Tools, tips and techniques to help you create and profit from web video

There may be times when you'd like to add a quick and easy audio clip to your web site instead of a full-blown video presentation. Don't worry, there's no need to buy a separate program - just use The Web Video Player™...

Here's an example:

It only takes a few minutes to create an interactive, "video-assisted" audio segment like this. Here's what you need to know...

1. Write your script

Come up with an outline for your recording, and then fill in the blanks. If you're good at "winging it," then go for it. But remember, few things are worse than listening to the incoherent ramblings of someone unprepared. When you don't have a clear picture of what you want to say, those "uhs..." and "ummms..." tend to creep in. Play it safe and stick to the script.

2. Set-up your mic

Plantronics DSP-500

I use a Plantronics DSP-500 USB headset mic for all of my audio narrations. This amazing headset utilizes digital signal processing technology, and can help anyone achieve studio quality audio recordings from their desktop. Oh yeah, and the best part? It's available for under $50.

3. Record your audio

I only recently discovered how easy it is to use Sony Vegas 7 to record audio narrations. I previously considered it primarily a video editor. But after first struggling with several other programs, I was pleased to discovered how simple it is to add narration to a multimedia presentation using Vegas's "Arm for Record" tool:

Audio Recording Tool in Sony Vegas 7

Just press the button, hit "Control+R" on your keyboard, and it start talking. You can easily re-record what you've already done, or start a recording from any point in your presentation. It's absolutely simple.

4. Edit your audio

Vegas makes it a breeze to edit your audio and sync it with optional video tracks (e.g., text slides, images).

After you've recorded your presentation, use the "normalize" function to maximize and level-out the volume. This will help make sure you are fully utilizing the dynamic range available to you.

At this point, you will also want to remove the "bloopers" and other unwanted noises and sounds, and rearrange the audio clips if necessary.

5. Add optional visual aids

The visual text "talking points" for this demo presentation were created in Vegas. Use the "Insert Text Media" function to add text slides to your video track. Keep them brief. The purpose of the text slides isn't to overwhelm your visitors with information. Your goal is to use them them to highlight important points.

6. Publish presentation and convert to FLV

Once you're satisfied with the presentation, publish it to a format that can easily be converted to FLV (e.g., AVI or MOV). I first publish to AVI, and then use the Flash 8 Video Converter to convert the AVI to FLV. This FLV converter comes with Flash 8 Professional (for more, see How to convert videos to FLV).

At some point during this process, you may want to crop the video (in this case, the text slides) so that it appears to take up a smaller amount of space in The Web Video Player. In the demo, I cropped the viewable area to 380x63 using the Flash 8 Video Converter, before converting to FLV. You can optionally resize the video at this point as well.

7. Create optional Intro, Exit, Logo Images

If you're planning to utilize the interactive features of the player, you will want to create optional Intro, Exit and Logo Images. This is the Intro Image I created and used in the demo:

...and the Exit Image:

The Logo Image is actually a transparent gif file that I set to load as soon as the video starts playing, and remains active until the video ends (the 37 second mark). It is still clickable even though it's not visible. Here are the Logo Image settings for my demo presentation:

Settings for the clickable Logo Image using an invisible clear pixel graphic

As a result of these settings, any clicks that occur on the screen area while the video is playing will cause the viewer to be re-directed to this web page your reading now.

8. Upload files and create player

Upload your FLV files and optional image files to your server. Login to your Web Video Player control panel, and create a new configuration. When you're done, simply copy the generated player code to any web page where you want your presentation to appear.

Creating interactive web audio presentations - summary

Once you understand how to make The Web Video Player work for you, you'll see you're not limited to using it just for "normal" video presentations (e.g., talking head segments). Just follow the simple steps above, and you can easily add powerful and interactive "video-assisted" audio recordings to your sites as well.

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