Think of it as an online Yellow Pages of companies in the Online Video category.

In addition to descriptions of their products and services, each company provides links to their free White Papers (a fancy word for PDF report) that you can download.  So even if you do not wish to buy any of these services, you can find free information to help you navigate the ever-growing world of Online Video.

The categories within the directory include:

• Advertising
• Content Creation/Production
• Content Protection/DRM
• Encoding/Transcoding
• Formats/Player/Codecs
• Hosting/Delivery
• IPTV
• Legal Issues
• Mobile
• Music/Radio
• Online Video Platforms
• Video SEO
• Industry Verticals
• Education
• Enterprise
• Government
• Media Entertainment
• Streaming Industry

Keep in mind these are all paid listings, so the companies listed are all fairly large.  This is not a directory of mom-and-pop type services like me.     I do not get paid in anyway for recommending this directory I am merely passing along the information because I think it will be of benefit to my readers.

Thanks for reading Video Production Tips!

Lorraine Grula

Online Video connects to the web vistor better than any other type of content! Greet your customers with web video!

Guest Post By Dona Collins

Online video usage continues to grow exponentially as broadband Internet access becomes more and more commonplace in U.S. households and work places. Most importantly, research shows online video usage transcends race, ethnicity, age and gender making it a crossover hit with deep cultural penetration.
Last week, Ragan Communications, Inc. reported 71 percent of Americans said they watch videos online – a figure up 38 percent from five years ago.


That finding followed research published this summer by The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project that showed more than half of online adults have watched or downloaded video and 19 percent do so in the normal course of a day. In addition, 74 percent of broadband users who have high-speed connections at home and work watch or download videos online, Pew reported in its first major report on online video that was published in late July.

VIDEO TRAVEL THE WEB

That kind of popularity is pretty phenomenal – even in the age of social media saturation. The Pew research also demonstrates how videos travel. Nearly 60 percent of online video users share links with others and three out of four people say they watch videos from links sent to them by others.

YouTube remains at the top of the heap when it comes to online video providers. As of August, Nielsen data rated YouTube as the fifth most popular web brand after Internet giants Google, Facebook, Yahoo! And MSN/WindowsLive/Bing. During that month, nearly 128 million unique U.S. viewers visited YouTube and each person spent more than one hour and 41 minutes on the site in August.
Nielson data showed men consistently are the most frequent users of streaming online video. Asians lead among ethnic groups in use of online video, viewing the medium more than six hours per month more than whites and nearly four hours more per month than Hispanics. African-Americans watch the most mobile video, according to the media research company.

PARENTS WATCHING ONLINE VIDEO

The Ragan Communications research also found parents watch more online videos than non-parents and rural residents are viewing more streaming videos than they used to –a likely byproduct of the expanded availability in recent years of broadband access in remote areas.
These statistics paint a clear picture of the continued rise of the online video star. Along with this continued success comes a greatly expanded avenue for personal entertainment, fundraising, community outreach, education and any number of other worthwhile endeavors. Marketing and advertising opportunities associated with online videos should also continue to show growth in conjunction with the continued popularity of online video.
About Author:
Dona Collins has been writing for over 11 years.  She is an expert in area of tablets, mobile devices, large databases, infographic design and other editing work. You can also find Dona on Facebook when she is not working.

Thanks to Dona for supplying this guest post at Video Production Tips.

VIDEO TUTORIAL ON EDITING AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST.

From strictly a video production standpoint, this was a fairly easy one to make.  It’s made from still photos plus one royalty free video clip I got from Footage Firm. There is a continuous voice track I recorded myself at home with royalty free music under.  (Mozart for strings)  If I were talking strictly about “styles” of video this would mostly fall under the category of “slide show video.”

But IMHO, this is not just ANY ole slide show video! It has many attributes which make it enticing to watch.   Specifically that  would be fantastic visuals artfully put together with an emotionally laden voice track and powerful mood music.

Visual storytelling relies on each separate component of the video blending together into a cohesive whole.  Viewers should be enraptured by the blend, not even giving thought to the individual components or production methods.   As video producers on the other hand, it’s our job to create, gather and blend the individual elements so it takes much thought indeed.  As you go from being a viewer of video to a maker of video you will become more observant of the individual pieces and procedures it takes to obtain them.

Cute baby pictures are always well loved.

AWWWWWW, THE UNIVERSAL REACTION TO A SWEET BABY FACE

Video  is a visual medium.  Stripped down to it’s core, a video story can relay on visuals only, no sound, no effects. That’s how movie production evolved, with silent film as the first tool.    So obviously visuals always play the prominent role, even when you add all the other elements.

There’s an old cliche in show biz that you never want to follow children or animalss because babies and puppies pack a positive emotional automatically.  They do not have to do anything other than exist.  This video is packed with incredible baby pictures, up-close and personal sweet faces everyone will love.

