Business

Great Article on DSLR Video Revolution

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  • Just read a great article over at Creative COW called DSLRs A Time Exposure by Robert Primes. It is a great look at why even Hollywood is in love with HDSLR cameras.

THE INCITING INCIDENT

At some point in the evolution of today's DSLR, digital replaced film, and low light level photography became astonishingly clear. We saw our world in a whole new way. And then a seemingly innocent event occurred that for some would be the beginning of a whole new style, and for others, would be another nail in the coffin of quality cinematography.

Rather than schlep a real movie camera or camcorder around with your still outfit, wouldn't it be convenient if you could just lock the mirror up and shoot motion synced to audio? Canon added the feature to their marvelous 5D Mark II still camera, almost as an afterthought.

Their normally astute marketers calculated that no more than 3 or 4 percent of users would ever use the feature -- perhaps a few wedding photographers and single-person reporting teams.

Read the whole article here – http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/dslrs-a-time-exposure

How Everyone Can Create Better Video

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An Interview with me.

"Author and video expert Richard Harrington discusses his efforts to bring superior video techniques to the rest of us. Rich discusses getting it right from the ground up, from camera set-up to final production, why so many users want to use greenscreen, and why the tools you have on the desktop are more than adequate."

Free Music for Video Projects

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A nice source to find royalty free or public domain licensed music you might want to check out http://freemusicarchive.org/

"The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads. The Free Music Archive is directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet.
Every mp3 you discover on The Free Music Archive is pre-cleared for certain types of uses that would otherwise be prohibited by copyright laws that were not designed for the digital era. Are you a podcaster looking for pod-safe audio? A radio or video producer searching for instrumental bed music that won't put your audience to sleep? A remix artist looking for pre-cleared samples? Or are you simply looking for some new sounds to add to your next playlist? The Free Music Archive is a resource for all that and more, and unlike other websites, all of the audio has been hand-picked by established audio curators."

Pre-Processing for Video-Sharing Sites

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There are hundreds of websites that offer embeddable players based on Flash technology. For many, this is a key way to embed content on their website and share with others. In this case, you are using the hosting services of the video-sharing site as well as their embeddable players.

While many take a role the dice approach, we believe in pre-processing clips before we upload. By taking matters into your own hands, you can get better looking clips in the final player. You can also get around some of the file size limits that can impede the duration of the video.

Let's take a look at two of the most popular services, YouTube and Facebook. The techniques discussed however can be applied to many other sites as well.

On-Camera Interview Tips

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  • Have talent/interviewee bring an alternate set of clothing.
  • Herringbone, stripes, or small patterns do not look good on camera.
  • Keep jewelry simple.
  • Do not allow interviewees to wear bright white. Cream, eggshell, or light gray are preferred.
  • Utilize a make-up artist. People give a better interview when they look good. Decision-makers favor approval copies when their people look professional.
  • Maintain eye contact throughout the interview.
  • “Edit in the Camera.” Encourage short answers and come back to topics again. Better to focus on good, tight answers, than trying to cobble together six takes to make your point.
  • Avoid enumeration or the phrase “Like I said before.” It is highly likely that you may use step three, without steps one and two. You also wouldn’t be asking the question again, if you were happy with what the answer was “before.”
  • Don’t be afraid to stop and start over. Do not let an answer ramble on. Smiles and nods encourage subjects that they are ‘on-target.’
  • Relax.

blipt.tv Review

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One of our favorite services has to be blip.tv. This robust site let’s you publish your video to many outlets (including nontraditional ones like TiVo and internet connected TVs). In fact the company claims that its network “reaches more than 80% of Americans on the Internet and a growing number of television households.”

We really like how flexible blip.tv is in that you can choose your distribution format. You have options to use Flash, MPEG-4, QuickTime, and more. Their player is also highly customizable and can be fully branded to your site or brand.

The service has both a free version and a paid version at $8 per month. The paid version offers priority encoding so your files are available in multiple formats. This is a great feature as it lets others re-syndicate your content using a player of their choice. The control panel for the site is very robust, and gives you complete control over targeting specific networks and social media sites.

TubeMogul Review

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The OneLoad service from TubeMogul (www.TubeMogul.com) offers both a robust free version (which allows for 100 videos per month) and a scaled paid service with advanced features for large publishers (priced at $50 per month and up). The principal benefit here is that it offers a single point for deploying videos to the top video and social networking sites.

You first set up accounts at any of the 30 sites supported by TubeMogul. You then upload a video to TubeMogul’s site and it is sent onto the other sites. This means you need to spend a little time setting things up, but once you’ve published more than two videos, this method is substantially faster. The site also offers detailed analytics (for supported sites), that can show real-time viewership, geographic tracking, stream quality and more.

Now I Really Want a BMW

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BMW introduces the next level of automotive consumer electronic device integration by supporting Apple's new iPod Out functionality. The new feature allows applications on Apple devices to be controlled and experienced with the iDrive interface concept.

Of course my kids would probably destroy it.... maybe they's loan me one.


Steve Jobs Interview at D8 Conference

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I've been waiting for this entire interview to go live. Here is the full, uncut interview with Steve Jobs at this year's D8 Conference. The interview is by Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg on the New York Times.

"The wide-ranging chat runs for more than 90 minutes, and covers everything from Jobs’ fraying relationship with Google (GOOG) to his stance on Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash, to his lack of interest in the TV market. And, of course, a lot of iPad talk. Enjoy."

Here's the link here – http://d8.allthingsd.com/20100607/steve-jobs-at-d8-the-full-uncut-interview/