Vimeo Video School is basically a curated and categorized directory of filmmaking tutorial videos on Vimeo, as well as original tutorial series by Vimeo themselves that take the form of both posts and videos.

The videos range from the very broad (“Shooting Basics“) which are geared more toward beginners, to the very specific (“Nighttime Shooting with a DSLR“). Some are very technical and professional, and some are oriented towards a much larger and less professional audience (like a post on how to make a great Christmas video).

In fact, one of the things we found really useful about this series is an entire series by Vimeo on DSLR filmmaking. They paired a DSLR expert with a DSLR newcomer which makes the videos much more watchable than having one person talk at you.

Vimeo put a lot of resources into creating a lot of tutorial videos as well as indexing a lot of the best tutorial videos on their site, which makes it a fantastic “first stop” if you are looking for a tutorial on a specific topic. It definitely beats searching for tutorials on YouTube.

In the United States, copyrighting is automatic. That means if you create something, it is automatically copyrighted. Automatically. Pretty cool eh?

I just copyrighting a drawing of a flying dragon on a napkin.

Well, it doesn’t quite work that way, but you get the picture.

As you might guess, this method is a little bit slippery when it comes to accounting for it. Let’s say someone steals something from your movie – all you’ve got is the default copyright claim that comes automatic when you created the film in the first place. It’s kind of like the default insurance that comes with your rental car.

What most people don’t realize is that it is extremely easy to copyright your film with the US Government. Then, you’ve got the upgraded copyright stuff. You’ve got the deluxe package, and you’re rollin’.

Copyrighting Online

I’m going to be pretty up front here – the US Government has a web application to copyright works online, but it isn’t going to be a smooth experience. It is most likely going to through up Javascript errors about sessions and then send you to a blank page. Just keep going back to the site, and you’ll be fine. It just takes a little bit of patience.

The site is called the Electronic Copyright Office (ECO), and you can find it at www.copyright.gov/eco.

You navigate the site by following their instructions. On the first page, you’ll be confronted by a choice of what you want to copyright:

We’re obviously going for “Motion Picture / Audio Visual Work”. Click it, and you get an explanation:

Select Motion Picture/Audiovisual if you are registering a feature film, documentary film, animated film, television show, video, videogame, or other audiovisual work. An audiovisual work is a work that consists of a series of related images that are intended to be shown by the use of a machine or device, together with accompanying sounds, if any.

From there, follow the instructions down the list, and provide all the necessary information. If you get stuck, click on a link somewhere – the ECO site has tons of great and very clear documentation that will help you for your particular situation.

Once you are done, you pay a fee to register your copyright, which is only $35. Not bad when you consider the benefits of copyrighting officially with the government.

Once you send it in, the government reviews it. If they have any problems with it they will contact you. If not, you will receive notice that your copyright has gone through.

For more information, there is no better site than just copyright.gov. They have a treasure trove on information on how to handle your copyright, including instructions on how to preregister a copyright before a work is fully completed.

What is Hiss?

Not to be confused with hum, hiss is a persistant noise on a recording that sounds like … well … hiss. Turn the sound up loud enough and you will almost always here some on your recording. A low levels, it isn’t much of a problem.

The problem is when you have hiss on a recording that is distracting – say from a bad microphone or from turning up low dialogue. You could also be trying to restore an old recording that has hiss on it. Wherever it comes from, however, it’s annoying and needs to be destroyed.

The Basic Method of Getting Rid of Hiss

Hiss removal involves a few similar steps no matter what software you are using. First of all, you need to find a sample of hiss just by itself. That way the audio program knows what the hiss actually sounds like isolated – before that, it could get hiss confused with other parts of your recording. After setting some parameters, your tool of choice will try to remove that hiss from the recording without damaging any other areas.

To illustrate, I am going to take a look at removing hiss from two programs: Audacity and iZotope RX.

Removing Hiss with Audacity

If you are not familiar, Audacity is a great (and free) audio tool for Mac and PC. You can get it here. To get started, open it up, and import a piece of audio.

After importing your track, look closely for a small chunk of audio where there is only noise. After you’ve found it, select that portion of audio.

Select Noise Removal… out of the drop down list of effects from the Effects menu. This will give you a little dialog box that presents a handy two step guide. The first, is to get a noise profile. Since we’ve selected our noise profile area, we can just click the “Get Noise Profile” button.

