First two months of ScobleShow

Robert, if you want some audio processing or editing advice, I'd be happy to help out. I have a bit of background.

I "hate" the fact I can't hear you properly if you have two guests.
I would love mp3 feeds..
I love the photowalking.


Otherwise keep up the GREAT work.

Ray: yeah, getting more microphones is gonna be tough. I can handle two, but barely. At some point I'm going to need an audio guy to come along and focus on just that. Thanks!

Derek: let me spend another month on this with Chris Coulter. He's been a huge help.

Wow.

It's amazing how some memes just sneak by. I didn't even know you had a show yet at PodTech.

Weirdly enough, I have never met you nor Chris Pirillo and I know you are "friends forever".

Reminiscent of corporate "buzzwords" that come and go and create club-like executive cliques, I think there are now "buzzmemes" of the blogosphere, that all readers of a certain realm of blogs are expected to know.

I think my attention-filter must be off-track. ; )

Robert, don't be so hard on yourself! You've effectively become a startup, albeit within a semi-established young company in a new media niche. I need to watch some more videos before I can earn the right to provide any constructive criticism on the specifics. I can offer the following thoughts: yes, the more formats you can offer your content through, the better. We all (myself included) have to be platform and player agnostic. As far as who to interview: I'd line up Jason Calacanis right now and I'll add the following to your Wiki: the product manager for Tablet / Mobile PCs at Microsoft, someone at HTC, Ed Colligan at Palm, somebody at Skype and a product manager / designer over at Dell. Sorry for the mobile tech bias, but that's my schtick, you know! FWIW: you're headed in the right direction, so keep on going!

My buddy Julio suggests that you need to improve the compression. 100mb files are too large he says.

he's got video production background skills

Check his blog out at juliogarcia.org

Jeremiah: your buddy Julio has never done 45 minute videos, has he? Does he have examples that he's done so we can take a look? I'm always looking for ways to compress video better. Stage6/Divx.com is the best quality I've seen, but it needs a player.
But, we're working on that. The way YouTube got its compression down is to make the quality crappier. Even then, the file size for huge videos is huge.
We're going to turn on a Flash-based system soon which will be a lot nicer to play.

im curious as to how much traffic / how many viewers you have :) would you ever post those stats? :)

oh, and chapters would be nice to. if you're going to do more editing, make it so that we can chose witch chapter/part of the video we want to watch (i believe this is available in quicktime already).

Jonas: I don't have good stats yet. Will try to get them. The Zune video had 19,000 completed downloads in the first three days, though (and is now pretty high in Google and continues to get good traffic). I think that's the high water mark.

Hey Robert,
I smiled when I saw this post as I was about to email you about your performance after watching the tour of Google Kirkland video you just posted. I've followed you for over a year and viewed many of your videos ( both before and after PodTech ). I've been a fan of yours and have introduced your work to others. But my feedback is not about formats or editing. It's about quality. I think you're missing a big opportunity. You could be the James Lipton of the technology sector. Some of your videos are almost unwatchable for me at this point. I say that because I see the potential and it never comes to fruition. My 2 cents ..work out the audio/video issues..then take your time, prepare some key questions and then...have a conversation.

Continue your passion.
I for one believe in you.

Maybe you shouldn't publish in either QT or Windows Media if you are aiming for wider machine coverage.

YouTube and Google seem to do ok with Flash video -- since virtually every internet capable machine runs Flash it seems a good choice.

Greg: thanks. I'm definitely going to slow down. Doing more than one a day is just sheer lunacy.

Brian: we're definitely going with Flash, but we still need the others. Flash doesn't do it all. It doesn't play on iPod, for instance, and if you want the best quality you can't go with Flash.

Greg: I'd like to know more about what you think is missing.

To get to the Lipton level I have to have a camera crew and not worry about doing audio or video or carrying the camera or any of that. He also has at least three cameras. It's subtle, but as a viewer that makes a video conversation work a lot better.

Get MSFT to sponsor your videos on the XBOX - put them up on Live where I can just get them and watch them where the Internet Gods intended me to watch them - on my big screen, in my recliner. Hell, let them take care of the file conversion and everything - they have interns, right?

Keep hacking Robert - you're getting there!

