Some of the hardest hit businesses are those that rely on day to day activity to ensure survival and cafe’s are no exception. Many of Christchurch’s inner city cafe’s are doing it real tough at the moment. With no way of getting into the corden, no customers and potentially months of waiting until they can start again many employers and employees alike are feeling the pinch. 

Carl Sara of Crafted Coffee Company has come up with a great way that anyone from around the world can do a small thing to help a large amount of people. www.christchurchcafe.com is a virtual cafe, serving virtual coffee, beans and even expressio machines to those doing it tough at the moment. 

The idea is super simple, rather than buying a coffee simply buy a virtual one online. All the money goes to help those businesses and staff effected by the quake in the form of $200 a month payments. Carl assures me all the money is tightly controlled and only goes to those who need it. 

Check out this short interview with Carl about the idea. 

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I was just sitting down to start the afternoons work, editing some videos for the recent AAPO conference delegates, when, well how do you put this politely.. the most crazy, most scary event I have been through unfolded for hundreds of thousands of people living in Christchurch.

After the initial quake hit Soph and I parked the car away from the house, loaded up some essentials and packed some clothes. I am one of the really lucky ones who has family about 20 minutes drive (usually) from Christchurch in the country, unaffected by the event.

After the car was packed I made my way into town. As someone who produces video for a living this was a strange event, I knew that many of my clients would be affected but I also knew that many people all around the world would want to know what happened to the people of Christchurch during this time. I made my way into the CBD and caught up with a fellow twitterer, Simon Baker. We then traveled around town, filming, talking to people, and generally making sure that this event was captured in our own unique way.

After traveling round town I made my way back to the PGC building, the 5 story building that collapsed. I met a guy who had been pulled out of the second story, we talked for a while about his experiences and then filmed a short interview. Like me I think he wanted the story of his day captured and remembered, some of his work mates did not make it out alive.

I then made my way home and out to the farm for the night, we had not power or water at this stage, nor would we for the next 5 days.

Click here to view the embedded video.

23rd Feb 2011:

I made my way back into Christchurch as I knew there would be many people getting started on the clean up, I spend some time focusing not on the CBD but on my own little suburb. I guess I thought there was many people covering the center but there are just as many people working their guts out in the suburbs, trying to cope with what had happened and trying to move forward. I met some great people that day, ordinary kiwis who 24 hours before had done some amazing things.

Click here to view the embedded video.

24th and 25th of Feb 2011:

It was time to put down the camera for a few days, I felt that my time was far more worthwhile at this time actually helping out, so armed with a 200 liter drum and dad’s ute I set off delivering fresh West Melton drinking water to those worst affected. As many of them did not have power boiling any water they had was hard, fresh tap water from the country did not need boiling, we drink it every day out there.

It was great to again see so many normal kiwis looking out for those around them, pitching in and getting the job done. Some of the streets of Christchurch are going to need a lot of work. Parts of the city are ok, parts are bomb sites.

26th Feb 2011 +:

At the moment I am trying to get back to some sort of normal. Getting the computers, hard drives and cameras all charged up and running again, working on some videos for clients and generally trying to keep busy. I have spent a couple of days out with the amazing team from She Cafe who have been delivering free hot chocolate to the shelters and emergency workers throughout the city.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The best piece of advice I can give to anyone reading this is to please support the local Christchurch businesses. By helping them you help the employees who in turn spend the money in Christchurch. We are going to need a lot of help but by continuing to support local business it ensures the financial heart of the city beats and at a time like this it’s vitally important.

Kia Kaha Christchurch
Stay Strong

Phil Benoit - Vidhost

In the aftermath of the Boxing Day quake in Christchurch, NZ there were many additional businesses that found they had to relocate due to additional damage to their buildings. Missing Link was one of those.

Not only did they have to shift but they only had an hour to clear out the entire office and boardroom and load everything into a container.

Once the word came through about this the word was passed through social media channels like Twitter and Facebook, people turned up who had never met the Missing Link crew before! It was truly amazing.

This short video shows some of the damage, the work of those cleaning out the office and even saving some of the plant!

Enjoy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Basically Steve and Ryan at Haka Tours (www.hakatours.com) asked me to jump on a tour and film the antics. As a bit of a trial I agreed to join Verve and his tour from Kaikoura to Queenstown, filming the journey, the activities, the travel and anything else the group should get up to.

Ever since I saw the first episode of Long Way Round I have been hooked on travel doco’s, and it’s the line of camera work that has inspired me for awhile now. This opportunity was the dream job, traveling, meeting new people while all the time filming and editing the experience.

