anything media

Come join in the fun!

… but what about video that gets results and doesn’t take a Hollywood production budget and crew to pull it off?

I’m really excited to have been asked to be part of the Learn About Web Denver conference taking place at the Curtis Hotel September 14th and 15th. The goal of LAW-D is to help small business owners who want to utilize the best resources in social media, web design, and search marketing to attract more customers to their websites. I’ll be speaking on creating great video on a shoestring budget. I know, I know… it’s kind of like cutting off your own arm since video is part of how I pay the bills. But I have a soft place for small business owners who can’t even afford my reasonable prices so Craig Sutton and Deb Robinson found me an easy pushover to get to jump in with both feet.

I’ll be covering some simple but profound (I think so anyways) ways anyone with a video camera can shoot better video and compile them into more effective tools that can get results on your web site… and all that using tools readily available to you already with no additional expense. So come join me! Let’s have some video fun!

This past two weeks I had the opportunity to participate in an awesome project. The Silicon Flatirons Center (out of CU Boulder) was having a pseudo-gala event honoring several individuals and companies for their work in the entrepreneurial world and for who they were in business in general. One of the awards was a Lifetime Achievement Award for Brad Feld, who is as Jack Tankersley of Meritage Funds put it, “one of the preeminent venture capitalists in the country”. I was enlisted to interview eleven of his colleagues, friends, and family (which I quickly found out most fall into at least two of those categories if they are in one because of the type person Brad is) and to compile sections of those interviews into an hommage video to be shown the night of the gala. Here’s the video:

Brad Feld - Lifetime Entreprenurial Achievement award video from Kendall Media Group on Vimeo.

As you can see, he’s quite a guy. I’m delighted I got to do the project, but more delighted I got to learn more about Brad and the influence he, and others through his inspiration have been able to do in this exciting area.

Organizations all over the world could learn a lot from what I observed the night of the awards. While a number of highly respected and influential people were in the room that night, there was also a league of young entrepreneurs floating around the room taking it all in. It appears the leadership for the event, knowing the audience created a great environment where the two subcultures could meet and “play well” together picked a unique venue in The Dairy Center for the Arts to host the event, and, they facilitated some interaction between folks by, among other things, assigning every attendee to a team for a Rock Band tournament. It was an awesome way to see merging of two generations who love the same thing… starting businesses.

Props to the folks at Silicon Flatirons, to those who have inspired them (like Brad, Jason Mendelson, Brad Bernthal, and Phil Weiser). It’s special what’s happening in what used to be lazy little Boulder.

Because it would reduce paperwork and time if they could pay by credit card, I had a client recently indicate a desire to pay via PayPal and a willingness to pay the additional PayPal fees to have that convenience. Not sure of the PayPal balance required to offset that I entered “calculate PayPal fees” in Google and discovered this great little tool online:

http://www.rolbe.com/paypal.htm

A recent Neilsen study indicates, in my opinion, a very important and yet untapped question related to the console wars. Joystiq covers the findings which seem to indicate that Xbox 360 owners appear to be more likely than PS3 or Wii owners to spend time on their console. While console purchase numbers are interesting to track, it appears that XBox is winning the console wars in two very important indicators of longevity for games: games sold and console use.

The first, second, and third times have been the charm for IgniteBoulder and IgniteBoulder 4, scheduled for April 29, is sure to be a great time! So mark your calendar and protect that date!

Ignite is a night of presentations on a variety of topics, with a twist. Each presentation has 20 slides, that automatically advance after 15 seconds. It is a worldwide movement, and Boulder is hosting our fourth April 29th at 6pm.

Tickets are set to go on “sale” via EventBrite at 11am on April 15th (tax day… Andrew, what ARE you thinking!)

Cast your votes for what presentations make it to the stage and big screen on April 4. Make your way over to UserVoice and review the pitched topics. You have ten votes to spread between the growing list of topics/ideas.

