Perhaps the definitive source for conferences, meetups and get-togethers for professionals in the media space, GarysGuide covers major media centers in the U.S. such as Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle. Outside the U.S. Toronto and London are represented.

As you can see from some of the events I am planning or considering attending there are plenty of offerings in the iTV, Streaming Media space.

The holidays are over however, here is a gift you can give yourself that will pay rewards throughout 2009. For $100.00 U.S. you can purchase an Apple One to One membership.

For your $100.00 you can schedule up too 52 one-hour sessions, or one session a week for a year (though nobody is going to be able to schedule all 52 if they have a life however, that works out to about $2.00 per hour which is wild) on any topic, say Final Cut Studio 2 or Photoshop CS3. This is a great deal and if you want to brush up on some editing tips and tricks with FCP, Compressor 3, Color or other aspects of editing content for online. The trainers at my local store in NYC are first rate, very knowledgeable and eager to assist where you need it. I can't even get a Mocha for two bucks...

If you are taping content in the business world for on-line distribution you no doubt have come across RF interference from Blackberries, which are the platform of choice in the financial markets, in addition to many other industries.

The culprit, the RIM Blackberry is a Canadian based company, so it seem interesting that the solution to RF radio interference should come from yet another Canadian company, Clock Audio. Having used their C3-RF series, I have found both the Cardioids as well as the hyper-Cardioid to indeed filter all but the most worst of problems and even then there is only the slightest of interference. I would defiantly look to add these to your production toolkit which are also not that expensive, for example the C801E-RF is 293.00 each and Dale ProAudio, here in New York City is their preferred solutions provider.

Mics pictured: C301ERF, C31ERF, C801ERF

Flash Video for Professionals: Expert Techniques for Integrating Video on the Web, is a new book by by Lisa Larson and Renee Costantini

The book provides a framework and the professional solutions to make custom Flash video more accessible to those with intermediate programming skills. But it’s not just a programming guide. This book provides a step-by-step workflow and guides the reader through:

• understanding client needs and setting expectations

• obtaining source video and optimizing for web-based playback

• creating a site or web application that incorporates video

• creating and skinning a player with Flash

• publishing a site (including a discussion of hosting requirements)

• exploring serving options (streaming vs. progressive download)

• enabling the client to update their site with automated tools.

The book takes the developer through the process of gathering and preparing content, asking the right questions, determining the scope of the project and writing the project proposal. Authors Lisa Larson and Renee Costantini cull from their professional experience of running their own digital media company to explain in detail the special considerations in deploying Flash video applications, with ideas for solutions as well as avoiding the most common pitfalls.

Readers will explore real-world requirements and torture-tested methods needed to deploy the finished application to the web, as well as the intricacies of setting up a work environment, best practices and application design, and ActionScript. Detailed code examples are provided to drive home concepts. The book covers the most recent ActionScript language, with special attention given to bridging between versions. Flash Media Server 2 is discussed, along with filter effects, webcams and data sharing. This book is a must-have for the professional Flash developer or designer who needs to expand their skill set to include interactive video delivery.

The book is available via Amazon

DVGuru had a link to an informative and useful document for photographer's (videographers should fall under this protection) which outlines your right to photograph images in public.

I am reminded of this as I saw building security for a Wall Street financial firm yell at a tourist not to photograph their building, this even though they were across the street and on public property. In New York City as with most cities rules for video production usually require you to obtain a permit if you are shooting with a tripod.

Link to the New York City Mayor's Film Office

The Future of Web Video, by Scott Kirsner is a comprehensive study about the global shift evolving with on-line video as a new form of conversation between content creator and audience. While the distribution model has been dominated mainly by networks, studios and other large silo organizations, content is now being produced by small producers who are also the audience for others in their peer group.

The book sets the stage with his perspective on current and future issues facing content creators and the industry. In addition, there are interviews with key figures on the content creation, platform and advertising sides of the equation.

Content creators will find The Getting Paid section a useful jumping off point to acquaint themselves with companies seeking content. Scott lists what content these companies are interested in, the deals they offer and his comments,

To purchase the book, The Future of Web Video

Scott’s blog

As an alternative to purchasing a second seat of Sorenson Squeeze, Riva Encoder, a free transcoder may be the answer, especially if you want a solution for your laptop.

