I just found two very simple but helpful things! I’m so excited I had to share.
First, a nice list of specs for various popular video upload sites:
and second, a dummy image generator:
(All you have to do is modify the URL to generate placeholder images of any size: http://dummyimage.com/390×321)
Both of these sites would have come in handy a zillion times over the last few years. Give them a try!
We have a problem that is probably common at similar institutions. Now that we’ve begun to produce digital media, what the heck do we do with it? For example, the University photographer at IWU has thousands of digital images that need to be distributed around campus for various purposes.
These images need to be placed in the hands of our corps of web contributors. There are a few individuals in every department that work on the web to varying degrees. It isn’t practical for the photographer to e-mail relevant images to each department, or even to produce proof sheets. New digital images come in faster than they can be sorted.
To solve this problem, we began to use a product called iView Media Pro. This software was designed to catalog media files. It can store and categorize sound, video, still images, and other digital stuff. Catalogs include thumbnail images, keywords, categories, and a connection to the full-sized image.
The Pro version of the software was purchased and installed for the photographer, and others around campus got the free Reader application that can open and browse these catalogs. The images live on a Mac OS X server where all the end users get read-only access.
This worked great until the Mac server crashed and was replaced with another newer Mac server. Now the catalogs that are made on a Mac and stored on a Mac can’t be correctly viewed from Windows. The images haven’t moved. The thumbnails and metadata are there, but the Windows computers looking for them can’t find the full sized image.
Did I mention that somewhere along the line Microsoft bought iView and changed the name? Now it is called Expression Media. They have issued two versions and a service pack update under the new branding. We’ve tried the new versions to see if the Windows bug is fixed, but tech support indicates it is under investigation.
I can’t shake the feeling that there should be a better way to do this. At home I use Flickr to catalog and share images and couldn’t be happier. Another web-based tool is SmugMug, which is powered by the Amazon.com cloud computing platform. Unfortunately there is no way to directly import the iView images into these services without losing the valuable metadata – keywords, categories, and other tags would be separated from their images. I can’t imagine how many hours it would take to redo this work.
For now, I’ll wait for the Microsoft techs to fix this bug. Anyone have other ideas on storing, cataloging, and sharing large amounts of images?
I learned about sketchcast.com from the Chronicle of Higher Ed’s “Wired” blog. Apparently some teachers are using this tool to some effect in their courses. Here is the nickel tour:
You draw in a small window using a pen tool, text tool, and eraser tool. You can record your voice along with your drawing or sketch. Then you click “publish” and an animated movie of your drawing process is published. It is quite easy. You can then send the web address to anyone out there in the world.
This basically is like an online whiteboard. It takes a few minutes to get used to drawing with a mouse, but with a little practice it is quite easy!
I’ve used Picasa and Flickr, a pair of excellent web-based photo organizers. They give users a way to sort and share large numbers of digital pictures. One downside has been the ability to edit images. I tend to use Photoshop Elements to do the editing I need because the online tools don’t give me all the options I need.
Adobe has released a potential remedy to this problem: Photoshop Express. It is currently in beta form, which means it is still officially in “test” mode. Patrick and I took a look at this beta today and found it to be quite nice! You can preview the effect of a potential edit by hovering a mouse over a thumbnail. Cropping, distortion, filters, color sampling and replacement, redeye reduction, and lighting fixes are all included.
Adobe is currently giving users 2GB of space on their servers, and the best part of all: integrated access to Facebook, Picasa, and Photobucket. I was able to edit pictures and upload pictures directly to my Facebook profile with a minimum of fuss. I had to log into Facebook to tag them and correct the captions though.
A couple of downsides: there is currently no way to order prints online (I can only imagine this will come in time) and you are currently limited to JPG images of 10MB or less. Not a big limitation but a notable one.
I for one am totally thrilled with this application. It offers me the ability to do moderately sophisticated editing from anywhere, with direct access to web photo sites. I wonder how it will hold up with thousands of people creating accounts to try out this beta software…