See..Jim Henson was totally right, puppets aren’t just for kids.

I got a kick out of this parody of Frank Kern and Andy Jenkins. If you know them it will make you smile with the accuracy. Clearly an inside job… Got the blond hair, inside phrases and everything.

And it was done by an insider..at least partly. It’s Mike Koenigs’s team who is also based in San Diego.

Xraying this, I want you to take away from this video other than it’s funny. Funny is serious business.

1) Look and copy at the format in your own videos: Opening Branding animated element, clearly visible and readable logo in the top form a subtle call to action to click over to the site and find out more. Engaging content that is likely to be passed around. This *IS* an ad, but this is all under the radar because it’s been wrapped up in entainment.

To be honest, puppetry is probably much easier to shoot than live video outdoors and requires no makeup. You don’t have to look good on camera and you don’t even have to wear clothes. You can use any puppets you like.

2) Video quality and video scripting counts. Entertain + Inform and that takes having people who live and breathe this stuff. If you don’t do it, get someone who can. You don’t have to have fulltime people you should start thinking how to outsource this work on an as needed basis.

3) production values in the IM space are rapidly starting to approach that of TV. Just think 5 years go, video was nowhere, now it’s replaced most serious sales letters. At home hardly anybody watches normal TV on old “Tube” sets, I know because when I walk around my neighborhood in LA I see these old TV’s sitting on the curb right next to the flat screen box ready to be garbage collected. I hope your sales pages are in there too.

4) production needs teams of people, like that video was brought to you by Mike Koenigs’s “new” company which has at least 7 people to do the writing shooting, creative etc. How many people do you have in your team?

P.s. If you like adult puppets check out the ADULT improv + telepuppetry called Puppet Up. Puppets + Alcohol + No Holds Barred

P.P.S. If you like puppets you might also like a cartoon of Frank my team created. with Kung FU Surfing Action

Renaming this series, if you can get it done in 5 minutes or less it’s a quickie.
Ever seen those links at the top of sites like:?

Home > Products > Hardware > Hammers

or

The Apple Store uses it...

or

it's good enough for Billionaire Richard Branson...

Then you’ve seen what is called Breadcrumb Navigation (wiki).  It’s good for users, good for SEO and good for you and quick to get on your site. So why don’t you have it?

Bread Crumb navigation (sometimes wrongly called cooke crumb)  greatly reduces confusion in deeply nested pages or categories, both for end-users and search engine bots, and if you’ve got WordPress and Thesis it can be yours in less than 5 minutes. (you can probably do it without Thesis in the same time, you just have to be geekier)

How To add bread crumbs navigation in 10 steps.

1. make sure you have Wordpress and Thesis 1.5 or higher installed.
2. make sure you have the plugins Thesis OpenHook and Breadcrumb-navxt installed.
3. create a few pages, in the right side of each page, choose from the attributes panel what parent page you want, this will form the heirarchy for the trail.
4. In the Wordpress Admin section open  Appearance Panel>Thesis OpenHook.
5. Take a look at this visual guide to which slot you want to place the bread crumb. I recommend the After Title hook, find the matching slot in ThesisOpenHook’s dropdown.
6. Paste the code in the installation section here
   

   Using OpenHook to place Breadcrumb-navxt into the Thesis After Title hook

7. Checkmark “Execute Php on this Hook”
8. Click the blue “Little Ass Save Button” below it.
9. Preview the site, you should see it below the Title.
10. Think about ways to clean up the hierarchy or style it better with CSS+graphics (which is how we got the breadcrumb above).

UPDATE The excellent developer of that breadcrumb plugin sent me to these pages, which cover how to do it (with graphics).  I turns out that the original of this style of graphics was Apple.com

http://mtekk.weblogs.us/archives/guides/quick-and-easy-apple-com-style-breadcrumb-trail-for-wordpress/

http://www.jankoatwarpspeed.com/post/2008/08/14/Create-applecom-like-breadcrumb-using-simple-CSS.aspx

There are several tweaks that have to happen to get the rich graphics and CSS to work with Thesis, which is what shows up above.   Once we figure out some compatibility issues with Thesis 1.6, I’ll look into making it available.

Quality Answers and Utilities at no to low cost, to make your life easier..so you can focus on what counts making content and making sales.

Listen I know you’ve got questions on video on the web,  I know a lot and I want to answer them -I’ve already started as you can see in the previous few posts.

I’m doing this because I’m pissed off.  I’ve been astounded by how much bullshit there is when it comes to getting your videos on your website, and how complicated many make it.  And I want you to succeed and for that to happen, you can’t afford to spend weeks or months getting your sites up…as has happened to several of my friends and masterminders.

