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admin_JM

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  1. admin_JM

    Website Help Pages

    By admin_JM,


    ANNOUNCEMENTS
    Today we launched a new set of website help pages which can be found in Support -> Website Help.
    Much of the content was inspired by the https://USA7s.net site (with their permission). I'd like to give a huge thanks to Cobar for the content and permission to use it.  
    In addition to USA7s content we also added screenshots specific to this site as well as a few more help articles.
    This is just the start of this help system and we hope there will be lots of comments and suggestions for updates and new items. If you see something that's wrong then please leave a comment in the article. If you have a suggestion for new help items then please let one of the admin's know through the Staff page.
    A couple of good articles to get started with are:
    Getting Started with the Website Website Overview John
  2. admin_JM

    BlatChat Forums menu now includes Quick Links

    By admin_JM,


    ANNOUNCEMENTS
    Today we added a sub-menu to the Blatchat --> Forums menu.
    The sub-menu provides quick links to each forum as well as "All Forums" and "New and Updated".
    Clicking the All Forums link takes you to the forums page as it was before this change. Clicking New and Updated takes you to the Unread Content Activity Stream. John

  3. admin_JM

    Added Website Update blog to System Menu

    By admin_JM,


    ANNOUNCEMENTS
    We've added a new Website Update blog to the site today. Administrators will post website changes to this blog.
    Updates will include announcements on configuration changes, menu changes and system updates.
    A new sub-menu called "System Blogs" has been added to the "Support" menu.
     
  4. admin_JM

    Member Storage Limit Increase to 750MB

    By admin_JM,


    ANNOUNCEMENTS
    Member storage limits have been increased from 500MB to 750MB.
    (This is a catchup post, the change was made last week)
    Background: Some users were getting close to their storage limits and so it was decided to increase limits for everyone. This change can only be applied to groups and is not available on a per member basis. 
    Reply to comment: The website is managed using the concept of "Groups". There are members groups, administrator groups etc. We can only change storage limits on a per-group basis. So this change has to be applied to all club members rather being applied to individuals who might be close to their storage limits.
  5. admin_JM

    Site Policies added to Footer

    By admin_JM,


    ANNOUNCEMENTS
    Site policy document links have been moved to the site footer. This means they're visible on every page of the site and not spread around the menus.
    They are:
    Guidelines - essentially the "Code of Conduct" for the site. The name may be changed from "Guidelines" to "Code of Conduct" in a later change. Privacy Policy Terms of Use - these are the terms and conditions that members sign up to when joining the website. Contact Us - Contact form Cookies - Cookie policy The new footer looks like this:

