Moodle Stories - How I went from sceptic to enthusiast

I've been working on the following video with my colleagues to capture views of others using Moodle as a teaching and learning platform. I've been eagerly waiting for the release of the official ASTI news letter before publishing this to my own blog. The ASTI newsletter articles, current and past are available here for those who are interested.

In the above video Gary Strong (Lecturer in Paramedic Practice) provides some very frank commentary on his experience of using Moodle and shares some of his pedagogical approaches.
Further detail on this video available via the ASTI website:
http://technologyenhancedlearning.net/moodle-stories/ which also provides some chapter jumping options.

This interview was created using two cameras (Canon), seperate (Zoom mic), and editing (by me) performed in Premiere Pro CS5.5.

DigiThings

A multi-collaborative digital skills development programme started this week (created at Plymouth University). It is aimed at those involved in teaching wishing to learn about new and different digital tools first hand.  Further details can be found on the DigiThings blog, which is worth a look.

For this course I had the pleasure of compiling together ~30sec talking heads introduction videos from each of the team members involved, within their respective areas.  The above Prezi features all the videos. Many thanks to all and also to Flea Palmer, Edd Bolton and Ed Bremner for the video brainstorming and Prezi development.

Those interested in the video equipment - I used a Canon 650D and edited the content within Premiere Pro CS5.5 (also for titling).  Screen capture was performed by the respective team members (using applications such as Adobe Captivate, ScreenFlow and Camtasia).

Learning to use Premiere Pro CS5 - 5.5

Adobe provide a number of free learning resources that most users would find helpful and even get you started, if your're a beginner. The CS5 - 5.5 versions are available via Adobe TV They take you from understanding the interface right up to collaborative projects.

Granted they are also trying to sell a brand/product but if you look past the plug some of the hints and tips are very helpful. Adobe TV work along side lynda.com, who create a number of other training materials (at a cost) They do provide examples for their training materials, its worth a look as you may find one you you are looking for... happy learning :)

Mercury playback engine and NVidia cards: any difference?

I did a little test a few months back and I finally had time to upload my findings. I was asked by some colleagues if the Mercury Playback Engine utilised in NVidia graphics cards for users of Adobe Premiere CS5 or greater was actually a feature worth its money? I performed a very basic test, placing around 2.5 hours of footage from a Canon 550D camera in full HD format and with a lot of editing to boot. I thought it would be useful to test how much time it saved rendering out the footage, either with or without the engine.

The screenshot above shows both GPU-Z and task manager running with the Mercury switched off. The results are typically what I would expect, in relation to this much footage, 8 hours for a render WITHOUT mercury. In contrast it's less than 2 hours with mercury enabled (screenshot below), giving the user headroom to do other things and also get some more time to do other video projects!


Without GPU the main CPU cores are maxed out and the computer is stuttering, it was actually difficult checking email let alone anything else (not great for workflow). With Mercury enabled (GPU), smooth and sweet and only ~75% on all cores – 42% on GPU. It also uses a bit more ram in the process – understandably (12Gb is recommended).

As an observation (not tested in this case) I generally find that with mercury enabled, editing is wonderful, it's only 'ok' without… Users should note that only certain video effects (that can be applied to clips) are optimised for the Mercury engine, if you want a speedy editing experience, try sticking to the basic ones first (see the video from Adobe below).

Ill also add that where video has been imported in from After Affects it reverts back to processor driven encoding, have not done any real tests, but if others have I would be interested to hear their experiences particularily involving After Effects and Premiere Pro.  Notably, this adobe article explains that After Effects is multi-threaded and only a few 3rd party plug-ins work with CUDA, so After Effects people will have to stick to long renders, and big CPUs rather than GPUs for the moment.

Specifications:
Mercury Playback engine performance on:  i7 Viglen (Windows 7 64bit pro) with 16Gb ram, an Nvida Quadro 4000 2Gb graphics card, with 2x2 Terrabyte 7200 rpm 6Gb/s drives. Premiere Pro CS5.5 Canon 550D full HD footage.

