How to get better pictures with the HTC EVO 3D phone

I’ve been rocking an HTC Evo 3D since launch day back in 2011. It’s been a mostly solid phone, but despite all the hype, the camera isn’t that great. A while back I happened across a post about changing the Evo 3d camera settings to take better 2d pictures. For some reason the blog post now appears to be a dead link, so I thought I would post my settings as shown in end image below. While my settings image below is not nearly as good as the original post, perhaps it will help someone take better pics with their EVO 3d camera. FWIW I will be moving to the HTC One later this month.

The camera is still not very good for action shots or shots of the kids, as it has some extreme shutter lag. However, for still shots, I found the settings below to be generally pretty good, particularly when posting to Instagram. In addition to the settings below, I adjust the ISO as well. For most pictures I leave the ISO at 400 to speed up the shutter, but will use 100 or 200 when outdoors. I do occasionally tinker with the white balance, but usually only under daylight or fluorescent conditions.

image

Some sample shots, after Instagramming, are below. Continue reading

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How to shoot video that doesn’t suck

A great book on shooting video

A great book on shooting video

Steve Stockman has a great book that tells you How to Shoot Video that Doesn’t Suck.  It’s highly recommended reading, and will make your video shooting and editing a lot better.  I hope to work on a more in-depth review in the future.  If you’re a bit impatient like me, and just want some quick tips, his short video below offers some great advice for making your videos better. Steve doesn’t focus much on equipment, so it doesn’t matter if you are using a dSLR or an iPhone to shoot your video. His tips are valuable for novice and intermediate videographers, regardless of the equipment or types of videos they make.

How to Shoot Video that Doesn’t Suck: 5 Tips from Steve Stockman on Vimeo.

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Why this blog ain’t dead yet

My files need attention

My files need attention

Do you ever try to remember something and you can’t quite remember the date or details?  This happened to me yesterday when I got an email from a colleague asking about our library podcast tour project.  We stopped doing the podcasts some time ago due to the low return on investment, and I had a hard time remembering when we first started the project and how it was conducted.  Fortunately, I blogged about it here on Library Voice, and even followed up with other posts .    Unlike my filing cabinet pictured above, my blog has a nice search function so I was able to find the relevant information with ease.  Many of the links on those posts are long extinct, but there was enough information there for me to find this old article from our local paper about  the tours.  Turns out podcasting was so 2006.

The problem is,  when I first got this email, it took me *way* too long to think “maybe I blogged about that and there’s some info on my site.”  That tells me that Library Voice has been off my radar for way too long.  With the end in site (pun intended) for Google Reader, many are again proclaiming that blogging is dead and has been replaced by the likes of Twitter and Facebook. I’m not buying it, and this small example is proof enough to me that there’s still room (and a need) on the web for blogs.  How we’ll read those blogs is another story that will unfold over the next few months.

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How to fix Closed Captioning on your YouTube videos

YouTube has a very cool featured whereby the big fancy YouTube computer will try to automagically perform closed captioning for your videos.  In my experiences in watching my own videos, and from viewing other videos, the closed captioning results from YouTube can be hit or miss.  In a pinch, most results are serviceable, allowing non-native speakers the ability to pick up on *some* of the works used in the audio.

I normally introduce myself in my videos as “Hey there, I’m Chad Boeninger, Business Librarian for Ohio University Libraries.”  In one of my recent videos, YouTube apparently didn’t pick up on my Southern accent or the spelling of my name.  The image below shows the result:

“hair I’m sad bond” ???!?

 

Fortunately, you can fix these results, and the process, while tedious, is not entirely painful.  All you have to do is go into the Edit menu in YouTube, and click on the Captions link.  This will take you to a page where you can change the wording of the captions, as shown in the image below:

Much better! (click for larger)

 

After you have edited your captions, it is a good idea to disable the YouTube automatic captions for that video to avoid confusing viewers with multiple closed captioned options.

Remember to disable duplicate captions

The end result, is much better:

Much better, with less “hair” ;-)

Now that I’ve got the first 7 seconds fixed, now all I need to do is find time to work on the remaining 15:03.  Perhaps an easier option is to download the captions.sbv file from the video and edit in a text editor, as shown below.   You could then upload the modified sbv file to YouTube, remembering to disable other caption options.

Editing captions in a text editor may save time

I’ll edit the captions for an entire video soon, and report back on what I’ve learned.

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How to make library instructional (or other educational) videos and screencasts

The video below is a follow-up to my previous post about how I make library instructional videos.

 

This video shows the basics of making library instructional (or other educational) videos and screencasts. The video discusses the inexpensive equipment and software needed, and shows how to make a video from start to finish. Discusses camera selection, how to use Screencast-o-matic.com, how to edit the video in Windows Live Moviemaker, and how to upload to YouTube. For a detailed write-up of the process, visit my post on how I make library instructional videos.

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