The best ways to become a successful freelance videographer/ editor.

Being a successful freelance videographer and editor has allowed me to expand my horizons and explore things I had only dreamed of doing in the past. The secret to being successful in video, or any field for that matter is no secret, in fact the biggest hump is taking that initial step. So, in light of that, I've decided to list the crucial steps that should be taken, as well as some helpful tips, that should help get you on the path to successfully creating video and marketing yourself and your work.

First you need to have some footage "in the can". You need to, of course, make sure that the footage is some of your best work. You don't want someone judging your abilities on footage that is not indicative of what you can really do. Editing the footage and getting on tape is easier than you think. Many computers, especially Macs, have built-in software that will allow you to edit footage that is corporate DV quality. Your editing doesn't have to be flashy, in fact using too many goofy transitions distract from the footage you've shot and honestly using excessive wipes and "page turns" etc. are usually quick indicators to the seasoned veteran that you are simply not as professional as he had hoped. Keep it simple and keep it professional, if you want it to be flashy, use several well timed cuts and dissolves, get your edit points from the footage, it'll usually give you good points to edit.

You can not be afraid to get yourself in front of people. Have business cards made, Vistaprint has a service where you only pay for shipping. Get yourself connected, no one else will do it for you. Networking is HUGE! The more people you get yourself in front of the better. It may suck to hear this but you can only hide in the shadow of the internet for so long. Good, old-fashioned leg-work is the best way to get yourself some work, or at the very least get new contacts. Many times, people think that sending out an e-mail and pointing someone at a website will do the trick, but unless that employer or producer has actually met you, they will think twice about putting you in front of one of their clients. My best contacts will trust me with any of their clients. This is the goal, to get to a point where they trust you with their clients, make them look good and they will call you back for more work. The clients will even start requesting you for more of their work.

One rule to remember when you are on a production for another company... DO NOT pass out your own personal business cards! This is bad business, you can easily be labeled as a person that tries to steal clients. For one, this makes you look bad, you won't get any more work from the company that hired you and you run the risk of gaining a bad reputation, and in this business reputation is everything. Burn a bridge and you never know when it will hurt you in the future.

Follow up with people you contact. Many times the contacts you initially make will forget that you are a resource for them. Try creating newsletters and sending it to them periodically. This will hopefully get them interested in what you do and keep them abreast to recent developments in your life. Don't be afraid to put slightly personal things on the newsletter, like "I just took a great vacation to the most beautiful part of the Caribbean" and then write a short story about it. There's nothing wrong with sharing something slightly personal with people you work for, it helps make you more of a "person" and not so much just another shooter or editor. Regardless of whether you decide on a newsletter or a periodic e-mail, the main point is to keep in contact, people sometimes get into patterns of using people often because they establish a comfort level with that person. You might as well make them comfortable with you.

The last thing I'll mention should really go without saying, perform. When you are actually onsite, hustle. Don't let yourself become too comfortable with your employer. Of course, joking and having a good time while you work is essential, people love to have someone around that makes the day go by quicker. the main thing you need to keep in the back of your mind is that you are there to work. So, when it's a good time to laugh, bring it on, but when it's time to work, it's time to be a professional. Don't let being comfortable translate into being lazy. Be ready to help out in any way. Often times the DP, or Director of Photography, will perform several duties, lighting, audio, grip, shot selection, composition and even talent training. Don't be afraid to jump in and contribute. Make sure not to step on toes and tell someone else to do their job, but offer an opinion, it may help the production in the end. At the very least it will help you look like a more valuable part of the process.

Conveying your value is the most important part of this process, so get out there and show yourself and showcase your talents. The more value you show, the more valuable you become.

Carlos Borges is a freelance producer/ videographer/ editor in Florida with over 11 years experience in corporate video. More articles concerning video on the way soon. Recently he's learned the skills required to build and maintain a lasting web-presence and is sharing the opportunity at http://www.profitlance1.com

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1 Beyond CEO cites trend moving from standard definition to HD at NAB2007

All markets moving upscale By John Virata

Terry Cullen, CEO of 1 Beyond, a manufacturer of media workstations and storage arrays, details some of the new offerings the company will showcase at NAB2007 in Las Vegas. In addition, he mentions the move from standard definition video to all flavors of HD, from wedding and event videographers to low level and high end broadcast pros.


View the full article at: http://digitalproducer.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=120359


An interesting trend indeed. It's about time the industry got serious about pushing HD. The trend has swung HD's way increasingly over the past few years, but the consumers are still in the grey area when it comes to fully committing to the standard. The trend of buying HD sets and not having HD content for them is more prevolent today than ever. HD support will increase the market's demand for it, hence giving more work to the people who provide it. NAB will reveal new trends and show us all where the industry will be focusing it's attention. Let's hope the quality of the products that are released are as inventive as they have been in recent years.

