Blog Feed: Miracle Tutorials | Tutorials and articles on podcasting, videocasting, video channels and content management

Trailer My Blind heart – a film debut by Peter Brunner

Published on 2013-02-12 09:48:16

MY BLIND HEART is the character study of Kurt, who suffers from the Marfan Syndrome and tries to rebel against his body.  Christos Haas, who plays Kurt, suffers from the rare Marfan Syndrome in real life. His left eye is blind and his right eye has

How to create captions/subtitles for video and audio in WebTVV, SRT, DFXP format

Published on 2013-02-10 14:32:51

This tutorial shows how easy it is to create captions/subtitles files in WebTVV, SRT and DFXP format for subtitling in videos and audios. Depending on the media player you use, you can even provide subtitles in different languages for the same media.

Should I upgrade to JW Player Pro 6.0 or Premium?

Published on 2013-02-07 08:59:44

A question that pops up regularly these days is: “Should I upgrade to JW Player 6.0?”  This depends on which features of JW Player you are using currently. JW Player 6.0 has a new set of advanced features which are surely worthwhile to i

Embedding an audio with poster image, watermark and subtitles, using JW Player

Published on 2012-08-14 11:31:09

Embedded audios in a website generally display a simple control bar with navigation buttons to play, pause, rewind and so on. While this is great for audio libraries, it can be so much more. In this tutorial, I’ll show you step by step how to add a poster image, a watermark and subtitles, using JW [...]

How to embed a video from Vimeo in WordPress without iFrame

Published on 2012-07-10 15:28:43

As explained in the older article, Vimeo.com has 3 standard ways to display videos directly on your website or blog.  In this article, I explain how to use the  standard method, embedding to place videos in WordPress. Since WordPress does not accept the iFrame method, we need to use the old embedding method.  Vimeo makes [...]

Australia gets its own S3 Edge server

Published on 2012-06-20 10:49:38

Finally, after a lot of nagging by various interested parties(me included), Australia gets its own Edge server on S3 Amazon, namely in Sydney. This will have quite some impact on delivery of streaming video and audio in the Land Down Under, because they have serious problems playing HD video. An edge server is especially useful [...]

How to skip to a chapter in a video with JW Player?

Published on 2012-06-13 08:27:56

A chapter is a place in the timeline of a streaming video. It can be anywhere in the video and there is no need to define chapters upfront. With JW Player, you can add chapter links to any part of a video or audio. This is very useful in lengthy videos/audios which cover several topics. [...]

Big improvements on S3Media Stream for Joomla!

Published on 2012-05-16 09:20:30

S3Media Stream is a powerful tool to publish private streaming video and audio with S3 CloudFront on Joomla sites. We are happy to announce big improvements on this extension. So far, it worked with a module to display the rich media. Like its WordPress version, it also has protected download links for all sorts of [...]

How to setup a Billing Alert for AWS Amazon/CloudFront

Published on 2012-05-12 16:52:09

Billing Alert from S3 Amazon is a fantastic new feature. It gives you the opportunity to be warned by email when your bill reaches an amount you determine upfront. This will help you greatly to control your spending on AWS, since you can take immediate action when necessary. Sometimes, your audios or videos score a hit [...]

Embedding a Playlist for Streaming Video – using JW Player

Published on 2012-02-06 17:44:38

Embedding a video/audio playlist is not difficult at all, it only requires your full attention. In this tutorial (part 2), I’ll show you how to embed a dynamic playlist. A dynamic playlists differs with a regular playlist in a sense that you do not need to create a separate xml file.  For this tutorial, you [...]

How far are we with HTML5? A report by Longtail Video

Published on 2012-01-31 13:21:47

HTML5 for Video progresses all the time.  Not as quick as we hope for and audio is often left out of the equation, but there is progress nevertheless. LongTail Video has brought out a report on the current state of HTML5, and the interesting thing is that the report will be upgraded every time there [...]

GreenGeeks shared hosting review

Published on 2012-01-24 13:39:37

Normally, I do not like to write reviews about hosting providers but I make an exception this time. GreenGeeks.com has its marbles together in terms of performance and like DreamHost, it does its bit to reduce carbon emissions, which I think is important. When asked about their 300% Wind-powered claim, support told me this: We [...]

S3 Amazon public content in danger of being hacked

Published on 2011-10-15 12:55:56

All S3 Amazon account holders should be aware that there are hacker scripts around that scan for public content in S3 buckets. Amazon has warned all account holders if they have public buckets.  Reading public content is quite easy since public files are readable to everyone. But what does that actually imply and what can [...]

NaturalReader: voice-over software that does the talking for you

Published on 2011-09-26 16:15:57

You don’t like your own voice on recordings, yet you cannot afford or have no time to hire a professional voice-over? Here is wonderful software that almost gets it right: NaturalReader. This software turns text into speech with voices that are way more sophisticated then any speech software of your Operating system. It is available [...]

Sponsoring independent movie makers: Rhett Lynch

Published on 2011-07-11 06:19:09

There are many talented movie makers who will not get into Hollywood or Bollywood, often because their movies are not mainstream enough or they do not want to follow the typical paths outlined by big film studios. Thanks to the internet and social media, indie movie makers can find sponsoring for their projects via the [...]