Credit goes to Josh Bennett, a former high school video production student of mine.  We’ve kept in touch via Facebook so I’ve been able to see his growing professional portfolio.  Josh was always an amazing talent and if you doubt me, look at his work!  If you’re looking for a professional photographer in the Nashville, TN area, you can not do better than Josh Bennett.

Baby Photo By Josh Bennett, a former high school video production student of mine. He's now working as a professional video maker and still photographer in the Nashville, TN area. Hooray Josh!

Once I’d obtain permission from Josh to use his pictures, I imported the JPEGS into my video editing program, Final Cut Express, and manually cropped, matted and keyed them over a background of a rose close-up.  If you watch the screen capture video down at the bottom of this post, you can see me dissect the editing time line for this video to show exactly what and how I played with each shot to achieve the final effects.

Now probably if I’d been smart, I would have used the automated editing service Animoto to put my slide show video together.  Animoto is fast easy and incredibly affordable.  But I did it manually, which is slow and tedious!  The advantage to doing it this way is you have precise control over every tiny detail.  Since I look upon this sort of work as artistry, I enjoy it and am willing to spend the time.  Trust me, I was a real perfectionist on this one.  I fiddled and tweaked and altered until I had it as perfect as I could get it.  I do not always allow myself that much time, because it gets expensive but editing is a process and sometimes should not be rushed.   The final video is much better for my efforts.  It’s a bit like the difference between slow-cooked ribs and the plastic-tasting McRib you get cheap.

For more details on how I edited this video, watch this screen capture video where I analyze the time line within Final Cut.  I show how I matted and used keyframe animation on each shot.

In the days ahead, look for follow-up posts.  I’ve invited Josh Bennet to guest post plus they’ll be more from me about the scriptwriting aspect of this video.

Discover how to make your own videos here!  The Video Production Tips blog is designed to provide easy-to-understand tutorials on the subject of video production.  The online video revolution is BOOMING!  Take advantage of it with do-it-yourself video making advice from Video Production Tips!  Free and highly informative, VPT covers all aspects of how to make videos yourself without going to a lot of hassle or expense.

That technique turned out to be so popular, YouTube added something they are calling Search On, which is an incredibly easy-to-use video creation feature that pulls together  screen shots and edits them together with a selection of music.  Here’s an example that took me just a few minutes to make.

This Search On video about Niche Celeb, the online video program I am currently promoting created by the McFadden Brothers and their dad, actor Thom McFadden.  With the use of the dramatic music, I think it makes a fairly watchable and effective video ad for the program.

Simple screen cast videos like this can be extremely effective.  Now, with YouTubes new Search On Video Creator function, any short search video is super easy to create.  You don’t need any software, just a YouTube account.  Here are the simple steps you take to creater a video like this yourself.

To use the Search On YouTube video creator, click here.

Once you get to that page, click where it says “create your own” and you’ll be taken to a page where you can enter in whatever keywords you want.  Then you can indicate whether you want your screen capture image to be of a general web search, an image search, maps, blogs, or whatever.  This helps give your video some visual variety.

You’ll get a preview of your screen shot so you can see if it says what you need it to say.  If not, just change your keywords or the type of search.

When you’ve entered in all the search terms you want, click next and some music selections will pop up.  You can listen and then make a selection.

Click next and your video will be rendered.  If you like it, YouTube has made it easy to share on Twitter or Facebook and a handful of other places.   You can also grab the embed code or link code.

The whole process takes about two minutes and costs you nothing.  Considering that, the result is pretty incredible if you ask me!

Thanks for reading Video Production Tips

Lorraine Grula

It’s an online video competition they’re calling the Google Demo Slam.

I’m seeing signs of it all over the web so obviously it’s become quite popular.

Anyone over 18 can enter a video they have created themselves by uploading it to You Tube.

The subject of the video entry has to be one of  Google’s new  services.  There’s about a dozen to choose from.  Google’s demo slam website has brief talking head videos explaining those services.  The basic talking head format is good to quickly give the viewer (that’s YOU!) the information you need to understand the services well enough to construct a clever story around them.

Next step is for you to become creative with a camera.  Tell the most entertaining story you can about the Google service you choose to highlight.  Storytelling is the key here, you have to be clever.  Entries have to be much more than a simple talking head!

Please note that does not necessarily translate into technically sophisticated.  You do not have to have the most expensive and fanciest tools to win!  Appealing creativity is much more important for something like this.

Storytelling on video includes using themes, characters, visual sequences, humor, gimmicks,  visual analogies and a number of other elements.  The video production techniques can still be simple, but you need to get creative here.

If you watch the ones already submitted that will probably help you get some good ideas.

Google has set up a website where folks can easily judge and vote on their favorite.     The competition is laid out as a battle between two videos at a time.  Each week another two new videos battle it out.