Once you have the noise profile, deselect the noise profile area, and get back to the two step panel. You can adjust the noise reduction amount, preview it, and hit okay. Play back your audio, and the hiss is now minimized or gone.

As we mention in our limitations section, your audio may be affected depending on the Noise Reduction level you’ve chosen. If you are getting audio that sounds like it was recorded underwater, it is time to go back and rethink your parameters.

Removing Hiss with iZotope RX

iZotope RX is a fantastic program that is well worth the fact that it is not free. You can get it at BHPhoto.com.

What does iZotope RX have that free solutions don’t have? Well first of all, it can do a lot more than take out hiss, but we are sticking to hiss in this article. One of my favorite features of iZotope RX is its Spectrogram information. It can be viewed right on top of the more conventional wave pattern:

This view allows you to see – in much greater detail – disturbances or irregularity in audio. For instance, hum can be observed as a single line shooting horizontally through a recording. Hiss appears as “noise” you can see in the background of the audio.

Removal works in a similar fashion to Audacity. Find a portion of the audio where just the hiss is present, click the Denoiser button and click Train. This will “train” the program in the audio noise profile of the recording.

As in Audacity, you have a Noise Reduction level and a Smoothing option. However, you also have a choice of several algorithms that might give different results. Some take longer to process, but it is worth it to see which one might fit your situation the best.

When using an advanced program like iZotope RX, it is a good idea to look through their documentation. In the case of iZotope RX, the documentation happens to be extremely helpful and thorough.

Limitations

Of course, there are limitations. Like we mentioned in our previous post, audio is like a bowl of soup. You are going to take out some things you want to leave in. Since every piece of audio is very different, you’ll need to do some experimenting with parameters to see what level of removal leaves your audio suitably in tact.

According to the guidelines, the idea is to “create a time capsule to show future generations what it was like to be alive on 24 July 2010”. All the content of the film will be submitted through YouTube, and if the footage you submit is chosen for the film (by director Kevin Macdonald), “you will be credited as a ‘co-director’ in the credits that appear at the end of the film. You will also be eligible for consideration to attend the film’s premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival”.

I'll save you a seat.

Awesome, right? Sure. At its core, this is a pretty creative idea. And it’s always great when an established filmmaker like Ridley Scott or Kevin Macdonald decides to get involved with something like this. However, there is a key factor at play here that I think deserves a look, and it is the exact reason why I chose to wait until after the 24^th to write about this film.

Is it possible that this film project isn’t meant for filmmakers at all? That, rather than looking for professionally shot footage from up and coming filmmakers, the producers of this project are actually looking for the best home movies they can find? Kinda like an unfunny version of America’s Funniest Videos?

They were ALL unfunny.

Considering that they are requesting completely raw, unedited footage, and that some of the tips they provide include stuff like: “The built-in microphone on your camera will struggle to record usable sound if your subject is any further then 3 feet away from the camera” (improper grammar theirs, not ours), it is pretty clear they aren’t expecting a lot of footage from seasoned film-making veterans.

It seems more likely that they are expecting footage from people who are more interested in “being involved in a movie” than people who will care about how the final project turns out. Because of this, I ask, is it possible that this film isn’t really showing multiple perspectives of the world, but just letting Kevin Macdonald use your footage to show his perspective?

While I don’t want to make it seem like I’m just some cranky dude who doesn’t like the idea, I simply what to highlight the fact that it isn’t really going to be any kind of stepping stone or building block for anyone chosen as a “co-director”. If this film is successful, none of the “co-directors” will get any of the praise. Instead, Macdonald will, for being able to make a great film out of “armature” footage.

Basically, it allows you to add captions to your videos, and add them as a different language captions. This works out great for videos that have an international interest, because you can easily make a video multi-lingual, if you have the ability or people to translate it.

How are Captions Generated?

Captions in YouTube (and in most video environments) never touch the video at all. They are simply text files of information that the player reads and displays. The file contains the in and out timecode where a caption should be, and the caption text. Very simple, and very lightweight – you never need to touch your video, and the files and tiny since they are basically text files.

The problem is, it can be a real pain to get caption files timed right if you are trying to manually work with timecode and put that into the text file. I’ve tried, and it can be a real mess.

Enter Overstream

Overstream is a really great tool that I came across that makes it very easy to create caption files for YouTube. It’s free, and it’s very easy to use.