Andrew Hyde of Boulder.me and StartupWeekend fame does a GREAT job with the tireless job of coordinating these crazy awesome nights.

Kendall Media Group via our eventon.tv brand provides video services to IgniteBoulder. Check it out at:

http://YouTube.com/IgniteBoulder (without slides)

http://omnisio.com/igniteboulder (with slides synced side by side)

Okay, I admit it. I have a severe, over the top lust for the Amazon Kindle. As a new business startup things are tight so, like others whose tweet’s I’ve watched, I too have hovered over that Buy Now button on Amazon’s site several times. However unlike them, I’ve not pressed it. Last week, Amazon released to the iPhone App store a free version of their Amazon Kindle reader. HOORAY! Thanks Amazon, I can delay buying the real one, hopefully till you release the Kindle 3 without a physical keyboard but with one more like the iPhone’s (HEY AMAZON… hint, hint, hint… and I’d be a GREAT beta tester… hint… hint… hint).

I read my first ebook cover to cover on my Dell Axim. So the screen size is not a huge issue for me at this point. It was actually my reading on the Dell Axim that provided the convenience that actually got me back into reading books regularly. So, anyways I downloaded the iPhone Kindle software and thus far I have to say I am very impressed. I read another blog post by Don Reisinger reviewing several other popular ebook readers available for the iPhone and found I disagree. So here’s my two cents worth as far as what I like about Amazon’s offering:

1. Perhaps the biggest perk for me is that books I buy on Amazon now for the Kindle I can read on my iPhone and on that glorious day when a real Kindle is mine I have them for it as well.
2. Simplicity. Others rave over the Stanza or eReader, both of which are free like the Kindle software for the iPhone. I tried them as soon as the App store opened and found them uninteresting and a little too complicated. The simplicity of the iPhone’s overall interface was carried well into Amazon’s Kindle software.
3. Ease of getting books to the iPhone for Kindle. I was really impressed when I chose a sample chapter from a book and indicated I wanted it sent to my iPhone. Shazaam! It was in the list of available books. One of my complaints with the other readers was the complicated process to get books into the reader. While I couldn’t find any that let me buy right through the actual app, I found the buy it on Amazon and it gets sent to your phone to be simple enough.
4. Reading screen itself. For some reason, the Kindle software for iPhone just looks better on my screen in it’s stock install. I guess I could tweak the others and find something similar, but why should I have to. I think someone actually spent some time reading on the Kindle for iPhone and that’s why it has a better stock interface for reading. The Stanza and eReader seem to be a bit behind here. eReader needs to adjust their spacing between lines. I understand they are trying to fit more on the screen, but one of the big wins for the iPhone Kindle is the leading between lines. The Stanza has a way to increase it and tweak the font, size, etc. but I think the Kindle format is fine as it is loaded.
5. Margins. This seems simple, but it makes a big difference. The Kindle has some margins around the edge of the screen. I’m guessing Stanza and eReader want to show a maximized approach to screen utilization. I remember a comparision of the difference getting from one place to the other would make speeding verses doing the speed limit in the city. It was pretty sobering to realize the risk of speeding would only buy me a minute or two. Same for the screen readers in my mind. The margins around the edge maybe only get me one more line on the screen, but having the margins seems to massively increase the readability overall in my opinion.
6. While Don Reisinger applauded the scroll bar for pages I find it irritating and unnecessary. It’s a nice feature but one I doubt I would use. Keeping with my old rule of tech/multimedia “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”

My only fear at this point relates back to an eBook I purchased on Amazon and after several years of not looking at it I went back to view it and was unable to. First problem was they were using Adobe’s stupid edoc reader (not just a standard PDF) and the computer I had the document on was gone… crashed… finito. So the book was no longer accessible without re-downloading it to satisfy Adobe’s specs. When I tried to find it I could not and contacted Amazon. They informed me that the publisher (and a major one) had terminated the contract and they were no longer able to provide access to the book. So basically it was tough luck dude! I was pissed, but there was nothing anyone could do.

