Cool Tools video: Video blogging with Vlog It!

We took a different approach to producing this week’s Cool Tools show. Instead of shooting and editing entirely in Adobe Premiere, we only did the “b-roll” with that method and instead used the tool we were testing – Serious Magic’s Vlog It! – to record and encode the actual show. As you can see, it came out pretty well for a $50 piece of software.

We did help the quality a bit by using our Canon GL1 (connected via FireWire) as the input, rather than a typical Web cam. We also used a 500-watt tota light to help eluminate Keith a little better and make him stand out more from the somewhat busy background. A couple of notes on Vlog It! (which debuted at DEMO): We originally tried to add the b-roll as an MPEG-2 file, but we must not have had the correct codec on the production machine because it did not playback properly in the final output. We switched to a Windows Media version of the same clip and everything worked fine. Also, the FLV file that Vlog It! outputs does not contain the duration information. I believe this was a bug in earlier versions of the codec and Serious Magic is looking into it. And, the final drawback – Vlog It! only supports Windows Media, Real and Flash Video, meaning if you want create content for the iPod (or PSP), you’re out of luck. However, you could upgrade to Serious Magic’s more powerful Visual Communicator product and get the correct output for the iPod crowd.