To start, go to overstream.net and create an account. Once you’ve logged in, we’re ready to go.

Creating an Overstream Session

Once of the many great features of Overstream is the ability to import a video to start captioning straight from the YouTube URL. Click on “Create Overstream” to create a fresh session, and then you can enter a URL in the dialogue box that automatically pops up.

After your video has been entered into the program, you can start captioning.

Captioning in Overstream

This is what the Overstream interface looks like:

In the video player area, you have a video scrubber. The black area scrubs through the video, and the white markers are for zooming on a specific section.

Find the place where you want to start your first caption, and click add on the bottom right. Type in the caption, and it’ll appear in the caption list with the in and out points, as well as over the video.

If you need to make a caption go for longer than the default time, move the black triangle cursor to the desired endpoint and click the caption out button.

You can overlap captions, and even drag them around on the timeline. It really is a great, intuitive tool that makes captioning easy and actually fun.

Caption Size

Overstream isn’t specifically built for captioning YouTube videos (although that’s what we’re using it for today for this tutorial), so the captions it renders in real time don’t look like the ones that YouTube renders. YouTube will render the text smaller, so you don’t need to be so cautious about having captions close to the edge on Overstream’s viewer. They’ll have plenty of room on YouTube.

Exporting for YouTube

Once you are all finished, click Tools on the bottom right hand side. This will allow you to export an SRT caption file, which you can upload to YouTube.

After clicking Export Current Subtitles as SRT, you’ll get a file download.

Adding the Captions to Your YouTube Video

After you’ve got your SRT, take it to YouTube. Go to your video’s page and click Captions and Subtitles on the Edit Video bar.

There you can upload your SRT file and designate a language for it.

Once its been uploaded, your video will get a cool “CC” icon next to it that looks like the “HD” icon, and you and your visitors will be able to turn on captioning and choose a language in the YouTube player. Awesome!

On this podcast we also announce a very special gift for people who “Like” our DiY Filmmaking Facebook page – a DiY soundtrack download we are preparing with some great stuff including some of Lance Johnson’s very own sound effects. It will be FREE and it’s for people who are fans of our Facebook page.

Panel is:

Adam (@adamfairholm)

Doug (@thedougmovement)

Lance (@omegabane)

Picks are:

Lance: Audacity

Doug: Celtx

Adam: Young Man Reading a Newspaper While Yawning Tracking Shots with Smooth Jazz

Other stuff we mentioned:

Craigslist, Blender, VLC, MPEG Streamclip, YouTube editor, MovieMasher, Jaycut, CineFX, Avidemux, VirtualDub, Wax

File Link: http://diy-filmmaking.s3.amazonaws.com/podcast/ep12_the_free_stuff_pt1.m4a

Now.

Direct Actors for Improv

Home Film School Student has a conversation with an actress about being directed in a scene where she ab-libbed quite a bit (and they wanted her too). The content of this video is valuable if you encourage actors to improv during a scene (this may be more helpful for them, actually), but my favorite parts of this video are meta. Such as the dude asking “are we ready to go” at the beginning, and this “bored camera guy” shot.

I’m trippin! Check out the videos here.

The Beeping! The Beeping!

For the first little while I worked with Final Cut Pro I had no clue why some audio would beep on the timeline and need to be rendered while others did not. Turns out it could be a few reasons, and Genius DV has laid them out in a handy little post.

For your health.

IndyMogul Really Wants You To Make a Slider

Zach from Backyard Effects and IndyMogul will stop at nothing to get you to make his $20 slider. Nothing.

Nothing.

Partner with YouTube Instructions from a YouTube Video

Did I just blow your mind? Maybe this video will. From FilmmakerIQ.

DiY is basically going to apply. Basically.

Young Man Reading a Newspaper While Yawning Tracking Shots with Smooth Jazz

It’s a common and difficult problem, so we are going to do a series of articles on how to deal with different types of audio problems and with what programs. But before we get fancy, we have do get down to some basics.

Enhance!

I like to sit down and enjoy an episode of a procedural crime drama like “CSI: Miami” or “CSI: Someplace” every once in a while, but I have to laugh when they deal with anything audio or visual. The common use of technology that doesn’t exist is the “enhance!” feature where a blurry security camera is somehow enhanced to allow us to read a license plate off the back of a car. It’s fun, but it’s stupid, because you can’t do that in real life. It’s just technically impossible to create data where there is none.

