Video for the newspaper (3)
Cade White has posted his third installment about job shadowing the video journalists at the Dallas Morning News. He includes a short video about the videotaping of the assignment (bartender lights drinks on fire! Whee!).
The assignment took about an hour to shoot for video, compared to the 15-20 minutes it might have taken to shoot a still photograph. Will all video assignments take significantly more time to shoot than still assignments? Is this a potential human resource management issue? It’s not impossible to shoot a video assignment in a matter of minutes, depending on the subject. But is that really the goal here?
Too bad the DMN uses a brain-dead Windows Media Player for the video. Slow to download, chokes, hangs, stops and starts, etc. All the typical WMP behavior. (If you’re not going to do Flash video, at least do Quicktime.) So I didn’t actually see the video until the fourth time I tried it. I sat there looking at a still image (very boring) while I heard the audio. It was cool when it finally worked. (Note that Cade’s embedded Quicktime movie on his blog page works fine every time.)
You’re spending all this time and effort to shoot and edit video and put it online. Why don’t you use a delivery technology that actually works?
Technorati tags: photojournalism | photojournalists | multimedia | video | online journalism
You’re absolutely right, Mindy. When I started studying their videos, it was quite frustrating trying to find the perfect combination of browser, plug-in, and OS. The videos wouldn’t even play on my wife’s brand new Sony laptop with everything fully updated. I’m not sure if this is a problem in the DMN’s implementation of the Microsoft code or just flaws in the entire Windows Media Player machine. The configuration that finally worked for me was Safari 2.0.4 with the Flip4Mac plug-in on my MacBook Pro running OS version 10.4.7. This works fine most of the time, but I still have some player problems. As a Mac user I’m accustomed to the occasional compatibility glitch, but I tried two different Windows PCs with no success. That represents a serious problem.
I’ve had conversations with David Leeson about this and I can tell you that he is well aware of the interface bugs in their video player. The challenge they face is that the video player technology is set at the corporate level and Belo uses the same play for all its properties. Changing it would therefore be a major undertaking that would take broad support across the board. This is complete speculation on my part, but I have to assume that this would have already been addressed if it was seen as a problem by those able to initiate a change. I know it’s a cynical perspective, but if they’re still getting the page views and the advertisers are not unhappy, then nothing will happen soon. Just my opinion.
Thanks for keeping up with my adventure.
Cade
August 1, 2006 at 11:18 pmCade, thanks for the background info!
August 9, 2006 at 2:35 pmI’m in Jacksonville,FL starting a news site. Could your students use the site for journalism?
Gray
I’m the Reporter You report we show the world. This is a free service just email your photos, text, and videos. http://imthereporter.com/
September 20, 2006 at 9:17 pm