Saturday, July 26, 2008

I peeked ahead at the wiki homework for next week (PBwiki is wonderful!) and saw I have to embed a movie that I made myself into a wiki page on my current wiki. I have NO idea how to do the machinima I want to eventually do and planned to make that a student project this coming year. I had it in my head that I'd get someone in the class who wanted to go further faster than the rest and I'd sic machinima on him/her and then have the student teach me. But this is probably better.

The first thing I did was go to Torley Linden's site and see what process he uses to make the Tip of the Week videos. The guy is amazing and all his videos are so fluid, appearing effortless. NO one can be in Second Life long and not learn about or from Torley. His site also features free textures, so I'm sure my students will also learn about him.

Imagine my surprise to discover Torley uses Camtasia...a program our IT guy has been promoting for over a year (waving to Frank and giving in!). I downloaded a 30-day free trial, watched a few tutorials and eagerly went in-world to start capturing my first video. Ugh! This poor computer is too old and NEEDS A NEW GRAPHICS CARD!!! I've been wanting to upgrade for a year now and now I have a better reason other than just wanting to. The video I captured was far too choppy simply because my computer cannot render the image to the screen fast enough with the graphics turned all the way up in SL. Hopefully I'll be able to get enough video that works so that I can complete my assignment.

But this actually has a good purpose in showing me the basics of machinima for the Virtual Worlds course. I *think* we have a site license for Camtasia which means the students will be able to learn it...and I have an in-house expert on the ins and outs of the program I can bring in to guest teach it (waves again in Frank's direction). Will be a lesson for second semester, but definitely will become a part of the class!

Okay, going off to capture more video...

Thespis

2 comments:

Chris Baker @bakerhhhs said...

Thespis,

I have the same "choppyness" problem - I don't have a high-end machine. I am using Smart Board Notebook software to capture movies. No machinima quality, but it works.

Unknown said...

Cool, Chris. Glad you found something that works for you. The head of our IT department told me we do have a few site licenses for Camtasia and I know he uses it at school with little trouble. So I'm hoping those computers are more powerful (or better equipped) than mine so the kids can make smoother videos.