Video tools for multimedia student journalists

As more of my students move toward producing multimedia, I’m starting to investigate hosting alternatives, from YouTube and Vimeo to pay services students might be able to afford.

I just noticed that the free WordPress.com blog server offers a video player plugin as a $60 a year, along with 3 gigabytes of free storage. Additional space is available, too, at $20 (5gb) to $90 (25gb) per year, with no bandwidth restrictions.

Vimeo’s free service is limited to 500 megabytes a week and only one HD video a week, but a 5GB a week Vimeo Plus service costs only $60 a year.

YouTube sets a maximum length of 10 minutes, but recommends 2-3 minutes per video. It allows files up to 1 GB. YouTube has a “Creators’ Corner” and instructions on “Producing and Uploading Your Own Videos” — including (of course) video tutorials.

Blip.tv calls itself a “next generation television network” with free core services and an optional revenue-sharing advertising program. It also offers a learning section and a blog, which recently pointed to this video chapter of an upcoming HTML 5 book.

While I’m enjoying exploring all of these sites, I suspect a number of experts have hosting-service reviews among their other online resources. If I were in a hurry to start a multimedia site, I’d look to see what these folks have to say on the subject:

Steve Garfield, a pioneer video blogger, who has a book on the subject coming out soon.

Robb Montgomery, who runs “Camp Video Journalism” workshops around the world, has a Ning social community to promote “visual journalism literacy in graphics, photo, video and design.”

Val Hoeppner keeps a list of free and low-cost tools, as part of her multimedia resources blog at the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, where I went last summer for her week-long multimedia bootcamp. PDF versions of some of her class tutorials are in her multimedia toolbox.

Mindy McAdams, Florida journalism prof, has a 42-page Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency available as a free download. She also conducts multimedia workshops and puts handouts like her No-Fear Guide online, and has a toolkit site under construction.