Editing lecture videos using Davinci Resolve

In my previous post I described a simple workflow for generating lecture videos.  One limitation of this workflow is that when slides are shared as a virtual background in Zoom (which I like to do in order to keep my webcam image on the screen next to the slides), the cursor is not captured in the video recording.  Since I occasionally need to highlight a portion of the image, this means that I need to edit the video files to add that highlighting.  To do this I decided to use DaVinci Resolve 16, which is a powerful video editing tool that is available for free.  It has a bit of a learning curve, but the power appears to be well worth it; here I will show my workflow for adding annotations to a lecture video.  I'm mostly doing this so that I remember how to do it next time around, but hopefully it might also be useful for others.

In this example I am discussing Z-scores, and I want to highlight the location of the Z = 0 (i.e. the mean) and Z =1 (one standard deviation) on the normal distribution.  After opening DaVinci Resolve, I start a new project for my video, which will open a browser for the media in my project.  I then import my lecture video using File -> Import File ->  Import Media; it will ask whether you want to change the video settings to match the current project, which I accept.  The video will now appear in the media browser in the top left; drag the video onto the timeline browser in the lower leftmost portion of the screen, which will add it to your timeline.  Now go to the "Edit" window by clicking the Edit button at the bottom (third icon from the left).  Now you will see your video in the timeline at the bottom, along with a preview window at the top:

Now let's add our annotation. First, find the location in the video where you want to add the annotation.  Then, right click in the area just to the left of the timeline, and add a new track:

Now open the Effects library using the tab at the top of the screen (if it's not already open), and navigate to the Effects panel under the Toolbox option.  You should see an option for "Adjustment  Clip" - grab this and drag it to the location on your video that you had identified.

Then, select and right click on the Adjustment Clip that was just created, and choose "Open in Fusion Page":

This will open the Fusion editor, which is a powerful tool for all sorts of video edits.  You will see a section in the bottom left showing two nodes for MediaIn1 and MediaOut1; what you need to do is add a Paint node into the line connecting those nodes, which you can do by right-clicking onto the line and Adding a Paint tool node:

You will now see details about the Paint tool in the inspector to the top right.  Here is perhaps the most important thing to know here:  The tool that is opened by default (the "Multistroke" tool) doesn't do what we want it to do here, which is to create a graphic that remains on the screen for the length of our Adjustment clip.  To do that, select the simple "Stroke" tool, which for me is the fourth icon in the panel above the preview:

You should then see a set of controls for Stroke1 in the Inspector to the top right:

Choose the color for your annotation along with changing any other features of interest; I will use a red painbrush, so I click on the color chooser and pick a red color.  Then you simply start painting in the preview window:

Now go back to the editing window, and adjust the length of the Adjustment Clip as needed for your video.  You can add as many additional annotations as needed using this same method.  

Occasionally I realize that I have said something incorrect in the video. Rather than re-recording or trying to edit the video itself, I simply add a title to the screen nothing that I misspoke. This is easy using the Title feature from the Effects library in the editing page:

Once you are done, simply export the video using the QuickExport feature and you are ready to go!

A quick and dirty workflow for creating lecture videos

I'm currently in the midst of fully reworking my undergraduate statistics course for online learning, which includes creating about 40 short (5-10 minute) mini-lectures for the students to view asynchronously.  As much as I would love to put many hours into generating high-touch videos, my time is limited so I needed a workflow that would allow me to generate these videos with as little overhead as possible.  Here is what I came up with.

Platform: I'm using a Macbook Pro as part of the setup described in my previous post on my home office setup.   

Software: I use Keynote to create the slides, Zoom to record the presentation, and QuickTime Player for cleaning up the video.

Slide Prep:  First, it's important to make sure that your slides don't use any builds, because (at least for Keynote) the Zoom "Slides as virtual background" feature doesn't support builds.  So just separate your builds out into separate slides.  Second, because your head will appear in the bottom right of the screen, you should make sure that there is no essential material that appears in that location.  In the worst case, you can always just move your head out of the way, which I imagine is someone amusing for the viewer.

Recording workflow:

1. Start a Zoom meeting, and start Screen Sharing. Under the Advanced tab, choose "Slides as virtual background", share the screen and the choose your presentation file.  

The slides will load, with a small image of your head in the bottom right.  

