Not everybody, who has experience in video production, has to work as a freelancer. There are several media & marketing companies who employ experienced Video Producers as part of their video production center / team.

Media Giants Hire Video Producers

Some of the biggest media giants serve millions of visitors through their network of broadcast, digital, mobile and publishing properties.

Because of their reach, they have several clients whom they offer various marketing solutions across their range of platforms.

And video features prominently in these solutions. And that is why they need a team of video professionals!

Need for Video Professionals

Depending on the size of the company, they may require just one person or may have a team with one senior Digital Video Producer and several subordinates.

The primary role of the senior guy will be that of an editorial lead and will be required to create top quality videos.

He/she will need to coordinate with the various departments to ensure the video content are ready for live distribution and for on-demand video content for all their digital properties and platforms.

Other Skills That You Will Need

For those considering senior positions, besides being good at video editing and production, you’ll also need to be good at communication and be at ease interacting with editors, producers, and even journalists.

Here are some more tasks that you could be expected to do:

Your Video Related Experiences

To be eligible for such roles, you’ll need to be experienced in the following:

What About Educational Qualification?

Though smaller companies may not be so particular about your educational qualifications, the big media companies will most likely have some minimum requirements, when it comes to your educational qualifications.

So a Bachelor’s Degree is the minimum that they will expect you to have.

In addition, they may also look for the following, depending on your responsibilities:

To Conclude

Depending on your age, personal commitments & ambitions, at some stage of your life, you may want to explore opportunities that are more stable in nature and provides regular paychecks. The role of a Senior Digital Video Producer in a big company could be that job for you.

Looking for simple video editing software for beginners? Find reviews of the best home video editing software programs, suitable for beginners.

Once the video shooting work is completed, to make your video crispier and to make it more interesting to your audience, you can further enhance your video using video editing software.

If you go through your recorded video on computer, you will see a lot of frames where you can actually make some improvement. You will also find lot of stuff that should actually be removed from your final video.

Since re-shooting your video is not an option always, editing the video on your computer gives you that opportunity to further enhance your final video.

Video Enhancing Features

The high-end video editing software will give you all the features and control to change your video the way you want to. But there are some of the things that you can expect to do, in general, on most of the video editing software.

By no means is this list exhaustive and complete. These are some of the basic and most-used features on any video editing software.

Video Editing Software Review – For Beginners

If you are a beginner, and if you have heard that Final Cut Pro is the video editing software used widely in Hollywood, it is not necessary that you actually go ahead and buy that software for editing your videos.

It may not fit your budget and besides, you may not have the necessary skills to do complete justice to that software.

So here are some of the best video editing software programs… that I would also recommend to beginning videographers.

Pinnacle Studio Ultimate (Win)


Price: $90 to $110


Whether you’re a beginner or video enthusiast, its now easy to capture, edit, and tell your story with the Pinnacle Studio.

You get improved user-friendly drag-and-drop interface which makes it a breeze to create high-quality movies with music, montage themes, transitions, animations and effects. You can easily share your masterpiece on DVD, the web, or upload to YouTube in widescreen. Read more

Sony Movie Studio Platinum Suite 12 (Win)


Price: $60 to $70


You can now create movies in AVCHD and stereoscopic 3D, edit the audio in Sound Forge Audio Studio, upload movies to Pixel cast, and burn to DVD or Blu-ray Disc; all with the Movie Studio Platinum Suite.

You can use surround sound mixing tools to create 5.1 soundtracks, and add style with the NewBlueFX 3D Titling and Video Effects. Read more

Corel VideoStudio Pro X4


Price: $40 to $50


Easier to use and faster, you can not get creative with amazing effects, music, titles, transitions, including new Stop Motion animation and Time-Lapse tools, that you can use with SD or HD video clips. Easily share the videos on iPhone, mobile device, disc, your favorite website or even your Television.

With enhanced speed and performance, you can now focus on the creative aspects, without the software getting in your movie-making. Read more

Conclusion

The number of video editing software listed her is not to confuse you but to give you multiple choices so that you can pick up something that suits your budget. All of these are good value for money but if I had to choose, I would pick one of the top two.

