From Words To Video Bringing Writing And Speaking Closer But Not To The Finish Line

Hope the Mother’s Day Weekend was all you wanted.  I miss my parents everyday of the year.

Have you ever come across a product that you hoped would live up to the hype, the technology would be advanced enough to give you the level of satisfaction you seek?

Recently I thought I found something that would be a tremendous way to promote the new speaking/writing course Painting My Room In A Colorful Way.  It’s a software that converts text from an article to a video.

There is some work involved and it isn’t as user friendly as it should be but if it had made the grade of at least a B+ I could overlook the imperfections.  The short story on the inner workings is you take an article and paste the title and the text into the appropriate boxes.  You can upload a photo if you would like or use one of their stock images.  You have the opportunity to upload audio or use one of their files.  They offer different type of backgrounds and fonts but not font sizes (that is one of the many facets that needs improving).

Once you have pasted the text in the box you are forced to make the words separate paragraphs regardless of how you feel about this.  Each paragraph gives you the opportunity to use 1 of 8 voices (4 female and 4 male).  An imperfection that came up right away was sometimes only one voice would work.  Other times all eight could be selected but a few sounded overly robotic.

The text must all be in English and the software doesn’t understand ” or ‘ so you have to make sure to remove those before getting into the final phases.  Another surprising failure is at times a basic word is not understood.  If you could imagine my surprise when “Dog” freaked out the system.  None of the voices understood the word but could read circumvent or superlative.

There were times I had to close out of the software because the voices picked up completely unrelated gibberish.  Instead of reading the text a series of numbers that had nothing to do with the article were being articulated.

The overall start to finish time is about 3 minutes per article but it would be far better to be 10 and have the error rate go down considerably.

My first inclination and using the product only enhanced my view is that it was released too soon.  There are so many issues that could use tweaking.  At the very end of the video the author’s information is shown in such small font Superman couldn’t read it with X-Ray vision.  The eight voices are not recorded at the same level so there is not a consistent tone throughout the presentation.

I have a link to a video I uploaded and the result isn’t bad but it is only because as a former disc-jockey and somebody that has been around audio/video forever I was able to use some tricks of the trade.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geUgs-pDTjM

Thanks for your time and enjoy the day.

Craig Fenton is the creator of Painting My Room In A Colorful Way (the ultimate speaking and writing course with written, audio, and phone coaching).  He is the author of the Jefferson Airplane book Take Me To A Circus Tent and the Jefferson Starship Have You Seen The Stars Tonite.  Craig lectures with a one time member of the Grateful Dead and a legendary American Rock & Roll Photographer.

http://www.learnpublicspeakingskills.com

 

Next To Your Dog This Powerful Tool For Writing And Speaking Can Be Priceless!

http://www.learnpublicspeakingskills.com

Next to your dog are you looking for a new best friend? Don’t worry your pet will never be jealous. Here are three hints, the word is nine letters long, starts with T and ends with S. Are you on the right track? That was a great guess, but not what I had in mind.

It’s the often overlooked marvel called a thesaurus. If you want to improve your writing and speaking ability for business, scholastic, and or personal use this is a tool that can only benefit and never result in negativity.

A thesaurus will enable you to take ordinary words and exchange them for those that have power, passion, and makes the listener or reader focus on your content? Why? Most people are using the simplest word or terminology for their written work or oral presentations and there isn’t anything that differentiates John Doe from Jane Doe or Joe Person from Jill Person.

To give you an indication of what a thesaurus can do why don’t we experiment. A typical sentence will be articulated as follows “It was an important speech.” Let’s use the handy thesaurus and try again. “The speech was incomparable.” “The speaker clearly distinguished himself from all others.”

How often do you hear the word awesome overused? It is at the point that the meaning has lost luster because some people say awesome every other sentence. Why don’t we try to substitute something more powerful? The normal sentence reads “The rainbow that followed the storm was awesome.” The colors of the rainbow following the storm were majestic.”

Why be run of the mill when you have the ability to excel. There is no reason a person of any age can’t build a strong vocabulary and be more confident and comfortable in their expression. The thesaurus is remarkable for the results you can achieve regardless if you are a professional writer or speaker. Each time you use it not only will your results be more superlative but you have increased vocabulary skills for future reference.