Rob

My Podcasts play on the iPod, but for this, I need to format them in 320 pixels :( Even tough the very last iPods supports 640, iMovie, for ex., won't export "for iPod" as 640 - And I've tried to put 640 h264 on an iPod, doesn't work... + the biggest problem of the iPod right now, for you and me, is we film in 16/9, so this means black on top and bottom on the iPod :( You talk about December, but let's hope we have a widescreen iPod on January 9th :) Will you be at MacWorld ? I'll be there (first time in Cali !) - would love to meet you...

I made the mistake of subscribing to your show in iTunes, and suddenly my download quota is being used much faster than I anticipated ;)

I think slowing your release cycle as you mentioned above would help me more than anything else though, I don't know that the demonstration videos would be much use on an iPod screen due to the small resolution (particularly for widescreen content).

The size of the files isn't really a problem, as far as video podcasts go.

Oh, Robert - I almost forgot - you want to compress video faster, at even better quality? Look at http://kulabyte.com - I visited them a few weeks ago and what they are doing is pretty darned cool. Takes some hardware, but the results are impressive.

Rob

I've watched many of your interviews and did not notice any particular problem about audio. Instead, because of many videos are quite long, it would be very usefull if you tag the them (as Kawasaky does)...
Nicola

Please interview Donald Knuth.

Leo Laporte should give a workshop on how to do a podcasting empire.

You and Ben together just give me a very good present for Thanksgiving. I rather see your scoble wiki up than getting a Turkey for this Thanksgiving.

I probably will not have a very nice Thanksgiving because I have to work through the entire Thanksgiving. And I am so stress out that part of my design has been explosed to TV news and they are going to sing along for the entire holiday.

When I am down, I will think about this little gift from you and Ben. It will light me up a little bit.

god damn, I make one comment about getting frustrated about downloading the SOASTA video due to file size and now I'm an expert. Now even you won't be able to get me into PodTech, Jeremiah ;)

We(my manager and I) used to do 5-60 minutes video for web viewing at Bay/Nortel Networks back in 98, but we used... ahem, Real Networks stuff with various compression codecs/techniques. But, whatever, I'm sure the PodTech flash player will be fine for those of us on slow connections.

Julio: heheh. Don't worry about it. The downloads are too big. It's just that Flash hides the size by doing a streaming download better than Quicktime often does, but that's cause most people who put up Flash content compress it all to hell which makes it look crappy. Also, most Flash videos aren't wide screen, so those are automatically 30% smaller in size.

Bess: I'll be thinking of you. I gotta work too, I have 980 unanswered emails. Sigh.

Justin: did Leo do 74 videos in two months without having a professional video crew along for the ride? I didn't realize he did that. But, one thing to keep in mind is that Leo's been doing radio for more than 20 years, if I remember right. You won't learn to be as good as him in a one-day workshop.

Your show is okay. I love the interviews. I only hate it when I can't hear you or the other guy speaking. It'd be great if you can put captions if there's a sound problem.

Robert...don't do Quicktime OR WMV. Do straight MPEG-4. Plays on everything. Why do two codecs when one is all you need.

John: actually we're converting everything to MPEG4 first, then to other formats as needed.

Edit, edit edit, you can get to the meat and still keep the flavor while chopping 15 minutes off a 45 min cast.

Fishmeal: we've been getting better at editing. The Google one had 15 minutes chopped off of it.

Robert, I absolutely love your interviews. It's all about the content.

In a perfect world, I would like to see you wear a Mic too. On a couple of your most recent interviews I had a hard time hearing you.

Mike

Mike: yeah, in most of the ones that'll come out from now on I'll be wearing a microphone unless I'm filming two people. Then life gets rough.

Can PodTech please label advertisements as such? "ADVERT:" would be nice in the title.

Raj: you mean the Seagate video? Good point.

Regarding advertising: anything marked with the "corporate" tag comes from someone who is paying PodTech. I will get that tag applied to the Seagate video too.

To Scoble Family:
Happy Thanksgiving! May your Scobleshow.wetpaint.com wiki will kill some of the annoying incoming emails so you can spend more time with your family.