I’m hoping the Kindle and Kindle for iPhone have better service for this side of the issue, but for now I’m in love with my iPhone version of the Kindle and will (finally) have a screen reader I feel I can use. Thanks Amazon!

On Dec 31, 2008 I found myself plagued with a virus because I just visisted a site. Not because I downloaded something from it, but because I just visited the page. I had McAfee antivirus running and had never had an issue in over a decade of web stuff. Then, and I’m fairly certain it was SendSpace.com and an embeded PDF that prompted the whole thing, I notice my computer just running like crazy and the fan and a notice that McAfee cannot reach the update server.

That began a long and arduous process of rebuilding the hard drive. I finally caved and went ahead and upgraded the hard drive but still had to ensure all documents and files were bug free. (Will I ever really know that for sure?)

I found this article on Virus Removal at The Powers Zone which had some good tips in it (after I was done of course!). I am now running McAfee and SuperAnti Spyware in it’s real-time protection mode. (NOTE: Had I thought of it beforehand I could have popped the HD out of the notebook, slid it into my external dock on my desktop and done the scan which cleaned it without any of the hours of laboring over it.)

While the comments by other readers question CNN and FOX News thoughts by the writer, the significance of the information is simply that American’s are embracing a new medium for keeping up with the what’s going on in their world. Poke at the specifics as much as you would like, but the simple fact is the Internet shows a dramatic rise this last year (although I am willing to say wait and see if it holds after the election/first year of a new president) and both Television and Newspapers are showing a consistent decline since early 2000. This is big to TV stations and Newspapers who have for decades enjoyed a rock solid financial base and unchalleneged reader/viewer audience. Having worked in a print-based environment whose graphs of units sold looked similar to both these I would guess TV and newspaper strategists are scrambling to protect their once concrete revenue streams.

Another interesting thing would be to see these numbers run alongside the rise of YouTube as the second most searched site on the Internet. Wouldn’t surprise me if the growth in YouTube and other similar services didn’t contribute to that 2007-2008 spike.

Several years ago (about a decade) my desk at work had a PC on one corner and a MAC on the other. Lot’s of OS water has crossed the bridge since those days so when I purchased a used MacBook Pro to begin learning Final Cut Studio for video projects I had some catching up to do.

I’ve started catching on to some of the keyboard shortcuts already. What I miss is the delete key AND having a backspace key on the PC. I’ve grown accustomed to being able to destroy keystrokes from the front or back but it seems on a MAC you can only destroy them from the back.

That said, one of the challenges I’m going through right now is establishing a workflow for exporting video shot in HDV (on my Sony HDR-FX7 cameras in 1440 x 1080 60i) and edited in FCP so it will upload and play in the new HD format (not just the widescreen player, but the really pretty actual 720p HD that YouTube implemented on 12/18/2008). Part of the challenge is pixel aspect ratio. The HDV is not square and the 720p is.

All the settings I knew how and where to manipulate in Sony Vegas and Premier Pro on a PC are just different on a MAC. What I think I am noticing is it just takes more steps to do EVERYTHING on the MAC.

The more I edit in FCP though the more I become attached to it. Today I have been working on igniteboulder footage I shot Wednesday 12/17 and learning the multi-cam editing in FCP. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to sync up the tracks and to adjust a track if necessary. Props on that FCP!

So, if anyone has solved a complete workflow from FCP to take 1440 x 1080 60i footage to YouTube’s 720p HD format successfully I’d definitely welcome the suggested steps.

UPDATE (12/20 11am): I was successful in getting a format that does go to HD on YouTube. The key is, as I thought, making sure your project video/audio settings have selected something with a square pixel aspect ratio. Then, I chose export a quicktime move and did a custom size (YouTube’s recommended 1290 x 720 -anyone know why 1290?) export of h.264 at a constant bitrate of 2000kbps. It seems to have worked, though it took a little longer for the View in HD link to show up than the actual video. Hooray! Now to refine and improve.

