“We rate ability in men by what they finish, not by what they attempt.”
There is an utterly fundamental, yet oft-overlooked step along the course of every project: completion. Correct, it is paramount that one sees through one’s work until the very end of finalization for it to be considered “done”. You think we jest, but too often we allow our minds to forget such salient principles and our precious works remain “in progress” till their memories decay from all recollection.
Please don’t let this happen to your MindBite masterpieces. The world aches for the knowledge you intend to bestow upon it with your lesson. But no one benefits from a work left dormant in the ether of a hard drive.
It’s very simple to prepare your lesson for the Internet where millions, nay billions, of individuals await in angst for exactly what you intend to provide. And to help the process along, the MindBites team has compiled the following information to further aid in the final steps.
The Internet may theoretically be infinite in size, but the MindBites servers are far from such. Consequently, we have sadly been forced to implement a size restriction of 100MB for all lessons. What this means to you is your lesson must fall within a particular time range as more lesson means more media, which in turn means larger file sizes.
We generally stress that lessons end near the 10-minute mark, not only for size purposes but also because viewers can only digest so much instruction in a given time. We feel this is a good rule of thumb for all potential instructors to adhere to, but if your lesson exceeds the proper range by a few minutes, don’t stress too much. A little extra never hurt anybody.
This is where compression technique becomes permanent and where many falter due to lack of understanding. All you need to know is that the video media you edited came into your computer at a particular quality, size, and resolution. These attributes, in their current form, are too large to upload to the Internet so we must change them.
Fortunately, some savvy programmers long ago developed several algorithmic-based computations that allow for media to be compressed in size with minimal loss in quality. Oh, there is definitely a noticeable difference, so don’t be shocked when your pristine lesson is but a shade of its former self. But at least, with these compression settings, the viewer will be able to watch the video without having to scrutinize every frame to distinguish between your talking head and an over-sized cantaloupe.
There are many different settings one may try out to obtain the video quality most satisfying to you, but it’s important to remember that MindBites accepts only iPod compatible formats, meaning that if it can play on your iPod it can play in our viewer. There are several reasons for this, the principal one being that iPod formats are low in size, high in quality. And if you stick to the 10-minute MindBite rule, you’ll have no issue in keeping the lesson below 100 MB.
So, while individual settings may vary, there are only two formats you need to be concerned with:
Now, we know those monikers mean little to you, as they mean very little to us as well, but just understand that these are two different types of codecs, or compression formulas, that, when applied to your video, will shrink it in size and resolution.
There are many programs out there that will apply these codecs to your video, a simple search on Google will more than likely produce adequate results. Many editing programs (Final Cut, Avid, iMovie, Premiere) will actually take care of this for you, so you may wish to do some info. gathering on your particular editing platform to see if such conversion is possible or if a third party program is needed.
When compressing your video, keep the following figures in mind (they may mean nothing to you now, but some compression programs allow for advanced attribute configuration and if you choose to play around with the numbers, the following should be used as guidelines):
Again, most of this information is excess which you will never use or have to think about. In fact, many compression programs have a wonderfully elementary button that expresses simply “Export for iPod”. So, if your program has this function, by all means use it. This will be the best choice 95% of the time.
It will take a good amount of time for your program to compress the video, the exact amount of which varies greatly depending on your computer, software, and the length of your lesson. So set it to work, and then head off for a peaceful stroll in the meadow.
Upon your return, make sure you watch the newly compressed lesson from start to finish. Countless are the times in which we have assumed a video completed only to find out too late that the compressor decided to get all funky halfway through. When dealing with technology, anomalies happen regularly (as counterintuitive as that may seem). So always check your work.
Also, make absolutely sure that the whole lesson is less than 100 MB. The MindBites site should inform you before you upload whether the attributes of your video meet our specifications, but in case of complications, you don’t want to waste precious time re-uploading a video that could have easily been checked for compatibility.
So, after you check and re-check your lesson, you are ready for the delightful uploading procedure, made ever-so simple by the hardworking IT department at MindBites. Simply log on to the website, click on the TEACH button and follow the instructions from there.
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