Robert, your X'mas Gift:
If you tape a short video on yourself about your profile, I am willing to edit the video for you as a gift. Then you can use the video as part of your bio on wikipeida. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Scoble. I can post it on "Back To The Future" bio section. Although this will upset many past and future speakers on the unfair treatment, I can proudly say I am your blog fan. Who can give me smiles among my hectic work schedule?

I will use royalty-free music or even compose music myself so that you can distribute the video without any legal liability. Including royalty-free images or my own artwork.

Ben, your X'mas gift: I gave you a pink ribbon back in Oct. I'll give you more pink ideas to make your wiki more "sexy". It would be "hotter" than those Victoria Secret "pink" panties. Think Pink!

Robert,

Film it based on a story board. One idea came from my shower time is a dramatic entrance. Like James Bond movie, you walk out from the side and suddenly turn to the front with your camera or mic. I drop the famous eye shutter with red dye overlaying the video.

Now you are granted by The Queen as Agent "009", previously work for Channel 9. Then you tell your story.

Yeah I am waiting to see the new Bond.

Getting it to work on ipods would be a big, big improvement

Pity ime not in CA

I did a comunity coledge course to expand on the MM side of my webdevopment skills

Robert,

what I hate most about the ScobleShow is how much it is dominating Sobleizer. This isn't the blog any more that I loved

I watch a lot of your episodes, and I second the audio problems but you'll get that right eventually.

If people look at you while answering a question you're breaking out of your reporter-box. Once you're not in the scene and directing the camera you ARE the camera and we see the scene through your eyes. If people then speak to you, they could also be speaking with a wall, because we don't see who they're talking to. On Nine you always had a cameraman and an interviewer. That seemed much more natural than your interviews from behind the camera. I like the Google Reader interview!

On the other side it seems very natural to just follow your camera while you're walking around (e.g. Google Kirkland). It's like the viewer was actually in the room.

Steadycam would be awesome, too (but picture quality rocks anyway)!

Keep on the good work... I love the concept!

Robert

I think the photowalks are great, and I think overall you are doing a sterling job. The annoyances I have:

1) Editing - there is too much stuff - you need to trim down
2) Related to the point above, digestibility. I want bite-size chunks of 10-20 mins max. I can't devote 45mins to an hour watching a video. So either break it up into smaller pieces, or add chapters so I can skip to the relevant parts. My option is for the smaller pieces. That's why Ze does so well - short, sweet and to the point.
3) File size. Related to both points above. Too much content means too big a file for downloading. Not all of us have the blazing bandwidth you guys in the US enjoy.

tq

Robert...
... you're doing just fine, its easy to knock stuff down (ref vallywag vs techcrunch), for two months you've proved what your interviews, demo's and strolls can achieve. Most importantly you've opened up the nano world of US tech and start-ups to the world, for those of us working in humanitarian and development in typically third world countries, this gives unique view on new ideas in tech.
. focus on quality and value add.
. the demo's are great.
. keep 'em short and sweet
. how about HD, Desk top and I-pod qualities?
. above all... keep it true, sometimes ask awkward questions
oh... and how about more on their business models?

great vids.. keep em coming

Robert,
As a non-insider watching from afar, I love the insight your show brings. Thank you for all of your effort. Maybe a smaller, lighter camera would make life easier for you. Often the moments of bumping into a door or having to pause to set that heavy camera down could be prevented by lighter, more compact equipment with minimal loss in quality. Otherwise keep up the good work.

Mika: I did all my own camera work on Channel 9 too. And the technique I used was exactly the same as I'm using here, except here I have a bigger camera and don't swing it around so much.

Texas: nah, I bumped into walls with smaller equipment too. I love this bigger camera. Much better image quality and I can control everything which makes it much easier to get usable video. Oh, and it lets me mix two microphones too.

Julio: Waaah? You don't' know everything in the whole world?

Robert,
it's interestting that everything you hate, and almost all of the comments, relate to technical matters. The CONTENT is the most important thing, and the reason i don't watch many of your episodes any more is that the content is getting stale. You seem to be reporting on variations of the same theme; i.e the newest, latest, greatest, coolest thing, which we don't hear of again in a couple of months.