Ulead VideoStudio and Pinnacle Studio Plus are software programs that can be easily learnt & used by beginners. Besides, they also have more advanced features for the intermediate users – something that you can use as you get more experienced.

More on photo, video editing software


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How to Make Your TV a Smart TV: Here are easy ways to web-enable your television so that you can access the internet as well as useful apps.

There are many who own a good television at home, but prefer to spend more time on the laptop so that you can watch interesting content on YouTube, Netflix, etc.

Connecting Laptop to Television

This is definitely one solution, and there are many who do this, but there are certain challenges associated with this method:

Is there any better solution?

Here are some, though each may have their own pros and cons:

Buy a Smart TV

This is definitely an options, but its an expensive one. Besides, it may still come with its share of problems, especially when it comes to viewing certain sites.

For instance, TVs in certain countries may not have Netflix support, as Netflix is not officially available in all the countries.

Most embedded TVs promise to keep up to date with firmwares updates, but there are always a few things that you want them to do, which they usually won’t support.

That explains why the hype around technologies such as 3D Television, didn’t convert into reality.

Use a Box or Dongle

You get dongles that can convert your television into a smart TV.

These usually support most digital formats, gives an 1080p HD quality picture, and can connect to the internet.

Some of these come with a microSD slot and USB port, and also have an option of Z-Wave connectivity.

Here’s a video that shows how to Plug a HDMI Dongle on the back of the TV to make it web-enabled.

To Conclude

These are some of the ways to to turn your TV into a smart TV. Some of these options will cost you around $100, including the accessories, but you could also be better off with a new smart TV if it supports all your requirements. Unless you are looking for advanced gaming functionality, its best to go for a solution that costs less than a couple of hundred bucks.

What is HDMI Cable used for, and where to find the best one. Know the what, why and how of HDMI cables

What Does it Stand For?

HDMI stands for High-Definition Multimedia Interface. It’s a digital replacement for existing analog video standards.

What is It Used For?

Its a compact audio/video interface used for transferring uncompressed video data and compressed or uncompressed digital audio data from an HDMI-compliant device (“the source device”) to a compatible digital audio device, computer monitor, video projector, or digital television.

What Are its Advantages?

Here are the benefits:

1. HDMI is currently the de-facto standard digital interface for HD and the consumer electronics market
2. Its a high-quality, single-cable, all-digital solution to interconnect all electronic components, supports standard, enhanced, or high-definition video
3. It delivers crystal-clear, all-digital audio and video via a single cable
4. Simplifies cabling between devices
5. It is a two-way platform, that lets individual components to “talk” to each other
6. Provide consumers with highest-quality home theater experience.
7. Enables connections between HDTVs and Computer monitors.

Here are a couple of videos that explains more about HDMI cables:

HDMI Cable vs Analog Cable

When you use an analog cable (red, green and blue colored-cables) with digital sources (such as LCD monitor), there’s a lot of conversion that happens in the background (digital audiovisual data must be converted into analog signals to travel through the analog cable, and then re-converted back into digital at the receiving end).

As you can see, the process causes signal degradation and results in significant loss in output quality.

Now, if you were to use a standard DVD player and non-digital sources, it would not matter much and you can very well use the analog cable.

But if you want to connect a High quality (1080p) digital source such as Blu-Ray DVD Player, PS3 and XBox 360 to your High Definition Television, the signal degradation can affect the overall output quality.

And that is why you need HDMI Cable to connect those gadgets, as HDMI delivers the best image quality (without any loss in output quality) and can handle high-definition video of up to 1080p resolution and 60fps.

Choosing the Right HDMI Cable

Even though HDMI cables are better, you still need to chose from a wide variety of choices.

You also need to be clear about the cable length you are after.

AmazonBasics (6.5F/2M)

Mediabridge (6 ft)

Monster Cable (4 ft)

When you also buy check that the type of HDMI Cable is the correct type/specs for your digital device.

These come in various price ranges, depending on:

You can get cables that are very cheap, and the same cables (from a different brand) can be priced more.