So why should companies care about this type of video production. Well it’s another string to the bow, it’s a style that shows the real experience of the trip, the real experience of the tour guide and the essence of the company, Haka Tours. Even if your a plumber, an accountant or a structural engineer think about having someone travel around with you for a day, showing your customers just what you achieve in a day and how hard you work for them, both you and they will be amazed. Combined with some interviews at the end of the day it makes a great video to highlight your company in a different light.

Day One

With a simple brief to capture the parts of the Haka Tours experience not normally seen I jumped on the intercity from Christchurch to Kaikoura, arriving just after 6. After thumbing down Murry (the haka bus), I was greeted by “watch out mate, dont step on the crays as you get on”, I knew this was going to be a very cool trip.

So first night, dinner of crays and cod on the bbq followed by cooked bananas with chocolate!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Day Two

Up early the next day to join a few of the group as they swam with the dolphins just off the Kaikoura coast. Nice weather when we arrived, not so nice once we had our gear on! Now it must be said the last time I filmed on a boat was with whale watch, it was hot inside the boat and by the end of the trip I was feeling really green, not to mention feeding the fish a few times.

This time I was hoping for calmer weather but alas it was not to be. The ride out was great, sitting outside the cabin on the back of the boat really helps, and once it was dolphin time all thoughts of feeling unwell were forgotten.

The Haka Tours group had a great swim, saw many dolphins, and even a few Orca whales just to top it all off, amazing.

After a quick trip back it was time to meet Murry and make the trip south to Christchurch, my home town. Throughout the drive many asked me about Christchurch and I replied there was not much to do there, thinking they were all after the adventure, but it must be said that traveling through your own town with people who have never been there really gives you a good appreciation for the place.

Final highlight for the day, the group performing their recently learnt haka to Haka Tours owner Ryan, tears were nearly shed!

Click here to view the embedded video.

The rest of the tour review is coming in a future post! Stay tuned

Yes they are a sitemap that goes on a website

No they are not simply an extension to a current sitemap

Yes they are added to Google Webmaster Tools

Yes they are XML format

Yes there is lot’s of information on the web about them

Yes THEY HELP DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR WEBSITE

Basically a Video Site Map is a custom file, created from a collection of meta tags based around your page and video content. Have a look at the example below direct from Google’s guide to video site maps,

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
        xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1">
   <url>
     <loc>http://www.example.com/videos/some_video_landing_page.html</loc>
     <video:video>
       <video:thumbnail_loc>http://www.example.com/thumbs/123.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>
       <video:title>Grilling steaks for summer</video:title>
       <video:description>Alkis shows you how to get perfectly done steaks every
         time</video:description>
       <video:content_loc>http://www.example.com/video123.flv</video:content_loc>
       <video:player_loc allow_embed="yes" autoplay="ap=1">

http://www.example.com/videoplayer.swf?video=123</video:player_loc>

       <video:duration>600</video:duration>
       <video:expiration_date>2009-11-05T19:20:30+08:00</video:expiration_date>
       <video:rating>4.2</video:rating>
       <video:view_count>12345</video:view_count>
       <video:publication_date>2007-11-05T19:20:30+08:00</video:publication_date>
       <video:tag>steak</video:tag>
       <video:tag>meat</video:tag>
       <video:tag>summer</video:tag>
       <video:category>Grilling</video:category>
       <video:family_friendly>yes</video:family_friendly>
       <video:restriction relationship="allow">IE GB US CA</video:restriction>
       <video:gallery_loc title="Cooking Videos">http://cooking.example.com</video:gallery_loc>
       <video:price currency="EUR">1.99</video:price>
       <video:requires_subscription>yes</video:requires_subscription>
       <video:uploader info="http://www.example.com/users/grillymcgrillerson">GrillyMcGrillerson
         </video:uploader>
    </video:video>
</url>
</urlset>

Have a look through the tags above and you will soon see there is a lot you can add to a video site map. Remember you are creating one of these entries for each and every video you add to your site. Now you might not want to do this for every video and you might not want to include all the information listed above, here are the key things you MUST include,

Taken from the Google guide to video sitemaps

<loc>
The tag specifies the landing page (aka play page, referrer page) for the video. When a user clicks on a video result on a search results page, they will be sent to this landing page. Must be a unique URL.

<video:video> Required

<video:thumbnail_loc>
A URL pointing to the URL for the video thumbnail image file. We can accept most image sizes/types but recommend your thumbs are at least 160×120 pixels in .jpg, .png, or. gif formats.

<video:title>
The title of the video. Limited to 100 characters.

