Hi Mary Kay,
You need to digitize the video. Video tapes (or at least VHS and PAL
tapes) are analog, computers need it to be digital.
There are several ways to do this. One is to buy a small video capture
device, and hook up your vcr to the capture device, and the capture
device to your computer. Make sure that the capture device is good
enough for your needs, and that it comes with software. Video editing
software can be notoriously expensive. If you need to buy software,
Adobe now has a smaller version of Premiere (the expensive one I use)
called Premiere Essentials, or something similar. Things to look for in
a capture device include a decent frame rate (60 is far better than 30,
30 gives you jerky video) and a reasonable screen size (640x480 is a
minimum for teaching).
Another and easier but less flexible way to do it is to buy a $100-200
VCR/DVD Recorder combo that allows "dubbing". This is easy because all
you have to do is put in the tape cued to the area you want to capture,
put in a blank DVD, press dub, start playing the tape, and stop playing
the tape when you have the spot you want. You can put multiple little
clips on one DVD, and you can usually choose your quality setting (use
the best one, please). The disadvantage of this method is that you are
stuck with mpeg (compressed) files. With the above method, you can use
.avi files, which have a much, much higher resolution. Then again, if
you are using avi files, you need a fast hard drive, lots of space on it
(avi files are huge, some of mine are more than 5 GB, so I need a large
backup drive) and you need to do significant editing.
I use a combination of both methods. I use a digital video camera, and
edit my video on my computer. For my old video tapes, I bought a VHS/DVD
machine, and use that for non-closeup work. In other words, if you are
showing positioning, the latter is fine. If you are showing suck
compensations in closeup, it's better to have .avi's.
Now, as for powerpoint, it is fussy about mpeg files. It will only show
certain ones directly in powerpoint. For others, you need to embed your
normal windows media player by using an "action button". It would be
nice if powerpoint just used the media player that comes with windows
and that one updates all the time, but it does not, it has it's own
internal one! Aargh! You can use the help file to look up how to do
that... I think it's on the tools menu. I have Office XP (I only update
my software when necessary, since it's so expensive for a private
practitioner like me) so they might have fixed this in later versions.
You can ask tech support at microsoft (support.microsoft.com).
Good luck,
Catherine Watson Genna, IBCLC NYC
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