So how much do you have to pay for a good quality HDMI Cable? Here are some guidelines.

1. Standard HDMI Cable: up to 1080i and 720p
2. High Speed HDMI Cable: 1080p, 3D and deep color

To Conclude

Though some day most of our connections should be wireless, there’s still a long way to go before that technology becomes affordable and works seamlessly. Until that time, we have to depend on cables to connect our electronic devices. HDMI is currently a better technology that requires fewer connections, so there’s less hassle and mess. HDMI cables are the best way to transport high quality video and audio data among DVD players, LCD/LED televisions, video game consoles, PCs and cable boxes.

There are several reasons why you may want to connect your Laptop Computer to a big screen TV, considering that there are so many interesting video resources such as YouTube. Here are various ways to make this connection work.

If you’re tired of squinting over your laptop screen or if you’ve recently bought yourself a new flat screen TV, a much better option is to route the computer display to your television screen.

And in case you’re wondering if there’s an easy way to do this, there are several ways to do this depending on what ports are available on your computer and television.

Jargons Explained: S-Video, VGA, DVI, HDMI

Before we go into the details, here’s a brief overview of the various connection options that are usually available.

Most computers have an S-Video port that can be connected to the S-Video input of your TV screen using an inexpensive S-Video cable. The S-Video port allows you to connect your laptop to both analogue and digital TVs. On older monitors, you can use the 15-pin VGA cable to connect the computer to the TV and it will offer slightly better picture quality compared to the S-Video cable.

S-Video doesn’t provide High Definition (HD) quality, and only carries the video signal, so you’ll also need to hook up a separate audio cable – typically from your laptop’s 3.5mm headphone jack – to the audio inputs on your TV.

VGA is an old standard and uses analogue signal that can’t be converted into digital signal, which is what HDMI and other digital standards such as DVI use (you can use adaptors however to change between formats).

Your TV will need one of two things: either separate S-Video and phono audio ports, typically found on the front of the TV, or a SCART socket found on the back. You’ll then need to purchase an S-Video cable of suitable length, along with a suitable audio cable. If necessary, you can then purchase a SCART adapter to connect the cables to your TV.

The newer HDTVs and laptop computers have DVI ports, so a DVI Male to Male Cable or DVI to HDMI Adapter Cable (If your HDTV doesn’t have a DVI port but does have an HDMI) can be used.

For older laptops with VGA output, there are VGA to HDMI and VGA to s-video converters available but they can be expensive, and can require lot of effort to get the connection working. VGA is analogue and it doesn’t convert well.

The best option is to get laptop / television with newer technologies (HDMI), which is the easiest way. It means the laptop (Mac/PC) and the TV needs to be HDMI enabled, in which case the Television easily detects the computer once the connection is made and you’re ready to go.

Various Connection Options

To give a summary, these are some of the most common connection methods depending on the equipment you have:

Connecting the Audio

Once the computer is connected to the TV via the video cable, you need to connect the mini-to-RCA cable from your computer’s headphone jack to your TV.

Adjusting the Display Settings

On a PC, under Control Panel, you can do the adjustments to the display settings and select the option to display on both your monitor and TV set.

For Mac, you need to go under System Preferences, click on Display, and then Detect Displays.

Finding Your laptop on the Televisions

Next, you need to select your TV’s video source, usually a button called “input” or “TV/Video” on your remote, until your laptop comes up. Once your computer is selected, you’re done!

How to Proceed

So the very first thing you need to do is to check the input and outputs on your computer and TV, to help you buy the right cable.

If you have a high definition TV, you’ll want to use a DVI cable or an HDMI cable. If your PC is a bit older, then it may only be able to use VGA cables, so it’s important to check your TV has the right connections for VGA, which most do.

In the event that your TV set uses one kind of connection and your computer uses a different one, you’ll need to get an adapter (available on Amazon, Ebay and most stores) as per the cable input that you have to use.

Standard definition TVs typically allow S-video cable connections, so for those who have not made the move to HDTV’s, this might be the only option.

