Microsoft Zune

Author and video podcaster Richard Harrington speaks to Microsoft Zune podcasting guru Rob Greenlee at the 2008 New Media Expo.

Presentation on WordPress

DCPA Member Naomi offers tips on using WordPress and blogging.

http://www.viddler.com/explore/geekycybermom/videos/28/

Be sure to check it out.

Bill Mandates Closed Captioning for Podcasts

A new bill has been introduced into congress that would target accessibility of web video. The "21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2008" (

H.R. 6320

) covers about a dozen areas. The proposed law has Internet video captioning requirements.

Eighteen months after its enactment, the Federal Communications Commission must set up regulations and deadlines for "an appropriate schedule of deadlines for the provision of closed captioning of video programming distributed to the public over the Internet."

Three kinds of video would be affected:

• Material that has already been captioned for TV viewing
• Live programming
• Video that is "generally considered to be comparable to programming provided by multichannel programming distributors."

It is point three that is sticky. A whole lot of podcasts fall into this category. Closed captioning and transcriptions cost.... many podcasters see little if any profit from their shows. Always nice when congress sticks its nose in the Internet.

How about instead of sending money to worhless causes... they actualy fund this requirement.

New Media Expo Coming Soon

Just a reminder that I'll be speaking at this year's

New Media Expo

in Las Vegas. The event runs August 14-16 and I hope you can come out. My class is called:

Producing Video Podcasts with Multiple Cameras

Want to cut down editing time and give your show more polish? Learn how to create video podcasts using multiple cameras. Join veteran podcaster Richard Harrington as he shows how to harness multiple angles to improve your show. From concerts and live events to demos and interviews, multiple cameras will help you tell your story. Learn how to setup and match your cameras as well as essential editing techniques. This workshop will make multi-camera productions a snap.

Advertisers Begin To Target Podcasts

A great article about podcasters and advertisers....
I’ve often scratched my head how I can gather 2 million people each month... but advertisrs still go with magazines that deliver less than 25% of that. This article from Investor’s Business Daily is an important read. It also features a colleague of mine... Scott Bourne.

Lend Me Your Ears: Advertisers Begin To Target Podcasts

Podcast audiences have branched out far beyond just geeks. And advertisers are starting to like them, too.
After having placed ads with Web sites and search engines, more advertisers are starting to spread their ad dollars to audio and video podcasts in an attempt to reach certain consumers.

Read the rest.

Shooting Progressive

Author and video podcaster Richard Harrington explains why he recommends shooting your video podcast in 24p (or 24 frames per second, progressive).

5 Tips for Launching a Successful Podcast

Emarketer reports that in in 2007, 18.5 million Americans tuned into podcasts. In four more years, the analysts projected that this audience will more than triple in size.

Ready to hop on the podcast bandwagon? Great! Check out these tips for launching a successful podcast.

1. Podcast on a regular basis. You’ll earn loyal listeners if you podcast on a schedule, such as weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Try to upload your shows on the same day of the week.
2. Keep your podcast episodes short and sweet. Online audiences have short attention spans. Five minutes is long enough. Anything over ten minutes is pushing it.
3. Stick to informative and entertaining content. If you talk about information listeners really value, you can slip in a little promotion. A rule of thumb for email marketing is 85% useful content and 15% promotional content. It would be unwise to devote more than 15% of your air time to promotions.
   Submit your podcast to iTunes.
4. Create a compelling podcast website. Your website or blog can feature your podcast schedule, announcements, and special offers, archive show notes, answer audience questions, and promote products or services.
5. Measure your success. Some measurement tools to try:

• Google Analytics: tracks users and audio file downloads
• Feedburner: measures the number of unique subscribers per episode
• Podtrac and Volomedia: behavioral and demographic data

Episodic Viewing of Podcasts

Deeje Cooley from Adobe shares some interesting thoughts about episodic viewing of podcasts. Don't miss this

great post

on what's possible with the new Adobe Media Player.

“There is a better way. More and more,

TV shows are being (re)distributed as RSS

feeds, which allows for a completely "on-demand" experience. What's more,

the coolest feature

of

Adobe Media Player

, called "Storyline Subscriptions", takes advantage of the reverse chronological order inherent in RSS to deliver every episode of a show, in order, from the beginning, at a pace determined by each individual viewer.

Most video RSS aggregators will pull the most recent episodes of a show, which is great for news and magazine-style shows. But for story-based shows, viewers really want to start from the beginning, in order to follow the story arcs and character developments. When you subscribe to a show in Adobe Media Player, you can choose to either pull the N most recent episodes, or choose to pull N episodes starting with a specific episode, usually the first one. And of course you can change these settings, on a per-show basis, at any time.”

Be sure to

check it out.

Near NYC? Check Out Rocketboom.

If you're near New York City, you might want to

check out the NYC Podcasting Association event

featuring

Andrew Baron

of

Rocketboom

.

When: Thursday, May 29, 7:00 PM

Meeting Description: We'd like to welcome Andrew Baron as this month's speaker. Andrew is best know for the hit videoblog Rocketboom. Andrew will talk about the current state of the industry; Where is the ad market at? Where is traditional media at in moving online? What options are avail to startups? What happened to Podshow and Podtec? What's wrong with Revision3 and Next New Networks?

Andrew Michael Baron is the creator and founder of the popular daily videoblog, Rocketboom. He is also the lead writer and producer of the show which has garnered international notoriety.

In Austin during the 1990s, Baron played in bands, ran a visual and performing art gallery and worked a variety of tech jobs. After receiving a BA in Philosophy from Bates College (Maine), Baron graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Design and Technology in 2003 from Parson in New York City. He was teaching graduate classes at Parsons and MIT when the notion of Rocketboom came to him. Although he has little interest in television (and did not own a TV set during the past decade), Baron has always been inspired by the implications of the democratization of media.