My feeling - you need to look for content that is relevant to the real world now, and is likely to remain relevant.
Andrew

Andrew: you saying a tour of Google isn't relevant? Oh, it's just the hottest company in the world.

Maybe you'd rather watch Photowalking. We teach you all sorts of stuff that'll help you make better photos.

Or, if you hate Google, maybe you should check out the interviews with Microsoft that I did. Stale? Name another place you get to see inside Microsoft Research.

And why don't you use your real name and show us how it's done? Ahh, anonymous critics. Probably just someone I pissed off in a previous life.

Hi Robert,

that is my real name and you have my real email address. You haven't pissed me off before. I'm not someone who blogs or interviews. I'm not particuarly interested in photography, video recording, editing, sound recording, or anything like that.

What I'm interested in is technology that's of use either directly commercially, or in helping me develop solutions for commercial situations - for corporates or government agencies. There is lots of useful technology out there that is of interest to me and is relevant in that context.

Yes, you've covered that sort of thing in the past. My criticism is that you aren't hitting my interest points so much recently, and it's because you're targetting, let's call it "alpha-stage" technology. We were forced to take notice of Microsoft, because it's Microsoft. I don't see Google much in the commercial world. I work in Java, web services, AJAX, billing systems, CRM, Accounts Payable, supply chain, logistics, testing tools, profit-and-loss, databases, app servers, BPEL, EAI, BI. That's what is interesting to me.

Robert, why ask for feedback if you aren't interested in it? You asked four questions. I provided you with my thoughts for your consideration - because you asked. I took 10 minutes to think about it - because you asked.

You don't have to agree; you don't have to do anything different, and I may well be the only one who thinks the way I do. But I do think you need to consider that you have a wide audience, and I guess if you ask for feedback, then you can't expect universal and unswerving acclamation for everything you do.

Don't listen to the critics - do what you think is right.

Best regards,
Andrew Harvey (not a pseudonym)

I'm liking the tech videos, getting a look inside the Google offices was interesting.

I'd like to see more sit down and have a chat interviews though as I find people talk more and open up a bit more when they are sitting down and comfortable.

I like the fact that some of the videos are long and in depth but I would like an option of an edited down version too - a 'best bits' would be good. For subscribers it might be good to have a feed of best bits so they don't use up all their bandwidth downloading everything.

Keep up the good work.

One tip if it doesnt apply already, get a mac.

Ideally, it would be nice to have a short summary video like movie trailer (30, or 15 or 10 sec) to introduce a longer video like 60 min video. Someone can decide in 30 sec or less to see if they want to spend more time to download or watch the entire video.

Or have a video script outline what the long video is about. Bullet points.

Product demos, long interviews, tutorials, tours are all good. There are many other tech areas are not being covered yet like database (SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle), enterprise application (CRM, ERP), BI, AI, IA, UI, Language (.Net, PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python), API, Web Services, SEO, SEM, latest research from MIT, Stanford, UCB etc.

Andrew: you might have missed my videos on SAP and Salesforce.com and SOASTA, they are in the sphere you're interested in. This was much more helpful criticism than your first post. Thanks!

forchilli: I have a MacPro and am getting a 17-inch MacBookPro too, but I also love my Tablet PC and I have a new Voodoo PC that AMD is loaning me and I have a Sony Vaio that Intel is loaning me. Both awesome machines.

Bess, I'm thinking of doing that.

Oh, regarding other areas to shoot, that's what I love about this job. Infinite things to get around to see.

Believe it or not tonight I am building the site that serve videos. I test both .wma and .mov and find browser issues especially serving .mov. After searching the best video format, .flv is the winner. Flash video has over 96% market share with almost no browser issues. http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/flashpro/vi...

You can convert .mov to .flv via http://www.zamzar.com/

I check out your scobleshow.wetpaint.com wiki. It is even better than your http://www.scobleshow.com because I can see the entire video list including comments. You should link your wiki to the side bar of your site and blog.

I can unlink the video and audio from my video. And export the audio into wav. I can easily convert wav into mp3. This is a very simple process. Every video I edited I can produce mp3 for audio podcasting.

Actually I like it the way it is. Apparently not every topic covered is of interest for me but many are.

