 I just did a little poll and one person might be doing a regular camera, which is a traditional video camera, which is fine. Mostly you're going to be using your phones. And that'll work really well. There's just a few things we can do to help so that you don't run into problems. Now, I've done a couple of things with A&R and with horticulture and they've gone and shot their own stuff and boy, a lot of good stuff happening. But some and not so good stuff. One quick example, when I get to the sound portion, wind is going to be the issue here. But ambient sound. So there was a flock of sheep. I'm not going to say who, but she was doing a really good job and you almost couldn't hear her. It was pretty funny. So when we get to the sound portion, you got to keep in mind everything around you is being recorded. So that makes it hard. So of course, Becky sent out the email. If you watched the video tips, bump up the quality video, then you've got a nice jump on this because I'm going to cover some of that, a lot of that stuff. But if you have questions, this is a small enough group. You guys just go ahead and ask, okay? Any kind of questions? Yeah, and clean up that lens, would you? All right. So what I like to talk about for anything shooting video is planning. Okay, you've got to have you got to think about this in advance so that you have everything you need. So you know the location you're going to and the time of the day. Talk a little bit about this in the morning, it's best because the wind is usually not blowing as hard. The sun isn't as intense, but you may not have that option. But if you can, try to shoot it in the morning or in the evening and you know how the weather works. Middle of the day is just a harder time to do that, unless you're going to be inside, of course, then that's all irrelevant. So then you also want to make sure you know what kind of gear you're bringing with you. So if it is your phone, make sure your battery is charged so you don't run out. Make sure you have enough space so that if you're recorded, it can go on to your phone and not suddenly say, sorry, I'm out of space and then you're out of luck. The charge batteries is the other one that usually gets people a lot of time. So those are some basic things. But the number one thing, number one, do not shoot your video vertically. It has to be horizontal. Has to be. Okay, see how it fits right in this box. I love this is a great example. This does not fit in that box and almost everything is 16 by nine. So you have to be horizontal and you can't do this. You can't start recording and then turn it because it'll look good here, but it'll still record it horizontally or vertically. So be this way, hit record, okay. And then don't be worried about shooting too much at the beginning. Give yourself a time to take it because we'll edit that. I've had an issue with some people starting right at the top or ending and cutting it off and it's okay. I'll cut off the extra stuff. Julianne Racine did it. She set hers up herself on a tripod, walked around and then started and I just cut off all that other stuff and it worked really well. And then with your phone, you always have the option of the front and the back camera. This is good if you have to do a selfie style if you don't have a choice. And what happens with that, it's usually a little bit lower resolution, even though many phones now they're trying to match them, but generally the front camera or the one facing you is going to be a little bit wider, which is good for selfies. But most likely you'll get some help and someone will shoot it for you, right? This has the higher resolution in general because now again like some phones have bumped up the other camera, but you want like this, right? Horizontal, good camera, other persons watching what they're doing. That's the real basics. So then go into your settings before you and make sure you're in high resolution, okay? You're in 16 by 9. Some people leave there. They do so much stuff on Instagram. For example, it's more of a box and that's how your camera can be, you can set it up. So when you shoot it, it goes right to Instagram, but we're not doing that. We want 16 by 9 and high resolution. So HD, it doesn't have to be the highest, but it doesn't hurt. It does take up a little bit more space, but not a whole lot more space. And then let's talk about add-ons. We'll get into the sound here now. Microphones, this microphone on your phone will work, but one of the secret, not secret, I'm sorry, silent, blind, the one you can't see is the wind. You can feel it, but you can't really see it, right? When it hits that microphone, it's going to sound like thunder. It's going to go, oh, well, maybe I can do it here. I don't know, did that work? So you don't want that. So your best way to get around that is to get out of the wind if you can. Now you may not be able to. So you can try to guard it or do something just so the wind's not going across. One of the ways to avoid that and to get really good quality audio, and some of the people are doing it, is to have a small microphone and you're tethered to it. The microphones that are meant to go with a phone have three bands instead of two on them, and it automatically turns your earphone out to a microphone in, unless you have one of the newer iPhones. They did away with, as you know, if you have one, they did away with those. So you have to get an adapter and I can't help you. You just have to get an adapter if you plan on using it that way. I