Marcus Hamaker is The Sleepy Geek

I have started to realize that most of us don’t need really fancy video cameras for out daily video recordings. Most of us are recording our family memories, our trips or just small interesting things. We are not making a video production that is going to be share with the masses.

The small flip style hand held cameras that are becoming more mainstream really are the best choice for most people, myself included. The top this holiday season is the Kodak Zi8. This thing takes HD video for your video memories. A great image and up to 10 hours of video capacity make it a great family choice. Put this in your pocket when you are at the resort or on the cruise ship and you will find it is so easy to grab it and shoot a quick clip for your video scrapbook.

From the Kodak website:

It’s small enough to fit in your pocket, but why would you ever want to put it there? Whether out on the town or just hanging with friends, the KODAK Zi8 Pocket Video Camera captures every experience in stunning 1080p HD video. Stay in focus while you’re on the move with integrated image stabilization. Then kick back and watch all the action on your HDTV or share your scene on Facebook™ or YouTube™ with a flick of the built-in USB arm. The Zi8 has all you need to define yourself in high definition.

Don’t get pulled into the hype and get a video camera that has a ton of built in features for editing etc. These effects should always be done during editing and on the computer you are using.

Geek on!

… the problem with this of course; is that 90% of them wouldn’t ever answer the question and a good portion of those probably wouldn’t read the question. I suppose it’s every blogger’s dream to know that. Then you can make sure to post and include the information that readers are looking for.

Strangely enough my posting has been erratic at best lately. I know, I know… I realize how often I post these days, and most recently it has been slower plus I have had a cold from hell. So most readers know that I had big plans in the fall to set up a live video stream on the website and stream myself 24/7 for the masses. Well it turns out that it takes a lot of time to gain viewership and maintain it. You would think that I could have come up with that before investing all the time in the setup of the stream, but I guess that was also part of the fun for me; twas a true geek maneuver.

Now I have my head geared towards podcasting. I am not 100% sure of format or topic yet, but of course it will have to do with technology – no question there. There are so many podcasts out there that are very topic specific that I think it would be difficult to try and spin a “general technology” podcast from an unknown creator. Let’s face it (more talking to myself here I suppose) I really have never created anything published, so I am definately unknown in the podcasting world.

I think I am going to try and come up with a few different ideas with a subject and description, then post it back up here and ask for feedback. What is missing or what is it that I am so interested in that I think I can do it better than the rest of the world :P

Uh oh, could be a long list…. Mwahahaha.

I am finding it increasingly difficult to find direction in the 2.0 or Social Media world. I have been working on a blog for quite some time and still have a quite low readership, or a least much lower than I would like. My question remains “Where do I spend my time and how much time is needed to make an impact?”. There are parts of me that think it will be impossible to make inroads in the social media world without being laid off from my 9-5 job.

I do work hard at my day job but I have never let it spill over into my personal life unless there is some sort of special project that needs tending to. I have a wonderful family and after doing all the normal family things after getting home from work it is already 9:00pm. If I don’t want to get sick due to a lack of sleep, the most I can spend is a couple of hours a night in my home office writing articles or working on my site’s back end.

It simply doesn’t feel like enough! My main goal is to have enough readers and viewers to sustain quality content through their interaction. I would simply like to be available for people who need guidance or support with their technology needs. The problem is when you have a small amount of time available to invest in your own branding, building up an audience is very difficult.

So the original question remains. How much time is enough and where is that time best spent? Up until now I thought it best to concentrate on my blog posts or updating my website. I am not sure that is the best way to spend time anymore. There are hoards of people that are moving away from their personal blogs and spending time on Twitter or Friendfeed, most notably Robert Scoble. This definitely will get you noticed but it seems that you need to spend 10 hours a day for real recognition. If your main career is not fed through social media then you won’t have 10 hours a day, you might not even have 2.

As I write this article I continue to come up with new strategies for myself and then find ways to break them. The video/stream portion of my website is really what interests me because it is what gives me the instant feedback that I like. I wonder if you can really support a video stream and gain viewers simply by being active on twitter. For some reason I don’t think so.

I am starting to believe that there is no way to obtain my true goals by only spending 10-12 hours a week on my blog/stream.

I would really like to spark a discussion with this article, please comment away!

I have spent countless hours since my vacation working on setting up a live video stream. It works in a sense but not how I would like it to run. I really do like the features that Webcammax can add to the stream, however the problem is the processing time it requires. It adds about 1-2 seconds of delay to a video stream that means that the audio will be heard 1-2 seconds before the video displays.