  7. admin_JM
    So, I'd been hoping to get a promotional video together for the Club all through 2021 but hadn't quite got my act together. However, during one of our Media Team's monthly Zoom calls we thought it would be a cool idea to try and get a Christmas promo video together and see if we could attract a few more people to join the club. The video was going to be aimed at Facebook, Instagram and YouTube (but mainly the first two). That meant the video had to really hard hitting, quick paced and less than a minute (more on that below).
    The Blatchat post about this video can be found here.
    I'd got quite a lot of footage from the Speed Champs video and from some of the drone footage that was taken from the 2021 Fish and Chip Run. I'd also had a standing request out for more Club video footage and that had got us some great footage from Chris Bates (Skyhook Video). Chris's shots are of the Bristol and Bath summer BBQ in 2019 and the Gaydon national event. The drone shot on the Fish and Chip run is from Mark (Blatchat username: mph).
    Hopefully the video conveys the diverse activities that Club members get up to. It should also be a good starting point for a slightly longer-form version of the video for a full Club promotional video.
    As I sit and write this today (27/12/2021) the video has had the following interactions on social media:
    Facebook - Reach: 5314, Post Engagements: 226, Reactions: 28, Comments: 2, Shares: 4, Impressions: 5801 Instagram - Reach: 252, Likes: 19 YouTube - Views: 391, Likes: 14 BlatChat - Posts: 17, Thread Views: 649 In terms of whether it actually created any new Club members, the jury is still out and we'll have to wait and see what the data shows us in a few weeks.
    The tech used to create the video was as follows:
    Apple Final Cut Pro (Video editing, music, titles etc) Apple Motion (Motion Graphics, lower 3rds) iZotope RX9 (Audio repair) Pixelmator Pro (Thumbnails, stills, logos etc) MotionVFX (a few plugins for Social Media graphics, intro animations, the Christmas animations were a MotionVFX plugin) In terms of the overall time spent making this video... it was probably around 15 hours.
    Things I'd do differently:
    Firstly, get your timing right. I hadn't appreciated that Instagram has a hard limit of 60 seconds for video uploads. The facebook and YouTube uploads are 71 seconds. It was only when I went to upload the video to Instagram that I found it was too long and needed to be 60s max. I had to chop 11 seconds out of the video - and at only just over a minute that's quite a lot. I'll leave it up to you viewers to find the deleted sections :-)
  8. admin_JM
    So, this video was probably never going to set the internet alight. But I think its important to record these events where we can.
    At the end of each Speed Championship season all the racing points are totted up for all the races and the winners are announced. Then a few weeks later the competitors get together and hand out the trophies for the season. This year (2021) saw the presentations being made at Silverstone, in a large function room contained in the main events building on the start/finish straight.
    As it happened the Club leadership team took the opportunity of a bunch of us being at the Speed Awards to also have a LT meeting in the morning. Most of us then chipped in for the lunch and stayed on to watch the presentations. Which also meant I could record the events.
    The format of the day is a meet & greet, followed by a lunch and then presentations. The whole awards presentations after lunch took about 50 minutes and my aim was to record them for posterity.
    The BlatChat thread about the post can be found here.
    In all the shooting of the video went reasonably well. The room wasn't very well set up for taking video though. The big windows caused problems for exposure and the room was very oblong and with two very intrusive pillars in the way. I was hoping I was going to be able to get my main camera at the back of the hall and get a good front on shot of the presenters, but the room was too shallow and the tables were set out right up against the back wall. The presenters were naturally going to be looking at the left of the room, which was good for where I had my camera, but meant the big windows were in shot.
    I also had a real school-boy-error with my main camera. I had it set to 50fps after taking some shots of the cars on the circuit, but that meant that it was probably going to overheat before then end of the presentations. And sure enough it did. About 35 minutes into the presentations it overheated and I had to switch to a backup camera - luckily I had it right next to me and ready to go. But that took me about 4 minutes to get the cameras switched and so in the meantime I had to rely on the footage from the GoPro and the Insta360. I then had the same thing happen to the GoPro... I had that set to 50fps as well and it ran out of battery at about 40 minutes in. Luckily I was back with a main camera and had the Insta360 to fall back on.
    What worked really well was using Rode Wireless Go II wireless microphones. I had 4 of these radio mics and fitted one to each of the presenters. That gave me some very good audio to work with.