How to Embed Streaming Video & Audio with HTML5 Fallback – using JW Player 5.6

Published on 2011-06-07 12:38:10

JW Player 5.6 is a Flash video/audio player created with Adobe Flex which has the capability to switch to HTML5 fallback mode if a non Flash browser is encountered. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to download and install JW Player and ho

How to encode a video simultaneously for web, iPhone, iPad, iPod & other handheld devices using HandBrake

Published on 2011-05-19 15:02:50

You want to ensure that everyone, or at least most people can watch your video? Then you have to create a video that works on the web and mobile devices such as iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and other handheld devices. This is not evident and you may coun

JW Player: who is behind it? Who is Jeroen Wijering?

Published on 2011-04-20 08:14:40

Who is Jeroen Wijering,  the creator of the industry standard JW player? What is his relationship with Longtail Video Solutions?  This trailer to the documentary video from PictureThis.tv gives you an insight into the history of the most famous vid

S3 Amazon and DreamHost: a perfect marriage

Published on 2011-04-03 11:13:01

By placing all heavy files on S3 Amazon/CloudFront, you only need a lightweight solution like DreamHost for your site itself. That way you have the best of both worlds. Both services are very cheap and easy to deal with. In the past, I had my doubts

How to switch from low resolution video to HD - part 2

Published on 2011-02-23 14:36:19

In this part, which is meant for S3 Amazon account holders, we are going to focus on streaming video. Streaming has a lot of advantages, which are explained in S3 Streaming video with CloudFront.   One extra perk not discussed in that article is im

How to switch from low resolution video to HD automatically - part 1

Published on 2011-02-20 05:54:55

In this article, I’ll show you how to switch automatically from a low resolution video to HD video on your site.  Standard, the low resolution version will play and when the visitor hits the full screen button, the HD video takes over.  HD sw

Fantastic camera work: Voices from the Field

Published on 2011-02-07 05:58:41

In August 2010, myself and two other film students went to Africa to make a film for the non-profit Project Concern. I went through a lot making this film — it was a difficult first film, and a mesmerizing experience. John X Carry Voices fr

The dangers of complying with iPad and iPhone

Published on 2011-02-06 15:18:03

Many of us love to see video plugins being compatible with iPhone and iPad and up to a point that is fine. For public videos there is no problem at all, but if you want to protect your VOD- or membership videos with private streaming, you simply cann

How to improve quality of video tutorials on YouTube

Published on 2011-01-10 08:19:56

When you upload a 800×600 screen capture video tutorial to YouTube, the quality deteriorates so badly that texts in the video are hardly readable. The reason is that YouTube regards everything smaller then HD video as a free license to shrink t

Converting video to streaming MP4 for S3 Amazon with AVS Video Converter

Published on 2011-01-07 19:08:18

Some video converters do not get it right when converting video to MP4 to stream on S3 Amazon/CloudFront. Especially the cheaper converters like AVS Video Converter for Windows tend to have problems. Luckily, there is a trick to fix this problem. Her

Streaming HD Video test on S3 CloudFront

Published on 2010-12-25 09:57:17

It is a while ago since I did a test with an HD video on S3 Amazon, so I thought this might be a good moment to go for it again. As we all know, HD video on video services like YouTube, Vimeo and others play reasonably well, although they inevitably

Going West - a stunning video by Line Andersen

Published on 2010-11-16 15:32:40

Marvelous video commercial for the New Zealand Book Council which showcases the narration and animation of a book called Going West by Maurice Gee. The video is created by Andersen M Studio. This is a stunning piece of work and each aspect of the vid

Cheap Web Hosting vs. Dedicated Server

Published on 2010-11-12 07:50:38

When it comes to choosing a hosting provider for a website, there are several options. After the provider is chosen, the next step is to choose one of the many available web hosting packages. The two primary types of web hosting include dedicated ser

New categories created

Published on 2010-11-11 09:14:57

Since I write quite a lot about S3 Amazon related issues, we decided to dedicate a special category for it so that you can find everything on this subject in one place. So far, we plugged most of it in Video Channels/Networks which is a bit awkward.

S3 Cloudfront: How to setup a bucket for private streaming - revised

Published on 2010-11-09 18:07:42

To avoid problems with streaming video and audio, in particular private streaming, the way to go is to start with a fresh S3 AWS bucket without any content in it. Decide upfront which bucket is going to contain media for streaming and which one for

S3Media Streamâ„¢ to protect your video and audio on WordPress

Published on 2010-11-05 11:39:31

Sometimes, you do not want to show video or audio to everyone. Or you want to show it to everyone, but you do not want third parties to publish your media on their site. S3 Amazon combined with Private Streaming can help you with this. I wrote alread

S3: Streaming MP3 audios on CloudFront is a problem. The solution is simple.

Published on 2010-11-03 10:14:25

Streaming MP3 is problematic on S3 Cloudfront. It often does not play and you get no error message telling you what the problem is. The fastest and best way to deal with this is to convert your audio to M4a, the format used for iTunes. I know, you ar

WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe - review

Published on 2010-10-02 11:39:56

WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe is a little handy application to transform High Definition videos into a wide range of formats on Mac and Windows. You can also convert other formats with it and generally, this works fine. The range of output formats i