<video:description>
The description of the video. Descriptions longer than 2048 characters will be truncated.

At least one of <video:player_loc> or <video:content_loc> is required.

<video:player_loc>
The URL should point to a .mpg, .mpeg, .mp4, .m4v, .mov, .wmv, .asf, .avi, .ra, .ram, .rm, .flv, or other video file format, and can be omitted if <video:player_loc> is specified. However, because Google needs to be able to check that the Flash object is actually a player for video (as opposed to some other use of Flash, e.g. games and animations), it’s helpful to provide both.

<video:player_loc> A URL pointing to a Flash player for a specific video. In general, this is the information in the src element of an <embed> tag and should not be the same as the content of the <loc> tag. ​Since each video is uniquely identified by its content URL (the location of the actual video file) or, if a content URL is not present, a player URL (a URL pointing to a player for the video), you must include either the <video:player_loc> or <video:content_loc> tags. If these tags are omitted and we can’t find this information, we’ll be unable to index your video.

Examples:

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?swf=http%3A//s.ytimg.com/yt/swf/cps-vfl87635.swf&video_id=v65Ud3VqChY

Dailymotion: http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x1o2g

So why use a video sitemap?

As I mentioned at the start the video site map has the ability to drive traffic directly to your website. If you look at one of the first tags in examples above, <loc>, this tag allows viewers to land directly on YOUR site when they see the content in the search engine results. This is what you want, you want people coming to your site to view your content, even if it’s a YouTube video embedded on the page you still want people to video that content on your site rather than on a youtube page. When they are on your website you have a much better opportunity to engage them in your product or service and then get them take some form of action, action that you want.

Creating video site maps can take some time but for those out there running wordpress, drupal etc there are plugins appearing by some talented folks making this process very, very simple. But even with this addition to googles site maps architecture and the ability for them to drive traffic to your site directly I am still amazed at the number of website development companies I talk to that know nothing about video site maps or that they even exist.

Here at Vidhost 2011 is the year of education, I plan on posting content of information from different sources to help educate the online community about online video and how powerful it can be. If you would like some advice on a topic or have a specific question then simple email me at phil at vidhost dot co dot nz.

Anyways while I was there I got talking to a PhD student from Melbourne. She got talking about an iPhone app she was using to gather data about diabetics throughout Australia and I started to pay attention. Anyways somewhere in the conversation we got talking about her expertise and how she really wanted to up-skill all the PT’s from NZ and Aussie about the effects and considerations when coaching a diabetic client.

We got talking about how she was currently speaking at seminars, which she was enjoying and about how she really did for the love of it and the satisfaction knowing she was helping people all over the country become fitter and healthier through her advice. So I asked her about making money and how she hoped to turn her PhD into some financial benefit for the rest of her life. She didn’t really have an answer. It was again, all about the love. But the love does not pay the bills.

I fully understand that money is not the only reason to do a job or start a business, I know this from this company, founded because I wanted to create and capture events, people and memories on film. But at some point there needs to be a profit, a payback for all the hard work, something to pay the bills.

We finally discovered that she could in fact film each of her lectures, package these up into 15 minute online video’s, charge a small fee and get her ideas out to every single PT in Australia, NZ and the world without leaving her research base in Melbourne. It’s called online video products.

It’s a simple solution and in todays marketplace with the web, online video, simple payment processes almost anyone with a good idea or a knowledge of a subject can produce a product that will help them earn some additional revenue from sharing their knowledge with the world.

It’s an area of online video that I am exploring more and more with my clients and also an area I feel will only continue to grow over time.

If you have any questions about online video products or how you can get started don’t hesitate to drop me an email to phil at vidhost dot co dot nz.

Basically the story starts a few months ago. The amazing Kaila Colbin and equally amazing Jess Hill had submitted and been approved to host a TEDx event in Christchurch, it had been one of Kaila’s dreams for a while. Everyone was really ecstatic for them in the office and so was I, then Kaila asked if I was interested in supporting the event by organising the video production side of the event. “Sure, why not.”

Now you must realise that Kaila is not one to things by half’s and I knew that the video side of the event needed to by world class to match the quality of  the unknown speakers who would end up taking the stage. What we ended up putting on both during and after TEDxChCh was something I am immensely proud of. It taught me a lot about pushing yourself to deliver a perfect event and that at the end of the day you mean nothing. And by meaning nothing, it’s all about the speakers, their message and their ability to change the way we think.

The aim from my perspective was to put on a top class show for anyone in the world to watch in the comfort of their own home or office. Allowing viewers to connect with amazing speakers at they talk about their lives, passions, creations and loss and to make the person watching feel like they were in the room.

