It’s “Guest Blog Wednesday” featuring Rod Harlan
So I bet you’re asking, “What’s a video guy doing as a guest blogger on a (primarily) digital photography site?” Well, I’m here to tell you why you need to jump on the online video bandwagon… and do it now! But first, for all of you that would feel a little cheated that you came to Scott’s blog today and you didn’t get a cool tip or trick to take with you, here’s how to turn Timelapse Photos into beautiful video in Photoshop CS3 Extended in just a few easy steps:
1. Choose File > Open and direct it to your folder of images. Make sure that they are numbered in sequence.
2. Select the first image and then click the “Image Sequence†checkbox (as shown below).
3. Select your Frame Rate. This will also determine the overall duration of the clip as it makes this calculation based on the frame rate.
4. Click the Play button in the Animation timeline or simply hit the Space Bar to render the video clip into RAM.
Here’s a video clip where I show the technique and talk about it in a little more detail: (click here).
If you’re using a 10-15 megapixel camera, then your images will allow you to create 4,000 – 5,000 pixel wide video files. This is many times larger than Standard Definition or High Definition video files. In fact, you can go out and shoot once, and then chop up the resulting monster video file into 30-50 Standard Definition video files for sale as a collection on DVD or website. You can see me demonstrate this technique with one of Moose Peterson’s files by viewing this video clip here:
Why Online Video
Now on to my main discussion point… the reason Photographers should jump on the online video bandwagon as soon as possible. To say that online video today is exploding in both business and consumer spaces would be the understatement of the year. Just take my buddy Scott as an example: Five years ago all he had was a gracious and benevolent friend (me) who would create, edit and/or animate the occasional video clip for him to use at his seminars or at Photoshop World. Today he has half-a-dozen full-time videographers recording, editing and post-processing video for both online and DVD distribution, and another half-a-dozen web designers compressing video and creating sites to distribute all of this video content, along with several dozens of the world’s top industry professionals creating video content for both the NAPP and Kelby Training websites. In the last 18 months alone, Scott — the digital photographer, trainer and businessman — has acquired enough video content to create his own television network… which is exactly what he’s doing, only he’s doing it online.
Does that mean that you should abandon your still camera for a video camera and never look back? Absolutely not! What it does mean however is that you should package your best images into a compelling slideshow, add a little music, save it out as a video file, and then distribute it on the web. Every decent program that can create a slideshow also has the capability to save out that slideshow in either Apple Quicktime, Windows Media or Adobe Flash format. And this is all you need to upload to a potential audience of millions. At WORST, your video slideshow is an inspiration to another aspiring photographer. At BEST, you’ve just doubled your marketing and picked up a wealth of new clients for your photography business. If you’ve ever seen a slideshow presentation set to music at Photoshop World by the likes of Moose Peterson, Vincent Versace, Jim Divatale, John Paul Caponigro, Eddie Tapp, Laurie Excell, Joe Glyda, Ben Willmore, or any of the many, many others… you know just how powerful it can be for both inspiration and for sales. Just ask any one of them how many more books, DVDs, or seminar tickets they sell after a showing! 
Where You Can Distribute
So the next step would be to upload your video to one of the many video sharing sites that have exploded onto the web in the last couple of years, but which one? Everyone’s heard of YouTube, but is it the best choice for you? Well, for the last year I’ve been researching and answering those exact same questions for my clients who hire me as a consultant and as a distributor of their online content. In that time I’ve compiled a list of the Top 12 sites I like for distributing video online. It’s a lengthy report I usually only share with clients, but I’m going to share some of the key points with you today, including a little bit about each site’s web traffic and audience demographics (compiled from Google searches and TubeMogul analytics) so that you can decide if the video distribution site is a good fit for you. Here we go:
Rod’s Top 12 Video Distribution Sites
YouTube
Description: The GrandDaddy of all video distribution sites
Traffic Averages: 69,329,000 monthly unique visitors; 74 pages viewed per person; 0:55:52 minutes spent on site.
Demographics: Evenly female/male audience, largest age cluster in 20-40 year old range.
MySpace
Description: Primarily a social networking site. The video component is not promoted, but is widely used.
Traffic Averages: 12,576,000 monthly unique visitors; 12 pages viewed per person; 0:07:03 minutes spent on site.
Demographics: Surprisingly, the audience only slants slightly younger; roughly even male/female; relatively less educated.
Revver
Description: Despite owning YouTube, Google’s intuitive video site is a success in its own right.
Traffic Averages: 8,094,000 monthly unique visitors; 16 pages viewed per person; 0:08:07 minutes spent on site.
Demographics: Slightly more male viewers; age slants relatively older.
DailyMotion
Description: Popular video sharing site out of Europe.
Traffic Averages: 5,388,000 monthly unique visitors; 10 pages viewed per person; 0:04:49 minutes spent on site.
