The document summarizes notes from the Health OER Tech Africa October 2012 conference on audio-video techniques for presentations. It provides tips on length of videos, sound quality, lighting, using multiple cameras, video formats, and free and paid software for editing videos and audio. Recommendations include using lapel microphones close to the speaker's mouth, bouncing light off ceilings, focusing cameras on presenters and objects of interest, and using common video and audio formats like MP4, MP3, and WAV.

1. Audio-Video Techniques Presentation
Chris Yebuah, University of Ghana
Group notes from the Health OER Tech Africa October 2012 conference
(http://openmi.ch/oertechafrica2012). These notes are shared under a Creative Commons
Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 License.
Participants include: Emmanuel Kusi Achampong, Enoch Allotey, Rosemond Aryeetey, Yetemwork Benti,
Gregory Doyle, Wisdom Dzikunu, Ted Hanss, Moro Ismaila, Roman Kanobana, Prince Kpasra, Saeed
Majeed, John Marfo, Fundile Nkunge, Nyemitei Odjidja, Tom Olewe, Kathleen Omollo, Benjamin
Prempeh, Adam Rahman, Nicole Southgate, Monge Tlaka, Chris Yebuah
• Length of video – not too short or too long
• Sound – quiet place?
• Lapel mic with condenser built in otherwise lapel mic close to the mouth. Also use 75% at recording
volume. Then when you edit, lower the sound a little to only pick up prominent noise and not
background noise.
• Shadows – bounce the light off the ceiling as opposed to putting the light directly on the speaker or
object. Look at where natural light is coming to counteract it. Use lighting to give you natural
coloration; manage white balancing to attain this natural coloration
• Video – when someone is talking, focus on person or activity of interest. At end out focus (zoom out).
He recommended using 2 cameras – one for presenter and other for procedure/object of interest.
Some techniques to keep in mind to synchronize the 2 video feeds: When there is no activity you
point to face. Record, don’t pause if you need to stop tape, you need continuity in your sound. Look
for point in video which has a keyword – look for it in both video stream
• Use 30 frames per second, AVI DV 1 Encoding is best format for most versatile; frame size 720x576
for DVD PAL and 720x480 for DVD NTSC
• Final Formats – use MP4 or OGG for videos. FLV or MOV are also acceptable. AVI is OK for original
format but not recommended for the final product since it requires special codecs. Do not use SWF
as the only version. For audio, MP3 or WAV is best.
• Tools
o Adobe After Effects ($) – useful for blurring faces if there are privacy concerns.
o Kino (free) – video and audio editor, http://sourceforge.net/projects/kino/
o Fre.ac (free) – audio format convertor http://www.freac.org/
o Camtasia ($) - http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html
o Jing ($) - http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html
o Camstudio (free) - http://camstudio.org/
o Audacity (free) http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
o Windows Movie Maker (free for Windows) http://windows.microsoft.com/en-
US/windows/get-movie-maker-download
o Handbrake (free) http://handbrake.fr/