When you create a show, Vlog It! produces a master project file. Its filename consists of the project's name followed by an extension of ".msh." This project file, along with a batch of associated super-secret hidden files, contain all information about your show, including the script, recorded audio and video, each media file and its paired effects, various settings. You can think of all this as the recipe and ingredients for a delicious casserole. However, just as you don't actually have a dish ready to eat until the ingredients are combined and baked, no video is ready to watch outside of VC until all the elements are assembled, rendered, and compressed. Fortunately, Vlog It! does most of the heavy lifting in this process—and there's no actual cooking involved, so it's energy efficient and doesn't heat up your kitchen in the summer.
Vlog
It! allows you to publish your show directly to the Serious Magic Vlog server, to another FTP site
of your choosing, to your hard disk, or directly into an email. Each of these options allow you to select
between two or more video formats and to either choose from several pre-defined resolution and compression
settings or customize your own.
Regardless of which path you take, the first step is to click the Publish button or press F8. This launches the Media Publisher Wizard. Before you publish your finished show, you should make a habit of saving your file by clicking the Save button on the Projects Tab or pressing CTRL+S.
Free Trial & Special Edition—On the Fast Track to Uploading to
the Vlog Host: If you're running the Special Edition or the trial version, then clicking
the Publish button bypasses the options below and gets everything ready to post your vlog to your
account on the server. A dialog will pop up showing the thumbnail
that's currently selected along with the vlog's name and the estimated time to upload it. Click Next
to start the process of compressing and uploading the show, and when those steps are done click Finish
to proceed with adding a vlog link to your blog.
For the technically inclined, the publisher in the trial version always outputs a 240x180 Flash video at 300 kbits and 30 frames per second,
with stereo audio at 44.1 kHz and 56 kbps.
The
first page of the wizard lets you choose among the following methods of publishing your vlog. While one of these
methods is explicitly for saving the output video to your hard drive, the other three methods also save a copy
there.
Save Vlog to a Hard Drive or Network: This publishing option saves your show to an output file on your hard disk or network. You can then distribute the file however you choose, including copying it to a DVD or CD with your favorite DVD or CD burning software.
Send video in an email: This method works essentially the same as saving to a hard drive except that at the end the wizard creates a new email message and attaches the vlog to it. This requires an e-mail program such as Outlook Express that is installed locally on the computer; it does not work with web-based email that you access through your Internet browser.
Publish video to a server on the Internet: This option is essentially the same as the Upload to the Vlog Host method, except you must specify the FTP address to which the file will be posted. Also, this method does not give you a dialog for adding a link to your blog.
Publish video as a Vlog: Select this option to have Vlog It! post the finished video to your account on the host server.
Previewing before posting or sending: If you ultimately want your vlog posted to an Internet server or sent by email but you first want to review it in its published form, you can accomplish both objectives without having to re-render—assuming you don't change anything except the method after publishing the first time.
What's that "Portions not recorded" warning all
about: If any segment of a project, even a single frame, has not been recorded, then the first page
of the Publishing Wizard will display a message to that effect. This serves only as a warning to you in case
you intended for the whole show to have audio or video recorded. This
condition does not prevent you from proceeding to publish the project. In fact, you can publish a project that
has not been recorded at all.
The file type you choose dictates what player viewers will use to watch your vlog. The three options are:
The default path for your output files is C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\Vlog It\My Output\My Published Vlogs. To change the path, click the Browse button and navigate to the desired folder. Note that unlike when you save a project to a different path and thereby change the default path for new projects, changing the path where a given output file is saved does not affect where future files end up. To learn how to change the default path for output files, please consult the last section on this page.
The default filename for the output file is the same as the project's name, with the appropriate extension appended (.rm, .wmv, or .flv.). To change the name, click in the text field and type the desired name. If you've previously published the show, changing this name will avoid overwriting the existing file.
If you selected either of the publishing methods that upload your vlog to an Internet host, then you can have Vlog It! initiate an email containing a link to the video file. Just as with the "Send Vlog in an email" publishing method, the program will create the email upon completing the publishing process. You must then enter addresses for all recipients and, if desired, write a subject and message. To enable this option, click the Send an email with a web link when finished checkbox.
In order to upload your vlog to a host, or "server," on the Internet, Vlog It! requires certain information about your account. Both of the publishing methods that upload vlogs to the Internet use what's known as File Transfer Protocol, or "FTP," so the path is known as an FTP address.
To set or change your account information, click the Account Info button and fill in the necessary fields. If you're uploading to the Vlog Host and have not yet created an account, click Need a Hosting Account on the Account Info dialog. That will open a web page through which you can either set up a limited term evaluation account or proceed to purchase a hosting service. Follow the instructions on that page, and when you're done return to the login dialog.
The program stores your account information, so you will not need to go through this process again unless any of the account information changes.
To double-check that all the FTP account information is correct or to go to the site in order to manage files there, click the Access Account Directly button. This launches your web browser and goes to the FTP site specified in the Account Information dialog. If it fails to find or log into the appropriate page, then review all information in the Account Information dialog.
