apryl's blog

I HAVE TO SAY... that I'm personally quite enthused about the new browse page that was just rolled out with several other updates to the SciVee website. I really like how it separates the content into sections that allow you to see the number of media available on specific subject areas.

Something else that tickles my fancy is the customized feed tool. For those of us that like using RSS feeds, this sure is handy for automatically feeding content as it happens to get posted from SciVee into your own blog or website.

If you have many videos that you would like to upload at once to SciVee, I recommend using the bulk upload option.

There are two parts to bulk uploading to SciVee: (1) providing a link to the video files where SciVee can access them and (2) providing the associated meta data for each video you would like to upload.

After you get your video files encoded in a web ready format and make them available and linkable at an ftp location, you can use one of the excel sheets attached below to associate each video file with its appropriate meta data. Details about the required entries for each column are located at the top of the excel sheet. Notice that the first column must contain the file name and extension. (You may want to use a consistent naming scheme like name-date.mp4 to keep the files more easily trace...

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Attached below is a poster template that can be used for printed science conference posters as well as your SciVee postercast. After altering this template with your poster information, you can export it for print, then you can prepare it for use on SciVee. It is important to note that the export format for print is different than what you will need for online upload.

If you download this file and look at the settings for export, you will see that they are set up for print:
48 X 36 inches, CMYK color, 300 dpi.

For exporting your poster for use on SciVee, I would like to recommend exporting the file with the following settings: 2400 pixel minimum width, RGB color, jpg format

TIP: When creating your poster, use a minimum font size of 12 points.

Poster Template Credit: This file was recreated from Keith Pezzoli's poster template he provided to his Senior Sequence Class of 2008-2009 students.

I recently attended ScienceOnline09, and gave a joint panel discussion/presentation with Moshe from Jove. SciVee's portion of the presentation slides are attached to this post below.

It was great to get feedback and ask the audience questions about the use of video in science communication. One of the questions we discussed was: How many of you would consider uploading video to a site like Jove or SciVee? and why or why not? Attendees that said they would said that they would use both Jove and SciVee for different reasons depending on their goal. If they wanted to publish a paper with video they would go to Jove and if they wanted to upload posters and slides or something previously published they would go to SciVee. Attendees that said they would not use either service either gave reason that it’s too difficult to convince their PIs who are too conservative or they feel...

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Add yourself to the listing for to offer your Science Video Production Service to scientists and researchers in your area in the linked listing at: http://scivee.tv/service

Maybe this is old news to some of you, but it is news to me.

I just can't help but share some information about this free online video production management software I recently discovered online called, Celtx. I tested it out on one of my video productions and I have to say, thus far, I really like the whole idea. There is a corresponding web 2.0 site that supports the free software called Project Central. It reminds me of basecamp a bit, but with so many more options specifically for media production. I highly suggest it when you are planning a video production for SciVee. You can log in and collaboratively write a script, add storyboards, and create a production schedule linked to your shot list, to name a few things I have tried out thus far. There is a decent review of celtx at: (more)

A very important part of creating a pubcast is properly linking specific sections of the text and figures in your paper to appear highlighted as your video plays. When you link your paper to the video in this way, the value of your pubcast is increased because attention is drawn to the scientific data included in your publication. In addition, when the video is annotated with data at specific points in the timeline, it not only creates a form of chaptering of the video but the value of the video is increased because of the later possibility of data mining the video content. Although, SciVee does not yet use this data in searches, the data you create when connecting specific synchronize points in the video could be used later on to search specific parts of the video.

There is an older tutorial of a screencast that walks you through the whole process of creating a pubcast, but if you want to view a newer tutorial that covers ...

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I just wanted to share a little bit about the FEST conference as it is taking place in Trieste, Italy. If you are at the conference and have questions about SciVee, feel free to leave me a message or meet me after the roundtable on Friday. I will be giving a presentation about SciVee at 6:30 and taking questions afterwards.

For those who have not heard about FEST, it is an international science media fair, but you can learn more about it at: http://www.festrieste.it/eng_chisiamo.html.
The Italian version is at: http://www.festrieste.it/

At the roundtable “Science Communication in Europe” both Franco Del Campo and Michel Claessen, two European scientific journalists, mentioned a study where surveys were conducted questioning who would be the preferred source of scientific communication. A journalist who shares information about the science, or a scienti...

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I just wanted to share information about a new feature that you may have recently noticed in the "Browse" section of SciVee. It has been updated to allow viewers to sort through videos more effectively. You can sort videos by target audience and subject area. If you have uploaded a video prior to this feature being added to the website, this means that you can now identify which target audience and subject areas your videos or pubcasts belong.

I recently sent out an email to a several SciVee members that described these steps, but perhaps it was not as clear as I intended because I have been receiving quite a few emails requesting further details about how to do this. In case you were wondering, I thought I would post steps that were more clearly understandable.

You can now choose which target audiences and subject areas that your videos are included in by taking the following steps:

1) Log on to the SciVee website.

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