    After shooting the whole event we decided that it was probably best not to try and put out all 52 minutes of the presentations. So we left in most of the bits about the season and the winners of each category. Sorry if you got a 2nd or 3rd place but I hope you can see that might have been too much in the end.
    In terms of the time taken to produce this video... well there was day of being at the event to start with, but I won't count that in my calculations. The video would have been much easier to edit if I hadn't had the camera gaffs. But in the end it probably took 40 to 50 hours to put together.
    The tech used... here's the kit I used on the day and the software used to edit the video:
    On the day: Canon R5 (overheated) Canon R6 Canon 24-105mm F4 GoPro Hero 10 Black Insta 360 X2 Wireless Go II x 4 Zoom H5 field recorder Manfrotto tripods Editing Apple Final Cut Pro (Video editing, music, titles etc) Apple Motion (Motion Graphics, lower 3rds) iZotope RX9 (Audio repair) Pixelmator Pro (Thumbnails, stills, logos etc) MotionVFX (a few plugins for Social Media graphics, intro animations) What I'd do differently:
    Try and get to the venue before hand. If I'd have known about the two pillars in the middle of the room I'd have tried to do something differently with the placement of my cameras (and even asked for some tables to be shifted slightly). Be more assertive about getting my footage. Not in an "in your face sort of way" but I should have trotted over to where Rob and Richard were standing and took some video of them shaking hands. I should also have slowed things down a bit at the end on the podiums, I wasn't quite ready with my cameras and so lost the "money shots". I was very much trying to keep out of everyone's way on the day, I should have piped up a little bit more though. Use better cameras. I thought I was going to get a good view with my main Canon camera and the GoPro and Insta360 were just going to be for backup. But because of the pillars and my school-boy-error with the Canon battery, I had to rely on them more. I should have used a second mirrorless camera as a backup instead of the GoPro. I'm not sure I'll use a 360 degree camera again for something like this. The resolution wasn't great (I knew that already) and while it gave me a lot of flexibility, I think I would have had better footage from a GoPro, or even another mirrorless camera that I could have used. Don't leave your Mac laptop power supply plugged into the power socket next to the projector . That was an expesive mistake! John
  9. admin_JM
    This video was another result of the Media Team's December Zoom call. We agreed I'd have a go at both a merchandise video and a club Christmas promo video, if I got time. 
    The Club merchandise time-table had all revolved around getting the everything available in time for Christmas orders. From the actual decision to change through to Christmas was a continual push for designs, samples and getting the store populated. In the end there were a couple of items that took a bit longer, so while I had this video done already we had to wait until the week of the final deadline before we could make the video live.
    We were also limited on what photos we had of the merchandise. The photos were taken at the Club's Speed Championship Awards lunch, held at Silverstone. That meant the photos on the web store and this video weren't what we might have hoped for. But beggars can't be choosers and we decided it was better to put something out rather than nothing.
    The BlatChat post about the video can be found here.
    As for results, the jury is still out on how many extra bits of merchandise were sold as a result of this video. But hopefully in a few weeks we'll be able to see if it made a difference - I suspect it won't be much.
    For Social Media stats we have the following up until 27/12/2021:
    Facebook - Reach: 2803, Engagement: 297 Instagram - Reach: 389, Likes: 31 YouTube -  Views: 180, LIkes: 9 Music: I would have really liked to have got some music attached to this video. But I really couldn't find anything royalty free that I thought went with the visuals. So in the end I decided it was better to have no music rather than a bad go at music. 
    In terms of the time it took to create this video... it was probably about 10 hours. The tricky bit was getting the merchandise "glamour" shots into the video with their backgrounds removed and the exposure about right - though that list item wasn't really very good in the end.
    Tech used:
    Apple Final Cut Pro (Video editing, titles etc) Apple Motion (Motion Graphics, lower 3rds) iZotope RX9 (Audio repair) Pixelmator Pro (Thumbnails, stills, logos etc) MotionVFX (a few plugins for Social Media graphics, intro animations, etc) Stuff to do differently:
    If we're going to do something similar for next year then I need to start much earlier, and have a video available at the start of December.  Do a few posts with the video to Social Media through December Better photos, and even a bit of video of the merch if we can.
  10. admin_JM