Riva will transcode from the following video formats: AVI, MPEG, QuickTime and WMV. In addition, you can use JPEG still images. Riva does not use the On2 Codecs such as the VP6 which produces high quality images. Riva uses FFmpeg, a compression set comprises under the Linux operating system, here is a link if you really want to dive into the Codec documentation

I have been testing and found the application works under most circumstances; it has refused to transcode some .AVI files with the following error message:

Since the files I tested were all rendered as uncompressed .AVI, the reason for the failure is unclear and their site did not provide any insight. In addition, when you press the Encode button there is no progress bar to indicate the program is working, the first time I tried it I thought it had frozen. In addition, their application support is limited with no rollover dialogs or on-line help. In addition, their on-line FAQ is empty. There are two demos however, they are (MOS) and there is no high-level overview which I would think would be the first one they created.

Their forum: does have some useful information however, there are also plenty of month old posts from users, which have not been addressed by the company.

When I contacted the company for more information, they commented as follows:

"We are not in the IPTV Business. Our solution is focusing on e-learning and knowledge transfer".

Thank you for your interest.

Robert Rothenberger
Owner
Rothenberger Global Training Solutions

Net, net while their help and instructions are limited and they do not see the Internet TV (ITV) market as their focus, it is still a free transcoder and useful as another solution for creating Flash files and the output quality is certainly good enough for most on-line video posting.

At the bottom of their page, they suggest a donation to keep the Encoder free -- I think that is fair and I will contribute...

WM Encoder 9, a free application from Microsoft is a very useful tool when recording content in the field via Firewire to a laptop. Files are captured as .wmv but can be opened and edited in most NLE's, such as Sony Vegas 6.0 You can encoded in the NLE, or re-encoded in Squeeze, WM or if you must Real media.

Since most capture to disc solutions, for example Firestore capture full frame (720x480) the down-convert can add significant cycle time to the production process. Also, a captured .wmv file size is very small, (a 20 minute segment captured at 320x240/15fps will average 90MB) so if you need to FTP content to a remote server, you can do it rather quickly even over the public net. In addition, if you do not plan to go back to tape there is no reason to capture full frame.

The other feature WM Encoder has is the ability to stream Windows Media content out in real-time. For example, if you wanted to set up a real-time moblogging system to your website using a DV camera and small laptop, this might be a solution, especially since I am not aware of any cell video camera (like the Nokia N90) that allows for anything beyond small file, short duration uploading.

I have worked with WM Encoder a lot and have come to understand some of its quirks, which I have listed below.

a. The audio metering is not a calibrated view; it is only an empirical guide. I suggest testing and then opening the file in the NLE of your choice to get a feel for the levels, since it is an encoded video file, you will not be able to open it an audio editor.

b. When viewing the audio meters they will appear on both channels even if you are only feeding one, be it the left or right.

c. It is also important to note that video brightness on your camera's viewfinder or external monitor will appear brighter then what is recorded within WM Encoder. For some reason it always works in this fashion. I would suggest lowering your laptop's brightness to the halfway point and then adjust your camera iris from there, you may want to experiment.

d. Video Safe Area, WM Encoder will capture the entire frame in your camera's viewfinder even beyond the safe action area so when framing a shot REMEMBER that you will need to frame according to what you see in WM Encoder and not in any other monitors.

e. The default Key frame interval setting is set to six however, I have seen flash frames during editing or scrubbing making editing more difficult. I lowered the key frame rate to three, which appears to have resolved the problem.

That said, these are not major issues and WM Encoder is a powerful application that has many useful features, namely;

- Retain or auto gen TC
- DRM plug-in via third-party providers
- Various plug-ins, (see image below)
- Deinterlace, Inverse Telecine
- 5.1 audio surround

WM Encoder should be part of your toolkit, and while it is a Windows only application, it is well worth using. I think the video quality is better then Real Media and audio is almost as good, finally yet importantly is the cost, free!

Please Note: Unless otherwise attributed, the ideas and thoughts expressed on this site are mine and mine alone and do not necessarily express those of my past, current or future employers.