The Vlog Experience Continues

I finally got down to making a video reading, one of the original ideas I'd had as to why I might want to vlog.

Below is the finished product - a reading of the first chapter of the YA Fantasy novel Willing Sacrifice.

As you'll note, I tried to add some extra bling to the reading. Editing the thing caused me all sorts of issues. Mostly during the conversion phase. But perseverance has its rewards. :P And I was finally able to find some advice on how to help with all the extra noise I kept picking up during previous recordings. (Having vents and air-conditioning going is not conducive to good sound recording, but in Texas there's little choice. Doh!)

However, this did not mean some unwanted sounds didn't make it through. Listen carefully for our dog - she's chewing on something somewhere. You might even catch a glimpse of Serenity flashing past in the background. Might see one of the cats, too! (Yeah, they weren't helping.)

Again I must ask myself if I'm insane. Having done just audio recordings before, I'm not sure why I thought this would be easier. Oi! But I am a sucker for playing with software, tech toys, and trying out new things. Heh heh.

Oh and if you want to read along and see how badly I butchered this, here's a link for Chapter 1.

Enjoy!

New Experience - Vlogging!

As authors, it's part of our job to keep up with the latest and greatest new ways to do promotion and connect with readers. The time of the publishers doing that for us is long gone. But that's okay. I may not be the biggest extrovert out there, but I do love to play with gadgets and software.

The latest trend I've decided to dip my toes into is video blogs or vlogs for short.

I've owned a webcam for a while and it was just sitting there collecting dust, so I decided it was time to use it! Version 1 was done with the webcam and Microsoft's Movie Maker. It's pretty laughable, but I was experimenting. Realized after the fact that Movie Maker can't handle editing video, so that was a major fail. But what little I could do yielded the following:

As you can see, focusing your attention on the webcam and talking to the audience and putting stuff up takes a lot of coordination! Something I am sorely lacking in. lol.

So, dissatisfied with my first run, I went out in search of better editing software and ran across TrakAx. (This software is especially good for music peeps! And it was cheap!) Hours of tutorials later and I mutated my original offering.

I did run into trouble as one of my two original webcam files was messed up, so I ended up having to use vlog 1 instead and I mutated it. Biggest hassle was getting the final cover and final piece of the video to play nice. Had to use a slow fade to make them behave, but it wasn't as good as if they'd done it! Bad, bad segment - for shame. You'll note the issue at the end. Never did figure out why it was mean to me. But improvement is improvement. So here's version 1.1.

I even now have an idea for vlog #2. I've also chosen the novel I'll try to do short segments with. It also occurred to me that my camera and my phone will both do video. Think of the possibilities! No one will be safe!

Now I truly need a clone. :P