One exception to this workflow is if you need to present video as part of your presentation, which doesn't work with the "Slides as virtual background" option. In this case you'll need to use a regular screen share, which will lose the talking head in the corner.

2. Start recording, being sure to select "Record on this computer".

3. After you start recording, give yourself a few seconds to settle and get any fidgets out of the way.  Then start talking.  I try to give the entire lecture without stopping, realizing that I will probably make a few mistakes, and that's ok.  Occasionally I find myself totally flummoxed part way through, or realizing that I need to make a big change, in which case I simply quit and start over.  Since each of the videos is relatively short, I don't lose that much time if I have to bail partway through.

One tip that I still find somewhat difficult to follow: Try to finish your comments about a particular slide before you flip to the next slide.  I find that I have a habit of flipping forward to the next slide as I am finishing my comments about a slide.  This is usually fine for talk, but for these lectures I am using Panopto within Canvas to embed quiz questions in the video, which I usually want to place at a transition between slides. However, if I am still talking about the previous slide after I have transitioned to the next slide, the quiz placement becomes awkward.

4. When you get to the end of the lecture, give yourself a few seconds of stillness on the last slide or on a blank slide inserted after the last slide.

5. End the Zoom session using the End button (no need to stop sharing).  This will cause Zoom to save the video to a file, which will pop up in the Finder once it's done. 

Post-processing workflow:

1.  Open the mp4 file from the Zoom recording folder in QuickTime Player. 

2. Find the point where you want to start the video, just before you start talking.  With the player paused at that location, choose "Split Clip" from the Edit menu. Click on the leftmost section in the timeline, and press Delete to remove that leading section, then click Done to save the change.  Now do the same for the end of the video, finding the point where you want to end and removing the trailing section.

There is a "Trim clip" feature that one can use to do this in a single step rather than two,  but I find that it's easier to be precise about where the trimming happens using the Split Clip method.

3. Close and save the video to a new .mp4 file.

I find that this method takes me only a minute or so to post-process each video once it's recorded.  Of course, you could do much fancier stuff if you wanted; in that case I would check out DaVinci Resolve, which is one of the most amazing pieces of free software ever created but has a pretty steep learning curve for serious video editing

Uploading the video:

If you are using Canvas and your instance supports Panopto, then I would recommend using that method to upload the videos, since it provides viewing statistics (e.g. for recording which students have watched the video) and also allows embedding quiz questions within the video.  

As always, suggestions are welcome in the comments below!

Home office setup

One of my colleagues recently asked me about my home office setup, after noting that my video and audio quality is generally quite good on our frequent Zoom calls.  Whenever anyone asks me a question like this, I take it as a good excuse to write a blog post!

We have all spent a lot of time in our home offices since March, and I’m lucky that we have a guest bedroom that I was able to repurpose as my home office.  I’ve ended up spending a bit of money to make it nice, but I think in general the investments have been good.  However, I’ve also gone cheap/DIY when I can.  Here is a photo of my desk setup:

Here’s a quick rundown of the various items:

1. Camera: Logitech C930e
2. Microphone: Audio-Technica ATR2100x-USB with Sterling Audio Sterling SM5 Shock Mount
3. Pop Filter: Stedman Proscreen XL
4. Mic boom: Rode PSA1
5. Headphones (over-ear): Audio-Technica ATH-AD700X Open-air
6. Headphones (in-ear): Apple AirPods
7. Lighting: Homemade diffusers with Cree 5000K LED bulbs
8. Green screen: Homemade
9. Chair: Steelcase Leap

Camera: This webcam was scavenged from my lab at the beginning of the pandemic, back when it was impossible to find a webcam in stock for purchase.  It works fine, though I wouldn't say that the picture quality is amazing.  After seeing one of my colleagues get amazing video quality by using their DSLR as a webcam, I tried it out with our relatively ancient Canon Rebel - the color was much better but its video was way too laggy, and the camera/tripod setup took up too much room on my desk, so I’ve stuck with the Logitech.  I use the Webcam Settings App for Mac to zoom the image so that my head takes up most of the image without having to lean into the camera.