Demographics: International audience; high age and income level; slants white male.
Yahoo Video
Description: A sleek, entertainment-oriented video site. Not yet fully integrated with all of Yahoo!’s community destinations.
Traffic Averages: 3,185,000 monthly unique visitors; four pages viewed per person; 0:02:76 minutes spent on site.
Demographics: Slightly more male viewers; slants older in age.
MetaCafe
Description: Popular worldwide video destination. Prides itself on quality over quantity.
Traffic Averages: 3,584,000 monthly unique visitors; 15 pages viewed per person; 0:07:10 minutes spent on site.
Demographics: Almost 3:1 male to female ratio; relatively even education and income.
Blip.TV
Description: Publisher-friendly video sharing and distribution site.
Traffic Averages: 1,265,000 monthly unique visitors; three pages viewed per person; 0:02:43 minutes spent on site.
Demographics: Slightly more male, educated and higher-income.
Veoh
Description: Focused on full-screen video programming for anyone with a broadband connection.
Traffic Averages: 3,627,000 monthly unique visitors; 30 pages viewed per person; 0:41:29 minutes spent on site.
Demographics: Slightly more male viewers; even distribution across age categories.
Vimeo
Description: Hip, user-generated content.
Traffic Averages: Approximately 1,311,000 monthly unique visitors; five pages viewed per person.
Demographics: 2:1 male to female ratio; high-income and college-educated.
Google Video
Description: One of the first video sharing sites to offer ad revenue sharing with publishers.
Traffic Averages: 436,000 monthly unique visitors; three pages viewed per person; 0:02:34 minutes spent on site.
Viddler
Description: Newer site with cool features like comments tied to a particular time in the video and automatic webcam synch.
Demographics: Slightly more male; college-educated.
FaceBook
Description: Another major social networking site with over 100 million users. It’s also the 4th most trafficked website in the world. Need I say more?
The Wrap Up
So what can video do for the Digital Photographer? It can expose your art to a whole new audience that might otherwise not see it. It can inspire others as it inspires you. It can encourage collaboration with artists from other disciplines. And it can increase your business and sales so that you can continue to do what you love most… take great pictures.
I hope I’ve been helpful to at least one of you. Thanks for reading.
-Rod
[ed. You can check out the public beta of Rod's DV Confidential site, by clicking here.).
This is great stuff Rod! By the way, it might be worthy to note that the time lapse video trick can only be done with the Extended version of Photoshop CS3, not the standard version that most folks actually own.
Jeff
Very interesting. It’s definitely a different way to take advantage of photoshop and I’m definitely going to try it out now. I have CS3 extend.
When i first saw Rod as your guest blogger, I kind of knew i have seen him from somewhere and suddenly when i referred to Scott’s Digital Photography Book Vol 2, there was a photo of him. And when i went to DV Confidential…that same photo was there.
This was a really thought-provoking post, Rod. I don’t know about other photographers, but to me, the thought of digital video seemed a little intimidating. I spend so much time learning and perfecting my work in still photography, and I guess I worried that adding a whole new realm to the mix would start to take away from what im already doing. (i’d rather be really great at a few things than just decent at a lot of things)
But the idea of using slideshows (something I already do) with music on video web sites is a really great thought, especially considering the amount of people who would be exposed to my photography who weren’t before. I’m definitely going to give it a try! Thanks so much!
A quick question though: Can we use any music for an online slideshow, or do we have to go to stock music sites with the royalty info like stock photos?
Hi Rod,
This is an excellent post that you’d presented. I like the list of 12 video distribution sites, of which I knew of only a few. Thank you for providing marketing strategical ideas of others in this industry.
Awesome! I put photo slide shows on my blog and clients love it.
Hi Rod,
Great post. I’ve done lots of this sort of thing for local clients but never considered posting to YouTube or other sharing sites. What a great tip.
Shinaz raises a very interesting question that you might want to address if you could Scott. How does a photographer go about acquiring the rights to use music with a slideshow. Is it even possible to acquire the rights for popular music that young people would find engaging for a high school sports banquet or the like, when your total budget is in the $100s of rather than a feature length film with a budget in the millions. My experience seems to be no. But I’d love to hear if someone else has figured out a way to crack that nut.
Thanks Scott for continuing to bring such high quality information to all of us. Wonderful choice for a guest blogger!
Blessings,
Lee
I’m wondering what everyone is using to produce slideshows? Can anyone suggest anything for Windows users?
Flickr looks like a nice option for short slideshows as you can run a 1:30 minute video from your feed.
Thanks Rod for a great post. Really gets me thinking on how to share my photos.
Wow, I really liked this idea. And I did not know that could be done….way cool.
Question? : I am shooting a model this weekend. To do a time lapse of her moving….I guess I need her to set up, ( a different pose each time) pose, click, pose, click, pose, click and on and to get the effect??
