LITR TALK BACK BLOG
July 19, 2008

Here at LITR, we have been using video for a variety of clients and applications. Check out the LITR BoomBox Video tab to the left to review the breadth and depth of projects that are possible. You'll find everything from powerpoint type slide shows to Live Video Webcasts and everything in between.

Now after vieiwing the various ways we have used video, you stll may not be sure how to incorporate it into what you are doing. Let's list where you could use video.

Obviously your website would be a good place to start, but what about your Press Kit 24/7 site, your radio show, video emails, blogs, marketing collaterals, video on demand with and without ecommerce, WebTV, Live Video webcasts, YouTube, Google Video, MySpace, Facebook, numerous other social networking and genre specific websites.

Why should you consider using video? First and foremost we are a rich media hungry society. Since the dawn of MTV in the late eighties, we are drawn to and expect to see video especially on the internet.

Search engines are ranking your websites by the amount of video and the relevancy of the video content you are providing. Having good video content can raise your rankings overall on the web.

Now for those of you that have some skills in the video arena, LITR has collected a few FREE video applications and utilities that you are welcome to use. They are open source programs on the interent which means you don't have to worry about what computer you are using. Choose from the six below:

1. If you send video of any kind out on a network basis, look into Xvid. This free application compresses video files, which are often huge and unwieldy in size. I’ve gotten better than 100-to-1 compression ratios with Xvid.

2. Blender is not only one of the best graphics programs from the open source world, it’s one of the best open source applications of any kind. It is widely used in the video and animation communities, plus it’s great for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, and playback. You can also use it on Windows, Mac or Linux systems.

3. For simple video tasks, Windows Movie Maker from Microsoft is FREE, and it’s more than good enough at editing tasks to do professional-looking short videos. It comes complete with a library of slick video transitions.

4. VirtualDub is a free program for Windows users that works as a video capture and processing utility. It’s not quite as feature rich as a tool such as Adobe Premiere, but it is faster and easier to work with.

5. MediaInfo is a free, open source application that specializes in giving you a complete functionality for audio and video files. It has only a 1.3MB footprint–small enough to carry on a pocket USB memory stick. If you have the Windows version of MediaInfo installed, you can also add it to your right-click context menus so that you can get to the properties of a video or audio file with one mouse click.

6. If you use a Mac, Simple Theora Encoder is a free open source application that can convert multiple files at once from several different formats, including .avi, .mov, and mp4. In keeping with the application’s name, you just hit Encode and with that one click you are converting your files.

These are just some of the FREE tools that are available for you to use for video. Start exploring the possibilities or give us a call and we can take you from conception to finished production in no time.

Also remember, if you haven't done so make sure you sign up for Press Kit 24/7
To learn more go here click the SIGN UP NOW button. For more details refer to the July 5th Talk Back Blog entry.

Talk Back at you later!

Stephan
www.linkedin.com/in/liveinternettalkradio