TESOL, Tampa March 17, 2006 How to Digitize Videotaped Materials VDMIS Academic Session: Dare to Go Digital! How to Digitize Videotaped Materials Video

TESOL, TampaMarch 17, 2006

How to Digitize Videotaped MaterialsVDMIS Academic Session: Dare to Go Digital!

How to Digitize Videotaped Materials

Video and Digital Media Interest SectionAcademic Session: Dare to Go Digital!

Johanna Katchen (柯安娜教授 )

National Tsing Hua University

http://mx.nthu.edu.tw/~katchen

[email protected]



mailto:[email protected]



Using Video in ELT

• For years we have been using videotape

• It’s easy to record from TV

• Easy to edit using two connected video recorders, though the result is not too exact



• Easy to bring to the classroom

• Cheap, relatively affordable for classrooms

• Relatively easy to use

• Easy to make copies for student use

• In many places VCRs are still in use in classrooms and schools may not be able to afford to upgrade to digital



But things are changing…

• October 2003—my university students complained that videotape was old-fashioned

• “Can’t you give us VCDs to work with?”• “My parents threw away the VCR and

only have DVD now!”• “We’d rather watch in our computers

and not have to wait our turn in the AV Center.”



What could I do?• All my teaching material was on videotape,

particularly news stories from BBC World and CNN International

• I had many short classic bits I use in both listening and speaking classes as well as linguistics classes, mainly Varieties of English

• Still easy to record a clever story on videotape



Digitize—turn analog videotape to a digital format

• Talking here about PC

• Many people say MACs are far better for working with video

• Where I live, in Taiwan, everyone uses PCs



What Do I Need?• You need a reasonably modern

computer, Pentium 3 or above for processing power.

• You need lots of memory, both for processing and for saving—you can use an external hard drive for this

• A VCR, preferably stereo and with a counter; connecting wire three to three



• You will need a video (capture) card in your computer to process video—new notebooks have this, desktops may not

• A digital bridge to convert analog to digital

• IE1394 (fire wire) from digital bridge to video capture card; newer models may use USB 2.0



• NOTE: some computer salesmen will give you a TV card instead of a video capture card, but the few colleagues I know who have tried this method have not had good results



Hardware Set-up



Software

• Many kinds of video capture software is available, from free to Adobe

• It’s the same software you would use to deal with home movies made on a digital camcorder

• I chose U-Lead’s Video Studio 8.0 (a Taiwan product); it’s easier to use than earlier versions and relatively cheap at about USD69



• Other software is also fine; Windows Movie Maker comes installed on newer PCs; disadvantage—editing a little more troublesome

• There is still a learning curve on most video software: you need some hours of practice to get the result you like and to use it with ease

• It took me a semester to learn to do it nearly automatically, with complete confidence



What format should I save it in?• The best processing standard is AVI, but the

size is huge

• MPEG2 is also big, for making DVDs

• Consider how you will use the file. Big is fine for burning a disc, but for the Internet you want to compress to a small size.

• Bigger has better quality, smaller worse.



• Can save on VCD

• Quality is good, file is big

• If you make your own DVDs, VCDs, and even audio CDs, they may not play on DVD players, especially higher quality ones, such as the one in your language lab or classroom, because of copyright protect mechanisms. This is so even if there is no copyright problem, such as with your students’ role plays.



• Some software such as U-Lead asks you if you want to include the option of playing on DVD player—and this does allow you to play them on DVD players

• Self-made digital videos are likely to play on a computer, but appropriate DVD/VCD playing software has to be installed

• Make sure you have the proper region code, then there’s +RW, -RW, and so on



Windows Media .wmv

• Capture (step one in digitizing) can be done with troublesome files

• Can be found on most PCs, so you can play the file

• Choice of different levels of quality (on U-Lead); its high quality rather good, but takes about 5 MB per minute

• I take a flash disc to class in the language lab and play it on the computer



Uploading to the Internet

• Most important question: How much space do you have?

• Our school gives each professor 500MB shared among personal website and e-mail. It’s not enough for my courses

• If one uses the school’s e-learn (Blackboard), each course has 190MB. One can receive 500MB or even 1GB per course



• While Windows Media gives good quality, at 5 MB/minute, only a few five-minute stories will use up lots of space

• Real Media using the free Real Player compresses more, 1 MB/minute, quality is not so good for language teaching materials and students have complained about this



• Low quality Windows Media gives about 1 minute per MB, but the quality is even worse. Recently I have used medium quality to show student speeches and students have said it is acceptable.

• More recent version compress to about 3 MB per minute with reasonable quality



• Added activities—pre-teaching questions, vocabulary, fill-in the blank, full text

• Let’s look at one example

• Comprehension Questions

• Fill-in the Blank

• Full Text

• Video not available for viewing on this site



• I would now put longer required materials on VCD for students to free up space on the e-learn site and also to avoid any copyright problems

• I remove even shorter pieces after a few weeks to free up space, especially if the material is newer

• Current students seem to enjoy having access to classroom video materials on-line

Documents

TESOL, Tampa March 17, 2006 How to Digitize Videotaped Materials VDMIS Academic Session: Dare to Go Digital! How to Digitize Videotaped Materials Video