The official launch video for the Hydrographic Academy

I finally got time to edit the footage I took for the official launch of the Hydrographic Academy. The Academy was very pleased to share the stand with the Marine Institute during the conference, with the launch being held at our industrial partners stand (Fugro).  This video shows some highlights at the both stands and clips around the conference, plus the speeches from both Andrew McNeill (Global Learning & Development Manager. Fugro), Barbara Bond (Pro-Chancellor, Plymouth University) and Dr Richard Thain (Project Manager, Hydrographic Academy).  All attendees were treated to a Plymouth Gin and tonic, to mark the occasion. More details can be found on the Hydrographic Academy Blog post 'Making a splash...'  Hope you enjoy the video.

Those interested in the technical elements of the filming.  I used a Canon 600D, 18-55mm lens throughout. The audio gain was set to manual and a Zoom H1 attached to provide stereo sound. All editing was performed in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5

Welcome videos from the Hydrographic Academy

Myself and the team put together a couple of videos for the Hydrographic Academy 'Learning Zone' Offline interface. These were a couple of welcome messages for the students. Why? This course will be predominately offline digital learning content, students are not likely to meet their tutors! It's rather important to enhance the overall learning experience that students actually know what their trainers look like.

The entire footage was filmed on a Canon 550D with a 50mm prime lens. I used a Zoom H1 fed into the microphone socket of the 550D, using a -25db attenuation cable (its a line to mic socket) I chose the 50mm for its excellent light transmission, as the lighting was standard florescent and ISO values was pushing into the graining 800-1600 area which is less desirable on this DSLR. We did not have access to additional lighting. Jon Scott (Learning Technologist) chose the location which was a video conference suite here at Plymouth University, hence the background image of Plymouth Sound. Sadly the room suffers from a noisy air-conditioning unit that can't be turned off. However, I was able to remove the background noise in post using a combination of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 and Adobe Audition CS5. When I get the chance I intend to blog about how this was achieved. Hope you enjoy the videos.




This tutorial from YouTube is particularly good at showing how to use Audition to clean up noise in Premiere Pro CS5.5:

How I created the Hydrographic Academy promotional video

This is an HA promotional video I have been working on, but before I discuss the details, I have to thank the following people who helped make this video happen:

Cdr Andy Swain and his team (Royal Navy) for providing the Pat Barton training vessel; Dr Richard Thain; Dr Victor Abbott (and students) and Gwyn Jones (and students) for providing the University's own training vessel the Falcon Spirit; Dave Hurrell (Film and Broadcasting Manager, Plymouth University) who provided some of the video content for this promotion (thumbnail videos); and Becki Vickerstaff (fellow Learning Technologist).

Ok so how did I achieve this?

With a lot of head scratching, but also backed up with some software and hardware. I predominately used Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 for the main editing of the footage and After Effects CS5.5 for titling and special effects. The main footage was taken on a Canon 550D DSLR, with a Canon 17-85mm IS USM lens, shot at 24 frames/second. Stills were also intermingled in places using content from the same camera. The thumbnail videos were sections of Dave Hurrell's footage shot on a Sony HDR FX1 camera.

The story board created for this production was a brief show and tell of what the Hydrographic Academy has to offer (as shown in the video). It includes lens flare effect titling graphics with blue colouration from the HA's main logo. The music is called 'White water rapids' which is copyright free from the Plymouth University's own UpMedia staff and student area (only) resource. I wanted to give emphasis to the sea and water, hence the different shots of boats and frothing white water. Equally I wanted to hint at the sort of equipment being used in the training, this was achieved by a few intermingled shots of electronic measuring equipment and more traditional hand held devices. Finally, so as not to make it feel like it was an academy with no soul there are little insights of the people involved in the project, who are working hard behind the scenes.

We hope you enjoyed the video!