get, oh, I said plan. See, if you plan it, you can get it before you have to shoot. So that would be handy. Another add-on is a tripod with a special mount. This one simply gets wide like this and holds the phone in here. Anyway, that's good if you've got to do it yourself or if you just want it really steady, which is always good. It is a little tricky if you're doing it yourself because you're using the other side of the camera. So, but I would say most of the time you should have somebody help you if you can. It doesn't take that long to shoot these, so I'm sure somebody for a doughnut or something will help you out. Let's see what else. Oh, headphones. If you can, you're going to use that jack for the mic in if you're doing that. Otherwise, after you shot, shoot a little bit. Play it back and listen with headphones, not earbuds. Okay, earbuds are good. You'll be able to know that you're getting sound. But the difference is headphones, good quality headphones, you'll hear if there's any kind of wind. Because wind has a really low, your buds just can't hear it with those because they're not meant to go that low. Headphones do, so then you'll know, oh my gosh, I got wind, so I got to change something. That's, if you have the time to do that, that can make a big difference. But you have to have headphones somewhere too, but we all have them somewhere laying around. I don't know. And as I mentioned before, wind kills audio. I can take some with an audio filter when I'm editing and knock some of that down, but I can't take it out completely, and especially when it's really rattling the cage. So really got to be careful. That's like, to me, one of the number one enemies. Because more important than video, I can't believe I'm saying this out loud, is audio, because we got to hear your message. It has to be coherent. And then the rest of the video goes along with that. You know, unless you're demoing something, then sometimes that's better. Bruce. Yeah. Is it better to just shoot video and then lay in audio later? Well, it depends on what you're doing. I prefer to see you in the video doing whatever it is, just because it really connects everything. Otherwise, it feels a little bit like a PowerPoint. But if you can't, you absolutely can't record it because the sound, the wind is bad or some other reason. Yeah, then you can do that. And we've done that. We've had people, in fact, if you know what you're doing and say, we're doing some of these demo videos, say I'm trying to show you how to do some gardening stuff. Well, it's OK to go afterwards and get down low and get some closeups of what you're doing. And I can edit that stuff in later if it matches. Bruce, this is Steve's winger. Sorry, I'm late. I agree with you on that. I agree with you on that. Because when you come back in and dub it in later, you don't get the same synchronicity that you do when his waiter's out there because I talk a lot with my hands. And you can't get that, you know? So yeah, thank you. Yeah, no problem. And part of what we're about is not just the information, but it's that connection with people. And even over video, that's a better way to connect with people than to separate it like that. Yes, but if you're shooting the scene rather than a person, isn't it just as easy to come back over and dub the audio over the scene as it is to talk at the time you're shooting it? Again, it just depends on what you're shooting, right? Because I used to work in news, and that's how we did it. We shot interviews, but we shot V-roll. It's called the video. And then we put it all together and laid that over. I mean, yeah, that's how you can do that. But if we're doing this for this project, the REC, you're trying to talk to people about something. They want to see you. It's weird, but they do. I mean, all of you. They want to see you. If you can be in the video, I do recommend there's some people that don't have a rapport on camera. They're like this. Yeah, I would probably then just shoot and cut audio under that. If you can't, you don't feel comfortable on camera. That's another reason. It does work. I'm just saying it's probably not as effective as far as that personal feel to it. I think Myrna's got a really good point. There are times when I would like to do something by myself because I can't always have Linda around and stuff. Therefore, then shooting pictures and then coming back and dubbing it in works, like as Myrna said. So Myrna's got a good point. Yeah, and again, there's a lot of ways to do this, but those are the two basic ways when we have somebody come in and we have some video. Some people just don't want to be on camera or they can't for some reason. Yeah, and it works. I mean, that's how we did it in news, like I said, except for when the reporter did a stand up and talk. But this is a little different animal. You guys are that people connection. And so we want to try to keep that as peopleized as possible. So what if we're shooting with somebody in the picture and they're talking and after the fact, we find out the audio is terrible. Can you just mute that audio and lay new audio over? Yeah, that's really hard. I've done it, but it's really hard to match. It's really hard. So if it's an interview, it's almost impossible because you have to have a person come in. But if it's you, I'm going to tell us a little story. It was during a blizzard was coming in. I went to the reporter down the road and he's talking demonstrating how windy and snowy it is. And we got back and it was just like, you couldn't hear a thing. So we dubbed it. And even though we pretty much got it perfect, we knew and could kind of tell that it was sort of dubbed. But yeah, I mean, you do whatever you can do, but I wouldn't count on that because it's hard. It's really hard because if you have an exact track and you got to match it up to another exact track, let's say you record something separately. Now, some people do this and I've done this with my GoPros. I had a little MP3 player and if you got that in your pocket and you're recording sound, you do your bit on camera, then you can take that and match those up. At least they're exactly the same. You just have to figure out where to get them to match. Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah, and then you're getting that microphone closer to you, which is that's the only real disadvantage of these things without a microphone because the further you are away from the mic, the less the quality. And that's why I decided to wear this today because this should sound way better than even though you can hear me and understand me, this just sounds better. Okay, I think in, sorry to jump in here, I think in myrna's situation too, if you're saying like the person's on camera, you know, and then we're having the audio issues, that would be a situation where maybe you can get by with having the person on camera for five to 10 seconds and showing them that the start and then if there's chances there's a way to get some cutaway shots or have a lot of extra b-roll then to cover it up, then you could throw in, and this is in the situation of course that the person cannot re-record it, but then you get a bunch of extra cutaway shots, other video of what you're demoing or what's going on, and then you can cover all that other part up and then throw in the narration, you know, then re-record the audio. But all that extra work sounds like it'd be easier just to re-record it if you could. Yeah, I guess I was thinking I do some videotaping of horses for my family and when I video, there's all this ambient sound. Well, I just shut that off and I record over it, but that's not people, that's, you know, and that's kind of what I was thinking of. You know, if they're out there recording something in the field and trying to show something and they're talking about it, but the audio comes out terrible, you can shut that off and we can record something completely new over it, right? Yes. Okay. Yeah, no problem with that at all. And that's why I say sometimes it's handy to, and Scott just mentioned it, he called it cutaways or B-roll or other video close ups of things, that provides you an opportunity. Say you have a really big flub up. Well, if you cover that with video, you can edit out the, you'll never know it, you can edit that part out. Or like you said, you can just cover up the whole thing. I wouldn't plan to do that, but if it happens, yeah, we'll figure out a way to get around it. Any more questions about that? Yeah, and I've had some people on the horticulture especially because they're doing demos on how to do certain things. They have, some of them have shot separately, a little close up of what they're doing. And I'm able to use it and it helps a lot, really does. Because if you're on camera the whole time, it's what we call the one take wonder. I mean, you have to get through it. And if you have little mistakes, no big deal, but if you have a really big flub up, think about a way to show something at that time, even a still picture that I could edit to, and then we can edit out the flub up. And then, because what we don't want, it's called the jump cut in editing. If I'm talking like this and I go, and I make a mistake, and then I edit to the same kind of shot, then my head pops up over here as I'm talking, because we cut a piece of the middle out. So that if you cover that up with video, it all will sound normal. I can make you sound or say anything I want, just about. It's tough though with inflection and things like that, so. So, can we provide you, I mean, I believe we're planning to have you come out and shoot whatever you can, but can we provide you with different video from maybe camera and the SRL, or phone and the SRL audio clips, if we want pictures, whatever, and you can just make your magic, right? It doesn't really matter what format it is. Yeah, I like, it has to be 16 by nine. If you give it to me vertically, somehow I'm not gonna use it because it's just not gonna fit at all. Right, right, right. So we have to go, that's the only format I really require. I also appreciate when you shoot higher resolution, so I can bring a resolution down, like when I blow it up, it starts looking pretty cruddy, so that would be, but formats, like if it's MP4, MOV, whatever it is, I can handle whatever it is. I'll convert it or my software knows how to deal with it, so. Okay. And I would shoot something that if I do come to say, for example, Carrington, and there's something going on when I'm not there, yeah, capture it and we can use it. Yeah, and then we're gonna get into the part where our, this is how I would like you to capture it. It's composition, right? So. Can I ask a question real quick though, before you go off of that? So you said on our cell phones, can we change the resolution or the, so that's just in our settings, probably like settings, camera or something. Every phone's different, but in general, once you open the phone, there'll be a little cog or settings, go in there and just