My goal was not to write a post on “how to vblog” or “vblogging 101“. I collected a list of resources to look at when you’ve decided you want to vblog.

Good place to start from is Everything About Video Blogging, or Vblogging by Ezine @rticles, and Videoblogging PDF from CCT where they teach how to use Blogger for blogging, compress video with iMovie, and post it with Blip.tv. Decent Set to start from when one has no idea and just wants to try it.

• Books:
  

Here is a full list of books on videoblogging from Amazon. I have got Videoblogging by Jay Dedman and Joshua Paul. Great book.

• How to make good quality videos:

Excellent Video Tutorials by Israel Hyman. Israel made 2-5 minute videos about each and every aspect of video making. Excellent work by an excellent creative professional who knows his craft.

Israel Hyman is also one of the Cofounders of Glimpster where they produced video Digital Photography Tutorials and Free Spanish Lessons (maybe this will finally get me to learn Spanish?).

FreeVlog tutorials cover quite a bit related to vblogging.

• Solutions for hosting videos and displaying them on your site:

Testing Grounds has a list of 35 or so sites (!) for free video hosting, with reviews. A couple of examples:

Vlog Central is a “comprehensive audio/video solution for bloggers that is integrated into their existing blog of choice”. They host you video and let you play it on your blog.

Blip.tv is a “free videoblogging, podcasting and video sharing service. If you don’t have a blog we’ll give you one, and if you have one already we’ll make it a show.”

• Video Editing SW:

PC Magazine Product Guides and Reviews - video editing software — 90 or more products!!!

I have not used any yet, so can not comment. I know iMovie (for Mac users) has great reviews and Final Cut Studio for professional (Mac) editors. My business partner uses MyDVD (for PC users) and it works for him.

• Prominent videobloggers (to learn from):

Steve Garfield is a videographer and video blogger based in Boston, Massachusetts.
He has been experimenting with vlogging since 2002 and launched his own regular video blog on January 1, 2004. On his vlog he features Vlog Soup a regular free tour of video blogs from all over the world. Also look at his Squidoo Lens.

See more below.

• Courses (around Boston):

It appears (some) local community television stations offer classes on video editing using their equipment as well as production ($5-10/hour only!). Am going to Amherst Community Television to learn from them and grateful for the opportunity. Check your local station, see what they offer.

Cambridge Community Television (CCT) has courses on Blogosphere: Video Blogs 101, Production and Digital Editing. They have very good manuals and procedures in PDF format (for free) if you scroll the page at the link.

Boston Media Makers, an interesting group of videobloggers in Boston area, also offer classes. They get together on the first Sunday of each month see if you would like to join.

• Online knowledge resources you may want to look into:

WikiPedia on Vlog
Voxmedia on Vlogosphere
Yahoo Tech Group Videoblogging

• Videoblog award (s):

Videoblog award is new — there is been just one (Nov 4, 2006), and, of course, in San Francisco. So, if you have not gotten the first one, you still can get there.

Podtech.net (network of audio and video podcasts and current employer of famous blogger Robert Scoble where he hosts Scoble Show with geeks) organized the first Vloggies annual videoblog awards night in San Francisco featuring and nominating vloggers from all over the country, if not the world. Irina Slutsky was the idea generator and made it happen together with Podtech team.

Best videobloggers list from the Vloggies (the People’s Choices)

Favorite People’s Vlog: Ask a Ninja — I personally can not watch through even one episode of Ninja. The (very) same start for all episodes with Jumping People in Mask (aka Ninjas) bores me and makes me move on before I even get through the start (yup, am aware it is perceived as funny and cool by many). Am guessing they made it to the top for their originality.

Best videobloggers list from the Vloggies (the Judges’ choices)

• A few vblogs (the ones I bumped into):

Ryan Edit
Drive Time
Tinkernet

My V-blog is yet to come.

To implement one of my ideas (about saving the world), I decided I want to learn how to videoblog (or vblog). Surely, my first step was to go to Google and Technorati to see what I can find about how to vblog. It has been an interesting journey. I thought I would share what I found with you.

The next post has a distilled list of resources I found useful or interesting. If you think I missed something, please add comments to the post. Also, dear vbloggers, who I missed or did not include, please add links to your blogs in the comments section. I did not mean to create a vblog directory here (there are those), rather to provide list of web resources available to a vblog newbie.

To simplify, to produce a vblog one needs:

• To make a video (s) and have a blog to post videos to,
• To compress if big, upload to some video hosting site,
• To embed the video in his/her blog,
• If there are many videos, or if videos are extremely popular, make sure the server can sustain the load.

Yes, that was oversimplified.

To add a few more (important) one needs:

• to have equipment — quality (and price) of equipment can be in direct proportion to quality of videos,
• to have SW to edit video (cut pieces, add music, text) and compress it,
• to learn and to practice how to make videos –
  while there is some art to the video creation, there are rules that, if followed or at least if understood, can help one a higher quality video,
• To decide what blog SW to use (wordpress vs typad vs blogger vs…),
• To be able (have an understanding of) to chose the right server / hosting service — assuming that traffic will be overwhelming (yup, that is a big assumption, still…).

So here is a list of resources I found useful and interesting.