How many poses do i need to make this work? 100 ro 150???? more or less
Ken
You can also do time lapse photography to video using QuickTime Pro. Also ProShow Gold can do it. And with ProShow you can get some interesting transitions between the frames.
Hey Rod -
Very interesting post but users of free video hosting sites should be very careful to check out the end-user license agreements before posting work. Some of them, including YouTube require the surrender some control of the work in order to post to the site. Read those EULA’s!
The other thing is that user demographics don’t mean much on those sites. Analogous to the old TV adage that viewers watch programs, not channels - the same holds true for online video. If you post interesting work and make an audience aware of its existence, they will watch regardless of which evil corporation hosts the site.
Finally, some prefer to submit to several hosting sites simultaneously. There is a tool to make this hassle-free. It’s called TubeMogul (TubeMogul.com) - Check it out.
peace
Cool stuff Rod!!!!
By the way have I ever told you what a handsome and attractive man you are?
XO
Dave
intersting!
I guess there are also people out there, that will start buying short videos instead of images? are there any “video stock agencies” that sell them?
thanks
Erik
Very nice, informative and idea inspiring post Rod..Thanks Scott for having him as a guest blogger…It does sound like you almost have your own television studio there at NAPP. Claire
Good post here, and an great follow-up from Jeff Revell in that native to Photoshop you must have CS3 Extended, which is likely beyond the range of most photoshoppers…I do have CS3 Extended, but had not taken advantage of the slideshow/video portions yet. This tutorial will definitely make me reconsider it…!
WIth regards to using music in video:
The most affordable option is to buy one of the numerous royalty free music packages, such as those offered by DigitalJuice (www.digitaljuice.com). They are relatively cheap and you get hundreds of tracks.
If you’re on the Mac, Apple’s iLife comes with GarageBand which has both semi complete tracks and thousands of loops so you can create your own tracks. They also have a bunch of expansions that provide more tracks and loops.
I personally started with video work (and I still do mostly video) and even with a simple thing such as a slideshows there’s more to it than just importing a bunch of files into Photoshop.
In particular, proper compression for the web can make a big difference both in quality and file size (which if you are hosting on your own site can make a big difference). If you’re going out to DVD, you have to consider such things as file sizes, color spaces, frame rates, interlaced/progressive, flickering, broadcast safe, bitrate, etc.
Basically, what I’m saying is that anyone going into video should be prepared to spend some time learning new things so you can create good quality products.
Anyway, I have a little timelapse to share of my own: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRP3YrbqFmY
Cheers
Great blog, Rod, thanks for posting.
You probably won’t remember this, but we went to the same church together when we were kids. I hope all is well with you…
Scott, thanks again for your blogging daily, and for the guest bloggers too. I get a new bookmark every week!
-preston
Hi Rod,
Thanks for the very informative post concerning video as Scott Kelby’s guest blog Wednesday video guy. It’s well written ~ Moose’ visual of the time lapse waterfall shows considerable creativity.
I’m interested in screen recording from Lightroom 2 showing capture and development of award-winning images. As this is a new project, it’s unclear what software to use and how to get files available for iTunes. I note weekly NAPP videos also contain tabs which let me go directly to tutorials ~ a creative timesaver. The NAPP videos are skilled presentations supported at their base by screen recorders.
Perhaps either you or Scott or even Mat could comment to particulars of such an activity for those interested in screen recording and tutorials. Matter of fact, if either Scott or Matt would put up a blog about the process, detailing software used and a general workflow, I think it would be extremely helpful!
Clearly, such an informative blog would help avoid a lot of trial and error time loss.
Scott ~ another great pic as a guest blogger!
This was an interesting post. I used to do a lot of video, now not so much. I do a lot more still imagery these days. I know it is against the trend but I feel video is just not where near I want it yet. I also hate the amount of time video takes to edit and work with which is another reason I love still images, for a comparable amount of post processing time I feel I get a lot more satisfaction out of a still image than out of video. I am a still in love with still pictures, though moving pictures, i.e. video, holds promise down the road.
I like putting my pictures in slideshows, but putting those online on public sharing sites is a waste of all that resolution. The videos on those sites are of such low resolution it is almost not worth viewing picture slideshows there. I know, I try to see other peoples stuff there all the time and am always disappointed with the quality of the images, not of the content just the resolution.
With that being said what is even more interesting is the link provided in the trackback comments by mikelao to his site saying that Canon just released a 5D mark II with 1080p video capabilities. Also they introduced the G10. Cool.
http://mikelao.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/canon-gets-back-with-full-1080p-video-on-a-dslr/
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=139&modelid=17662
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=144&modelid=17624#ModelDetailAct
So although I think still pictures are the way to go, I have a desire to do video at times and would love to have that option in my dSLR. I am not going to upgrade to get it, but it would be nice someday. In the mean time I am all for putting my still shots in video format, but show me a video format that can show my pics at their best resolution, 1080p is good enough for now but not as good as the native image resolution, not by a long shot.