Audio/video sync problems drive me nuts. If a channel on TV is out of sync I will almost certainly change to something else or turn it off.

I have been in contact with Webcammax customer service, trying to drive some initiative to capture audio and video and allow throughput to your software (in my case the Ustream interface) at the same time. I am not concerned that there will be a 2 second delay, only that audio and video synced. At the reception of my service request I was told by customer service that my case was passed on to the technical team. That was 7 days ago, since then (2 days ago) I sent an email asking the status of my issue and have only received the standard “we will respond withing one business day” response.

I worked in technical support in the past and I know how much of a pain in the ass it can be to deal with hundreds of people everyday, but it is in the best interest of the support person to manage expectations. An email simply stating that it could take 1-2 weeks to obtain a solution wouldn’t have made me extactic but I would have accepted that.

This is turning into a rant about Webcammax support when even their support hasn’t been overly negative. Shame on me I suppose – but I really, really want this to work and I can’t afford to buy an iMac to host the stream.

But it’s nice to dream :)

I have been planning on starting a video stream on TheSleepGeek for quite some time but it takes planning and decent equipment. First I decided to use our family DV camera for the video source because it has good optics (Canon Optura 10) compared to most webcams. Next I plan to get a Samson C01U or C03U which has become the podcasting standard it seems for good quality audio and easy usability. Both those models are USB which will make them easy to connect and configure.

The problem after doing all this that is that the image that I am sending to my community is very generic. I don’t think for a second that my mug can hold viewership on the stream alone and so with ideas that I am admittedly stealing from Chris Pirillo and Leo Laporte, I need someway of adding other content to the video stream.

This is where Webcammax comes in! With all of the preparation and setup that I have already mentioned, I still would have an incomplete package in my eyes. Webcammax is allowing me to add features to stream that otherwise would be impossible. I am quite aware that there are products for OSX that people have raved about, but I don’t have an OSX system to dedicate to running the stream. With Webcammax I can manipulate exactly what I need to on the video stream so that I can enhance the viewers experience, all from my Windows machine.

from www.webcammax.com

The installation is as simple as it should be as far as I am concerned… Next, Next, Next – Finish :) Love those!

After that I opened the program (keep in mind I am running a demo version) and immediately I was greeted with a view of myself through the camera. The image is quite clear and in comparison to the preview window on the camera itself, I can’t complain.

Let’s get to the specifics of what I wanted to do and how Webcammax made it pretty easy to accomplish.

1. Add a topic to the top of the stream – This was done by creating a new text effect, modifying the text to the font, size and colour I like then saving it.
2. Add a black background to the topic that is the entire width of the image - After placing the topic from step one I noticed that the black background behind it was only the width of the text. I found that I could make an effect from an image so after creating a black bar in Paint (just make a black bar the width of the incoming source, for me this was 320 pixels) I did that and re sized it to fit close to the topic. The grouping order is as it is listed, so if something is over what you want to see, move it down the list.
3. Add the address of the live stream page to the bottom of the stream – This is important to me because I would like to record my better tips and tricks and upload them to Youtube or another similar site. This was as simple as step 1, just create a new text effect and move it to the desired location.
4. Add a live capture of a chat window – This is where things are slightly more complicated, but it works well. I have a copy of XChat open and logged into my chat all the time on that computer so I can monitor activity as it happens (actually when it starts to happen :)). I now used one of the PinP (picture in picture) sources to do a screen capture. I edited that to take a certain size capture and placed it over the area of XChat that I wanted people to see. After that I was able to move the image itself in the preview window to where I wanted it in the stream.
5. (not done but I have seen how to do it on a Youtube video) Add a scrolling image for sponsor logos – This is very easy. You can create a new effect, include your images and set a time to display each one. Then place it where you like on the screen.

I am very pleased with the product thus far and I am excited about it’s versatility. I have made a stream that is very similar to that of live.pirillo.com, which I know is very clean and works but the flexibility of Webcammax is good enough that I know I can make something original in the future.

It is also important to not that this is not the only way tho use Webcammax. It also has many effects and features built in that would make it useful for playful webcam chat over the most popular instant messengers, or for a professional internet video conference.

There is only one caveat which is to make sure you have a fairly powerful system with a lot of RAM to run Webcammax. Every effect and source seems to tax the processor and too much can bring your computer to a halt. Verify their system requirements before jumping in blindly.