January 2006 Internet Video Magazine Newsletter

Welcome to 2006 and whole New Year of video on the Net. We just got back form Las Vegas and the annual CES Show. Lots of toys, electronics and fun gear. Big screen TV screens and monitors, cameras and MP3 players and phones – all in one unit, and lots of cool new video mobile video players. The good news is that someone is going to have to create and distribute all of this video – and that might be you.

With the plethora of mobile video devices – video players, gaming devices, phones, toys, etc., I think the market for short, downloadable, interstitial type of programming will be immense. Can you create a movie less than a minute long and pack it with information, entertainment and a call to action?

Did you shoot lots of video this holiday season? Did you think about documenting your family’s holiday events?  Check out our updated Ten Great New Years Video Making Resolutions article.

By the way, you may notice that we have added a press release section to this newsletter – we squeezed it in between the articles and trends sections and the cool new videos and online video websites sections.  Tell us what you think.

ARTICLES

Check out this great article from the San Diego Union about the growing plethora of downloadable video entertainment for mobile, home and business locations. Video download services redefining entertainment in on-demand world

Do you take your camcorder along with you when you travel? Check out these great hints and tips to make your videotaping experience a little bit safer and more enjoyable. more

Are you shooting high definition digital video and looking for a good way to edit it? Check Doug Dixon's article about how to use Sony Vegas Video Plus DVD to edit your HDV footage and create great looking DVDs and final productions.

Free for digital photographers who need an easy to use digital image editing, organization and workflow solution. Check out Lightroom Beta for Macintosh OSX 10.4.3, an all-new digital imaging solution for professional photographers. This is really cool. It is available as a free online download from the Adobe Labs Web site.. more

All about Google Video and the new Google Video Pack. - Read Rich Tehrani's VoIP blog. This is really interesting - With all the talk of Google taking on Microsoft, what may be overlooked is a slew of other companies who will lose large amounts of share to the company best known for sifting through the world’s information and categorizing it. For example the Wall Street Journal reported the company will allow users of its video search service to also download videos for a fee. more

At CES 2006, Sony is introducing a new high-powered laptop computer - with features that moviemakers and multimedia creators will love. Sony is introducing the VAIO® FE series notebook, a high-performance mobile media center. Built on the latest advances, including the newest mobile technology from Intel®, DDR2 memory and a super-fast serial ATA hard drive, the FE series provides the muscle to power through the most demanding tasks at top speed. The result is smoking performance for a wide array of productivity and entertainment activities, such as running resource-intensive programs while maintaining communications or sharing pictures, movies or music. more

Starz to Offer Download Movie Service - Starz Entertainment Group is launching a movie download service that allows consumers to view full-length studio films, concerts and TV shows on portable devices powered by Microsoft Corp. software.

Here is everything you need to know about editing digital video and creating and sharing your videos. Check out Doug Dixon's new How to Get Started and Edit DV in 2006 article. Lots of great info.

If you are seriously thinking of getting into the business of Internet Video and Web Casting, you should get this book. Hands On Guide to Webcasting - all about Internet Event and AV Production is applicable for use in all industry verticals from corporate to entertainment, and provides an end-to-end technical overview of the webcasting process. It's very easy to read with lots of diagrams, it provides step-by-step instructions from audio/video production, encoding and authoring to delivery and business issues, this guide provides both the depth and breadth necessary for mastery of the subject. more

Web Design and Graphic design are essential skills you need to be effective at making outstanding and truly distinctive images and videos for the web. Check out these two new books - Sam's Teach Yourself "Adobe Creative Suite 2" and Head First's "HTML with CSS and XHTML". Both are create fro the non-techie tyro who wants to know how web graphics work - as well as the basics of PhotoShop, Illustrator and Acrobat.

Best short online films of 2005. AtomFilms posted their list of the top online films for the year 2005.  Check it out. Some of these are really great.

