Mountain of editing.

Gotta be honest... I don't love video-editing. The entire reason I went back to school and learned a new trade was to get off my "chained to the desk" graphic-designer-ass and get out there in the world. It worked - for the most part - (cue montage of production photos from New Zealand TV shoot). However - my path didn't exactly lead to a career as a globe-trotting television camera man - well -  it kinda did, for a couple years. Eventually, I honed my craft as a producer and editor, in addition to my shooting background. So here I am - shackled to the desk again. The upside - I now have a family and a "life" - so 50% of my work doesn't have to be squeezed-with-a-shoehorn into the few business-hour shooting times I'm afforded. I can do most all of my post-production in the wee hours and odd times as I find them. The other 50% still allows me to get out and be in the world - no computers. Can't complain. Currently in the studio: Final edits on the Boulder Beer Company "About Us" web video, final edits on the Zinn Cycles "About Us" web video, three episodes of Beer City Television (Rancho Tastings, Boundary Bay Brewing and Tommyknocker) and a logo/identity project for "Don't Frack My Sixpack" (a campaign being promoted by Colorado brewers drawing attention to the careless proliferation of the practice of "fracking" the earth to extract natural gas deposits). Busy. Tired. Stoked.

Beer City Television Episode No. 6 - Twisted Pine Brewing. Part 2 of Two-Part Series

Beer City Television - Episode #E06 - Boulder Breweries By Bike Pt. 2 - Twisted Pine Brewing from Boulder Video Design on Vimeo.
Part two in our series "Boulder Breweries By Bike". On the second half of our day we rode to Twisted Pine Brewing and learned a little about their history and their oh-so-spicy hot pepper beer - the Ghostface Killah.

Busy is good. Corvettes are fast.

Busiest I've ever been. Thank you Colorado!

Back to back out of town shoots for PhoCusWright and Adam's Polishes. PhoCusWright is the industry leader on travel research and insight. They just presented this year's PhoCusWright conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. Super long, busy days interviewing folks and events. An awesome time and as usual, I'm learning a little something along the way.

This most recent Saturday and Sunday I found myself in Orange County at West Coast Corvettes - shooting Volume Seven of the instructional DVDs for Adam's Polishes. Adam Pitale makes only the finest custom car care products in the U.S. And because of the high level of craftsmanship required to detail a $100,000 car appropriately - he produces detailed videos for every step of the process. Fun shoot, great group of folks - and he even let me take his '62 super-modded Vette for a hotlap around the neighborhood. Scary Fast.

Now... we're hunkered down in the editing bay for an unprecedented run of editing for all of December. Whew!

Video = Fastest growing website feature for Small Business

Small Businesses need all the help they can get. A short video to tell your story not only educates your potential customers but helps personalize their shopping experience and will more likely bring them in your door. Here is a great article from Reelseo.com on why you should incorporate video into your website.

Video content on the Web? You'd better you bet.

A recent Kelsey Group study estimates that 74% of the online population is watching video content. Video has become part of the core behavior of all online demographics. Online video even challenges television. The projected growth is enormous; in 2009 there were 187 billion streams which is projected to double to 310 billion by 2013. That is an exponential number! The possibilities are endless for people, businesses and non-profits, large or small, who are thinking up new ways tell their story, advertise and increase their online presence and/or profits. Leveraging video-sharing sites like Youtube, Vimeo and Revver is also a fantastic way to boost search engine returns for your company because of the "add keyword tags" option on each of these sites. I witnessed firsthand the power of this tool in a previous role as Marketing Manager for Test Drive Videos. We were able to deliver top ten search engine results for a Portland Metro area Toyota dealer by strategic keyword placements within all their video content at the top five video-sharing sites. In today's marketplace it is no longer enough to just have a web presence. Having dynamic content, like video, is a crucial piece of the puzzle in the chaotic landscape of today's marketing strategies.

Off to ATLANTA!

Knee-deep in shooting this week at a Travel Industry trade show. PhoCusWright is the authority on the buying and selling of online travel and hospitality. They put on these trade shows to educate and share information. Yet another project where I get to learn something. Love my job. :)

Sixteen - is the magic number.

For all of you video geeks out there! I just learned a little something important, and very cool. When exporting .mov files from Final Cut - via - Compressor, occasionally I would get this bizarro vertical green line down the right side of my frame. It was happening infrequently and no matter how I changed the settings, it was still there. Turns out, when you're using the H.264 codec (which I do for most everything), your video's final dimension needs to be divisible by the number 16. Apparently, H.264 encodes in blocks of 16, or something like that. In any event, since I frequently change the dimensions of my final file due to overall file size, or where it's going to be delivered, etc., I just had to incorporate a little math to make it work. And indeed, work it does! Example: A current project is being output at 520 x 390 pixels. This equals 202,800 pixels. Divide by 16 = 12,675. A whole number! God bless Apple forums.