I know there is a lot of pieces ( video, video players, video conversion, video hosting, etc), but it doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive as others might have you believe.

I really want to get you guys focused on what matters…getting your content up on the web and making conversions rather than spending time on video nuts and bolts.

So here’s the deal.  Post a comment and ask any question on web video and I’ll answer it for you free.  My goal is to create a solid set of tutorials on this site to not only answer your question but also get those outsourcers you use up to speed.  At my consulting business I  routinely charge clients $200/hr for these type answers!

In addition I have a whole dev team who loves nothing more to build solutions to make your life easier, and help me in my own business which is much like yours.

So what do you really want to know about web video?

Put a splash image before your video

In the prior post we showed you how to get video onto S3 and onto your webpage using free tools in under 5 minutes.  That was so fast, we didn’t cover a great feature that gets more clicks on your video.

With and without splash image, which would you rather click on?

To show an image before your video loads (aka a splash image)  is great to get more clicks by helping users know what the video is about, the result is more people will click to watch the video and that is the point of putting them up on the web in the first place!  The alternative is a rather unattractive black box.

Of the various free media players, there is several that support splash images. Note this is built into a few different media players, but the following code only works with  FlowPlayer (an open source and free player), which we covered in the first episode.

FlowPlayer makes adding images in front easy..it actually supports whole playlists in it’s configuration!, basically a splash image will be just a playlist of 2 items,  the splash image and then your video.  The first will autoplay, the second will not, so it will pause on the image.  FlowControl has a nice fade effect to add polish.

If you’re using wordpress formatting it with the Visual Editor, can make it slightly finicky, your best bet is to copy the code below (stripped of whitespace) update it with the values you need and paste it instead where the 2nd “<script” block begins.  If you’re doing a normal webpage this step is optional.

<script language=”JavaScript”>flowplayer(“player”, “YOUR_PATH_TO_FLOWPLAYER_SWF”, {playlist:[{url:"YOUR_IMAGE_URL", scaling:"orig",autoPlay: true},{url:"YOUR_VIDEO_URL",autoPlay:false}]});</script

To Get an splash image here are a few options.

1. Use any image you have lying around…I like ones of dead relatives, they always get attention.
2. Create a title slide using PowerPoint, or a simple text editor and
3. Open up your video in a media player and capture a frame from it using a screen capture utility (built in to most Operating System with the “prt sc” button.
4. Create it from scratch to be all fancy pants.

TIPS

It’s a good idea to get your splash image like your video on the CDN,to keep it from clogging up your webserver.

To be safe, once up on the CDN, test the url to the image in the browser directly (to make sure the ACL is setup) then try it in the playlist.

If it doesn’t work in wordpress, create a simple text file and paste the flowplayer embed code into it ,save that text file as *.html, and test that in a browser till that’s working.  Then strip out any unnecessary whitespace to put it into the wordpress blog.

Save that working code into a place you won’t forget, odds are you’ll use it over and over again…especially if your successful.

Coming soon, what CDN’s are, the pros and cons of S3 as a video provider, higher end alteratives. Be sure to subscribe to hear about those and future episodes.

You want video on your site, and are confused by all the options, jargon, technical issues and shady expensive stuff.    I feel your pain, I get a LOT of questions about video from my clients with the same questions and confusion…especially when they are getting charged for things that are free.   So I created this short video to clear things up.

Video can be easy, 5-10 minutes is all it takes, and in this video I’ll show you how to take a video on your desktop and get it onto your S3/Cloudfront and then into your website or blog in under 5 minutes.

Here’s what you need to get started

• A website or blog (duh!)
• A video you want to get up…(make it good else noone will watch it)
• To be signed up with Amazon S3 and CloudFront (the latter is especially important for video..both free signup)
• A tool for uploading to S3 (e.g. S3Fox, CloudBerry (windows only))
• About 10 minutes

Note: this video was uploaded in the exact same way as shown in the video. One thing we didn’t cover in this is how to get that pretty image at the very beginning, that’s covered in part 2.

NOTE: if this is your first video, and you play the video from a media player somewhere else, you’ll need to upload a crossdomain.xml file, you’ll only have to do that one time per ‘bucket’ (where you can have more than one bucket per your amazon account, for different companies). The one I use is here (but becareful, this is “wide open” access).

There’s lots more to know about doing high quality video that streams nicely and cheaply.  Be sure to opt-in on the right to get notified on new episodes.

Oh and Mr. Pine says hi.

In 5 minutes how to video blog with Amazon S3

In this post we’ll show you how to get your first video off your camera onto your wordpress blog, amazon s3 or cloudfront in less than5 minutes, with free tools.