The Digital Video Production Cookbook from O'Reilly Digital Studio by Chris Kenworthy provides 100 great tips and tricks for inexpensively creating neat looking effects and video scenes.. more

 "Is It Streaming Media or IPTV?" by Howard Greenfield

‘IP’ (Internet Protocol) media has been streaming on the web for more than a decade. Isn’t any video stream on the web arguably IPTV. TV (video) + (delivered over) IP (internet protocol) = ‘IPTV’. The current IPTV offering is characterized by a two-way digital broadcast signal, broadband and set-top based, coming over switched telephone or cable networks. Because we already have streaming Internet video, what would change? And will the promise of increased user control or MPEG quality force the telecoms, ISPs, and portal sites to build out this new platform in the next year?
 

Read the entire article - "Streaming Media or IPTV?", Greenfield, IPTV, Int'l Magazine.

ItsMeTV launched in December 2006 and is offering MEdia Lockers that you can use to store your videos as well as all other kinds of digital media. You can use ItsMeTV's Media Locker to Link Your Videos to the World Wide Web, Send your video link in an email, or Publish your video on your web site.  Business can use the ItsMeTV to host and promote their adverting, advertorial and how-to videos and multimedia manuals. Get 15 MB for $14.95

INDUSTRY NEWS

Need more power in your PC for video editing and image processing?  Alienware  is now featuring the new AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 dual-core processor on both the Aurora ALX and Aurora 7500 desktop platforms. The Aurora ALX and Aurora 7500 systems equipped with the AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 dual-core processor delivers leading-edge performance, an integrated memory controller, and fast HyperTransport™ technology.  Alienware’s Aurora ALX and Aurora 7500, equipped with the latest AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 dual-core processor, can run multiple process-intensive applications while still providing truly exceptional PC performance. more

Sorenson Media, the worldwide leader of video encoding and compression applications for digital video professionals and enthusiasts, announced the release of Sorenson Squeeze 4.3. Available for both Macintosh and Windows operating systems, Sorenson Squeeze 4.3 Compression Suite and Sorenson Squeeze 4.3 for Macromedia Flash introduce new tools to enhance and support multimedia creation using Macromedia Flash. more

FOCUS Enhancements, Inc. (NASDAQ CM: FCSE),  announced that it will add native QuickTime HDV support to its industry leading Direct To Edit® (DTE) Technology.  Clips recorded in the QuickTime HDV format using FireStore FS-4Pro HD and DR-HD100 can be used immediately in Apple Final Cut Pro 5 without having to first capture or convert footage. more

At CES, Sony introduced two new high-powered laptop computers - with features that moviemakers and multimedia creators will love.

POWERFUL PORTABILITY: SMALLEST SONY MEDIA CENTER PC DESIGNED FOR ON-THE-GO - New VAIO Notebook Combines Cutting-Edge Performance with Exceptional Entertainment Experience.   more

LIGHTWEIGHT SONY NOTEBOOK PC DELIVERS TRIFECTA OF MOBILITY, POWER AND STYLE - New VAIO SZ Series Packs High-End Features and Advanced Security into Intelligent Design more

At CES 2006, Samsung Camera released a High-Performance 8 Mega-Pixel Digital Camera - the Digimax V800 is equipped with an 8 mega-pixel high-resolution CCD,  a high-quality f/2.8 ~ 5.1 Schneider Kreuznach 7.8mm ~ 23.4mm lens, 10x digital zoom, a large 2.5" color LCD. For enhanced movie-shooting, the V800 supports MPEG-4 video compression, providing recording times which are 3 to 4 times longer than conventional digital cameras. The V800 has the ability to capture movie clips in VGA (640 x 480) at 30fps, and also boasts a movie clip stabilizer for video recording. more

VitalStream, Inc. (OTCBB: VSTH), the world leader in video streaming, and Serious Magic, a leading developer of next-generation video software and communication tools, have teamed up to launch the first combined PC video blogging software and streaming solution for consumers looking to add video to their blogs. more