If no account information is set when you click Next to continue to the wizard's third page, then the Account Information dialog will pop up. When publishing using either of the web hosted methods, you cannot proceed beyond this point without providing the necessary information.
The main decision for you here involves balancing the vlog's image quality against its file size. You naturally
want the best quality possible, but the emphasis has to be on what "possible" means. This
is defined by the medium through which you'll be distributing the vlog and, in the case of serving it on the Internet,
the bandwidth of your viewer's connections. The three preset options are:
The fourth size/quality option, Custom, allows you to adjust various settings individually, such parameters as constant or variable bit rate, frame rate, and which audio and video codec to use. This is terrain where only advanced users should tread. To learn more about the custom settings, please consult the Custom Publishing Options page.
Depending on which file type you selected on the preceding page, this panel may also contain one or more of the following options:
Size Considerations for Vlogs to be emailed: When setting the size/quality, be aware that some email accounts are limited to 3 or 5 MB of incoming email. The person you are emailing may not be able to receive large files. Large files can also be a problem for people that access their email via dial-up modem. Check the file size in the email subject field before sending. You may need to republish to a smaller file size depending on your recipient's email account and connection limitations. Generally, we recommend keeping emailed file sizes below 2 MB.
How 2 Pass Encoding works, and why it's sometimes unavailable: The first pass gathers information about the content of the stream. The second pass uses the information gathered on the first pass to optimize the compression process. The 2 Pass Encoding checkbox is available only if you either are using one of the presets or have the Media Type Mode in the customization dialog set to constant bit rate (CBR). When the custom options are set to Quality-based variable bit rate (VBR), 2 Pass encoding is disabled; whey you're using the other CBR options, it is always enabled.
WME Setting vs. Reality: If you open the customization dialog with the Default Format set to Windows Media Encoder 9, but you do not have WME 9 or later installed on your PC, then you will be prompted to download the free upgrade. If you choose not to do so, then the customization dialog for WME 8 will open rather than that for WME 9.
Interested in Publishing as an AVI? If so, then you might want to check out Vlog It's big brothers in the Visual Communicator line of software.
The wizard's fourth and final panel shows a summary of your publishing settings. If all details are as desired, click Finish to start the publishing process; if not, click Back to return to the wizard page where you can correct the errant setting. When you click Finish, Vlog It! starts assembling, rendering, and compressing your vlog. A progress bar will show how far along it is with these processes. When these steps are complete, the progress bar will remain displayed—unless you opted to upload the video to the Vlog Host or another server on the Internet. In that case, Vlog It! will immediately start uploading, and the progress bar will start over again to show you how far along that process is. [If you encounter an error uploading, please jump ahead to the next section: Getting through the Firewall.]
If you uploaded to the Vlog Host, then the publisher wizard will automatically proceed to the dialog through which you link your vlog to a blog. With all other publishing methods, the progress will remain up when the process is complete. Click the Finish button to close the wizard and return to the program.
After closing the publisher wizard, take a second to save the project—the publisher settings are saved as project properties, so if do not save before closing then you will have to start from scratch the next time you publish the same project. Publisher settings are also saved as the defaults the application, which are applied to each new project.
How Long is Too Long: The speed of rendering will depend chiefly on how fast your computer is. As a general rule, if publishing is taking more than three times a show's duration, then something is amiss. Please contact our customer support crew for assistance. With a computer that substantially exceeds the minimum specifications, the publishing time should be much closer to the actual length of the show.
We designed Vlog It! so that you can create a video, copy it to a host on the Internet, and add a link to your blog even if you don't know a server from a waiter or can't tell FTP (file transfer protocol) from FTD (Florists' Transworld Delivery). One hurdle that's beyond our ability to clear is network security. This is quite a good thing when you think about it—after all, your network wouldn't be very secure if any program that you install could break through it at will.
The layer of security most likely to prevent Vlog It! from uploading a file is the firewall that protects your computer or network from other computers on the planet. Firewalls are designed to block certain kinds of communications, including the file transfer protocol that Vlog It! uses. So in order for this process to work, you may have to grant Vlog It! permission to "FTP" (yep, those three consonants are now an accepted verb). Unfortunately, we cannot provide detailed instructions on how to do this because there's not a single set of steps that works for all the myriad firewalls on the market. What we can tell you is that Vlog It! needs permission to use Port 21. You should be able to limit this permission to individual programs as opposed to opening it indiscriminately. If you have a network administrator, this will be a snap for him or her. If you're on your own, then please consult the documentation for your router or firewall software. Or you could use this as an excuse to get reacquainted with a geek from your past—believe it or not, most of us will tackle such a job for nothing more than a beer, but it better be a good one.
The
final product of all your love, labor, and creativity is a neatly compressed little package called an
"output file." The default path for such videos is C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\Vlog
It\My Output\My Published Vlogs.
To change this to a folder of your choice:
Want to publish as a self-contained web page or to a video tape? Prefer to stream live over the web or present to a live audience? Favor .avi over .rm, .wmv, and .flv?
All these publishing options and more are available through our Visual Communicator software family.