I’ve been using Amazon Services for quite some time, and haven’t ever needed services like EzS3 as most features can be done pretty easily for free.  The video players also are typically available for free and pretty easy to configure.

1. Get a wordpress compatible blog (comes with most providers) free.
2. Get the pb-embedFlash wordpress plugin which allows you to quickly embed any flash or flash video with a single line, in a standards compliant way.
3. Sign up for Amazon s3 with Amazon Web Services (free signup, reasonable costs for hosting)
   

   Click to signup for Amazon S3

4. Use S3Fox that can be installed into FireFox (free) to upload the files to your bucket. S3Fox is like a FTP for your webserver that works with S3 instead.

5. 

   IMPORTANT Click the Everyone has Read access, else they won't be able to see the video

   Once uploaded, set the permissions to these as public so that they can be visible to the open net, by default Amazon makes them only available to you.

6. Decide on S3 or CloudFront for delivery of the file. I recommend CloudFront for more consistent access across the world.
7. 

   Copy the URL and Paste it into your embed code.

   Right click to Copy the url.

8. Paste that url into the embed code of your wordpress post (see the top video for an explanation)
9. Preview and that’s it!

You may also be interested in this post, comparision of Amazon vs Ooyala etc.

NOTE: if this is your first video, and you play the video from a media player somewhere else, you’ll need to upload a crossdomain.xml file, you’ll only have to do that one time per ‘bucket’ (where you can have more than one bucket per your amazon account, for different companies). The one I use is here (but becareful, this is “wide open” access).

Be sure to opt-in to the right to gain access to more great tips.

The video that we used in the example, starring Mr. Pine.  Enjoy!

Frank Kern does it

Chris Carpenter does it

Quick Video Marketing does it. (and even tell you in depth how)

Just about every TV show does it.

Shouldn’t you do it too?

One common technique on TV is to use multiple cameras with different perspectives.  This has the following advantages

• When doing interviews or product shots, you can’t see everything with just one camera alone.
• It adds variety and keeps the users attention.
• It with cutting can draw the users focus.
• With proper cuts and fades create emotion

It’s been tempting to get 3 camera ‘interview” shoots both for the blog and some info products, like one of the ones I do is a cooking show like feel, that would benefit from having 2 camera.  One close up on the desk watching the hands, the other two adding variety to the shot of the cook and helpers.  Since I use cameras like the flip, this doesn’t break the bank and still fits into a single pair of jeans.

For infoprenuers who are largely doing things solo, or need to be portable, and targeted the web, this class of cameras is easy to carry in a single bag, I just haven’t heard of many doing it.
Here’s a great 12 min video on how easy it is to do multicam editing in Adobe Premiere

The Casio Exilim V8, last years model but still great for big video.

While many of the pocket cameras out there support video, some do it better than others.

I actually use the Casio Exilim V8, which originally was $400 and top of the line, and now that 2 years have passed is down to $80-$150. it’s not 1080 HD, actually 640×480. But it extremely works well for web video and has some features I haven’t seen.

Here’s an example (with some compression issues)

Advantages over the Flip series

• smaller than some of the other flips
• It’s cheaper $120
• 7x optical zoom which you can use while shooting.
• bigger LCD to preview content on.
• it’s got a built in face tracking mode in the video, so within a small range it appears like you have a person shooting video with you.  It only tracks faces..this rather surprised me when I found this out.
• is the built in spot light (amazing for a camera so small).    Great if you like working at night (ahem) It’s bright enough to stop ships from crashing into shores..amazing that such a small light can make such a huge difference in the video quality, if you don’t mind having blind spots afterwards.
• the camera is a decent voice recorder which can come in handy at conferences or out walking.
• is a decent camera and has a flash which can be used as the synch for multi-camera shoots.

You can occasionally get it online (refurbished) between $120 with shipping and handling and $150.. Just beware many (if not most) people advertising are selling the Ex-V7 which is very similar but had some issues with the shaking correction. But if you are willing to risk it, you can get those even cheaper, like down to $70 on ebay)

1) P2 is a very twitter like Theme for Word Press.

Word Press now supports a twitter like theme for micro blogging, very intriguing, watch the video.

http://ma.tt/2009/05/how-p2-changed-automattic/

It could be really useful in some niches and QA and the like, or internally with outsourcers to get things done.

2) Use Word Press as a Social Network

Also word press mu is a viable social network platform for word press (a brother to the word press).

http://mu.wordpress.org/ + http://buddypress.org/ ==  social network for cheap.

I wonder how this can be used for membership sites.  I realize there are a ton of forums but many of them suck.