Lighting With Cookies

Author & video podcaster Richard Harrington shows you how you can make "cookies" and use them to enhance the look of your sets or locations.

NIN – The Times are Changing

One of the first bands I fell in love with during college was Nine Inch Nails (actually back then, it wasn't a band). The seminal record,

Pretty Hate Machine

was a mash-up of Prince Samples and Orchestral Scores from Stephen King and Clive Barker films (along with many other sounds). Since then Trent Reznor has continued to evolve/

Yesreday they‘ve releases The Slip—a new 10-track album—for free on

http://theslip.nin.com/.

The record is available in virtually every flavor of DRM-free digital format, all you need to do is give them your email address. The album will eventually be available in traditional formats as well. This move mirrors those of both

Radiohead

and

Prince

.

Available in several DRM-free formats, the record will be released on CD and vinyl in July.

"Thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years," Reznor wrote. "This one's on me."

There's a great article over at

Billboard.com

that goes deeper into the whys... what I think is amazing is where the industry seems to be going. Here's an artist who's always been pushing limits (including abandonning his record label recently). This record, along with his last

Ghosts I-IV

were released under Creative Commons (in fact much of Ghosts is also free).

Taking it a step further, Reznor offers many of his tracks for remix at

http://remix.nin.com/

). So here's a guy who not only tries new things, but wants his fans to remix his records and have fun. In fact you can share your remix and listen to others off his site. I think its interesting that there's a financial model here thats all about creating a relationship with the fan base.

Bottom line... check this out... the future is at hand.

Does the World Need Another Media Player?

The fine folks over at Layers Magazine have published the article:

Does the World Need Another Media Player?

This time its had the benefit of being scrubbed by an editor (not just spell-checker). You can read it here:

http://www.layersmagazine.com/column_adobe_mediaplayer1.html

.

A few folks have commented on the length of the article... here’s the Spark Notes version:

• Flash Video is getting really popular
• The Adobe Media Player will be easier for corporations, schools, and government to use due to Adobe's greater acceptance over Apple (and especially iTunes).
• The media player supports several models that are attractive to content creators
• The media player supports very rich statistics on media consumption
• The application is going to move onto all sorts of devices and platforms in the near future.
• If you are a podcaster... I predict the Adobe Media Player will have as great of an impact as iTunes did on podcast consumption.

The article is long... but worth the read... I promise.

Interesting Video to Explain Podcasting

Adobe Demos Future Technology at NAB

Adobe has actually posted their "secret" presentation from NAB. Hart Shafer talks about four cool things Adobe has up their sleeve.

You

SO

need to watch this... trust me. BTW (for those of you waiting... they did show

OnLocation

for Mac in this demo).

School of Podcasting Interview about Video Podcasting

Thanks to the

School of Podcasting

for having us on the show. I had a chance to catch up and talk with the host about what folks need to think about when moving into the world of video podcasting. The interview also features my co-author (and business partner) Mark Weiser.

You can get the interview for free right here (

http://www.schoolofpodcasting.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=330803

) and you should also check out their other shows which offer great perspective.

-Rich Harrington

’Toon Your Video in Adobe CS3 Production Premium

Want to create a cartoon effect for your video? Be sure to check out this step-by-step tutorial I wrote for Layers Magazine.

“Sure, clients want it…that “cartoon look.” But let’s face it; good animation is hard to come by. Unless you have a gaggle of animators locked in your closet, you’ll need to get creative. Sure, you could break out the pencil and paper (or maybe even try shadow puppets), but we’re here to offer you a different solution. By harnessing the power of Adobe CS3 Production Premium, you can convert video frames into vector art into film-resolution movie files. Curious? It’s all possible with the power of the Production Premium.

Read on

.”

Time to Comment on Advertising and Measurement Standards

The Association for Downloadable Media just unveiled Advertisement Unit Standards and Download Measurement Guidelines. They'd like public comments on both. They encourage public comments in order to refine and enhance the documentation. The public comment period will end on May 16, 2008. You can download and comment on the draft standards for advertising and measurement

here.

The open comment period will conclude May 16, 2008.

Two Updated Final Cut Pro DVDs

I just released two newly updated Final Cut Pro discs. We updated our Absolute Training for Final Cut Studios Disc 1 & 2. Both DVDs are full current for Final Cut Studio 2 and include hands-on training files as well as HD resolution training and iPod files.

Apple Final Cut Pro

Volume 1: Getting Started in Final Cut Pro

Volume 2: Going Deeper in Final Cut Studio

Also, you may have missed that we recently released the following titles. These also include HD and iPod versions on the same disc.

Apple Color

Volume 11:

Introduction to Color

Volume 12: Advanced Color

Bundled for Savings

Apple Motion

Volume 13: Getting Started with Apple Motion

Volume 14: Going Deeper with Apple Motion

Volume 15: Advanced Techniques with Apple Motion

Bundled for Savings

Animoto Creates Rocking Slideshows

Looking for something different? I discovered

Animoto

at this year's SXSW conference... Load up your photos, pick a song, and within a few minutes you have a rocking music video. You can use their cleared music or load up your own. Thirty-second movies are free, full-length videos cost $3. You can get a full year's access for $30.

The whole process is a piece of cake. Be sure to check them out – 

here.

You can post the videos to a website, download them for an iPod, or even use YouTube to share. The videos you download

Here are a two more of mine that you can check out.

Three-Point Lighting

Author & video podcaster Richard Harrington explains a fundamental of video production - Three-point lighting.