UPDATE (12/21 11:33am): Well, the first one either had some kind of fluke and the other two I didn’t fluke right, or I’m seeing why YouTube emphasizes that the HD functionality is still undergoing some tweaks. I thought I had created all three files identically, but there may be an outside chance I used 48kHz on the first and 44.1kHz on the other two. I read some info in Google Groups and it seems that may be it. So I’m tweaking and testing a 48kHz version of a 44.1kHz version I uploaded a minute ago.

UPDATE (12/26 8:00am): Eureka! While it’s been several days (Christmas distractions and editing/posting backlogged video from an event), I’ve been editing and posting a slew of videos using the specs that seem to be working. It appears the kicker IS the 44.1kHz vs 48kHz audio and/or the AAC audio format and making sure you have a square pixel aspect ratio. Here’s my current setting for exporting 1440 x 1080 60i from Final Cut Pro 6 to YouTube HD:

I’m editing in both 1440 x 1080 60i and Apple’s Intermediate HDV (captured into project with both sequences and it works fine). I’m EXPORT > USING QUICKTIME CONVERSION > QUICKTIME MOVIE and then setting the following (items not mentioned are left to default):

1280 x 720 (custom set not the 1280 x 720HD which may make no difference but I’m not taking the chance at this point), de-interlace the video, and constant bitrate of 8,000 kbps (multipass)
AAC audio at 256 kbps

And shazaam… there you have HD settings for 1440 x 1080 60i export to YouTube HD. Check them out at http://youtube.com/igniteboulder

Where’s your copy of The Yellow Pages? I’ve gotten to the point where as soon as I see the obvious bag on the porch containing the latest copy it goes straight into the trash. I used to feel guilty so I’d keep them in the garage for at least a couple of months… then they’d go into the trash. While I know we’re not the typical consumer when it comes to electronic vs. paper, I’m sure the number of Yellow Page searches for businesses is beginning to take a hit.

Several months ago, Google and YouTube announced another great way businesses can benefit from their services and one that will certainly contribute to the decline of Yellow Pages use. Your Goolge Maps Business Listing can now include a web commercial about your business (Did you know about Google Maps Business Listings?) which can help give you a leg up on the competition. Here’s my favorite example of this great service in use: I Dream of Cake in San Francisco CA.

Zeke Camusio posted a great article (Video Marketing – How to Promote Your Business Using Videos) about using video to boost customer’s visibility. Here’s five steps he suggests for producing a video:

5 Steps to Producing a Video

1. Decide what kind of video you want to record (talking head, based on a PowerPoint presentation, from your computer screen, interview, etc.)
2. Get a good microphone and a camera. It doesn’t have to be a professional camera. Sometimes a simple digital camera is enough.
3. Write the script or prepare the content. Do a practice run first.
4. Record it.
5. Do some minor editing using free software such as Windows Movie Maker. You will probably need to trim out the end and the beginning, and add a watermark with the URL of your website.

This is a great list of steps to create a video for your business. If you have the equipment and aren’t afraid to experiment I’d say go for it! Get your web-mercial shot, edited and uploaded to your business listing. If you are not quite as sure about doing it yourself, find someone in your area to help you. Area community colleges, or even high schools could be a great source to find someone with skills and equipment itching to help with a project like shooting your web-mercial.

It won’t be long before businesses begin transitioning marketing dollars spent on Yellow Pages for decades to capitalize on new media opportunities. Kendall Media Group has begun to specialize in creating videos for businesses, and assisting businesses with setting up their Google Maps Business Listings. If you are in the Denver area, or a business within a day’s drive and you’d like to talk about how your business can take advantage of Google Maps Business Listing or about having a video to place on your listing we can help. Shoot us an email. We can help get you up and running!