Inaugural first: Video in a new way
Posted: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 6:17 PM by Stokes Young
From Stokes Young, director of multimedia @ msnbc.com
There have been a lot of historic firsts today. Here at NBC News we're excited that, on the occasion of Barack Obama's oath of office and inaugural address, we're offering our own small first step for online news video. For the first time, you can use a video clip's transcript to:
- Jump to and play any point in the video by clicking on the word where you want to begin
- See the most commonly used terms in a video clip and select them to see them highlighted in the transcript and on the timeline
- Search a video clip's transcript for the words you want to watch play in the video, and go right to them
- Select a subclip of a longer clip to embed on your blog or Web site
That last feature bears some explaining, even though in the end it's about as simple as copying and pasting in a text document. For the example below, I first went to the clip of the swearing-in and inaugural address at http://inauguration.msnbc.com.
Then, with the transcript view open, select the block of text you want to embed as video and click the "Clip & Embed" button that pops up. You can then drag the "in" and "out" marks to make sure you have the bits you want, and preview with the "play" button:
Then, hit the "copy" button to get the embed code on your clipboard:
Then, paste the clip into your blog:
One of the best features of the dashboard, beyond the technology, is having a wealth of archival NBC News footage of past inaugurals. It's easy to lose yourself watching silent clips dating back to McKinley and transcript-indexed full speeches back to Truman (with some indexed FDR clips in between). Compare the clip of President Obama, above, with this excerpt from President Reagan's first inaugural address:
Finally, don't forget to select the "NBC News analysis" radio button to see select analysis and commentary on specific moments in the speech, many of them from right here in First Read. We call the feature Video Explorer. Have fun with it, and tell us what you think, but make sure you check out our Photosynths as well. . .
Photosynth is a Microsoft technology that "stitches" together a large selection of pictures from one location to allow you to really feel like you are there. We made one from pictures from the inauguration ceremony, and you can click the 'next' and 'previous' buttons to see a selection of several more covering the inaugural.
