didn’t see anything in the scratch folder…
  6. on linux, youtube-dl blahlink will download the highest resolution version of blahlink video
  7. fcpx does not like flv files, and likes wav rather than mp3 files (if your recorder gives you that option)

hexapods video

(cc zero) made in inkscape + gimp + solidworks screenshot.

OKAY EVERYONE.
I’m still alive! I lolfailed at making a comic over IAP, but that is okay. Because! I ramped back up into happy excited mode! I hope this lasts more than 24 hours. I’m stressed about The Future but what the heck I am now able to convince myself to enjoy the moment and not be all “I should have done this by now” and “f***there’s a million things I should do, maybe i should just sleep instead.”

Thanks, brain. *scrunches face* I wonder about saying things like this when I am trying to find a job. oh well!

Anyway, I spent the last few days working on a video about hexapods, ostensibly to help people understand the design process for 2.007. (I made 18-servo-pod for 2.007 instead of participating in the contest). I’d taken part in a documentary-making class before, which used the final cut pro installed on the macs in the New Media Athena Cluster in building 26.

(We made this: http://vimeo.com/11305828)

But this was a bit different. For one thing, neither of the two hexapods (linkage and 18 servo) work right now. For another, since it’s a video about the design process, basically I am stuck with whatever media I took 2 years ago. So I have a lot less video and more pictures than might be ideal.

Anyway, turns out video editing software (in my case, final cut pro x) is magical and there’s no need about worrying about timing my screencasts with my audio recordings (which are done separately — I probably read each paragraph of the script 3 or 4 times) (The main advantage of reading it paragraph by paragraph is when you make a mistake reading it, you can re-record just that paragraph).

I used a stand-alone mic from a friend, and transferred sd-card files.

Using multiple monitors

My setup was like so:

Note the camstudio video settings, I think way lower would still be fine.. It also used to automatically open the avi file after recording, which got annoying so I turned that off.

I have two monitors, so I set the rightmost one to be 1280×720 resolution, lower than it can be.
Camstudio has a “select screen” option so it will only record one screen. Zoomit didn’t handle multiple screen as gracefully — I ended up making my right monitor the default (bringing the taskbar along with it :'( ) because it would let me type, but not draw, if I activated it (hit ctrl-2) on the wrong screen.

creative commons licensing

you can make your youtube videos creative commons license by default:
I went back and marked all my s*y videos cc, and set cc as default as well.
In addition, I just looked at cc licensing my images, and realized I’d set that as default a while back.
http://support.google.com/picasa/answer/94293?hl=en&

To find cc license videos, just type “hexapods, creativecommons“.

final cut pro x

Relatively intuitive to use. I used option-w to insert gaps (for breathers), cmd-r to “retime” edit the length of clips, and to make the end of a video sustained, I did it hackisly by cutting (b for blade) the end of a video and then using cmd-r to stretch that to however long I wanted it. There’s also automatic audio enhancements — I used “background hum removal’ a lot, and I need to go back and auto-enhance audio for all of them (I spoke rather softly).

other shortcuts: < and > for moving items around, ctrl-= for increasing 1db audio level, alt-w for insert gap.
oh I also learned -12 dB is a pretty standard audio level (depends on if you expect your video to be on tinny computer speakers or on real audio equipment) and you never want audio to reach 0 dB (when speakers distory).

result

The draft version can be seen here:
I need to figure out the purpose of this video so that I can add and intro and conclusion to it. Also, credits. I tried to keep most of the reused videos / pictures in-browser so I’m not directly re-using someone’s video; I wonder if using 6 seconds of the dancing hexapods video is acceptable? Unclear, but I decided in favor of making something rather than twiddling my thumbs worrying about things.
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an incoherent world 004, also why i am doing this

hrm.

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yes, those are rabbit slippers with glasses.

==
oh right, why am i doing a comic?
well, for fun, because there should be more engineering art, because my friends at MITERS say the most ridiculous things that are just begging to be turned into plot bunnies, and to practice drawing.

the idea is to stick crap on the internet and then look back at it in ten years and hopefully be able to measure some improvement. some sort of consistent practice thing. probably i would get better a lot faster if i did Actual Exercises (“deliberate practice”) like learning anatomy or drawing poses or copying existing art or something, but over the years i’ve learned that actually what matters the most is being able to do something consistently u.u Of course, I highly doubt this will be consistent after IAP, but it’ll be fun.

e.g. http://artistadodia.postbit.com/jonathan-hardesty.html (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3031684), although I think the original inspiration is from reading megatokyo from the beginning to … somewhere in the middle, and also from that Right Brain Drawing Book thing that compares some of Da Vinci’s beginning sketches to the later ones.

