Knight Digital Media Center
Multimedia and Technology Training At the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
Multimedia and Technology Training At the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
Updated Sept. 20, 2009 in Computing
This tutorial presents resources for learning and mastering the OS X operating system, basic file management and basic communications tools.
Updated Nov. 4, 2009 in Web Development
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making the content you publish appear near the top of the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Your SEO skills make it easier for your audience to find and connect to your content.
There is a great deal of information about SEO online. A Google search on the term Search Engine Optimization returned about 30 million results. In addition there are 30 pages—more than 350—paid search results. Clearly there is a lot to say about SEO and many companies, services, sites and consultants that market their SEO services.
Sorting through all this information—coupled with all of the data available through Google Analytics—can make SEO seem like a huge task. In reality, the basics of good SEO can become part of your workflow in a short amount of time with virtually no technical requirements—and no consultant required.
This tutorial presents the foundation tools and techniques for incorporating good Search Engine Optimization techniques into your publication workflow.
Updated Sept. 1, 2009 in Audio
GarageBand '09 is a powerful, easy-to-use audio editing program. This tutorial shows the basic techniques for cutting an interview audio.
Updated Nov. 2, 2009 in Reporting
How do you decide whether to take a video camera, a photo camera, an audio recorder or just a good old reporter's notebook on a story?
This tutorial gives you some tips on how to make those choices.
Updated Oct. 20, 2009 in Web Development
Once you've created a web site, you'll need to upload it to a public web server, where the rest of the world can enjoy it. If you're not working with a content management system, you'll need to use one of the internet's oldest protocols, FTP (which stands for File Transfer Protocol). This tutorial includes a video screencast illustrating the FTP process step-by-step.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Web Development
Widgets are bits of code that when embedded into a website, blog or personal page on a social network, can display different kinds of content from other websites, such as a feed of news stories.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Video
Choosing the right video camera gear can be difficult since the market is flooded with an abundance of choices. If you break down the elements each camera has to offer, you can significantly narrow your choices to a camera that offers you the best results at an acceptable price.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Photography
There are three basic camera types: Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras, advanced point-and-shoot cameras, and point-and-shoot cameras. Each camera type comes with various prices points and advantages. This tutorial includes a buying guide and some information about the different camera types and which is best for your newsroom.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Mashups
ZeeMaps is a map mash-up application that can easily map address lists using data from industry-standard .csv [comma separated value] files.
Updated Aug. 12, 2009 in Web Development
HTML is for setting the logical markup of documents on the web, but has nothing to do with how those documents appear - that's a job for Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS. This tutorial provides an introduction to the fundamentals of document decoration with CSS.
Updated Nov. 2, 2009 in Reporting
This is an overview of the transformation to digital journalism that many news organizations and individual journalists are undertaking. This guide grew out of the opening presentations for the Knight Digital Media Center Multimedia Program multimedia training workshops.
The guide provides background information, data and history on the trends and tools that are rapidly changing the practice of journalism. It's designed to serve as a starting point for discussions at news organizations and among journalists about what needs to be done.
This is also very much a work in progress - we'll be constantly adding new information and new sections, including an exploration of the business side of online publishing. We welcome suggestions and comments to improve the guide.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Mashups
Locating photographs and mapping them online is a great way to add another dimension to a story or project. This tutorial will cover methods in tracking the locations where photos are shot and how to get them into maps.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Audio
Audacity is a free, lightweight, sound-editing program that works in PC, Mac OS X, and Linux. It is an easy way to start editing audio if there is little or no budget for this type of software. But Audacity quickly becomes eclipsed by other, more robust, pieces of software that are more complete, less bug-prone and have better support.
Updated Aug. 17, 2009 in Audio
Podcasts are a simple and effective way to add multimedia to your site. While there are many tools and applications available to create podcasts, this tutorial covers a basic setup for fast production. All you need is a headset, a Mac, and GarageBand.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Flash
This tutorial will go through the process of constructing a simple Flash template with three buttons. Each button will take you to a different section of the project that will showcase your videos, photo slideshows, or a Google map mashup. This tutorial was written for people using either Flash 8 or Flash CS3, under the ActionScript 2.0 language.
