Creating a video podcast for free

With all the tools and integrations to get video online (youTube, mobileMe, Posterous), you’d think that it would be pretty straightforward to create a video podcast. It took me a little while to figure it all out. Here’s how I did it.

1.       Create a Posterous account

2.       Email your movie to posterous.  This is cool because you can set it up to go to lots of services at once.  So by sending it to posterous, it could get submitted to youtube, vimeo, and be hosted as a .mov for iphone and podcasting. They use amazon storage to store the movie so hosting is free (at least up to 1GB right now). 

3.       Use Podcast blaster to create an xml file with the new episode information. It will keep your information so adding episodes is easy. I still think it could auto populate the length and duration fields, but oh well.  When you get to the episode url, go to your posterous page, find the download link for the .mov file and use that URL.

4.       Upload the XML file to your website. I hosted it at Google docs, which seems to work ok. I was worried about google docs being blocked on  some corporate intranets but I think it should be fine as long as iTunes can access the file

5.        Submit a Podcast to iTunes. Use the URL to the xml file you just uploaded. You only need to do this step once. After iTunes approves it, your podcast can be found iTunes. iTunes checks the xml file about once a day for new content.

Some additional notes:

·         If you just want to create an audio podcast, you can skip steps 3 and 4 and just submit your rss for your posterous blog (http://yourname.posterous.com/rss) to iTunes. Posterous supports podcast formatting of your rss with audio but for some reason not video.

·         There are many options for what format your video could be in. I didn’t test extensively with posterous to see if it always hosts videos in a podcast compatible format.

·         Movie size will likely be limited by your email provider.  Posterous limits you to movies of 100MB if you post by web. If your movies are bigger than that, you may have to find another hosting solution.

Here’s the one I created: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/crossfit-initiative/id402341737

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Shooting and publishing videos from your iPhone 4

We've been shooting most of the videos for the blog using a Sony video camera at the gym.  It's ideal to use since you can zoom and it is probably more steady, especially if you have a tripod. But a lot of us have an iPhone 4 with us almost all the time that do a fine job of shooting nice video.

The quick and dirty method

1. Create a youtube account if you don’t already have one.
2. film the video (landscape orientation is preferable )
3. Go to your camera roll. press the square button with the arrow,

1. Tap the movie and press the “Share” button and select “Send to YouTube”

   

This should work for most movies, especially if you narrate anything you want the viewer to know about.  But sometimes you want to add some title screens with text, audio, or some nice transitions. 

How to make your movie a little prettier

1.    Get iMovie from the app store ($4.99)

2.    Save the image and movie from this email to your phone if you are filming for CrossFit Initiative. Otherwise, find some images or clips of your logo (or whatever) that you want to use to dress up your movie and save them to your phone.

3.    Film your movie.

Create your project in iMovie

·         Go to iMovie and create a new project.

·         Set the Theme. You’ll have the option to set this when your project opens. If you want to change it later, touch the sprocket icon at the beginning of the timeline.

     

·         Add a title screen - If you want to start the movie with a Title screen where you can enter text, you need to add a movie. That is what the attached movie is for.  You could just apply the title screen to your whole movie, but that is probably not what you want. So add a short clip like the one attached.

Creating a title screen from an image

1.    Create a new project and add an image.

2.    Set the duration.  You’ll want it to be long enough to allow for the title to be read. Probably around 3-10 seconds. Set the duration by dragging the end of the clip when it is selected (has a yellow border)

3.    Optional: Animate it

a.    go to the beginning of the clip, set the position by using your finger to move the image, then go to the end of the clip and set the position again. Now it will animate between the two positions you set.

4.    Optional: Add audio

5.    Export the movie. I film in high quality so I export this movie in high quality.

6.    Create a new project and add the new movie to the project.

7.    Double tap the clip in the timeline. Set the Title style. Which one you use will depend on the Theme you choose. Touch the text area on the clip to edit it.

        

Adding your movie(s)

·         Tap the “add content” button and select your movie. If you want to trim it, touch it and then drag the yellow handles on either end. If you have lots of cutting and trimming to do, you’ll be better off just uploading it to a computer and editing it there as trimming on the iphone is pretty imprecise and takes a long time to do.

·         Optional: set the transition type

o   Double click the transition square between clips. You’ll get a menu allowing you to choose what type of transition you like. Default is cross dissolve.

