Zen Mix is an Flash Web application that allows you to put any Web video on top of a Web picture and apply cool effects and then show others! This can be done very fast and for free. See the intro mix at the top of the Zen Mix site for a live example. Zen Mixes can be used for vlogging (video blogging), storytelling, promotion, e-learning, and more.
1. VIDEO
It is very easy these days to put video on the Web. Just use a video camera or a digital camera. Digital cameras these days often have better quality than a digital video camera. Save the video to your computer – this might be in avi or mpg format, etc.
Zen Mix uses Flash video format with an flv extension. This is the second most popular Web Video format and recently employs the ON2V codec for excellent quality at low size. You can get the Flash 8 video encoder from Adobe.com and convert and host flv video yourself. But an easier way is to upload your video to a site like Blip.tv. Blip.tv converts just about any type of video to flv and hosts it for free.
Posting video to Blip.tv is as easy as a two minute sign up then choosing the upload link. It will ask you where on your computer the video is and for a title and optional description and keywords, etc.
To use the video in Zen Mix you need to have the URL to the flv file. Click on your post in Blip.tv and then select the share link and then the permalinks tab. This will show you a link to the flv. Select this link and copy it. This is the video URL you will paste into Zen Mix.
WARNING
It should be noted that currently the popular video site, YouTube.com does not give you a link to the flv file. And as such, you can’t use a YouTube video in Zen Mix – you can download the video as outlined in this download videos link but then you must host them somewhere like blip.tv or vimeo where they give you a link to the video with a .flv extension – for vimeo, the video must be yours.
2. PICTURE
Most people have a favorite place to post pictures online. A great example is flickr.com. This is a wonderful site where pictures from all over the world can be seen. You can post for free but it is well worth the $14 a year to become a pro.
Once you post your picture, just right click it and select copy image location. This is the picture URL you will paste into Zen Mix.
3. MIX
Once you have a URL to your flv video and jpg picture you are ready to mix them in Zen Mix. Go to http://www.zenmix.com and paste the two URLs into the appropriate boxes and select next. There are example URLs available to you if you have not posted your own yet.You will see the video show up on the picture. The screen indicates how you can move and resize these using the control and shift keys. Most of the time you will want to position the video in the top left corner and resize it to fit the screen and covers the picture. Of course you do not have to. It should be noted that you can also move the Zen Mix logo around. Press the next button to continue.
You are now given a chance to apply blend mode effects by selecting from the pulldown. These do things like making the picture show through light (or dark) parts of the movie, etc. It is probably best to just experiment with them. An easy way to light the face for good blending is totake video of your face in a doorway facing into a light room with a dark room behind you.
4. FILES
Save your file and you will be taken to a list of your mixes. If you have not signed up for Zen Mix then fill in the boxes for a creator name, password and e-mail. If you want to automatically log in each time then check the box.Once you save your mix you will see that you can view, edit or delete your mixes. If you come back to Zen Mix and want to edit a previous mix as opposed to creating a new one then just click next until you see your mixes then select the mix you want to edit and click edit.
There are two more screens after the list of your mixes. They show you how you can link to your mixes so they play on our player page. You are also given code to embed your mixes directly on your own pages should you want to.
Please see the page on Zen Mix Features for more features of Zen Mix:
October 23, 2009 at 7:51 am
wow splendid method .
Till now I was using http://www.tubeleecher.com