By all accounts we pulled it off.

Now onto the technical stuff some TEDx sponsors and video pros alike might like to know about. What did we actually use and how did it all come together.

First off I knew I wanted to have at least three cameras in the room. This was mainly for the final edit as TEDx rules state that the live recording is not to be used for the final uploaded YouTube videos, these have to be reedited to ensure quality of final product. So three cameras, we ended up with a fourth at the front of the room reflecting the audience during the event.

After live streaming a weekly show from NZ for about 4 -5 months know I know that the connection to the US, where most of the streaming servers are (and the ones we would be using), can be a bit “iffy”. While most offer a nice web interface for camera switching etc we just dont have the bandwidth and the lag is to great to fully trust the service. We needed to send the streaming server one video feed, a vision mixer was in order. Through my business partner at Event Production we had the use of a 8 camera vision mixer. If you are running a TEDx event I strongly suggest you do all your camera switching before sending any feed to the servers.

So 4 cameras plugged into the vision mixer, output via firewire into a laptop.

Although some vision mixers allow a direct stream to the internet we had some things we also wanted to try during the day. So into a Mac Book Pro laptop running Wirecast webcasting software. This was the best decision we made on the day, making the rest of the process so easy. I can not thank the team at Telestream enough for their great product. Ok so firewire into Wirecast where we had preset each of the presenters introductions and the fillers for each 30 minute break. Jess also came to me about 2 weeks before the event with “it would be really cool to have a live twitter stream running on the video stream while we are at break”, sure no problem, have you seen it done before? “No”. Using Wirecast’s desktop presenter utility we ran a second screen from the Mac Book Pro and displayed a live twitter wall of TEDxChCh event based tweets.

The tweet wall was something special in itself. Darko and the team at walloftweets.net created a custom branded website that we could use to display relevant tweets to all. They also offer an option for in conference video screens. Not only was the tweet wall well received but the entire application was built on one day, using all our own graphics. Be sure to check out the walloftweets.net crew if you ever need anything like this.

Back to the setup, 4 cameras into vision mixer, live camera switching, output into laptop via firewire, into Wirecast with the wall of tweets coming in as a second video feed. Wirecast allowed us to simply click and transition from cameras to intro slide, back to presenter and then in the breaks feed in the tweets. I had someone helping me run the laptop side of things who only learnt about the software 30 minutes before we started, I gave him a quick rundown, gave some guidance as the event ran and at the end he felt like he didn’t do anything. Now thats the kind of software I like.

Ok so from the laptop we transmitted out via a 700kbps upload internet connection, the fastest we could get in our location, out to the livestream servers in the US. For TEDx events Livestream.com provide a fully featured version of their platform for use during the event, run from the domain livestream.com/tedx . We plugged the details of the account into wirecast and we the show started to clicked broadcast and everything just worked.

My two camera operators had headsets on and throughout the show got directions on the type of shot I wanted and thats how we ran the show. Two follow cameras, two stationary cameras, 2 guys in the back running the live stream. Too easy.

So what would I change. I don’t think I would change anything about the live stream setup we had. I might add another camera, a more dramatic close up shot, if I have the resources. I would also look to load the presenters slides into the wirecast system before the event and cross between them. This time we just used a wide shot from the back of the room, it worked well but it could have been better with full resolution sides. I must note that the wide shot did give context to the slide, the speaker and the audience which might have got lost if it had been a straight slide.

The other thing I would change is the lighting. We did not get a good chance to review this before the event due to scheduling of other events but I felt it was a little dark where the speakers were. I think the key here is separation between the speaker and the projector screen / back wall. If you watch the videos you will see some of the presenters are less than a meter from the projector screen making it hard to light strongly without impacting the projector. I am sure there are some lighting gurus out there who know the answer, please leave a comment so we can all learn.

I had the most amazing time working with the TEDxChCh team putting this event on and will be back next year with some improvements! If anyone has any questions or comments about the event, if you watched the livestream or the YouTube vids then please leave a comment below, I would love to hear from you.

And if you are running your own event in the future and have any other questions about setup, running and post event editing of the talks then I am more than happy to help out.

A special thanks to my camera operators Glen and Jared and my assistants Jonathan and Soph for all their hard work. Thanks to Hadlee for the vision mixer and his input and finally a huge thanks to Kaila and Jess for the opportunity to be part of this great event.

In the mean time here are the full videos for your viewing pleasure.

If your into the outdoors then make sure you attend the 2011 Recreations Expo, for all the details check out http://www.recreationexpo.co.nz/.