InPhase Technologies, the leader in holographic data storage media and systems, today announced that it has developed and is shipping the first Holographic-ROM (H-ROM) media targeted for use in consumer devices. Data is recorded into the Tapestry^TM HDS4000 media with the same wavelength red lasers used in CDs and DVDs. The InPhase HDS4000 media is the latest addition to the InPhase media product family that includes green laser HDS3000 media, and blue laser HDS5000 media.  InPhase also announced that it has developed and patented H-ROM mastering and replication technology, for license to companies developing holographic equipment. This will enable the distribution of high-definition content using H-ROM media. Technology that will be incorporated into low-cost readers will also be licensed to consumer electronics companies for commercialization in the near future.  more

COOL NEW VIDEOS

We found a bunch of new films plus we received lots of recommendations and submissions. Here are some of the more recent ones plus some exceptional leftovers form the holidays.

You can find them all at Best Videos of the Week

"A Christmas Carol, Diane and Susan" is a hilarious and very well produced short parody/take-off of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Ed Beneezer is visited by three ex-girlfriends who try to show him the error of his ways. Hilarious and rings of truth.

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Brilliantly written and edited. "Love Math" by Kent Zembrana, was the First Place winner at the McGuffin Film Festival. It’s a wonderful story of dating, romance. love, lust and loss in our modern day Internet and blog linked society. Also on the McGuffin site, is "The Perils of Nude Modeling" a brilliantly written, edited and directed tour de force of the dynamic tensions and inner battles that go on in a classroom dedicated to the drawing of nudes. Not pornographic, there is some nudity. 

It may be a parody - it may be a mockumentary - but whatever you want to call it - "Zombies in my Neighborhood" is funny. Ostensibly the behind the scenes making of yet another cheesy horror film, this seven minute short pokes fun at all the ostentatious behind the scenes short features that litter our DVDs and movie theatres.  Plus, it makes good fun of all those oh so serious zombie and horror flicks. Good stuff.

Dancing Christmas lights - cut and edited to music. This video has been almost everywhere. Here is your chance to see it at Google Video

Are technology and computers taking over your life and hurting your relationships?  Are you just too much of computer nerd and can't get a date. Check out this funny commercial - Don't Work So Hard. Why can't women be more like a computer game?

Where do the Christmas Santas come from? Some might think they are leftovers from the unemployment line but the truth is much more interesting. Check out this short iFilm movie – “Tracking Father Christmas” - documents how Santas are culled and captured from the wild men of nature. Great concept, wonderfully written and produced. You might not want to share this with little kids.

You can find all of these flicks, and more – at Best Videos of the Week

VIDEO WEB SITES OF INTEREST – Check them out at Best Video Web Sites of the Week

As you can imagine, video oriented web sites are popping up by the thousands.  From sites using Internet video to promote their film making skills, to sites using video to promote other people’s skills and products, it is hard to keep up. Recent site spotlights include:

TurnHere.com who is seeking professional and independent filmmakers, who it pays for their work and creativity, to participate in an ambitious initiative which is chronicling the stories of American neighborhoods and places across the country through 2-5 minute short films made specifically for the Internet.

TV Worldwide, an interesting and very entrepreneurial collection of informational and for pay video. This might be your path to fame and fortune - or at least, fortune.

 If you love watching great short movies online, you have to check out the McGuffin Film Festival.  If you are a creator of great short films you ought to visit the site and submit your film for the next McGuffin Film Festival.

DeadKidsFilms make short films, music videos, documentaries and even advertising. Their work, and the web site, reflects their urban attitude and style. This is a good example of how to use web design and film making expertise to make it in the arts.

Atom Films posted their list of the top online films for the year 2005 Check it out. Some of these are really great. Also check out the Top 100 Films List at iFilm.

Google Video may be the best online sharing site ever. You can post personal video blogs, silly family movies, events, commercials, anything.

Happy New Year and have a great 2006. And as usual, if you don’t want to get this incredible, amazing and fun filled newsletter in your email mail box any more, just hit reply and put TAKE ME OFF in the subject area.

Copyright SRS Productions - 2006