[Mike Cohen]

Branden,
While we don’t expect you to post “I have produced a DVD showing how you can lose weight while juggling live chickens” – in other words you may have a never-been-seen-before idea that you do not wish to disclose – that is a tough sell. It’s like saying “I have a system that will let you quit your job and earn six figures a year” – in other words, you’re selling a dream. That comes across as a scam.

Heed the advice of others. In the current economy of free how-to videos on the internet, you’d better create an awesome website promoting your video – give away a taste and charge a fee to access it all – there are plenty of cheap ways to make a video-based website. And then you have to market it, starting in your own market and then moving outward.

There is no free lunch. Have you noticed all the DVD and books in the clearance bin at Walmart? $4 fitness DVD’s are not making much money for anyone. From Walmart’s point of view cheap DVD’s are loss leaders. I bought my wife a walking DVD for $10 at Target. Target probably has 10 copies per store times 5000 stores. They probably pay $5 per copy from the distributor. If the creator of that DVD makes 50 cents per unit sold that is probably a lot.

What’s your business plan?

You don’t have a business plan? Go to the library and get a book about this. You have to write up how you see yourself making money from the live chicken juggling diet, before you try to get instantly rich without a plan.

Next buy or borrow some of Seth Godin’s recent books.

And ask specific questions on this forum. We are not in the dream business – we are in the business business.

Good luck. Look at the big picture. Yeah, a great idea is potentially great, but an idea is not an island.

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

Drew
There is no shortage of talking heads videos on the web. Here’s my favorite:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1wg1DNHbNU

But seriously (actually I was serious) go to just about any tech company’s website and you’ll find video of CEO’s and other officers touting the awesomeness of their products and services.

What you need to do is get the message across in a way that does not look and sound like a scripted piece of propaganda. Shoot it so it looks like you caught the person walking down the hall, rather than sitting in a wood paneled board room counting gold coins like Scrooge McDuck. But don’t shoot it like that – still use a tripod and good lighting. Fly casually. I’d also intersperse some clean graphics.

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

Can the video files be played in VLC or QT player? If yes you may need to transcode. If not do the files play on the camera. If so maybe you can capture using a capture device such as Matrox mxo mini etc.
If giles don’t play on camera you might be hosed.

Was this the first time using this camera? If so surely you tested your workflow before jumping into a project.

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

How about a video of throwing a DSLR into a pool for a videographer to retrieve? That would be much more interesting.

Not sure what it has to do with a wedding video. Maybe a groom throwing a bride into a pool for a dog to retrieve. Or throwing a dog into a pool…oh forget it.

Good luck on finding your needle.

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

We have recently been evaluating new e-mail marketing providers, and they all have this huge focus on “social” with all the buzzwords that go along with it. Granted, the focus of these vendors is mass market retail (national retail chains, catalogs etc) who are all doing big social media campaigns. It turns out, through these e-marketing platforms, you can track the performance of your social media links down to the individual users, automatically post messages to FB, Twitter and other less used services, and while not actually monetizing any of this, at least you can see who the movers and shakers are who help to promote your brand.

All of this is retail based, of course.

If you provide a service as most of us on this board do, then social media has different uses.

I follow a few shooters and editors whose work I like – they do post the same links on FB, LinkedIn and Twitter as well as their blogs, so there is some redundant information if you follow all sources. However I am a media pro just like the folks I follow – I am following them because they post some useful links, they talk about their own activities, and they in most cases are not trying to sell me something. Like Shane said, if I want to hire someone perhaps I will look to the folks I follow first, or at least get a recommendation from them.

But how many people are following these people who are potential customers (such as small business owners, marketing directors, ad agencies, etc)? Probably not very many unless they specifically searched for, say “video production atlanta.”

And that is the challenge with social media. Let’s look at the FB page for a brand – most people who “like” the page are either current users of the brand or perhaps they have liked the page because of a friend liking the page. In my FB world, I only “like” a product or service if it is useful to me. For example, a friend’s feed includes his comments in response to a naturopathic physician – the posts were interesting and useful (not overtly trying to sell me something) so I have become a follower. Will I become a patient of this guy? Seeing as he does not accept my insurance, the likely answer is no. But I am getting some value from the information.

Now take a national brand. Lately I have been flying Southwest a lot, so I followed them on FB. About 90% of their posts are either promotions (ie, Father’s day is coming up, why not fly to see dad” with a link and a sweepstakes entry). In fact many of their posts have to do with contests. They are also celebrating their 40th anniversary so they post old photos and get people talking about their own memories. So they are getting some good will and giving people the chance to win prizes.

But all of this is aimed at current customers. Certainly getting repeat business is important for any business. But would they get the same amount of repeat business without FB? Good question.

That being said, if you show all comments on the Southwest wall, you get the flip side of social media – the backlash. A few months ago when they changed their frequent flier program from number of legs to points, their fan base erupted in complaints, some laced with some salty language.

Do the Southwest leadership read and/or respond to these posts? Another good question.