Microphone setup:  I wanted to get a boom mic rather than a stand mic, mostly because I didn’t want a stand mic taking up extra space on my desktop.  I know that many people use either a lapel mic or a mic integrated into their headset, but neither of those sounded attractive to me.  The microphone connects via USB to my computer, and works really well. I went for a nicer mic in part because I was planning to record an audio version of my statistics book to provide to my students, and I’ve been really happy with the sound quality.  The shock mount does a good job of isolating low-frequency noise from the desk, though a tiny bit of keyboard noise is evident when I’m typing, even with the mic pointed directly away from the keyboard.  The Rode mic stand can sometimes be difficult to keep in position, but works fine for my purposes.  I don’t use the popscreen for Zoom calls, but it has been important for recording spoken word material, which otherwise sounds like I’m spitting on the listener.

Headphones: I generally alternate between in-ear and over-ear headphones over the day.  I love the AirPods, but after a while they start hurting my ears, and they don’t have enough battery life to get me through a full day of Zoom meetings.  The Audio-Technica headphones were my first open-back headphones, and I am definitely a convert - they let you hear the outside world, and don’t leave you with that closed-in feel that you get from closed-back headphones.  They are also super comfortable.  These are standard wired headphones, which I like both because they don’t have a lag like bluetooth headphones (not so important for Zoom calls but essential when I’m playing guitar), and also because I will never be stuck with a dead battery.

Lighting: Everything else involved buying some equipment, so for the lighting setup I decided to go DIY (with lots of help and encouragement from my designer/wife Jen).  I wanted a simple two-point lighting setup from the two sides of my monitor, so we started with a couple of old table lamps that we had around the house.  I took a couple of empty wooden picture frames and attached each one to one of the arms of the lamp using a plastic cable stay, which is not exactly bulletproof but so far as lasted several months without failing.  

To create a diffuser I started with some architectural tracing paper which I affixed in a sleeve around the picture frames.  ultimately this wasn’t quite enough diffusion (I was still seeing strong reflections of the light in my glasses), so I also attached a piece of standard printer paper to the front with a binder clip.  I still get a bit of point glare, but it’s not too bad:

I'll probably try to do some more tweaking to resolve that.  We started with some warmer bulbs but I didn’t love the color, so I replaced them with Cree 5000K LED bulbs which I’m pretty happy with.

Green screen: I don’t usually use a green screen, but sometimes I need it if I want to play with video editing software for lecture videos. This one is also DIY - basically a wheeled clothing rack with a green fleece blanket attached using some large binder clips. 

Definitely not pretty, but gets the job done.

Chair: After spending the first few months of quarantine sitting in a cheapo office chair (and feeling the effects by the end of the day), I decided to splurge on a serious office chair. I already had a Steelcase Leap in my campus office, so I knew I would be happy with it. It has not disappointed - it’s definitely not cheap, but if you need a really good chair and have the budget I would definitely recommend it. Your butt will thank you!

I'm interested to hear your thoughts and any tips on how to further optimize the setup.

Vacation fun: Making traditional Texas chili con carne

I’m on vacation at home this week, and one afternoon when it was especially gray (because San Francisco in July) I decided to cook up some chili con carne.  The recipe that I use is a modification of one that I can no longer find online, written by Reece Lagnuas back when he was a butcher in Austin.  I documented this cook because the recipe is such a great rendition of the traditional Texas chili that I grew up eating that I thought it should be out there for everyone to try.  And this batch turned out to be especially good!

Your reward at the end of this journey

Be forewarned, this dish requires a pretty substantial time commitment - from start of prep until the dish was cooking it took me about 90 minutes.  Once it’s cooking you just need to check it occasionally to make sure it’s simmering and not cooking too hard - it should be ready to eat within 2-3 hours.  Perfect activity for a cool, gray vacation afternoon!

Also - I've never written a recipe before, I apologize in advance for how verbose it is...

Ingredients:

• Meat: I hope it goes without saying that you should only cook with humanely raised meat.  The meat for this cook came from our neighborhood butcher shop, Avedanos, which supports local family farms.  
• • ~ 2.5 pounds pork shoulder
  • ~ 2.5 pounds brisket (preferablly from the fattier end, known variously as the point or deckle)
  • if you have your own meat grinder then buy them whole, otherwise ask your butcher to grind them as coarsely as possible 
• 1 large onion - diced relatively small
• fresh chiles
• • 2 red bell peppers
  • 2 poblano peppers
  • 2 large jalapeno peppers
• dried chiles - I use a varying mix, this time it was:
• • 2 chile ancho
  • 3 dried pasilla
  • 2 chile guajillo
• seasonings: you can mix all of these together as they will be added at the same time
• • salt (start with 1 tbs, we like it salty so usually add more to taste later in the cook)
  • ground black pepper (1 tsp)
  • cayenne pepper (if you want it spicy - for this cook, I added about 1/3 tsp of Penzey’s Black & Red which is a mix of black and cayenne pepper - the end result had just a very tiny bit of spicy kick)
  • Chili Powder (3 tbs)
  • Ground cumin seed (2 tsp)
  • Garlic powder (1 tbs)
  • Onion Powder (1 tbs)