AVCHD will be making a strong push this year. The format totes higher quality with higher compression via the MPEG-4 standard

How Plasma TVs And LCD TVs Differ

How Plasma TVs And LCD TVs Differ
by: Joseph Foley

The buying of large-screen TVs has absolutely skyrocketed lately. It seems that everyone wants one – and with good reason. The large-screen TV has come a long way from those faded-out behemoths of old that took up half your living room and never really produced a picture of decent quality. Now, however, especially in combination with HDTV, you can get not only a nice, large picture, but a crisp, clean one too.

Once you decide that you’re ready for a large-screen TV, you quickly discover that you only really have two main options – a plasma TV or an LCD TV. Plasma TVs were first on the scene, but the recent mass production of LCD TVs by major manufactures has put LCD TVs pretty much on equal footing with plasmas. That said, you will still have to make a choice.

If you’re like most people, you not only have no idea how the two differ, you don’t even know the areas you should be considering in order to determine how they differ. But they do indeed differ, and knowing the difference is extremely important if you’re going to get the TV that’s right for you.

You can essentially boil the differences between plasmas and LCDs into twelve basic points. In some areas, plasmas will win out. In other areas, LCDs will win out. In yet other areas, it will depend on your own personal taste in order to decide who wins out.

The twelve ways plasma TVs and LCD TVs differ are the following:

1. The first is a technical issue, and may seem a little boring, but it really does affect other areas. Plasmas TVs are made of chemical compounds called phosphors. LCD TVs use millions of liquid crystals.

2. The next section is related to how big the TVs are and the availability of larger sizes. You have a wider selection of larger-size TVs with plasmas (though LCDs are catching up).

3. The next section is “small size,” which is also important. Plasmas don't come in smaller sizes, which you will need for places like the kitchen.

4. Next is viewing angle. Plasmas tend to have a wider viewing angle (though, again, LCDs are catching up).

5. Although the manufacturers may not like to admit it, each “can” suffer from certain problems. Plasmas can suffer from burn-in effect; LCDs don't.

6. Another problem area, but for LCDs, is “delay.” LCDs can produce a jagged figure when in motion. Plasmas tend to do better. HDTV improves this dramatically for both.

7. The next area is life span. You can replace the light source with an LCD, thereby bringing your original picture back. With plasmas you can't.

8. In the next few sections, the theme of “picture quality” is considered. First, color: LCDs produce sharp, lively colors. Plasmas produce warmer and more accurate colors.

9. Next is brightness levels and the TVs ability to handle different lighting. LCDs tend to do better in bright-light conditions.

10. Also related to picture quality is “black levels.” Plasmas tend to produce blacker blacks.

11. Another area to consider is contrast range. Plasmas, "technically," produce a higher contrast range.

12. Last, and certainly not least, is price. At the moment, plasmas tend to run a little cheaper, but this is changing rapidly as LCDs flood into the market. By the time you read this, in fact, there may be no difference at all.

Essentially, which one is right for you will all comes down to taste: What potential negatives will you not really notice? What positives do you want more of? What do you really want the TV for – movies, sports, news, regular TV shows? Both plasmas and LCDs have strong advocates in their corners. Both have deliriously happy customers. But those happy customers are only happy because they knew what they wanted before they made their purchase. If you want to make the right choice, you’ll have to decide what it is you want and which of the two TVs can best give you that.

Verizon and AT&T step up IPTV deployments

Verizon Communications last week got approval from state regulators to offer its FiOS TV service in 45 Southern California cities, within Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.

read the full article at:
http://broadcastengineering.com/iptv/verizon-att-iptv-deployment-0315/

Arqiva installs Zandar multiviewers for European HD trucks

Arqiva, a provider of transmission services for broadcasters and end-to-end media solutions for content and channel providers, has acquired 48 Zandar Predator HD8 MultiViewers to help produce live HD broadcasts of Championship Football for Sky Sports and its Sky HD channel.

The compact Predator units are installed inside two UK-based mobile production (OB) trucks, 24 for each, making it one of the largest single HD8 OB projects completed. Sony Professional Services installed the systems on both trucks.

On each truck, 10 multiviewers are installed in the production area, 12 in the videotape recording area and two for the audio mixing section. The Predator HD MultiViewers feature native HD input processing to display HD images up to 1080p. The multiviewer also offers low frame delays (less than one frame) from source to output.

The Predator HD8 accepts and auto-detects up to eight SDI or HD-SDI inputs with a high quality DVI output to the LCD displays up to 1080p resolution. The systems feature Zandar Dual Head (ZdH) display to drive one or two displays independently or configured as a virtual monitor wall, with spanning capability. ZdH is particularly ideal in space-restrictive OB vehicles because the system saves on rack space by combining two MultiViewers in a compact 1RU enclosure.