Same goes for most national brands. Sure there are wingnuts who like to complain about everything, but some of the complaints are probably with some merit. Best Buy’s forums on its own website are notorious for attracting the ire of disgruntled customers, but the company has made a habit of making good with selected customers.

So am I making money off social?

Here is what we have tried so far.

A few years ago we started a YouTube page and posted brief clips of some of our more popular videos (we are also a retailer of medical videos). Some videos eventually got thousands of views. One in particular got nearly 75,000 views. And the product it was promoting had good sales as well. We then removed this video, and sales of the same product were unchanged.

As for Twitter and FB, we post links to new products and events, but we are really just getting started. We include FB and Twitter links in our e-mail marketing messages, although I suspect the target audience of doctors perhaps have other things to do besides look at Facebook.

I have my own Twitter page which I have used to engage with some public figures, some video pros, and also post information about company products and services. I have about 150 followers – it is interesting to see new followers appear depending upon what keywords appear in a tweet. Apparently some people automatically follow you if you use certain words.

As for LinkedIn, I have used it to find leads – it is amazing all the free public information that is listed. I have been contacted by a couple of physicians who I already know. From them I could connect to many people I don’t know, but I have found at least anecdotally that working people are either too busy or reluctant to provide the introductions LinkedIn seems to think people are willing to provide. And then let’s say I do connect to potential customers on LinkedIn – then what. I certainly am not going to send them sales pitches. It seems to come down to what Shane suggested – if someone is looking for a service, and they are either following you or they search for a service that matches your criteria, they might or might not contact you. Reminds me of those things they used to call search engines!

Let us not forget Creative COW – the social media website designed for our industry. Certainly ad agency and small business owners are not going to say “I need a video made, I’d better go to the creative cow.” That would be like me saying “I need my toilet replaced, I’d better got to International Plumber’s Local 526.com” – no I am going to do a search.

So if someone searches “surgical video production” they get a link to Creative COW on the first page of results. That’s pretty good. I have gotten a few leads from my activities here.

Making money?

We make money by going out and pitching services to potential customers, doing direct mail marketing for our products, having relationships with industry and medical societies, and having an e-commerce website. Social media may one day help attract people, but it does not necessarily have a direct measurable effect for non-retail. As of this writing.

Mike Cohen

I would be remiss if I did not ask you to follow us on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cine-Med/128846546090

[Mike Cohen]

Thanks for the video and the reminder to help. You’re right, thanks to Anthony Weiner and Caylee Anthony, the Joplin Tornado is ancient history in the news media. I have not heard about it for at least a week.

Are you from that area Grinner?

Mike Cohen

Here’s the link from the video
https://rebuildjoplin.org/

[Mike Cohen]

Now to answer my own question.

I scoured the web, both the COW and Adobe forums, as well as a few other locations.

It turns out that setting Media Encoder to Square pixels does not actually convert non-square source to square output – it merely encodes a square pixel movie that contains non-square pixels. I think. Adobe does not make it clear what it is actually doing.

What you need to do is make a sequence in Premiere (or a comp in AE) at the PAR and video size you wish to export. Put your content on the sequence, and then export to the same settings. That works well, although there remain some variations, such as interlacing.

In this particular project, we had 720×480 widescreen sequences (non-square) and we needed to make 850x480ish MP4 with square pixels for upload to Ooyala. I opened a demo account so I could test various settings. Once you realize that 720 non-square pixels becomes something around 854 square pixels, you stop worrying that you are stretching the width – you are not.

Exporting from the native sequence directly to MP4 with square pixels resulted in a blurry image and an error upon Ooyala encode.
You need a sequence set to your output format. So I exported an intermediate AVI native file from the sequence, then imported that onto the export setting sequence, export with the same settings as the sequence, and we are in bizzness.

2nd project was cut at 720p. Since 720p is already PAR of 1 (square pixels) I can export that directly to a square pixel 850wide video size, and the results are also excellent.

So rule of thumb – garbage in, garbage out. Square pixels in, square pixels out. Non-square pixels in – non-square pixels out. Non-square pixels contained in a square pixel movie equals a mess.

Adobe will convert, but only by putting non-native video on a sequence. So when you choose a sequence preset, or make your own, it adapts whatever you put in that sequence to that setting – though not in real time on many systems, which is why things stutter.

Learning never stops – thank goodness for that.

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

I found another thread, I know not where, suggesting that Quicktime player on Windows may play video and audio out of sync due to some fault with the qay QT handles audio drivers – but in fact it is ok on a Mac and when loaded onto a streaming host.

Seems ok now.

Mike

[Mike Cohen]

To build upon the other posts. Place the lower third on its own sequence. Then when you need it in another project you can click Import..project…then select the particular sequence you need and it will import only the media needed for that sequence. You used to be able to import titles when they were not saved as part of the project but not since CS3. One would think Adobe would let you import a title or a bin separately but perhaps no one has ever thought of that.
Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

You may wish to post this in the Field Production forum

https://forums.creativecow.net/fieldproduction

And be specific – there are about 2 million variations on your question.

Mike Cohen