Online Video Production Blog

This article by Phil Cooke confirms what I have experienced with creating video for the online and mobile market.  Attention spans are shorter online.  You need to grab your audience early and keep the video interesting so people wont click away.

I write this blog from a number of locations.  I have been stuck in front of a another computer away from my main 2 machines, my office machine and my home machine, with time to kill and blogs to write.  I like to try and finish an article if possible so when I get back to my main machines I can get back to whatever work I need to do there.  As such I have had to set up some procedures so that I can work effectively on this new blog while away from home base as it were.

One techique I have used is to store high quality versions of all files I might need in a hidden folder on my site so that I can easily adapt any images on the go or add them to my various social media sites.  I also had to find a quick and easy online image editing application.  I found www.picnik.com

I revamped this website in November 2008 after owning the domain for over 4 years and having a pretty crappy Joomla site here for most of that time. I always thought I would "get around to it" at some stage. I never did.  Recently though I started working on three other sites (www.dailydevotions.com.au, www.theclique.tv and southmorang.nccc.org.au)and felt that it was time to spend a bit of that time and acquired knowledge on my own personal site.

I must admit that the idea of possibly earning a few adwords dollars and building my personal brand did cross my mind but as I have got into it, I have found that I actually enjoy the writing side of it. I recognise that people may not enjoy reading what I have to write but that kinda isn't the point at the moment. I am enjoying creating this site and hopefully, in time, there will be a repository of my knowledge that may benefit someone else.

My mother works at a major supplier of mountain bread here in Melbourne Australia, she sits on the end of the sales@ email address and as such gets a mix of legitimate and spam mail.  Knowing my interest in SEO she forwarded me this email.

Now I think there is something highly ironic about a company offering SEO services and guaranteeing to get top position "in major search engines" that 1. doesn't have a website itself, 2. doesn't even rank for their own company name (thats not rocket science, I have ranked number one for camthecameraman for over 3 years!! and I make no big claims about that no one else is even trying) and 3 they promise to "evaluate your site for free" and havent even checked to see that the Mountain Bread Company does indeed rank top spot for the phrase "mountain bread" in its local google search and number 2 in google worldwide.

Watching Jim Stewart's vlog today on YouTube I saw that it was displayed in widescreen.  Jim has for a number of months, maybe years, recorded in widescreen or 16x9 format but has had YouTube pop black bars at the top and bottom (letterbox) his pictures.  Clearly YouTube is catching up with the new world of 16x9.

I saw this article in the age online to confirm that YouTube is indeed going to offer widescreen viewing from now on.  This is also confirmed on YouTube's Blog. This will be a bonus to those people who love watching videos online on their spiffy new widescreen laptops or home plasmas and LCD's.

 

 I just got this question on facebook from one of my students:

 

hey Cam - do you know/have you heard anything about there being no copyright attached to anything posted to the web as at 01/01/09 for US sites ? a photographer at work made mention of it  I forgot to mention it to you