This is a good strategy for building momentum based on dramatic anticipation and repeatable viewer involvement.  You can vote each week.

No monetary prizes are given, instead selected video producers get the recognition that comes with having your video in the competition, which no doubt is considerable.

Now let’s take a second to analyze what they’ve done to make this successful from the get-go.

• They get tons of people involved through the competition aspect.
• They get tons of  FREE creative input explaining their new services.  Plain people talking to plain people.
• Since tons of people are watching these memorable demonstrations, their confusing array of new Google products goes from zero consumer recognition to high consumer recognition.

BINGO!  That’s the whole point.

How much did Google spend to have all these videos produced?

Not a dang thing!  Now of course they set up the Demo Slam website and coordinated the whole campaign but the videos themselves are created free of charge by willing video producers world-wide.

There are not any monetary prizes, it is all done for the love of attention.  Winners get featured in the Hall of Demo Slam champions.  No big prize check forthcoming!

That doesn’t stop people from entering and putting huge amounts of effort into their entry.

RECIPE FOR VIRAL

Video producers show off their stuff by entering.  They encourage their friends and families to vote for their video.  Friends and family encourage everyone they know to pass the video on to everyone they know… who then pass it on to everyone they know….

The core basics of a viral video campaign are woven into the entire concept driving the Google Demo Slam.

Corey Christiansen is the social media director with M80, a company Google outsourced the campaign’s social media marketing to.    He had this to say about the motivation behind event.

“As far as Google’s objectives with Demo Slam- Google makes thousands of free technologies, but a lot of people don’t even know about them. We thought organizing the world’s most creative tech demo battle would be a great way to help educate people about what’s available and the many uses for each technology.”

Whether you want to make a video for the competition or just go watch the goofy things other folks have come up with, here’s the link again to visit the Google Demo Slam website.  There you will find all the rules for entering and you can vote for your favorites.

Thanks for being a Video Production Tips reader!

Lorraine Grula

If you’d like assistance designing your own video marketing campaign, contact me for personal consultation.

Storytelling is the heart of any video.  I stress that a lot here at Video Production Tips.

For novice video makers, there’s no doubt in my mind that grasping the art of visual storytelling is absolutely the most difficult thing.  Screwing a camera onto a tripod and plugging in a few lights is one thing.  Using that camera, plus other confusing equipment, to tell a story takes a different mindset and train of thought.

I get lots of questions from VPT readers on this subject.  So I created this post to show you more examples of a creative, effective video marketing campaign.

Dissecting the efforts of others can help promote ideas in your own head if you are not sure where to start.  There’s usually a basic formula you can follow.  Formulas never sound too creative and they aren’t.  But formulas are your foundation.  You add creative juice to the basic storytelling formula.

As a seasoned video storyteller, I’d say creativity often comes in the details of precisely what story you end up telling.  Precisely what characters you create and develop.  Precisely what adventures you have them endure.  Precisely what visual and auditory elements you create and select to convey information and emotion to the viewer.

The campaign I show you in this VPT Blog post includes not only the creative use of video and You Tube marketing, it also features a $2,500 prize.  Nothing like prize money to create positive attention and boost your marketing efforts.  This campaign also relies heavily on that tried-and-true attention getter…the Yuck Factor.

Well…what do you call eating dog food?

This online video marketing campaign is the effort of a company named Pace Butler near where I live in Oklahoma City.    Their business is used cell phones.  They make money if they convince you to send them your unwanted cell phones for recycling.  Most people do not even know that option exists, so lots of cell phones are left to gather dust in a drawer.   But wait!  You can make money off them by selling them to Pace Butler!

Spreading that word is the company’s main goal of course.

So far their online video efforts are working.  Volume is up; more phones are coming in the door.

How did they do it?

One way was to dump one ton of cell phones on top of a shiny Camaro while at least five video cameras were rolling.  Yes, they trashed a perfectly good car.  Sounds like Hollywood!

By doing so, they created a visually wonderful gimmick designed to set people’s jaws flapping.  And their “forward” buttons clicking.  The recipe for a viral video sensation!

Listen to everyone say, “You’ve gotta see this shot!  It’s a hoot!”

Crunch!  Over and over.

Makes for great video.  (The giant Iguana ain’t bad either.)

Once you learn the behind the scenes tricks, you realize the car wasn’t really such a hot rod, but making it look like one helped tell the story.

Watch the video review I made and see what you think.  I hope my dissecting this very creative video campaign gives you lots of ideas for your own video marketing campaign.

How can you wrap excitement and visual drama around your product?  Start with characters on a mission and go from there!  If you are interested in visual storytelling, my free course goes into detail on the subject by dissecting an original comedy holiday special that won several prestigious awards.  You can sign up for this free video making course here.

Thanks for reading Video Production Tips.

Lorraine Grula