·         Optional: add audio

o   You can add audio, but it is only applied to the entire project.  If you want to apply audio to just certain clips, the workaround is to create a separate project for that clip, add the audio, and export that project. Now, when you add that clip into your project, it will have the audio you want without having to apply audio to the entire project

·         Add a closing title screen. Do this the same way you created the intro title screen.

Publish

·         Go to the Projects page and tap the share button

·         Choose your export size. This will save it to your camera roll

·         Preview your video and if everything looks good, select it and share it on YouTube.

The first time you do this, it might take a while. But once you have a project set up with intro and title clips you like, sprucing up movies should be pretty quick. Get creative! I can’t wait to see what interesting things you’ll shoot. If you’re looking for ideas, give the 2-minute Double under challenge a shot.

Ray and Rob doing Double Unders - An example of a video that I filmed, edited, and published all from my phone. I don’t think it’s going to win any Grammys but it might win a Dummy.

Download now or watch on posterous

IMG_0536.MOV (762 KB)

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Increasing likes for free on a CrossFit site

I'm looking at our Facebook page, and noticing that we've been pretty stagnant lately as far as fan growth goes so I wrote down these ideas that I think might help us reach more people without spending money. I already know we can basically buy fans at $0.50-$1.00 each using Facebook ads.

Free ways to get more fans.

1. Post the workout (or maybe just a video) each day and pose a question with it. Why? comments and likes increase post quality.  Posts with higher post quality are more likely to show up in people's news feeds and be seen by their friends. Also, Facebook may suggest the page directly to friends of people who like us.
2. Tag other pages, people, and businesses in wall posts.  For example, " [Dave] from [business] setting a deadlift PR today". To tag people or pages, make sure you are friends with them or like their page, then type @ followed by their name (it will autofill and allow you to choose the right person or page). Why? This will make your post show up on their wall. So people that visit the X facebook page will see the post and be able to click right through to our page. Think of businesses that have a lot of traffic and see if you can find a creative way to mention them. 
3. Take pictures/videos during a workout and tag people in them. Why? These will show up on their wall, exposing their friends to us.
4. Create events in Facebook. For any event we are having at the gym, create an event for it. Post this event on other relevant pages, inviting them. Invite all fans or send all fans an update. Why? as people RSVP, it will show up on people's wall that they are attending an event. It may also show up in their friends news feed. Make sure any updates you send to all fans are relevant and not too frequent. If people feel like they are being spammed, you'll quickly lose fans. 
5. Invite friends to become fans. You may have done this when you created your page but it doesn't hurt to go through you friends list once in a while and send invites to your new friends. Why? Once they are fans, they are more likely to see your posts.

Free ways to get more traffic to your website

1. Write interesting articles and post interesting videos. Why? People will share things they find really useful or entertaining. 
2. Encourage people to sign up for the daily emails (burn your feed using feedburner to create daily email digests).  Why?  the more people that are subscribed the more people will know about the current events at the gym. 
3. Pose questions in the blog encouraging feedback. Why? People will spend more time on our site
4. Add links to other sites, especially blogs. Why? This will create a backlink on their blog. These usually show up in or around the comments on their site and provide a link back to your site.
5. Post interesting comments on the main site and on other blogs. Why? When you post, there is almost always a place to enter your website.  If people read your comments and think you are interesting, they'll likely click through to your site.

It sometimes seems like a popularity contest with no real objective to drive fan and page view numbers up. But if you believe you have a product or information that can truly help people, I think it makes sense to take some of these steps to get your message out. We'll see if they work. We are at 269 fans right now. 

Comments welcome.

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Stupid human tricks

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IMG_0473.MOV (332 KB)

As promised after Barbells for Boobs

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Leila's new trick

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IMG_0460.MOV (1289 KB)

Sent from my iPhone

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Lightning

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IMG_0454.MOV (1013 KB)

Sent from my iPhone

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Alexander Fire

I was at work late last night and when I left the Alexander fire was pretty visible from the IGT parking lot. Unfortunately, all I had with me was my iPhone so the pics are not that remarkable. I walked up the trail that we run up from IGT just off of Double R to get pretty close to the fire. The wind was blowing Southeast so the fire wasn't moving toward me and I could barely smell the smoke.  I hung out there for a little while and called a few people using FaceTime (iPhone video calling) to show them the flames.  Apparently the fire didn't cause and structural damage and just burned a hill of sagebrush that had burned just a few years ago. 

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IMG_0405.MOV (2028 KB)

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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