look for, a size, it may not even say resolution, but it should, but it might not, but you just look for the size and you might have the option for four by three or even three, whatever Instagram is and, but you want 16 by nine, the wider view and then just look at numbers and just look, well, whatever looks the biggest to me, I don't need specific, it's gotta be 1080p or 720, whatever, just big, big is good. So like I have the options of 1080p, like you said, HD at 60 FPS or I have different options like 4K at 60 FPS. Yeah, you don't need to go that big. I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah, 4K is, you know, there is one advantage of 4K. If my end product, say look at your screen right now and you see all these rectangles, right? And then it's one big rectangle of everybody in it. So let's imagine that's 4K, but I'm gonna output in the size of one of these. You know what I'm saying? A smaller version of it, like 720. Well, suddenly with that one shot, I can select anywhere on the screen and crop it in. And you know, that's one advantage. You really have a lot of options. So 1080p is big enough. 1080p, right? It has a P next to it. Yeah, 1080p is perfect. Yeah. So mine says at either 30 FPS or 60 FPS. Okay, FPS, that's frames per second. And you want to shoot it, what you're used to seeing is 30, which is actually 29.97, but it says 30. Okay. Yeah. I can't find the settings on mine like you're talking about. This is what I use. What is it? Ah, yeah. Well, you keep looking. It's in there somewhere. When we get done, I have a question to ask of extension, okay? No, a request, a request. Thank you. Okay, okay. You guys are the best, by the way. Well, somebody is. I don't know if it's me, but. Oh, every extension people are my new heroes. All right. So composition. Yeah. So in composition, that's how it looks. Like if I was over here, and you know what? That looks goofy, but when I turn like this, now it doesn't look so bad, does it? This is called nose room. So if you're shooting something, you give, if they're looking that way, you give them some nose room. And I'm not gonna go into all the aspects of composition. That was just an example of you want, you don't want this, right? Like we see so many Zoom people do, you just see a little head. Well, wait, yeah, here's a good example. So you wanna fill the frame, head not, out of frame, and you know, near the top. And that's kind of how I frame myself right here. So this would be pretty good composition. I mean, if you were down a little bit, it wouldn't be horrible or anything, but it does look better if your eyes a little higher. If you have action to follow, everything needs to be slow and smooth, right? No jerking around and try not to do big, big, big pans. Think of this. So what video does is each time a frame goes by, it's kind of redrawing that picture, right? And if you have a wide shot, a field of grass going like this and you're panning, it's gonna look really weird, garbage-y, because it can't possibly, unless you have a really high-end camera, you can't possibly capture all that without it getting a little fuzzy. And then if we're gonna use it, encode it and send it out and see it on the web, it's just not gonna look great. So big, wide pans of lots of stuff, like this stuff right now, high quality because we're not, it's just my hands moving, right? A little bit of this might mess it up a little, but it's really not redrawing a ton of stuff. So if you're gonna show something and then you wanna move in, go ahead and move in nice and easy, most phones will automatically go to their, if you're getting really close, we'll go to a close-up focus, a macro. But if you pull out, mostly it's gonna be fine too. So it's all kind of auto everything, really makes it nice. And then backlighting is the other big one I've run into where you wanna make sure whatever your subject is, person, animal, whatever it is, plant, that it is standing out from the background. So I have a lamp back here, but I am actually brighter than that lamp. So it doesn't detract. What happens is if there's a lot of light, the camera, there's something called the iris that's trying to balance the light, it's gonna make you look dark. So I have a white shirt. And if I get in here, it's, see how it's kind of, you can't see detail here. It's kind of washed out because it's trying to also expose my face properly. And so don't wear white, don't wear black. Try to wear a more neutral color when you're out there because the camera will like it better. Because it doesn't like high contrast. So what you wear can be important. And so really I shouldn't be wearing a white shirt today. I'm my own best worst example. But it's not that bad because this is just a Zoom camera. So it's your message, all right? What you're gonna say, these are supposed to be kind of short if possible. Now, normally short, we like two minutes and under, but you guys might have more to share. So we said maybe five minutes would be good. I would outline it. What are the points I need to hit? And then go ahead, but don't write it out and read it because then you turn into plastic person, right? You're not yourself. And most of you are just naturally good presenters. Just be yourself. And if you dare, look right at the camera and talk to people. Looks awesome on video because it looks like you're looking right at them. So if I'm looking and doing a presentation like this versus like this, you're gonna feel more of a connection, right? Like you're actually