There are various gadgets available now that let you connect your PC to your TV via WI-FI. Although this might be the ideal choice, it does require additional equipment.

At times your TV may not recognize your computer’s connection. In that case, confirm your laptop or computer is switched off before inserting the lead into your TV. Then plug the lead back into the TV set and restart your system. Now, the connection should ideally be recognized. If this doesn’t occur on the first attempt, try this step a couple more times until the connection has been established.

What Will You Need

You’ll need the following, besides the computer and the television:
A male-to-male video cable of one of the following types:

Here are a few videos that shows how to make these connections:

To Conclude

If you haven’t chosen the correct source to show on your television you will not able to view your computer display with it, so be sure you have chosen the proper input source (e.g. HDMI, aux) as required. If you wish to change the display quality, it is recommended that you do it on your laptop or PC instead of the TV set.

If everything is connected as per the steps mentioned, you are now ready to watch YouTube or other video streaming websites, your favourite websites, your home videos, party pictures, on your new widescreen TV.

Free Movie Maker: Learn about the advantages and disadvantages of this software and how to download it for free.

Windows Movie Maker, developed by software giant Microsoft, is a FREE option that offers you the options to create, edit and share home movies using your computer.

It comes with a good selection of special effects, and gives you the ability to add music and narration to the video clips.

Features of Windows Movie Maker (WMM)?

Here are some of the things you can do using WMM:

1. Compile your video clips or photo images into a movie.
2. Trim the movie clips to remove unwanted footage.
3. Alter the length of time that you want your photo images displayed.
4. Fade the clips/images in or out or blend one into another.
5. Choose from several imaginative transitions
6. Add special effects (such as slowing down or speeding up the video, etc.)
7. Add a commentary track
8. Add background music.
9. Add Titles, subtitles, and credits.
10. Save your finished Movie to your computer, upload it to UouTube, or burn it onto a DVD.
11. All this and much much more

Though WMM has limitations, this free movie maker from Microsoft should be appreciated for its sheer unassuming modesty and ease of use, which makes it quite attractive to users of all age groups.

The Canon Vixia HF G20 camcorder is currently Canon’s top of the line consumer camcorder, and it replaces the quite popular Canon HF G10.

Price: Around $1100

So what are the improvements?

Improved HD CMOS Pro Image Sensor

The high quality lens is capable of zooming 10x, as in the earlier model, but the CMOS image sensor was improved slightly to provide better low light performance.

It has extended dynamic range, enhanced gradation, and significantly more light capture for 20% improved low-light performance over the G10.

Layout

The layout of the buttons has not been tampered much. The new Vixia HF G20 uses the same top and bottom button layout as the previous generation HF G10.

Lowest Prices here on Canon Vixia HF G20

Other Improvements

With the Vixia HF G20, you get an improved lens hood and an improved eyecup. The lens hood can protect the lens by using an open/close lever placed on its side.

It allows simultaneous output to both the Electronic Viewfinder and LCD display.

Video Review

Here’s video review of the Vixia HF G20 camcorder:

Here’s another one that compares it to the Vixia HF-G10

Overall:

Using Web video production for marketing your products or services can be cheap, and give good returns on the efforts and money involved. Here are important things to keep in mind.

Types of Videos

You can find different types of videos on the internet. Some of the more common ones include:

1. Funny, Viral Videos
2. Educational Videos
3. Interviews
4. Product, Services Reviews
5. Happenings, Events

Things to Keep in Mind

Here are certain things to keep in mind, especially if the videos are going to be uploaded online.

1. The video needs to be short and to the point, to keep visitor attention
2. Needs to be smaller in size, for faster loading
3. Video needs to have a good storyline and proper wording
4. Need to be well-lit and properly shot
5. The audio quality needs to be good
6. Depending on the topic & purpose, you may also use a webcam or screen capture software
7. You Need to Promote them to get more eyeballs

Read here on more ways to effectively market your business online.

Professional Video Production

Most home-made videos i.e. videos made using webcams, affordable cameras, online tools, etc. can serve the purpose, especially if its for blogging, sharing with friends, showing certain skills, or for online marketing.

