Monday, March 3, 2008

Audio & Video: Video

I enjoy these video websites, some of the videos are well done or just fortuitous depending on the circumstances. Some of them are terribly amateur, the Home Movies of years gone by are just the same home movies of today's technology.
I did a rather broad category search of a popular tourist destination. Yellowstone. Should be lots of videos of Old Faithful. Youtube, of course, seemed to have hundreds and one I chose was very slow loading and lots of people in the foreground, heads moving and hair blowing. Bliptv had fewer choices, but I found a very good video there, and the artist had just used the natural sounds as recorded rather than dubbing in some music (which by the comments on Youtube, is popular but I prefer natural). Metacafe--I looked at the "#1 weekly top earner" but the title link did not go to that one. I did my subject search again and looked at one that had earned $800, and it is very funny of a bear coming up to the car to check them out and tries to eat the mirror. That is what I mean by a "fortuitous" moment. Whoever was holding the camera did a better job than most, and I am glad they are now paying for their vacation with this video. Viddler had many fewer choices in my search, and youaretv had zero hits. Revver I nearly gave up on, as it was very slow to load the website, but the videos then ran smoothly. Ads kept popping up and I hated it. ScienceHack had possibilities, but the offerings so far are somewhat limited.
I enjoy these sites. I actually have a couple very faves that I know are on Youtube, Kosovo--now that Kosovo is independent we emailed it to some friends, and dancing treadmills. Watching them brightens my day, and I know I will return to Youtube and Metacafe just for fun.
Definitely libraries could build a collection of informative videos and offer our account to the public. I personally would not want to search here if I wanted to paint window trim, but maybe if it were already collected as "the very best" free video.

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