Steps:

Roast the fresh peppers.  The goal here is to char the skins so that they come off easily after steaming.  I used my outdoor gas grill, but you can also do this directly over the burner of a gas range.  If you don’t have gas then it sounds like you can also use an electric range or toaster oven.  You want the skins to be charred black over as much of the pepper as possible, so you will need to turn them regularly; the larger peppers will probably take much longer than the small ones.  Once they are nicely charred, then put them in a loosely sealed container to steam for at least 20 minutes.

Roasting the fresh chiles on the backyard gas grill

Roast and rehydrate the dried chiles.  This will require a hot pan (I used the same Dutch oven that I will use to cook the chili) and about a quart of boiling water.  Heat the pan on high and toss in the chiles, turning them regularly to prevent burning.  When they start to smell roasty, place them in a heatproof bowl for soaking.  Before you soak them, use some scissors to cut small holes in the side of each chili - this will make it easier to get any air out and submerge the chiles fully. After cutting the holes, pour the boiling water over the chilis.  

Roasting the dried chiles

Prepare the meat.  If your meat was ground by your butcher then you can skip this step.  I like to grind the meat myself, since butchers often need time to set up their grinder for a coarse grind.  I use the meat grinder attachment for our KitchenAid mixer.  When grinding meat, it’s important for both the meat and grinder to be as cold as possible, so I put both of them in the freezer for about an hour before grinding the meat.  Chop the meat into strips or chunks that are small enough to fit in the grinder feed; I like to leave most of the fat on and remove it later during the cook, but sometimes I will trim away large fat pieces.

Action shot - grinding the brisket

Clean and chop the chiles.  Remove the skins from the fresh chilis (they should come off easily after steaming), and also remove the stem, seeds, and membranes inside the chili.  Don’t wash them!  For the dried chiles, try to remove as much of the seeds and membrane as possible (don’t worry about the skins).  Then chop them until they are nearing the consistency of a paste; this generally takes a lot of work.

Dried chiles after roasting

Another action shot - chopping chiles

Time to start cooking!  Add about 2 Tbs of oil to the large pot, and cook the onions on relatively high heat until they are just starting to brown, stirring constanly.

Blooming the spices - the smell is amazing

Add the spice mixture once the onions are starting to brown, and stir constantly for a minute or two. You should smell the spices bloom, especially the cumin seed.

Browning the meat. After blooming the spices, add the meat and cook for several minutes until it is starting to brown. You should be able to smell the meat browning and start to see fat from the meat rendering out in the pan. 

Add the chili paste and mix into the meat. Then add just enough water to cover the meat; for this cook it was about 6 cups.

About 3 hours in - almost done!

Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer.  The chili will then cook for at least 2 hours and preferably 3 or more hours; for this cook, it went a bit more than 3 hours.

Skim extra grease.  A couple of hours into the cook, there will likely be a substantial amount of grease on the top of the chili.  I like to remove some of this before serving, so that the chili isn’t too greasy. There are probably fancy ways to do this, but I simply use a Chinese soup spoon to skim the fat off of the top.  This time around I ended removing about 1.5 cups of fat.

When you are ready to eat, taste the chili and add salt as needed to taste.

Enjoy!  I don’t generally like adulterating my chili with any additions, but this time I tried it with a bit of guacamole on the side, and it was really good.

This recipe makes a lot of food — we usually have enough left over from this recipe for two additional meals (for two people).  The chili keeps well in the freezer for at least a month, though it rarely lasts that long around here...