But if you a big organisation, you want your corporate web video to look professional! Most viewers are going to form an impression about your company/brand based on the video.

So it may make sense to hire a professional video production company to create your corporate video.

To Conclude

Whether you are self-employed, or own a small business, or want to start your own photography and video production services, using the internet to promote your services is very affordable and also highly-effective, compared to most conventional advertising methods. So do make the most of web video production!

Related Sites

CameraPoll.com

Excellent camera review site, find great digital photography news, as well as discussion forums.

Video Forums

Useful beginners guides to video editing, including several Adobe tutorials.

VideoMaker

An excellent resource on Video editing & production, camcorder reviews, & videography

Video Help

Good site on how to make videos, explains the various video formats.

eMusicProducer.org

Excellent resource on creating music for all genres.

Flat TV Stands

Excellent resource on TV Stands & Entertainment Centers.

Weddings, in general, is serious business nowadays. Every aspect associated with a wedding is taken care of by professionals.

Even though you may have been given the opportunity to shoot a wedding by one of your friends or relatives, that does not mean you can take it lightly at all.

The ceremony, moments and celebrations associated with a marriage can go on for more than a day, so as a Video-maker you need to ensure that you shoot a faithful documentary of the events as they unfold.

Here are some suggestions/tips to help you to take a professional approach to wedding video production and wedding video editing.

Wedding Video Production: Professional Approach

The most common approach is to make a chronological record of the event. You shoot it as a documentary, telling a story and interpreting what you see.

The most suitable position from which to shoot the wedding ceremony is usually from behind the priest’s left shoulder. You get a good view of the couple’s faces. You may just want to check with the priest to confirm if he is ok with your position.

Don’t just stick to capturing the evening reception and the celebrations. Grab shots of the post-ceremony socializing and conversations as well. It could be outside the venue, but does not matter.

You will get lots of candid and interesting snippets of video. The video footage will give you plenty of diverse moments when you sit down for editing!

Consider the use of an external microphone. You will need to capture the sound associated with all the formal moments, including the ceremony.

The camcorders built-in microphone will not give you the best results, with all the background noise being captured.

Besides you, the photographer will also be capturing those precious moments. At times, you can’t do much since the photographer will get in your way. Try to include him in the action and create another point of interest.

Every wedding will have key formal events together with less formal or lighter moments!

So you just cannot stick to shooting from a tripod all the time!

For the formal, staged moments, consider the use of a tripod. If you have to get closer to people or between places to capture the lighter moments, it is best to shoot hand-held.

Besides capturing the formal moments, you will also have to capture some informal moments, close-ups or candid shots of the couple.

Utilize the time when they are getting ready for the wedding, to ask some questions about their would-be.

Add a little humor to your conversation. Make them comfortable. It will all add to the quality of your final video.

Wedding Video Packages

As a consumer of these services, you need to understand that wedding videography is a competitive market, so you can expect to get good deals, and also deals that match your budget.

Compare Prices

So it’s in your best interest to ask for several quotations and then do the comparisons; you should also request for samples of work and get feedback from other users. Turn to friends and family for referrals, and previously hired, wedding videographers.

What will Be Delivered?

Besides the main wedding video, you can have several shorter videos & montages of specific events and dances, which can require editing work, and for which the videographer is likely to charge more.


There are many who also provide a package that includes photography and videos. This can be beneficial to you, as the team is likely to be well coordinated and complement each other.

The disadvantage of this arrangement is that it doesn’t let you hire a more economic photographer or videographer separately. However, if the difference is not much, its best to opt for a package and then get a good deal on the various deliverable.

Summary

Every wedding celebration, irrespective of what religion or culture it is associated with, will have its key formal moments, as well as some lighter moments. So try mixing your shooting style to get a diverse footage. At the same time, it is one of the biggest moments in a couple’s life. So as a video-maker, make sure you approach it in a professional manner. With the above suggestions, you should be able to pull it through, and give the couple’s something worth remembering for the rest of their life.

Learn more video shooting tips here

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