Video embeds can really add a lot to any article, blog or diary. I've discovered that they're really easy to do using my iPhone, and I imagine the same is true for other smart phones that record video.
The iPhone lets you easily upload a video to youtube. I use it a lot to get snippets of news shows from TV and the occasional live news coverage-- speeches, debates, demonstrations... I have a digital recorder on my Comcast box, so, if I see a news segment I want to grab on my camera, I back up to the point the segment starts, set up my phone camera video stand and grab it. I can usually set it up, record it and upload it to youtube in 10-15 minutes. Then I can wrap an article around it.
Before I set up my iPhone recording stand I just held the camera as still as possible. It worked okay. The stand's better and easier. Give it a try.
Here's the set-up I created to shoot video from TV for youtube. I bought the iPhone tripod mount for under $10, attached it to a mini desktop tripod costing under $10 and mounted it on an old mike stand, (cost about $20-$25 on craigslist or ebay.) You might be able to use a cheap sheet music stand that you can pick up at a yard sale for under $5.
Here's a
link to where I bought it for $10
Here's an example of a mini tripod from
radio shack for $7.99
I put one of the legs into the open neck of the mike stand and set the height to optimize the image on my iPhone. One thing you'll want to do is go from full/wide screen mode setting on your TV to a narrower one, so you can get in closer for the shot. And keep the volume up on the sound.
If there are other solutions, please mention them in the comments.
If you have a product you want me to review, contact me at rob at opednews dot com.
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
Check out his platform at RobKall.com
He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)