…these two panels took me twice as long as yesterday, at three hours total (i think around 4 or 5 hours for the first two pages, and page three was a bit over 1.5 hours). now I have to reference backward for the colors and such, also i really should make up my mind what the shipping container looks like, also i have never been inside a shipping container, also i am too lazy to do research, also i have no idea what the setting actually is, also wtf i have to pick clothes for my characters and i want to pick fancy things but then i would have to draw it @__@

i was going to talk about vending machines and smoothing caps, but maybe tomorrow. x.x uweh wow, i’ve barely worked on anything this week building-wise. uh………… i was planning on an update 5x/wk for the next two weeks (the rest of iap) but this is kind of silly. maybe i will do the 2x/wk thing and go build more things <3

i think next week is turn razor scooter into electric vehicle week. i want to do it in a semi-reversible way, it’s just light enough now to carry around inside grocery shopping, so it definitely won’t be with batteries and a motor included. but part of the point of making it electric is to be able to haul groceries with it, hrm.

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an incoherent world 003

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Well.
I blame the end of term and 2.009 peer reviews, which I’d just read when I wrote this script. I wish I had a stronger ego, so instead of moping I could be like “Hah! I shall go forth and work on this problem.”

No worries! The next few strips will (a) actually contain technical content and (b) be more lighthearted. Hopefully. 😀

Additionally, I was looking for comics by makers, and found it difficult to find any @__@. There was this: http://citizenengineer.com/ce01.html by one of my heroes, ladyada, and Phillip Torrone. But it is more photorealistic than comic-y, though it adheres to the comic format.

This article was also interesting:
http://blog.makezine.com/2011/04/07/which-comic-book-character-is-the-greatest-maker-of-all-time/

This page took a third as long as the other pages, since I really only had to draw two simple panels u.u

==
Anyway, long rambly personal blog things follow:
http://www.quora.com/MIT-Massachusetts-Institute-of-Technology/What-are-the-downsides-of-attending-MIT-as-an-undergrad
That about sums about MIT for me. Especially,

Plenty of people at MIT do perfectly normal, youthful diversions from the beaten path – like taking time off, build disco dance floors instead of studying, intentionally take 7 or 9 classes at once “to learn as much as I can”, and the like. However, the people who can do this and are visibly *confident* of it are in a clear minority. The others – I’d venture to guess a majority of campus – often wind up with serious identity crises in an undergraduate culture that rewards maintaining the same level of “excellence” at MIT as it took to get in – getting As and being in six clubs on two hours of sleep a night, and then graduating into Google, Wall Street or Ph.D programs at “name” schools (depending on your circle).

Ouch. ;__; Oh right, last last term and taking 8 or 9 classes. That ended poorly (with two incompletes and a my first D…), but I still maintain I have no regrets. I definitely fall into the “insecure about not getting As” group though. But what worries me is that, right now, I have almost no desire to take more than 2 or 3 classes.

Oh and as my friend Cathy Wu says on that same question,

I fear that many students enter MIT with the potential and aspirations to substantially improve the world (help solve world problems, innovation, etc.), but spend their four years working themselves to death such that they burn out by the end, and they end up not achieving their full potential. I only have anecdotal evidence of this.

-__-;
I remember coming to MIT in part thanks to the existence of D-Lab and Amy Smith and the work on international development. This sense that there is something really f***d about the world, that if only I were more [technically] competent I could help address, has been a driving force over the years. But lately I’ve been very internally focused and wondering if I’m not a startup-founder, self-motivated type after all. : / I’ve taken a long, long, break this winter break, I’m not even really doing anything over IAP, I really enjoy being on hall, yet I still feel distressed all the time. Talk about a waste of stress! Hah. I think mostly it is uncertainty about grad school / the future, and constantly stressing about what I should be doing with 2.007x. @__@ Uweh, I need to set some deadlines and make up my mind already.