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Talking remotely: Lessons learned so far

Since making my commitment to reduce air travel for academic purposes, I’ve been giving a lot more remote talks.  In the last 5 months I have given 10 remote talks - many thanks to those who have agreed to host me virtually rather than in person:

September:

• National Academies Data Science in the Cloud workshop, Washington, DC
• National Academies Brain Health Across the Lifespan workshop, Washington, DC

October:

• Cognitive Science Colloquium, Institut d'Etudes Cognitives, École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France.
• Johns Hopkins University Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Distinguished Lecturer Series, Baltimore, MD
• NIMH  Talk Series on Machine Learning in Brain Imaging, Neuroscience, and Psychology, Bethesda, MD

November:

• Santa Fe Institute, Cognitive Regime Shift meeting, Santa Fe, NM
• Montreal Neurological Institute, Open Science Symposium, Montreal
• Johns Hopkins University Dept. of Biostatistics,  Bethesda, MD

January:

• IBI Data Standards and Sharing Working Group, Tokyo, Japan
• Max Planck School of Cognition, Berlin, Germany

Some of these were already bunched together so they wouldn’t have required separate flights, but even considering that, my back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that these flights would have resulted almost 7 tons of CO2 being generated (as estimated using https://www.icao.int/environmental-protection/Carbonoffset/Pages/default.aspx).  Not to mention lots of physiological stress from jet lag, and travel costs to be borne by my hosts. So in many ways it’s been a huge win for everyone.

An important issue, however, is what the experience was like, both for my hosts and the attendees and for myself.  The visits varied from talks with a short Q&A session, to extended visits in which my talk was followed by individual meetings with researchers. For me the experience has been very positive — certainly not as good as being there in some ways, but still very satisfying.  The least satisfying experience for me as a speaker has been in situations where I give a talk without time for Q&A afterwards.  I think that my hosts have also largely found it to be a positive experience, at least from the feedback that I’ve received. In one case, I was the pilot test for hosting extended virtual visits, and afterwards they told me that the experience had convinced them to do it regularly.  

Going through these talks has taught me a few lessons about how to improve the experience, both for the speaker and for the audience.

1. Always set up a time with the host to test things out in advance in the actual venue, preferably at least a few days before the talk.
2. On the day of the talk, arrange to meet the host online at least 15 minutes before the scheduled talk time.  Even when everything is well oiled, problems can arise, and you don’t want to be debugging them in front of an audience.
3. Give your host your cell phone number, and keep your phone handy so that they have an alternate way to contact you if necessary. 
4. In general I think it’s good for a virtual talk to be a bit shorter than a regular talk, simply because it’s easier for people to fade off when you are not present to look them in the eye.  Erring on the side of going short rather than long is also a good general principle — As an audience member I have rarely been upset when a talk went shorter than expected, and it gives more time for questions, which are usually the most interesting part anyway.
5. For longer talks (over an hour), give the audience a short intermission.  For example, for my talk to the Max Planck School of Cognition (a 90 min talk with 30 mins for questions), I asked the audience to stand up and stretch out about half way through, which they seemed to appreciate.

I also have several suggestions for hosts of virtual visits:

1. *Please* use a standard commercial conferencing system (like Zoom or Webex) rather than a home-grown system. Especially one that requires me to install special software! Having to install new software or log into a new system is just another potential point of failure for the talk. In general I have had the best experiences when using Zoom or Skype, but I’m sure there are other systems that are also good.  
2. As a speaker I particularly like being able to see a chat window on my screen as I’m talking, so that people can post questions during the talk.  This works well with systems like Zoom, but often doesn’t exist at all in home-grown systems. 
3. Please provide a camera so that the speaker can see the audience.  Talking without seeing the audience is much less pleasant and also makes it impossible to tell if people are disengaged, or if there is an unexpected problem with the A/V system.  
4. Make clear to the audience up front how questions will work.  I prefer having them submitted by chat window, but if they are going to be spoken, then there should be microphones explicitly for the question, and these should be tested beforehand to make sure that the speaker can hear them.
5. For extended visits, it has worked well to have a single Zoom room for the entire day, which individuals come into or out of throughout the day for their scheduled meetings.  Please remember that people sitting in front a computer have biological needs just like people who are physically present, so schedule regular bio-breaks during the day.
6. For events that are more discussion based, it's important to have multiple microphones spread around the room so that the virtual attendees can hear what is being said.  If someone is going to be writing on a whiteboard, it's also important to have a camera on the board.

Please leave other thoughts or suggestions in the comments below!