    Social Video Blog

    By admin_JM,

    Hi All,
    This is an initial post to get the ball rolling on Club created videos.
    Over the next few posts I'll highlight what we've been up to since we started working more on club videos and then in subsequent posts to keep members updated on what we're up to as and when videos are released. Hopefully I'll also get time to tell you what we're currently working on and what the upcoming schedule looks like.
    We'll be using a Blog format for these updates so that members have a simple single place to go and look at what's new in Club videos. We're doing this because sometimes posts can drop off the bottom of everyone's forums pages as not everyone reads every post and every comment. We can also embed videos more easily in Blog posts and also have the benefit that any video posted in a blog will also appear on the Blogs, Videos page automatically.
    I look forward to hearing your thoughts and comments as this blog progresses.
    John
  11. admin_JM
    A year in photos and video from the 2021 Speed Championship.
    81 Drivers 15 Rounds 6 Classes 5 Championships The original BlatChat Post about this video can be found here. 
    The content of that post was
    The Detail
    At the end of the season Graham asked all the competitors to provide video and/or photos that they took through the Speed Championships in 2021. They each then uploaded their contributions (if they wanted to) to a Dropbox folder which gave me about a month to produce a video.
    It has a 38 minute and 47 second run time. Graham first asked me for a 10 minute video, but that was going to be a challenge given all the media I was provided with.
    The 900 photos and 50 videos created a video that was about 2 hours long. So I spent the month chopping that down to something more palatable and adding some music, titles and graphics. I know not everyone likes the music but on the whole reactions are more positive than negative to music so that's what I'll keep doing. The music for this video is essentially selected from a set of Jingle sound effects which are included in Apple's Final Cut Pro video editing software.
    All in all there's about 1100 items in the video: video clips, audio, transitions, titles, etc. Each needs to be timed correctly to achieve some sense of rythm... hopefully I've achieved that through the video.
    In terms of the time it took to create this video... it probably took somewhere around 50 hours in total.
    The tools used for this video were:
    Apple Final Cut Pro (Video editing, music, titles etc) Apple Motion (Motion Graphics, lower 3rds) iZotope RX9 (Audio repair) Pixelmator Pro (Thumbnails, stills, logos etc) MotionVFX (a few plugins for Social Media graphics, intro animations etc) Google Text to Speech (for the spoken bit at the beginning I used Google's speech APIs to produce some speech that wasn't me! ) Things I would do differently:
    Try and get the club to pay for better music - I struggle to find even reasonable royalty free music to add to these videos and it can take a long time to fit what I can get into the tempo of the video we're trying to go for Ask the speed champ guys for a few more videos of cars on the circuits (from outside the car) and some more videos of things in the paddock. Perhaps narrate some more of the video and produce more of a story Get people to send video/audio through the year rather than just at the end. As of December 27th 2021 the video has been watched about 1,000 times and is one of the more popular videos on the clubs YouTube channel.
    John
  14. admin_JM
    The video in this post is a bit of a different one. 
    As many will know The Club chose to go with Prostate Cancer Research as the Club's supported charity for 2021. Stephen Hubbard (Golf Juliet Tango) came up with a great tag-line slogan and image for the start of our work with PCR - a stylized image of a 6 point racing harness and the tag-line "Gentlemen, is everything ok under the buckle?". A really imaginative combination of the Prostate checks we know we all should have, and the daily reality of many Seven owners, buckling up to enjoy our driving.
    So, as a way of promoting the new imagery, and slogan, and to promote the charity during Men's Health Week 2021, I decided to have a go at turning Stephen's work into a video animation.
    If you watch the video you can see that I animated each of the harness straps, added sound-effects of the buckles clicking together and added a tongue in cheek "race starter's" voice-over of the slogan.
    The animation was created by chopping up Stephen's original image in Pixelmator Pro into various pieces, which were then animated in Apple Motion 5 and imported into Final Cut Pro X to add the sound and additional graphics. The thumbnail was created in Pixelmator Pro. All in all that was probably about 15 hours of work to create a 22 second video!! 
    John
  17. admin_JM
    Hi All,
      here's the first real post on this blog, about the first YouTube video we released as part of our 2021 commitment to make more videos for, and about, the Club.
      You can find my original BlatChat forum post here. And for a more in depth look at how the video was created you can take a look at my Purplemeanie blog post on the topic here.
      It was a real learning experience to get this webinar together and to create the video that resulted. In the future we hope to use what we learnt to make more videos like this for club members. They are, however, extremely time consuming and will have to be fitted in around life and other club events.
      If you have suggestions for webinars then please comment, DM or email me.
    John
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