If you decide to put a thesaurus under observation on your computer or purchase the actual product, the end will more than justify the means. It’s never too late to be the best you can, especially when the cost is not humongous. Pet the dog and let him know he’s always number one and gets the gold metal, you can save the silver for the thesaurus.

http://www.learnpublicspeakingskills.com

Thank you for the kindness of Chris for making this part of his Blog Carnival!

http://www.purposepowercoaching.com/site/?p=362

 

A New Use For Twitter, it can be a great writing exercise (Say more in less time)

Painting My Room In A Colorful Way is the ultimate guide to better speaking, writing, and self-confidence with a book, audio files, email support, and phone coaching. With a price that won’t leave you speechless. Includes a money back guarantee.

http://www.learnpublicspeakingskills.com

One of the latest social networking phenomenons is Twitter.  It seems to be on the mind of every celebrity, politician, student, business owner, and social maven.

If you aren’t aware of what Twitter is, here is a brief description.  Twitter lets you post (the catch is 140 characters total or less) what you are doing, thoughts on a subject, a plug for a product, or a hello to your friends.  You follow Twitter users and they can follow you as well.

Here is where I have found a new use of the site.  One of the exercises I am currently teaching is how to say what you need to in articulate sentences while still staying in the 140 character restriction.

Yes, there are ways to circumvent the limitations such as using u for you or 4 and not 4 but when you can get a full impact to the reader without having to abbreviate your thoughts, you have learned a valuable tool.

When you speak or write the key is to keep the attention of those that you are communicating with.  We often find ourselves endlessly explaining something that could be stated in more concise patterns.

The exercise is can be advantageous for the sports commentator that has to get his point across between each pitch of a baseball game or in between downs of a National Football League broadcast.  It can help somebody on a job interview think faster and better their choice of words.  Maybe you are a business owner and need to get the attention of a future client in a couple of sentences, or you are writing a headline for a blog post.

Whatever the reason why not try this.  Think of a message you want to get across to friends, family, co-workers, and so on.  Start to write the contents in Microsoft Word.  When you have finished check the character count and if it is over 140 try to condense it without using abbreviations and losing the meaning of your thoughts.  The next thing you can do is to take something that you have already posted or written that is over 140 characters and see if you can truncate this as well.  It is not always feasible to be effective with a word or character limitation but for practice it can only benefit your speaking and writing capabilities today, tomorrow, and further down the road.  What have you got to loose but a few words.   Good luck!

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Craig Fenton is the creator of Painting My Room In A Colorful Way (the ultimate speaking and writing course with written, audio, and phone coaching).  He is the author of the Jefferson Airplane book Take Me To A Circus Tent and the Jefferson Starship Have You Seen The Stars Tonite.  Craig lectures with a one time member of the Grateful Dead and a legendary American Rock & Roll Photographer.
http://www.learnpublicspeakingskills.com

 

Not speaking and writing your best isn’t as funny as this video. Enjoy it.

http://www.learnpublicspeakingskills.com

Not speaking and writing your best isn’t as funny as this video.  Enjoy it.

Thanks!

Video is here:

http://odurl.com/nC

 

Jefferson Airplane/Starship Interview, New Speaking and Writing Course, and we lost 2 musicians

http://www.learnpublicspeakingskills.com

The ultimate speaking, writing, and self-confidence course is here “Painting My Room In A Colorful Way.”

By public-speaker and author Craig Fenton of the Jefferson Airplane book Take Me To A Circus Tent and the Jefferson Starship Have You Seen The Stars Tonite.

At a price that won’t leave you speechless!

http://www.learnpublicspeakingskills.com

Welcome to Jefferson World (Almost April):

How is the week going thus far?  Thanks

as always for stopping by the Circus Tent

Blog.

I forgot to mention (sorry) about a

couple of musicians we lost lately.

Former bass-player for the Electric

Light Orchestra Kelly Groucutt

and one of the most well known

drummers ever Louie Bellson.  Thanks

for the sounds you gave us.

Joe Viglione long time author, writer,

manager, and promoter was kind

enough to interview me regarding the

Jefferson Airplane Take Me

To A Circus Tent/and Jefferson

Starship Have You Seen The Stars

Tonite.

Jefferson airplane Jefferson Starship Books

Please board this way for the

interview:
Gemm Jefferson Interview With Craig

Thank you for all the

airmails

regarding my soon to be

released

speaking,writing,and

self-confidence course

“Painting My Room In A

Colorful Way.”

There will

be nothing that can compare

to the quality, price, and

learning

tools.  This includes not only

an E-Book, audio, email,

but phone coaching too!

More details coming! They

always will be found here

and at

http://www.takemetoacircustent.net

All the best,
CF