Updated Sept. 17, 2009 in Video
This tutorial will cover the basic use of the Canon VIXIA HF10 video camcorder, as used in a journalistic application. This tutorial is written specifically for the students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Although the information will be catered toward the school's use, we are making this available to the general public.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Web Development
New to WordPress? This tutorial will guide you through the basic steps of publishing with the WordPress 2.5 publishing platform. Learn how to post and mange your content, as well as upload media.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Web Development
Multimedia web sites often take the form of mini sites that don't utilize your publication's design templates. Coming up with fresh, professional-looking web designs for multimedia projects can be tedious and time-consuming. Fortunately, there are literally thousands of downloadable free web designs out there, ready to be customized and modified. In this tutorial, we point to some of the best resources for free web design templates, and also provide detailed instructions for modifying our own freely downloadable web design.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Mashups
This is a set of resources for map mashups. The resources include links to sample sites used in the KDMC Tech Training Workshops and links to online resources for creating your own map mashups.
This is not an exhaustive list of resources available; the list will get you started. If you find a great resource, please let us know and we'll add it here.
Updated May 29, 2009 in Mashups
How do you take spreadsheet data and turn it into a great looking map? How do you do this without writing a lick of code? These simple steps will make your mapping work fast and efficient.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Mashups
This tutorial will show you how to create your first Google map. These step-by-step instructions are guaranteed to get you started in one of the coolest—and easiest—Web technologies.Updated May 21, 2009 in Web Development, Flash
A tutorial on how to create and use templates for creating news projects using Adobe Flash. A general understanding of the basics of Flash is required for this instruction on implementing the templates.
Updated Aug. 12, 2009 in Audio
This tutorial covers some of the basics in portable digital audio recorder devices, and their use in a journalistic capacity. There are several factors to consider when purchasing a digial audio recorder, including cost, quality and durability.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Audio, Photography, Web Development, Flash
Soundslides has become one of the industry standards in creating audio slideshows due to its simple interface, low cost and its devotion to journalistic storytelling.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Reporting
Not all stories make good multimedia stories. The best multimedia stories are multi-dimensional. They include action for video, a process that can be illustrated with a graphic (e.g., "how tornadoes form" or "how this new surgery works"), someone who can give some pithy quotes for video or audio, and/or strong emotions for still photos and audio. Most multimedia stories require that the reporter go into the field to report the story face-to-face with sources, rather than doing a story entirely by telephone.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Photography
The Canon Rebel family of cameras is the first level of SLRs the company makes. They generally run between $600 to $1,000 depending on the kit options and accessories. The camera caters to a wide audience by including automatic options for beginners as well as highly customizable settings for more professional photographers.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Mashups
Now that you've learned how to create map mashups, adding them to your site should be a simple matter of copy-and-paste, right? Not so fast - there are a number of issues you may run into when trying to insert the map embed code provided by Google and other providers to your site. We'll cover a few of those here.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Audio
Many times professional digital audio recorders such as the Marantz PMD 660 are either not available or are too expensive. This tutorial will show one cheaper "non recommended" alternative when other options are not available.