For more information, visit www.zandar.com.

Miniature HD video cameras in Daytona race

The WW20000BA H.264 HD encoder from W and W Communications was suc cessfully used by Broadcast Sports inside its onboard wireless HD cameras for transmission of live video feeds from racecars in this month's Daytona 500 race. The race was the first ever Daytona 500 race broadcasted in HD. Broadcast Sports, a wholly owned subsidiary of L-3 Communications/WESCAM, delivered the compact, wireless HD broadcast camera systems that were mounted in the cockpits of several cars in the race.

A COFDM microwave transmission link provided non line-of-sight transmission of the AV bit stream to production and satellite uplink units.

The WW20000BA video encoder was used in these camera systems to compress the video in HD broadcast quality at bit rates low enough and with very low latency, to make live coverage in HD over wireless links possible from cameras within the racecars.

'The successful broadcast in HD of this month's Daytona 500 race was a major milestone for the live broadcast industry'.

'Without the WW20000BA H.264 HD encoder from W and W Communications and their commitment in supporting us, we would not have been able to achieve this milestone'.

'This first success is opening the door for BSI to bring viewers world wide live sports coverage in HD', says Adam Toner, Engineering Manager at Broadcast Sports.

The H.264 standard produces superior results at lower bit rates compared to the older MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 video compression standards.

However, the significantly higher computational complexity of H.264 poses a major challenge in terms of power and footprint.

BSI found the solution to this dilemma in the WW20000BA encoder from W and W Communications, which runs at 110MHz only and comes in a single chip implementation.

The WW20000BA encoder compresses 1080i/p HD video at 2x lower bit rates and 15% better PSNR than MPEG-2 HD encoders.

'The combination of our video encoder expertise for low delay applications, combined with BSI's HD camera and microwave transmission expertise made it possible to achieve this milestone'.

'W and W Communications is proud to be partners with Broadcast Sports and to supply the company with the industry's best H.264 HD broadcast quality encoders', says Kishan Jainandunsing, Vice President Marketing at W and W Communications.

The WW20K H.264 codec chipset from W and W Communications consists of the WW20000BA encoder and the WW200001BA decoder.

Encode-decode tandem delay is less than 35ms or about 1 frame at 30frame/s with performance very close to the H.264 Joint Model.

The W20000BA encoder integrates an advanced context-adaptive noise reduction filter.

This not only reduces noise in the source video, but also improves the encoder's compression efficiency significantly depending on the video content.

Accurate constant bit rate control guarantees video quality versus available channel bandwidth over broadband wireless transmission links.

Software upgradeability of the chipset makes it easy to apply field upgrades.

W and W Communications: contact details and other news

H.264 Codec Chipset suits live HD broadcast applications.

Release date: February 27, 2007 W&W Communications Introduces H.264 Codec Chipset for Live HD Broadcast Applications The WW20K H.264 HD codec chipset from W&W Communications delivers broadcast quality 1080i/p video with minimum delay at low bit rates SANTA CLARA, Calif., Feb. 27 -- W&W Communications, Inc., the leader in H.264 HD encoders, announced today its WW20K H.264 HD codec chipset for live broadcast applications. The chipset consists of the WW20000BA single chip encoder and the WW20001BA single chip decoder. The low encode-decode tandem delay and ability to encode 1080 video at high quality and relatively low bit rates makes the WW20K chipset suitable for live HD video broadcast applications, such as sports and news events. "The broadcast industry is in the midst of converting to the HD format. However, the high bit rates of broadcast quality HD video material poses a challenge to real-time news and event coverage in high-definition," said Kishan Jainandunsing, Vice President Marketing at W&W Communications. "Our WW20K chipset provides the broadcast industry with a practical and robust solution to take down this last barrier towards HD video broadcasting." About W&W Communications, Inc. W&W Communications develops best-in-class video compression software and hardware solutions for video-enabled consumer, professional, enterprise and infrastructure platforms. Its innovative product line includes highly optimized, low-delay, power-efficient, high-definition H.264/MPEG-4 AVC encoders and decoders, as well as multi-format, multi-channel transcoders. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA with offices in Beijing, China and Madrid, Spain. For more information visit www.wwcoms.com. CONTACT: Kishan Jainandunsing of W&W Communications, Inc., +1-408-481-0264, or fax, +1-408-213-2951, or kishan@wwcoms.com

Contacts: General Information: Kishan Jainandunsing USA Phone: 408-481-0264 FAX: 408-213-2951 E-mail this person

Company Information: Name: W&W Communications, Inc. Address: 2903 Bunker Hill Ln #107 City: Santa Clara State: CA ZIP: 95054 Country: USA Phone: 408-481-0264 FAX: 408-213-2951 http://www.wwcoms.com