The same goes for their treatment of audio. Usually, a garbled piece of audio is brought into their A/V department and it comes out pristine, so they can get the one piece of evidence they need. Usually this can be done with Horatio standing over the technician’s shoulder.

Like the video part, the audio treatment is completely fabricated, but it plays into a common misconception about audio in general: that you can “remove” something from it or “enhance” a part of it easily.

Can you do those things? Yes, but it is much more difficult than TV has led everyone to believe.

Audio Soup

Think of your audio track like a big pot of soup. There are spices, carrots, peas, chicken, and a bunch of other stuff all mixed together. It’s delicious, but has a flavor problem. It would be much better if we took the carrots out. Okay, no big deal. You can see the carrots – they’re orange. You get a spoon and start picking them out.

So you start taking the carrots out, and you soon find out it’s not as easy as you thought. You keep removing parts of the soup you didn’t intend to, like some broth. But after a while, you manage to get them all out. You took some of the soup with it, but that’s going to be okay.

Now, for your next assignment, you have to take the oregano out.

What is “Fixable”?

Audio is like the soup – all mixed together and messy. You can’t just “remove” something easily and without consequences, but if you know exactly what you need to get, you can take it out with some work if you don’t mind losing a little bit of other audio in the process.

What makes something a carrot? It has to be something that is uniform throughout the audio, like a hum or a hiss. Something that can be easily identified and is always there. The carrots are still in the soup, they are just identifiable.

Obviously, it’s impossible to remove the oregano because it’s too much a part of the soup. If you really wanted to take it out, you’d damage the soup heavily, and you’d have a hard time figuring out what is oregano and what isn’t. There would probably be some left in there when you’re done too.

The oregano elements in audio are things like a cough or a car in the distance during dialogue. It’s too embedded in the sound to be completely removed.

Next: Removing the Carrots

Soon, we’ll be posting round 2 of talkin’ about audio, with a list of tools to remove carrot-like audio problems, and some methods. Stay tuned!

Also, we’ve introduced a new contest. Call in during the next week with your best Hanna–Barbera cartoon impression, and win a copy of Adam’s comic strip book from college, CroissantWorld.

Panel is:

Adam (@adamfairholm)

Doug (@thedougmovement)

Lance (@omegabane)

Picks are:

Lance: Aniboom

Doug: SickAnimation.com

Adam: iStopMotion 2

The intro audio is Grum from Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job. Outro song is from Sick Animation’s Cool Court.

File: http://www.diy-filmmaking.com/podcast_files/ep11_the_creepy_coin_collector.mp3

However, Atom.com prides itself in blending mainstream and indie media. One aspect that highlights this point may also be particularly useful to the DiY-Filmmaker, and that aspect is Atom’s World Famous Cash-Money Internet Comedy Tournament. The rules are simple, and best described by the site itself:

WHAT IS THE TOURNAMENT? The Tournament is a weekly competition beginning April 19, 2010 celebrating the funniest and most popular original comedy videos recently uploaded to Atom.com (“Atom”).

HOW DOES ONE ENTER THE TOURNAMENT? Entering the Tournament is simple. Just upload an original comedy video to Atom.com and in the process, agree to our User Content Submission Agreement, Terms of Use, and these Official Rules. Video specifications including video formats and file size limits are communicated during the upload process.

Readers of this blog know we aren’t the type to just tell you about an online comedy video tournament for no reason. What makes Atom’s World Famous Cash-Money Internet Comedy Tournament so great is not the prizes (though the prizes are kinda sweet), the real value of this tournament is the Creator’s Kit that Atom.com provides for contest participants.

Homemade Jib-Arm not included in Kit.

In this kit you will find a great fourm about the tournament, a short list of web resources for production, and best of all, a list of dozens of “free” production music provided exclusively for use in this contest. You read that right, Atom.com provides free production music to use in project submitted to their tournament. And this isn’t some crappy recycled loops like you get from a royalty-free music DVD, these are professionally made music trackes composed by Matt Messina, the composer of Juno and other films.

I entered the contest a year or 2 ago, not because I wanted to win anything (which I didn’t), but because I wanted to use the provided music to see what I could come up with. It turned out awful, but the music was perfect! So, I post my contribution here with the request that someone, anyone, make something better and link it in a comment at the bottom of this post.