How did you author (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?
I authored this video by using the build-in rear-facing camera on Instagram on my iPhone 7. One difference I think between the iPhone camera and the built-in camera on the Instagram is that iPhone camera has four types of video quality settings which are 720p HD 30fps, 1080p HD 30fps, 1080p HD 60 fps and 4K 30fps, whereas the built-in camera on the Instagram shows no choices for video quality. Besides, the Instagram will automatically call its build-in compression algorithms to shrink video when a video is uploaded (Penn 2019, para. 1), whereas there are not enough online information indicating that, how is the video quality of using the built-in Instagram camera when a video is recorded and stored in the Instagram and if it would be shrunk as well. Thus, we don’t know how its video quality compared with the phone camera’s video quality, in the authoring process.
I intended to shoot a couple of clips in order to show details of different parts of my video object – the tripod, so I used the ‘start– stop touch’ feature to break up my whole recording. In the authoring process, the experience is quite interesting. The square format does not affect I framed the video a lot as I mainly focus on the different parts of the tripod, not the whole tripod, and the tripod I showed is not tall, hence the square format would not crop the important parts of the tripod in the video like the vacuum cleaner in week 10 photo post. The most disappointed me is the video is really jerky because I hand-held the phone to record the video rather than using a tripod.
I trimmed the first shot a little bit (I was also only allowed to trim the first shot) to have the video length less than one minute, otherwise, I was not able to upload the video onto the Instagram post or I can only choose to upload it onto the IGTV. Keeping the same the previous two video posts, I muted the audio and wanted audiences only to focus on the video content. I added the “Gingham” filter which is my most commonly use and decreased “Gingham” parameter from 100 to 72. I was not able to further play around with editing tools as these do not be provided within the video authoring part. Another thing made me unhappy and regrettable is I forgot to use the “cover” feature, I think the cover feature is pivotal in the distribution part, a good front picture would attract people’s attention. I also tried the “magnify” feature (the small eye icon in the top of the authoring page) which is a unique feature and other videography apps that I used do not have the same affordance, but its magnify effect is not obvious.
How did you publish (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?
When I tried to upload the video post onto my Instagram account yumao0520, the “Action Blocked” warning shows again. Every time I tied to upload video post, the warning always appeared and then failed upload. Nathan Olson (Olson 2020, para. 5) explains that “there are people who try to grow their followers very fast by following and unfollowing lots of users, and excessively commenting on different posts in a short period”. Hence, Instagram finds and blocks accounts that are involved in spammy behavior to protect the app and its community. But, clearly, I am not one of them who involved in these two above behaviors, therefore the Instagram might exist the algorithms to search and restrict other behaviors or another reason is that my account is new. In order to solve this problem, I tried to repeat report the mistake for a few times. After a couple of times, I finally uploaded the video at 7:00 PM.
As usual, I published it with a text caption consisted of three parts saying:
I have focused on different themes in each post, in the final week video post, I emphasized the requirements of people plays a pivotal role in good designs. I also added many hashtags related to the video content in the post as I used as many hashtags as possible in the last post and got a satisfying distribution effect. Besides, I used the hashtag #networkedmedia in this post, hope to distribute it to other people who followed this hashtag or other students who are using this hashtag in this course. I also tried to add a location to my video post after I upload the post, and the feature is easily found in the “edit info” part. I really like the Instagram allows users to do editing after the post is uploaded, for instance, I always write many words in the caption and use many hashtags, it always happened like the wrong spell, the hashtag is not worked or I forget to tag the brand or so on, the Instagram gives users an opportunity to re-edit rather than re-upload the post, it saves more time.
How did you distribute (the photo or video) you published on Instagram to other social media services?
I was able to distribute it through hashtags and geo-tags. In addition to use hashtags I usually use, and some hashtags closely related to the video content, I also used #travel #camera #travelvideography #videography and #video these hashtags to garner more “likes”, the similarity of these hashtags is they are all extremely popular and some of them have millions of posts . Moreover, the “Qufu” geotag was used to reach more audiences who followed or are interested in this geo-tag. Unfortunately, I still got no one follower until the last day I finished my media work, hence I was not able to distribute any work to my followers.
As per my previous posts, I also distributed the video to my Tumblr and Facebook accounts at the same time as Instagram uploaded my post. An interesting thing is worthy to mention, once the video is play finished on Tumblr, people only allowed to go to my Instagram post to play it again. It is an interesting approach to distribute my Instagram account. As a summary of distribution on Tumblr and Facebook over the three weeks, the Tumblr has well behaved and it tends to further distribute my Instagram account; the Facebook has been also worked well except that posts cannot be distributed onto my new Facebook account initially for some unknown reasons, and compared to the Tumblr, it aims to protect my Instagram account privacy with not showing any traces of the Instagram, it is interesting because we all know the Instagram is owned by Facebook. Also, the hashtags and geo-tags are all worked on these two platforms, it can help my posts further distribute.
My Post on Facebook
Reference List
Olson, N 2020, How to Remove Instagram Action Block – 8 Proven Solutions | 2020 Edition, Yrcharisma.com, viewed 25 May 2020.
<https://www.yrcharisma.com/2019/07/01/remove-instagram-action-block/>.
Penn, F 2019, Instagram Reduces Quality Of Iphone Video While Uploading? Optimize Video First, Videoproc.com, viewed 25 May 2020.
<https://www.videoproc.com/iphone-video-processing/instagram-reduces-iphone-video-quality.htm>.