The ideal solution for a touring digital storytelling project, using existing, available digilabs at community centres, libraries, schools, colleges, etc. would seem to be to use web-based editing applications. This would remove the need to install individual programs or to have carrier bags full of training handouts for different combinations of pre-installed software.
I’ve been discussing this recently with Umbrian home movies specialist Simona Bonini Baldini, who’s just returned home to Italy after spending the summer with us at the BBC here in Wales. Simona too liked the idea of editing in the cloud. One of her must-haves though was the ability to help digital storytellers to make broadcast-quality videos. When Simona tested cloud-based video editing apps, she discovered the snag: uploading broadcast-quality moving-video rushes for a digilab-full of digital storytellers would take too long. Even at Standard Definition, not HD.
My hope though is that – as broadband speeds in Wales (and Italy) increase in future – all this will become practical someday. After all: every cloud has a silver lining.
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Mike Nutt
That pun was dying to be made!
Have you seen http://stroome.com/ yet? It’s a project over here in the states. Last year when I tried it, the user interface was really not up to snuff, but I haven’t tried it recently. This is also related to the idea of wikimentary or wikumentary, which are good ideas that seem to have stalled, but still good ones. Bandwidth is obviously a big issue… this might be one of those ideas that is slightly ahead of the technological capabilities available to most people, but worth keeping at…
Fred Mindlin
“If ifs and ands were pots and pans,
There’d be no end of work for a tinker’s hands.”
I parted ways from the Center for Digital Storytelling at the point where they began insisting on Final Cut instead of iMovie because they wanted the products of their workshops to be broadcast quality. I still hold to the populist view that what DS is most importantly about is spreading the technical capacity to allow ordinary people to tell their stories in compelling ways that have a true filmic quality even if they’re not HD.
I agree, we can dream. “The Big Rock Candy Mountain…”
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Sandra Anstiss
I totally agree with Fred. When I made the decision to use only PCs and free/low cost software it was because they are more readily available for the majority of people to access. This is very important to me because when I did my own training I came away so inspired and fired up by the whole concept I wanted to make another story myself straight away. But I was very dissapointed because despite having all the source files and training manual from the course, I didn’t have a Mac or the readies to buy PC compatible editing software, so I was stumped! I decided to research alternatives as part of my Masters and now use software which is either free or low cost, but most importantly, available for anyone to download. It’s the stories that are important after all and what I don’t want to do is to put technical obstacles in the way of people who want to make their own stories.