Astronomy Students

If you are looking for the videos from the Spring 2010 semester of classes,
go to this link.

If you are looking for the videos from the Fall 2009 semester of classes,
go to this link.

If you are looking for the videos from the Spring 2009 semester of classes,
go to this link. NOTE: Many of those videos may no longer be available.

For Fall 2008 class videos go here.

Spring 2008 semester of classes, go to this link.

The rest of this webpage is devoted to showing people how to make videos like those in the links above.

Notes about the videos

1. Here is a video Matt Kline and I created during a Fall 2010 Flex Day presentation about creating "video casts" and the like.
2. Some of the classroom videos have spotty audio at times. The microphone momentarily cut out when the antenna didn't pick up the signal from the wireless microphone. That problem is solved now that I purchased a bluetooth microphone (and headset, although I don't put the earphones on during class).
3. In the past, I used 3 different options for placing the videos online. I usually use option #2 for class videos, until Google discontinued its upload option.
   1. Directly upload the videos to my own ECC web page and link to them.
   2. Upload videos to Google Video which I have done for most of the videos.
      • Videos on the Google site have fairly poor resolution (320x240 I'm guessing). The original versions of the videos are higher quality (640x480) than is seen on the Google site.
      • Now I use viddler.com, and upload videos in 640x480 resolution. However, they have a 50 GB storage limit, which is about how much space I needed for 4 classes for one semester, so I'm exploring other options at the moment (including paying Viddler and/or Screencast.com)
   3. Upload the videos to TeacherTube.com because that's the natural place for this kind of video.
      • I found TeacherTube performs VERY slowly from my office and from my home, so I abandoned this option quickly and moved to Google. (YouTube says it has a 5 minute limit.)

Creating videos

This is a 15-minute movie how I created the videos:

• I suggest you save the target, rather than opening the link, if you click to Open video (80 Megabytes), or watch the video using Google video.
• In this movie, I left out the "Important note about WM converter". See #4 below.

More information about creating movies is seen below:

1. To record my voice for these movies, I needed to hook a wireless microphone to my computer microphone jack. A wired microphone will work too, but I walk around a lot during class so I wanted a wireless microphone. The planetarium already had one installed, so using that wasn't much work to set up.
2. I used the free software CamStudio with its lossless video codec to create the screen capture into a movie file. To download the software, scroll down about halfway for the two download links to the zip files. Unzip them and install them on your computer, CamStudio first, codec second. I've changed codecs a few times, and am now (12/23/2009) am even considering using the (not free) Camtasia Studio.
3. Technically, all you need to create videos is the Camstudio software. However, I found that its movies created enormous file sizes, even after configuring the settings to create smaller files. So I had to use a file compression program to make the movie files more manageable. (Camtasia Studio solves this problem, but I still need to "play" with it some more before I decide if I want to switch to it and pay for it.)
4. The movie compression program I use is WM Converter (also free) to change the movie files to a smaller size and different format: 640x480 video resolution, 700 kbps video, 32 kbps audio, 10 frames per sec, WMV files. This typically created files approximately 5 megabytes per minute, which is MUCH more reasonable. You can create smaller files with smaller video kbps (e.g. 56 kbps), but the video quality is noticeably poorer, making the videos much less useful for teaching purposes.
   • IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT RUNNING WM Converter:
     Running the WM Converter program dramatically slows down my computer, even when it runs as a "low" priority. (After buying a new dual-core processor and a new laptop, this problem seems to have passed. But if you're using an older computer, keep reading.) So I tend to have the computer process files when I don't need it for anything else (even reading email or web pages). Often I will have it convert the files after I'm done with work for the day, and just leave my computer on at night, converting the videos.
5. I created an account on Google video. Then I uploaded the movies. Then I created the links below based on what was displayed after uploading the videos. (Today I did the same thing with viddler.com)