talking to me. So, yeah, and the last bit was to avoid details, too many details. In general, video is better at just being general, but if you get too detailed people, then that stuff just kind of falls through the cracks. Unless you have support, like we're throwing graphics on the screen that, you know, with the numbers that you're talking about, that can help. But, you know, you've seen the PowerPoints, right? With a bazillion words on the screen and you just like, I can't really comprehend all that. Same thing when you're saying it. You got too much there. People aren't, they can't take it all in. So it's just try to figure out what's the most important part. And so when you go out there, planet, right? So, you know where you're going the time of day, what you kind of wanna do and try to, you know, I like to have fun with these things if possible. Try to be a little creative. I don't know. Carl, great example. When you first did these in our videos, he was one of the first ones to get one done and you did it, you know, with some buddies. It was awesome. Did it with the animals. I love that. It's not, you know, that engages people. And so if you can have your presentation engaging people, that's always helpful. So I do have a question for you when it comes to, sometimes you do interview type video. We ask a question, you respond by, by, you make a response and there might be like three questions. What, where, when, how? How is this particular set as CREC or these field day videos gonna be different from that or can they be the same or what's your thoughts? Well, what I can't, I've actually not been to, I've been, I've visited field days for part of a day. I've never done a full field day. So when it comes to the context of what you're talking about, that is really up to you and what you think is most important. The interview style is because that's live, right? When you're doing it, it's not a video recording, right? You're talking about, yeah. So you're not live and you're just presenting. So you could, if you wanted the interview part, you could still interview and we call it pulling sound bites where you pick spots that you wanna use. I mean, we can edit that, but I need details if that's gonna happen. I'm gonna need you to tell me at this point in the video, the in queue of the sound bite, I need those details or I won't be able to find it, right? But because these aren't live, so they have to be done differently. So now we gotta get outside our little box and think how can I present my information in a way that is different because I'm not doing it live. And that's your challenge, right? I mean, however you think that would be effective. Yeah, just looking for guidance on that. Yeah, yeah, no, that's a great question. Yeah, and I wish I, and that's the thing, most of the time when I'm working with video projects with people, the person I'm working with is the specialist. It's their content and I am not the expert of their content. So the best I understand it, that helps when I understand it, but it's really up to you guys when it comes to content. But I do challenge you, like I said, it's not live, so it definitely has to be done differently. Although I do notice some of the videos that are online that they seem like they're done live. Yeah, there are some that are outfield, that type of thing. They're showing different things and it seems live, but they're just recorded. Yeah, most likely it was. Yeah, or maybe they were live and then that's the recording of it. Or yeah, yeah, and we did this again, back when it was in news, we called it as live and you're on the set and they cut to you and you're talking and it looks like it's live. We don't put live on the screen, but it looks live because we're doing everything we normally would. You can do it that way. I mean, if you have the means, someone to run the camera and a microphone or a way to hear both people. Yeah, no problem doing that. Q and A, standing right next to somebody, that's kind of cool. No problem with that. Okay, just looking forward to you come out to Carrington. Yeah, me too. Yeah, well, and once we know where I'm actually going to go, then we'll have to figure out the schedule. So, because it might be, if you guys are the only ones on, maybe I'm just going to Carrington. I doubt that, but yeah. I'm looking forward to driving to Williston actually or heading here. It's a long drive. There was something else I was going to mention that was about, I can't remember. Do you have any questions now? Any more questions about shooting it yourself? That video is really important. If you haven't, even if you have seen it, it's, Becky included it in the email, a link to it, and it is a super good thing to look at before you go out. Just good reminders of what you can do to keep your video quality as high as possible. The point of high quality video isn't just to show off, it's to get that message that you have to everybody, right? So that I want to tell you this, I want to make sure you hear it and demonstrate the best I can. And that's why we get rid of the sound in the background and we have a good lighting because you're not thinking about that, you see and hear everything and they take in what it is you want to say. It's just harder when you have to filter that stuff out yourself when you're watching a video. Do you know what I mean? It's like, I can hear you, but, you know. There's some other question for you. I get to go first, Steve, okay? Sorry, Linda. It's a kind of a compound