Updated May 22, 2009 in Web Development
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is simple document markup languaged used for creating Web pages and other information viewable in a Web browser. This tutorial is a crash course in basic HTML - enough to get you up to speed and help you feel comfortable with general HTML syntax and structure.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Photography
There are two basic kinds of digital cameras: Digital SLR (single lens reflex) and non-SLR. Digital SLRs are generally more expensive and more accurate than non-SLR cameras, and include more professional features.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Audio
A compact flash audio recorder is a digital audio recording device that saves audio onto a compact flash card - the same kind of card used with a digital photo camera.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Video
This tutorial covers usage of the Sony DSR-PD170 or DSR-PD150 video camcorder. It is also an overview of video camera principles and hardware.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Photography, Web Development
Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard for working with digital images of any kind. This tutorial will take you through the entry-level steps of using the program to open, crop, resize, adjust and save a photographic image. While applicable to earlier versions, this tutorial uses Adobe Photoshop version CS3.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Web Development
Dreamweaver is a Web page design program that lets you type text and add media elements directly into a page, much as you would with a word processing program like Microsoft Word. Dreamweaver converts your text and graphical page design into the HTML code read by a Web browser.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Audio
A minidisc recorder is a digital audio recording device that saves audio onto a minidisc. Each minidisc holds up to about 80 minutes of recorded audio.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Video
This tutorial covers accessories related to the Sony DSR-PD170 or DSR-PD150 video camcorder. There are several accessories you should have with your camera to improve the quality of the video and audio you get, and to protect your equipment. They include things like different microphones and a set of headphones, a tripod and a carrying case, and various adapters, filters and cables.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Web Development, Flash
This is where your skills come together - Web page creation skills, interview skills, audio and video editing skills, and storytelling skills all converge at this point. Inserting media into Web pages is a bit more difficult than creating plain old HTML with graphics, but if you've mastered the other tutorials in this site, you'll do fine.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Audio
Soundtrack Pro is an audio editing program designed to work in concert with the Final Cut Pro video editing program. It can be used for more fine tuning of audio tracks in your video files than is possible in Final Cut Pro. It also can be used to edit audio files that are not attached to video, such as audio you recorded on a compact flash recorder or a minidisc recorder.
Updated Sept. 11, 2009 in Video
People invariably make the same sets of mistakes when they first start shooting video: Trees or telephone poles sticking out of the back of someone's head; interview subjects who are just darkened blurs because there was bright light in the background or beginners take boring shots of buildings with no action.
Here are some shooting tips to help you avoid some of these common mistakes...
Updated Nov. 18, 2009 in Flash
Adobe Flash is a powerful vector-based animation tool that has become the de facto standard for multimedia on the Internet because it allows authors to create online presentations with minimum file sizes. This is an entry-level tutorial to introduce Flash's basic features to people who have never used it before.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Audio
ProTools is a professional audio engineering software program made by Digidesign. Although it's used by top-notch pros in the radio industry, ProTools has a fairly easy learning curve, making it just as good for beginners.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Video
A voice-over is a narration done by a broadcast reporter, usually reading from a script and a standup is when a television reporter appears in front of the camera to narrate part of a story - most often at the beginning to set up the story, or at the very end.
However, reading that script is an art that requires both smooth delivery and emphasizing the key points in the story.
Here are some tips for doing these standups and voice-overs...
Updated May 21, 2009 in Video
iMovie is a simple, easy to use video editing program that comes free with the Apple operating system (it has no Windows PC version). Despite its simplicity, iMovie offers many of the same features — dropping clips on a time line, cropping them, adding transitions between clips, etc. — as more advanced video editing programs like FinalCut Pro or Premiere.
Updated May 29, 2009 in Video
Final Cut Pro is a very sophisticated video editing program made by Apple. It is the editing software of choice for multimedia journalists using Apple computers, and is comparable to Adobe's Premiere video editing program. Final Cut Pro does not make a version for Windows.
Final Cut Pro is particularly popular with video journalists working in the field who want to edit their video on a laptop computer.
Updated May 26, 2009 in Video
Premiere is the most popular video editing program that works on both Windows PCs and Apple computers. Made by Adobe, it is comparable to the Final Cut Pro video editing program for the Apple platform.
Premiere is particularly popular with video journalists working in the field who want to edit their video on a laptop computer.
Updated May 21, 2009 in Video
Once you've finished editing your video (or audio), you'll need to greatly reduce its filesize so that it can be transferred over the Web effectively. Compressing audio and video can be as much an art as a science, but we've attempted to simplify the process here.
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