18th Annual Pro Video Show

The 18th Annual Pro Video Show (hosted by the Camera Company with the participation of the Boston FCP User Group, SMPTE/NE, and NPVA/NE) will be held Friday and Saturday, March 7-8, 2008 at Stonehill College (Sally Blair Ames Sports Complex) in Easton, Massachusetts. This popular annual event provides two days of informative workshops, seminars, and equipment demonstrations, with lots of opportunities to check out the latest gear. I will be presenting three seminars at the show you might be interested in attending:

Web Video 2.0: Delivering Your Video Online (Friday, March 07, 1:00PM - 3:00PM, $25.00)

Art of the Interview: Strategies and Techniques for Better Video Interviews (Saturday, March 08, 9:00AM - 11:00AM, $25.00)

Interview Lighting: Professional Results On A Tight Budget (Saturday, March 08, 1:00PM - 3:00PM, $25.00

Read more

17th Annual Pro Video Show to be held March 9-10, 2007 at Stonehill College in Easton, Ma

If you live in the Boston area you will not want to miss the 17th Annual Pro Video Show sponsored by The Camera Company to be held Friday and Saturday, March 9-10, 2007 at Stonehill College, in Easton, Massachussetts (Exit 17B off Route 24). This annual event provides local media makers with the opportunity to check out new equipment, talk with fellow media makers, and attend a wide range of workshops and seminars. Yours truly will be presenting two of the seminars, “Delivering Video on the Web” and “Champagne Production Values on a Beer Production Budget.”

Read more

The Future of Web Video

With all the excitement over Google’s purchase of YouTube and videomakers making money putting Mentos into Diet Coke bottles, you’d think that the viral video phenomena is where all the action is. But for independent filmmakers who are looking to get some financial return on their work, there are some serious distribution and revenue opportunities emerging on the web, but it’s not YouTube. Alternative sites like Brightcove, blip.tv, IndieFlix, and CustomFlix offer a range of services to filmmakers who would like to take reaching an audience and distribution into their own hands. Scott Kirsner’s new book, The Future of Web Video: Opportunities for Producers, Entrepreneurs, Media Companies and Advertisers provides the most comprehensive guide to web video to date from materials gathered in 2005 and 2006. The books is available as an e-Book or printed book. Since sites in this space and the services they offer are changing so rapidly, it’s a good thing that Scott has made his chart, Getting Paid: Sites that Help Video Producers Make Money available online for free.

Secret recipe for amazing image quality video downloads

My “secret recipe” for amazing image quality with video downloads via the web is not so secret, I’ve been using the H.264 (a.k.a. MPEG-4 Part 10) codec along with AAC for the audio. H.264 is much more efficient than previous MPEG codecs (compared to MPEG-2, H.263, or MPEG-4 Part 2) and thus requires half of the bandwidth for the same image quality as the previous codecs. By the way, H.264 is the codec used in the HD-DVD standard, as well as Blu-ray Disc, and many broadcast applications, it’s the wave of the future and it’s here today.
Read more

Wide Screen QuickTime Movies from Squeezed Material

Here’s a tip for delivering QuickTime movies using QuickTime 7 Pro Player that will open up and play straight away as 16:9 from material
that was originally exported as a 16:9 image squeezed into a 4:3 video frame.

Read more