question. Once we have the video shot or the audio compiled, all the information, how do you want us to send it to you? I'm thinking we have NDSU's file transfer system. We could use Google Drive. We could use SharePoint. We could stuff it in the mail. And then zipped files or do you prefer them to be completely unzipped as huge as possible? Thank you so much for that question because that's exactly what I wanted. I couldn't remember the last bit I wanted to say. That was one of the issues we had or still have sometimes with some of these other projects, people. First of all, this is personal to you, right? When it comes to, your video will go to your phone. Do you need to get it off your phone and onto your computer? That's up to you. How I like to work is get it off my phone and onto my computer, and then I feel like I can do more with it. But if you wanna go from your phone directly to one of these things, yes, you can do that. Here's what I suggest. We don't have it set up, but we did set one up for the horticulture project. And that's on Google Drive. We just set a place for everyone that they could go ahead and dump their video there. That made it pretty easy. But I got video in ways I didn't even know you could send video. I got these interesting, it was an iPhone, a link, it looked like a picture that brought me to the video that I could download. I would go, number one, with what you're most comfortable with. Number two, see if we can set up a Google Drive thing so that we're, if we send them all to the same place, I know where to look for them. But I need an email so that I know that you're sending me something, right? But getting it off your phone depends on also the kind of phone you have. I have, where's my little device? So if, and I don't mean to pick on iPhone users, but you don't have quite as many options except this might help because with my phone, I have an SD card I can pop out. But it's in here somewhere. So while you're looking then, Bruce, do you want us to try to zip files at all? Or since Google Drive has all the space in the world, we could just dump it in there or wholesale and let you have it. Zipping's really not necessary. Oh, here it is over here. Zipping's not necessary because it doesn't really do much with video. What zipping does is when you have a lot of files and you zip them together, usually that saves some space. So this little device, it's like a USB, but it has on one end here a USB-C end, right? I can take this, plug it into my phone and I use Samsung, so it, or yeah, anyway, Samsung, it's an Android. And I can go into my files and I can find the video and transfer it to this and I can plug that right into my computer or at least this one at the other end, I have a regular USB at the other end so I could transfer it either direction. So these are really handy because you physically move or copy that file, but a lot of people are really comfortable with doing it electronically with wifi, most likely, and zipping it to their computer or to wherever you wanna share it. I'll talk to someone here in Adcom and find out about a Google Drive, just, you know, if you don't feel comfortable. Otherwise, however you wanna send it, it's fine. And you can try to zip it. Once you zip it, you'll see if the file size changed because I can unzip it, but it's not an issue, but I don't think it's gonna compress it very much. So that is really, I'm so glad you asked a question because once you've got that video, you gotta get it off your phone. And then here's the other advantage of sending it to your computer. Now you have a copy, right? A backup. Once you send that, now you have kind of like three copies and you can delete the one on your phone that's taken up all that space. So I recommend backing everything up twice. So my photos, for example, that I take, they're in a hard drive here and one at home because if I have a fire here, I still have them at home or vice versa. But I'm not saying this is that important, but once you move it to your computer, you've technically made a backup, right? Because you have two versions of it. And then once you send it, then it's as many versions as you can. And then you can get it off your phone if it's taken up space. Again, if you have the ability and you can put an SD card in your phone, I have a 122 gig card in my phone so I don't run out of space. I just extra phone or extra card. All right, any other questions? Any clue about world peace? All we are saying is give peace a chance. Yeah, give peace a chance. Yeah, I should, we're recording. Otherwise I would tell you my bear trap joke which is really good. Steve, did you have a question? I stepped over the top of you before. No, it wasn't important enough. It can come up later. Well, this is being recorded. So we'll repost it in case you wanna look at this or but what's even more concise is that video, the video tips that Scott and I created. Very handy. Thank you for doing that video. That it's entertaining, it's informative, it does all the things. Thank you very much. You are so welcome, Linda. You know, it's kind of funny when we did the first one, we did it with a four by three before HD. And then we got some money from this, our ACE organization, and we were able to do it in HD. And we kind of did it for them and for us, but it just, it is coming in so handy, especially now that people are shooting more of their own stuff. So I'm really glad we did it. All right. You have more questions? Ask now or email later. Give me a call.