A great online video course for $10,000?

May 22, 2007 1:31 PM

We have: 10 Hours of raw video footage (mini-DV). 1 Website. $10,000 Budget. We want: A sub-site on our website that features a video course, with room to add more courses, as well as shorter videos and podcasts in the future. We need: to know how.

Our web developers are willing to do the technical web stuff for $4000, which leaves us $6000 to edit the videos, add some sort of b-roll/graphs/whatever, do some marketing once it up, and whatever.

1. Do you have any examples of great sites that have video courses? Ideally, they are not 'fluff' subjects, and are fully-integrated designs (i.e., not just a mpg download). We would like to have the online-viewer pop up, and maybe slides/ads/sign-ups in an adjacent window. We'd love to just see a ton of sites that do something similar, but haven't had success on Google. MIT's courses were the best we found so far, but still not it exactly.

2. How do I find someone to cut up the video and add the educational charts and graphics? It's 10 hours on medical ethics (from a Jewish perspective) so the editor would need to be able to follow the material and also have a pedagogical bent, which is why I'm thinking Craigslist won't work. How much should I pay?

3. (Bonus) Do you recommend 10 1-hour courses, or do you think people would do better with more shorter clips? Each hour is somewhat self-contained, but there is a progression overall. We are a non-profit and we're looking for the most exposure/greatest viewership to launch - and we haven't settled on a format. Suggestions?

My email is in the 'file. Examples are the most important thing for us right now.Thanks muchly.

posted by prophetsearcher to computers & internet (11 comments total)

this should be on jobs.metafilter.com
posted by parmanparman at 1:40 PM on May 22, 2007

i'd respectfully disagree. i'm primarily looking for examples of great video learning sites, and secondarily looking for help on HOW to find an editor.
posted by prophetsearcher at 1:49 PM on May 22, 2007

Moodle, using google videos as the video host would be a very effective and cheap way to get this to work.
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 1:53 PM on May 22, 2007

I believe "Video editing from a Jewish perspective" is a fairly specialized field, so you may have to pay extra for that.
posted by rhizome at 2:15 PM on May 22, 2007

I like the way http://phpvideotutorials.com is setup, nice and simple. I would also make sure you keep the video to 30 minutes OR shorter, unless it is some REALLY interesting content. Good luck.
posted by dnthomps at 2:26 PM on May 22, 2007

1) I'd suggest looking at existing video training; such as lynda.com. I haven't seen online tutorials that have other interactive content (like text and still changes) in a 'large' timed interface.

2) There are a number of resources in NYC:
There's the NYC film office, the Moving Pictures Collective (http://www.movingpicturescollective.org), Soho editors (http://www.sohoeditors.com/) and quite a number of others. I might talk to what synagogues you're involved with, and see if the rabbis know someone.

The problem is that the 10 hours may (or may not) fit into your budget (based on how much cutting/flexibility etc.) you want.

Do you want 10 one hour items? Is it easy to cut? Are you going to want lots of input/changes?

3) It's an ADD world. The shorter the content the better.
posted by filmgeek at 2:31 PM on May 22, 2007

Speaking as someone who works with web video (for a PBS show that streams most of its episodes), I'm going to suggest you NOT use flash video from a Google Video/YouTube style source. The resolution will get really tiresome if you want people to sit down and watch an hour of content at a stretch. Go for windows media/qt at a decent bitrate. And cut the hours into a least quarters so people don't feel stuck.
posted by Mayor Curley at 2:41 PM on May 22, 2007

I second Lynda.com and also the idea that shorter is better.
Another reason Lynda.com works is that the videos are about learning software or various web tools while people are at their computers, actively using their computers and it's all sort of wrapped up together. Hour long videos about medical ethics may be tough to sit through at a computer, as a passive viewer.
I guess you don't want to go the DVD route? Maybe have clips online but the longer project available on a DVD? Yes, it costs to manufacture, but 10 hours of high-res video bandwith will add up quick if you get a significant web audience...
posted by chococat at 3:06 PM on May 22, 2007

If you have 10 hours of footage you will not end up with
the as the final runtime of the programs. What you will
need to do is find a freelance editor who will do this as
a package deal, others have given some suggestions. Just
to log and digitize the 10 hours of footage would cost you
a couple of thousand dollars where I work and the set up
will eat a bunch of your post budget.

Honestly I think the budget should be triple for the edit. Your best bet to cut down your costs is to do a "paper edit" watch all the footage and make a script of what you want the video be for the editor. It is very expensive to make decisions about content in an editing suite so try and make your plan as good as you can before hand. Collect all the supplementary materials that you need for the project graphics supers etc before hand.

The 10 hours of video that you do have shot may not necessarily cut together very well, depending on the quality of the camera work, audio quality will be an issue as well. One would have to look at the footage before I would commit to being able to do anything with it. Music, voice over recording and graphic design all cost someone to produce and source try and do it yourself. While it certainly would be possible for someone to do something for the amount of money that you have budgeted I don't think that the end product will end up being that great. Of course I may be wrong but adjusting your expectations down a bit from great to functional may help everyone.
posted by jade east at 3:39 PM on May 22, 2007

Seems like a monster budget for an odd project. What could possibly cost that much money?

Chances are what you need is to chuck out all the boring bits (I mean, ten hours, seriously?) on your bog-standard Mac and then just put the rest on YouTube or whatever in 5-10 minute chunks, then embed that alongside your slides on your site.

This whole thing reads like an ill-considered Rent-a-Coder project, to be honest. You could get this done for very little money.
posted by reklaw at 5:07 PM on May 22, 2007

You might want to look into Viewlets, they're pretty useful for the sort of training you're talking about
posted by jeremias at 8:07 PM on May 22, 2007