Downloading and Editing Video – Handout
Prepared by David – [email protected]
For copyright questions please ask Matthew – [email protected]
Some observations about downloading and copyright for educators
for more info see the ACC’s copyright guides
http://copyright.org.au/find-an-answer/
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You can record and download anything from pay tv, public tv, or a radio broadcast.
You can also convert the file formats of these downloads.
You can also download a media file uploaded to the internet on a broadcaster’s
website, and even YouTube , so long as the thing that you are downloading is the
‘broadcast copy’. Again, you can convert to different file formats if you meet these
broadcast conditions
An interesting wrinkle to this is that even though a movie you have on dvd might
have been broadcast in Australia previously, that DVD is not the broadcast copy and
thus, technically, you cannot reuse and copy this DVD for educational purposes, as
per Screenrights.
You can record broadcasts from home, so get that DVR humming !
ABC Iview and catchup services are an exception to the above. They can be
streamed/played in class, but you can’t download or screen capture them.
Material broadcast before 1990 is not covered by the Screenrights educational reuse
provision.
Embedding YouTube is fine so long as the material you are embedding is from an
official uploader (some videos have embedding disabled too).
According to the Australian Copyright Council, you can’t use a password protected
upload to Vimeo or YouTube in the same way as you would with Blackboard
If the video you are looking at is obviously the work of a pirate you shouldn’t use it at
all, even linking to it is technically verboten.
Screen rights content needs to be distributed with a 5A licence
Physical Copy:
Online Copy:
Downloading from YouTube
Downloading a YouTube video is easy – just remember to keep in mind the copyright rules about
downloading – it has to be a broadcast copy from an official publisher.
There are Firefox plugins you can use to download files from YouTube. Once you download the
plugin you will see a button underneath each YouTube video saying ‘download’
To get the plugin, just Google ‘YouTube plugin for Firefox’
Alternately you can use an online file converted like youtubeinmp4.com. Just past in the url here..
There are other such converters available, but this one is good because it requires no downloading
or registration to use. Remember – it is not illegal to format shift a broadcast.
Both output mp4 video files, but it’s possible the latter service produces a higher quality download
(TEST THIS)
If the YouTube video you are looking at is from an original publisher, but not a broadcast copy, then
you should embed the video instead (see the Sonic Youth example below)
Downloading from TV News
TV News content is all downloadable content, so feel free to use it without worry. When you look up
a video there will be a download button beneath the viewing window. This will also output an mp4
file. In the following pop up window, use the save option.
Uploading an mp4 to UTS Online
Uploading an mp4 to UTS Online is pretty easy. The only hassle is sometimes the viewing window is a
little small.
Once you have your mp4, go to UTS Online and look for this ‘add MPEG/AVI content’ button
Then browse for your mp4 file and upload
You can alter the size of the window on the next screen too, but the results sometimes create big
letterboxes.
Once it’s uploaded it looks like this (these settings were width 400 height 300)
(Uploading lots and lots ofmp4’s to a UTS Online page will make them open slowly)
Editing your MP4
(demo is in Windows Live Movie Maker, which is on the library’s student image)
We are using Windows Live Movie Maker here because it’s in the labs, but there are many
other softwares out there – Imovie, Screenflow, Camtasia, and many more. These softwares
have more advanced functionality than Windows Movie Maker, including the ability to split
the sound and vision into separate files. But Windows Movie Maker is easy to use and lets
you clip and combine media files, so it is good enough for our purposes here today.
To put your mp4 files into the editing software, use the ‘add videos and photos’ button
This will make your clip appear on the timeline..
To chop up the video, click on a point of the clip, and the playhead will move there.
To make a division in the clip where the playhead is, right click and select ‘split’.
You video will now look like this:
You can now select the part you don’t need by clicking on it. You can press delete to remove
it, or drag it around somewhere else on the timeline.
If you want to combine two different mp4’s, just press the add videos and photos icon again
and choose another file.
You can do ‘transitions’ if you would like to add a dissolve or a fade between different clips.
In Windows Media Maker these are a bit clunky, but they can be found under animations
(This type of transition is called a ‘wipe’)
You can also add captions
If you would like to place in opening slides or whatnot you can import photos to the movie
also using ‘add videos and photos’
When finished, use the ‘save movie’ option. In the software demoed here this will output a
Windows Media Video File (.wmv), but other softwares will give you the option of
outputting in a range of file types.
If you do end up with a .wmv you won’t be able to embed it directly to UTS Online. You can
add it as an attachment, which works fine. When you click the .wmv link a player will open
(again check mac)
If you want to embed your .wmv you will have to convert it into a different file type. To do
this you’ll need another type of file converter found online. An example is www.onlineconvert.com . It’s also a no-registration-necessary setup. You can find others by Googling
‘wmv to mp4’
Once at the Online-convert website, choose video converter, then choose your output type, eg:
mp4.
Then upload your .wmv file here
You can then upload that mp4 to UTS Online to have it appear in a viewing window.