This month we celebrated July 1^st as Happy DTS 7.1 Day! “Give me 7.1 surround sound or give me complete silence”.

http://www.celebratesevenone.com/

Celebrate 7.1 on 7/1! from DTS Digital Entertainment on Vimeo.

DotLot played the producer role and called on some of our finest crew to shoot this production. We had the chance to work with some amazing talent: Fred Willard, Lou Wagner, Richard Horvitz, Robbie Troy, John Pollow along with some talented DTS buddies. This was a quick one day shoot which took plenty of preparation. We all had a great time on-set and off-set!

Even the Agoura Hills Mayor Denis Weber got into the act by proclaiming July 1^st to be “DTS 7.1 Day” in honor of their cutting edge 7.1 surround sound audio technology.

Also … signup and be a part of this celebration as DTS is given away Blu-Ray Discs, Playstation 3 and a 7.1 audio system! Go on and have some entertainment!

We recently received a project to capture past webinars and create FLVs so the company could play them on the web. Our first thought was to just bring the presentation into an NLE system for editing and encoding. However, in looking at the data delivered, we found these webinars had all sorts of programming that made it pretty impossible for NLE’s to capture straight out of the box

Ideas were shared on the best ways to gather the data into a format that was malleable for encoding.  One thought was to have one of the in-house programmers sort through the code and export the audio and images into a video codec we could use. However in looking through the code our programmer gave me the angry look that translated a “No Go”.

Our second thought was to do a screen capture of the material. Well, we’ve used a couple different screen recording software packages before. All of them have been ok in their own ways.  We decided to re-try an old go-to software everyone has used in one project or another, Camtasia Studio from TechSmith. This software has done some growing up in the past several years. Now you can screen record you presentation and export it to many more presets than I remember; blog, CD, DVD-ready, iPhone, iPod, Web and YouTube, or if you prefer formats: WMV, MOV, AVI, M4V, MP3, RM, GIF (animated file). So yeah … there is quite a lot of versatility with this program.

The recording of the screen is pretty straight forward with a simple interface. Hey, even an intern could do it, right Rob? Moving on … you set your window to record and hit the red button. Nothing’s going to blow up but for the most part that is all you need to do. Do check your audio levels however.

Once the recording is finished, you then get the option to edit the piece. Again with a simple, iMovie-ish user interface, cutting the piece is just a shortcut “S” away. Trim, save your project and “Produce video as” – ah … this part is up to you. Your end delivery is moments away.

The process is very time consuming and there needs to be a lot attention to the details. One miss steps could cause you time and the potential to recapture the entire project. Watch your settings and capture area very closely. Remember we’re all professionals.

Overall, I’ve come to appreciate Camtasia for what it is – a really inexpensive screen recording software that can get the job done. Now, there are many other functions I didn’t go into that this particular software can do (i.e. 3D tilt effect) so go and revisit this old friend and maybe it can help you out again someday.

What do you use to screen record?

DotLot is excited to put on an a mini-series event of fun, targeted discussions about online video and its’ uses: entertainment, new media statement, advertising, communication, etc. Some tentative topics include, top online videos and why, top V-loggers and what makes them effective, what’s viral?, and developing online genres.  Plans are being formed, material is being collected and lunches will be planned.

So stay tuned as these events are set to begin sometime in mid-April and re-occur once per month (unless demand changes). We’ll keep you posted as more information is developed. This ought to be entertaining!

This Friday DotLot is hosting a demo of the NewTek Tricaster with Keycode Media’s Mark Sambrano. We’re expecting a good turnout of some of our local friends and we’re excited to see this live web switcher in action.

I’ll post a full review after the demo.

We have used several different formats for shooting video. We own a Sony Z1-U and have fought the HDV battle for a long time. Over the past year or so, though, we have also shot extensively with the HVX-200, the RED ONE and several small consumer style cameras, such as the Canon HV-20 and the Flip. We are working hard to identify the perfect production workflow for acqusition for online distribution.

After having attended an LA area reseller’s seminar on the camera we had initially been unimpressed. Recently, though, our friends at Hollywood Press TV let us borrow their Sony EX-1 for some tests.  The results changed our perspective on the camera. We’re still getting acquainted, but at first glance we know that the camera can shoot 1080p at 24 and 30fps. It can shoot overcrank and undercrank. It has a fairly intuitive menu. The footage looks amazing! We struggled a little bit with some missing frames in After Effects, but assuming there is a fix for that, I think we may have found a great all-purpose camera for web production.