I would like to know if there are any sites that do full 1080p resolution HD content so I can upload my slideshows there. I might even settle for 720p resolution but no lower, certainly not the 320×240 on youtube now (up to 448×336 sometimes).
Matt
Time lapse movies are a hoot to create and watch. My D2X had the feature already built in and I’ve used it to take several hundred photos throughout the day of a cabin remodeling project. You can then create the final movie in iMovie, Acrobat Pro and I’m sure many other programs. It is all great fun.
I agree with Rod. A discussion on how to create “screen recording” movies, file formats, sizing, chapters, etc. would be very helpful. Especially the pros/cons, strengths/weaknesses of the various software packages and file formats.
Cheers!
I’ve been doing time elapsed sequences with my video camera, didn’t occur to me to do hi-def stock ones with my digital. Def, going to look into this for some extra cash.
great idea, thanks!
-nate benson
nbenson.wordpress.com
@Jeff - You’re the man! I definitely should have mentioned that about the Extended version. It’s weird having 2 versions of Photoshop now. We used to have 2 versions of After Effects until they realized it wasn’t really worth the hassle, maybe that will happen with Photoshop as well.
BTW, just to clear things up even more, all of the video features in CS3 are only found in the Extended version. But if you bought one of the Adobe bundles (for web, print, video or even the master collection) you already have the Extended version of Photoshop. In fact, EVERYBODY that has Photoshop CS3 has the Extended version loaded on their machine, it’s just the serial number for Extended that unlocks all of the new features. Use that little nugget of information as you will…
@Shinaz- I didn’t know I was in Scott’s Digital Photography Book Vol 2! I’ll have to go look for that. I am on the Cover of his first Lightroom Book… that’s why it was the best seller! Here’s a tongue-in-cheek take on the whole ‘cover model” thing:
http://www.dvconfidential.com/non-video/rod-harlan-cover-model
@Karen - Legally, you can only use music that you have the rights too… but you’ll find popular music used WITHOUT permission all over the web and video sharing sites. That’s because the practice is tolerated to a point. However, that doesn’t make it right. Yuli, another commenter, gave a couple of great suggestions for royalty free music. I’ll add one more than allows you to license the same clips used in TV shows like CSI and Smallville for only $60. Check out: http://www.TripleScoopMusic.com
@Yuli - Thanks Yuli for the great explanation. It’s readers like you that make Scott’s blog so useful to others!
@ Ken - Concerning the model shoot… the more pictures the better. If you have an extra camera with an intervalometer, just set it up to take a random picture every 30 seconds to a minute or so. Should give you a very fun result.
@ David Cuerdon - you scare me… you really, really scare me.
@ Erik - There are a ton of “video stock agenciesâ€. Go over to the DVPA site (like NAPP but for video folks) and take a quick look at a list of over 250:
http://www.dvpa.com/public/department102.cfm
@ Preston - Great to reconnect with you. I’ll try to touch base through your Flickr account to see what you’ve been up to…
@ Joe and Brad - Good feedback on wanting to know more about doing “screen recordings”. I’ll try to do something about that in the near future on my blog.
@ Nate - I’m glad you liked the idea! Let me know if you ever produce anything with it…
Rod,
You are the bomb. Thanks for the tutorials & the great advice. I was following along with you & was curious to see how it worked. So I took a folder of Vegas shots & did what you said but I kept getting a warning message that the sequence had gaps. I tried with just the images that were in sequence but same error. I’ll play around with it some more.
Response to an earlier comment, maybe David Cuerdon saw you at a past midnight madness when you were part of the dating game. LOL
excellent Ron…..I was one of those that at first asked, “what is a video guy doing as guest blogger”? I found your post to be very informative, and very cool….
thanks!!
Scotty Graham
Jakarta, Indonesia
@Lavonne - If you want, you can upload the folder of photos somewhere (like iDisk, etc) and I’ll download and take a look if you’re still having trouble’s.
@Scotty - Glad you liked it. BTW, in the next 12-18 months EVERY MAJOR NEW DSLR will be shooting video as well. Just something to think about…
Thank you for your post, Rod. It actually made me really excited to try it out and do something new with my photos.
@Ron: thanks for the reply to all our questions (including mine)
appreciated.
Rod have you taken a look at Animoto?
Absolutely, I made a video of Scott’s 3D head with it!
http://www.dvconfidential.com/non-video/wheres-scott-kelbys-3d-head-at
Thanks for the help Rod but I think I figured it out. I tried it again with just a few in sequence & I didn’t get that warning again. It was also done on a different computer. Maybe I’ll reset my PS preferences on the computer that gave me the warning despite the images being in sequence.
Thanks a bunch.