Using just the cam and eventually without tripod (as e.g. for some screencast like episodes) is also ok for me and I got a little inspired by this and do it aswell on my http://comlounge.tv video blog. Instead of setting up everything in some corner and doing interviews it adds a little dynamic and if you are in a big room (like at a sprint) with some people if adds to the interactivity of it. It's sorta more vloggy like and for me it does not need to look that 100% perfect anyway.

Of course sound is always a challenge. And getting good sound is a bit expensive (e.g. for a wireless mic which is of very good use for talks at conferences as room sound is not that great). But then again if you give your interview partner a mic it means that other people cannot really jump into the conversation (see my point above).

As for the mp3 and ipod stuff I have the same problem. Producing an mp3 from a video is quite trivial though with a unix one-liner but then again it would be nice if the mp3 would have at least a little introduction of what we will see now. So it would be better to produce a slightly different version here (or maybe add this audio to the video aswell).

And I actually have ipod-Videos in there most of the time (although I don't know if they are actually plaing on an ipod as I don't own a video ipod) but there is no feed for them yet. This also means that I have to work a bit on the software side so that all this is more or less produced automatically.

So problems sound familiar ;-)

As for the show itself, keep doing it, it's great! :-)

Bess: Yes, flv is nice but not that many devices play it unfortunately. The key right now is probably just to provide many different media types.

Proper video editing is *very* time-consuming and at its best a highly-specialised skill. But it wouldn't take much effort to chop out a five-minute chunk -- the "best bit" of each video -- and post it as a Scoble Interview Hotspot.

Also, what about getting an Edirol R-09 or similar*, recording interviews in MP3 and posting those separately, alongside the videos?

* I've not tried one: it's on my shortlist ;-)

Hi Robert
The Scoble Show is fine...it is now a library of raw interviews, and interesting in what it is. To do an edited show is a different task, and one that may not be what you are about...which is giving us the raw experience of being there.

You should be able to export to mp3s from your final cut...or in the very least take your quicktime files and export as MP3s from quicktime. Hey, I bet a bunch of people at podtech know how.

I find that for every hour of shooting you should count on at least three hours of editing...or more.

Video tagging the pieces with a timecode reference point should be interesting...isn't there a group that does that? Where is my techcrunch archive now.

Great to see you Robert...going Hollywood but not too much.

I wish your site was stickier.... try putting target="_blank" in your link code. Like this.....

the ScobleShow wiki that I just started over on WetPaint.
A few things I hate about my own work so far:

Sorry, that doesn't work weird.......

Hey Robert-

Why not get some interns? Put up ads at some of the local universities in their film department - see if you can find students who are willing to volunteer their time and expertise. It's basically documentary filmmaking. The worst that could happen is you've got an intern operating "B" camera who thinks they're making a music video. But chances are you'll find a budding documentary filmmaker who's really passionate about the art. (I'm a former grad-school film student)

The growing pains of podcasters/bloggers transitioning to video are something we've seen for a long time now - I don't see any reason why you can't raise the bar!

It's hard for any one person to do it alone...

Just mention Victoria's Secret in your blog and things just happen around the same time. Victoria's Secret just advertises their fashion show in full page on all the popular entertainment magazines this week.

Guess what they say - SEXIEST SHOW!
Guess what color they promote - PINK!

http://www.victoriassecret.com/fashionshow uses Flash Video.

Robert: Can you interview tech executive behind Victoria's Secret? Victoria's Secret site is one of the most successful e-commerce sites with best user interface design, shopping cart with user experience, and success in streaming video delivery. They are way ahead in streaming video before YouTube.

Ben: Just check your template selection. Is it time to add a "sexy" pink template? What about landing the wiki on Victoria's Secret? Think about those pink traffic.

Subtitle or transcript please...

Yer am loving your videoblogs - I just need to finally get myself a video mobile player so I can watch these on the move. Mostly been watching the photowalking ones but when I've time also dropping into the others.

Although (as you say) some tuning is required going forward I think you have come a long way since your first show.

I kinda like the raw feel to it - ie not much post processing going on. Isn't this what it's all about.

Keep it up !

Robert, try Flip4Mac WMV Studio Pro ($99) for creating a WMV version of your show. It's a beautiful thing.