Who out there has used this camera? What has your experience been? If you have shot with this camera and used it for keying, web, or just about anything else, send a comment to let us know if it was a good camera for you.

New Media Expo

I learned about this expo from a friend and after watching the following video decided it would be a good idea to head up to Vegas…..

If you’re not familiar with that player, it’s Viddler.

The expo was actually a great experience. I got to meet a lot of great great people from a lot of great companies. The ones that really stood out were TubeMogul and Wizzard Media.

Tubemogul is fantastic because for podcasters, content creators, producers, etc. they are a great resource. They have a created a site that acts as an intermediary between users and 20 major video hosting sites. In other words, you upload your video to their site, and they submit it to youtube, Revver, myspace, viddler, break, blip, and many more. They then aggregate all your stats, comments, etc on their site, allowing you to see the full picture of your videos’ success.

Wizzard Media is similar to Veoh. They are a hosting site that has a proprietary player with lots of great functionality. They also work to bring advertisers and content creators together, with specific ads targeted at the right demographic. Since they actually have staffers whose job is specifically to bring producers and advertisers together, the advertising campaigns are much stronger. Recently, they worked with major companies such as Puma.

All in all it was a great experience.

Oh…and I met this girl

DotLot™’s most recent shoot was an exciting one – we shot an ad campaign for the PSP/Madden ’09 game bundle that was released this week. One of the creative executions involved an excited fan who lowers his buddy over the edge of their stadium seating section to grab a special edition blue PSP from the field below. To accomplish this shot, DotLot™ worked with a stunt crew to rig an actor from the ceiling of our main sound stage. He then climbed over a piece of a scoreboard that we built and was lowered by wires to the floor below where he picked up the PSP. We shot the whole thing using the RED One camera in full 4K mode.

An interesting production note: We shot the video elements on July 29^th, 2008 which was the day of the “Great SoCal Earthquake of July 29^th, 2008”. (Look it up – it’s in the history books.) Our rigging and stunt team was actually in the air on the scaffolding when the earthquake hit, but they were able to get everyone down safely and after a 10 minute break to wait for aftershocks, they were right back up in the air. Huge props to the whole team!

Here are some pictures from this very successful shoot.

Production companies who make videos that are specifically intended for web distribution vary in size from one-man shops to major production studios. DotLot™ (and parent company The Buddy Group) is a mid-sized agency with clients from a lot of different verticals. We do projects for large, national brands on a regular basis. Where we have run into problems in the past is during the production of short videos for local and corporate clients. Just as we have learned over the years that web videos depend as much on story as feature films, we also know that all projects demand the same level of management and attention, regardless of size or budget.

At DotLot™ and The Buddy Group, we assign an account manager to every project, regardless of the actual logistics involved. The creative team on a project should be free to concentrate on making their project sizzle without having to worry about managing the budget and the overall production schedule. Often times, though, when a video needs to be shot or edited on a very quick timeline, it’s tempting to want to skip over the work required to plan and organize a project; but it’s these situations where that type of planning can be the most important.

We assign one person to every project who is ultimately responsible for keeping it on schedule. To aid in this process, we use a checklist that at a bare minimum answers the following questions:

1) What are the key elements of the project?

a. How long must it be?

b. What are the audio & video requirements?

c. Do we need to make fancy titles or other motion graphics?

2) How many hours are allotted in the budget and how does that work with the rest of our production schedule?

3) When does the client need to see a rough cut?

4) When does the client need the final video delivered?

5) Where and how will the video be delivered?

a. Hard copy?

b. Online distribution?

These may seem like obvious questions, but web video is usually ordered and executed quickly. Big projects carry a certain weight that demands careful planning. Small projects, however, can really put a kink in the overall production schedule if they are not planned just as carefully. The internet is still seen as a new world by a lot of clients, big and small, which is why we must continue to educate them (and ourselves) that production is production, no matter where your audience watches the final product.

I was working at hanging some lights in our green screen studio when I walked out and saw Jonathan, Brad and Michael gathered around two of our edit stations. They had split an After Effects project into three separate projects.


Michael is working from the top down.

Jonathan is working from the bottom up.

Brad is busy adding panache.

I decided I could be of the most help by walking away.

What a team!