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#RefreshCA – Tuesday, Sept. 28

September 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

refreshlogo[1]Digital Filmmaking w/ Chris Wilks & Kelly Griffin

After a short hiatus for the summer break, we are back with our regular monthly meetings of the Central Arkansas Refresh group. This month could possibly be one of our coolest presentations ever, Chris Wilks and Kelly Griffin will be presenting on digital filmmaking this month.  Their presentation will cover the entire process of taking an idea, developing a script for it, shooting, and editing a movie.  In addition to the technical aspects of the process they will also point out some of the notable changes in digital filmmaking over the past 10-15 years, such as the development of 3 CCD prosumer cameras like the Canon 5D and 7D.  Also, if anyone has any questions they would like to send in advance the guys have agreed to do a mailbag segment to answer your questions.

This months meeting will be held at our usual location in the basement of The Flying Saucer in Downtown Little Rock on Tuesday, September 28th.  We typically get started around 6:00 / 6:30 but don’t worry if you are running a little bit late.  As always, the meetings are free to anyone interested so bring a friend / co-worker with you.  One other new development, I received a message the other day that The Saucer has put in dedicated wireless downstairs for us, so be sure to thank them the next time you are there.

For directions to The Flying Saucer, see the map below.  We will also be sending out notifications via our Facebook Group so be sure to RSVP so we can get an idea as to how many people we can expect.


View Larger Map

Important Announcement: #RefreshCA to Add Meetings in Conway Soon!!!

One other important announcement, Greg Henderson is going to be our point of contact for the Little Rock meetings while myself (Cotton Rohrscheib) and Arlton Lowry attempt to setup an additional monthly Refresh meeting in Conway (most likely the 2nd Tuesday of each month).  I still plan on being an active part of the monthly #RefreshCA meetings but want to pursue expanding this community a little further.  If you are interested in helping out or presenting at one of our upcoming meetings, please drop us a comment and let us know.  We would love to see as many Little Rock people as possible come down and help us get this extension of our community off the ground. Stay tuned to our Twitter: @RefreshCA for updates and announcements on our first Conway #RefreshCA.

Filed Under: Central Arkansas Refresh Tagged With: , , , ,

Thoughts on Vimeo –vs- YouTube

August 4, 2009 By 3 Comments

vimeo_logo_header-300x200 The other night at the Central Arkansas Refresh a couple of us were discussing Video sharing platforms, primarily YouTube and Vimeo. I have been recommending Vimeo to my clients for a while now to use as a method of storing and sharing their video content on their websites. 

My reasoning for choosing Vimeo over YouTube mostly has to do with the fact that I like Vimeo’s player a lot better, but there is also a noticeable difference in quality. If you are unfamiliar with Vimeo, here’s an explanation from their website of the service:

Vimeo is a thriving community of people who love to make and share video. From simple moments to masterpieces, Vimeo is the perfect home for you to upload, store and share all the video you create. Your video’s quality and security is important to us, and that is why we’ve built advanced privacy options, sharing tools, and high quality video encoding. So whether you are an amateur filmmaker, proud mom, restaurant critic, or just a guy with a cellphone, connect with Vimeo today.

I should probably state for the record that I am not a video guru, 99% of the time my partners and I outsource video projects for our clients to a list of providers that we recommend or have worked with in the past.  This arrangement has always worked out well for both us and our clients.  With this being the case, we rarely host video content for our clients, instead we just embed content from these video sharing sites, as is the case with most development firms that I know of today. This is just standard practice anymore. 

Disadvantages to Vimeo

There are a couple of disadvantages I guess for going with Vimeo over YouTube, exposure probably being the biggest one.  YouTube naturally gets more traffic than Vimeo, it’s just a given.  But with the growing popularity of Vimeo, and the ability to use Facebook Connect to post and comment on videos, it’s probably just a matter of time before Vimeo catches up with YouTube.  Another disadvantage to Vimeo is the fact that you can’t play video content from inside Vimeo on the iPhone because there isn’t an app available yet.  This is of course a concern in the Vimeo community and there are some interested parties looking to release such an app in the very near future, see the Vimeo future request forum post.  You can also find some good quality comparisons on Vimeo’s community forum between Vimeo and YouTube.

Advantages to Vimeo

Earlier I cited the quality and clean appearance of Vimeo as the main reasons I like their service over YouTube, but in one comparison I read, they cited the following:

      • support for high resolution (HD) content
      • stereo audio without fuss
      • option to download the source (non-transcoded) original video file
      • option for content owners to replace an existing video file, while preserving likes, comments,
      • real-time status updates as video is uploading and converting
      • advanced privacy options, like password protected videos
      • post-conversion alerts (they’ll email you when your video is ready)
      • video information (title, description) can be added while the video is uploading, not before
      • more advanced and customizable embedding options

Which to Recommend…

So, at the end of the day who do you recommend to your client for video sharing?  My thoughts are both!  It only takes a little bit of time to upload videos to both YouTube and Vimeo, so why not create both?  You can get the most exposure inside of YouTube for your content and utilize Vimeo’s customizable embed options to display the video on your website.  I don’t see a real problem with handling video content this way, and I have a few clients doing this right now.  Granted, it’s a little bit more work, but at the end of the day they realize that they have a lot invested in their videos and usually don’t mind an extra process or two if it means it’s going to give them more bang for their buck.

Don’t take my word for it, there are also some other opinions on this topic:

Filed Under: Social Media / Web 2.0, Web Development Tagged With: , ,

Central Arkansas Refresh Meeting

March 27, 2009 By 3 Comments

Just a heads up, the Central Arkansas Refresh Group is going to have our second meeting this next week (Tuesday, March 31) at the Starbucks located at 9401 N. Rodney Parham Rd. in Little Rock.  The start time is 6:00pm and we expect the meetup to last about 2 hours but with all of the networking that went on last week it’s hard to say what time we all need to tell our families that we will be home.  Also, if you haven’t already, please RSVP on the Facebook Event page so we can kind of get an idea for headcount…

Our Facebook group has grown to over 55 members now and continues to grow each week.  The group is open to everyone interested, our goal is to have a diverse crowd, here’s a little bit more from our website about the group: (compliments of David Kinkade, who is also promoting the group on his blog)

The Central Arkansas Refresh Group consists of technically minded professionals who make their living on the web — bloggers, software developers, graphic artists, social networking enthusiasts, photographers, videographers, marketing and media gurus, and website owners.

Centered in Little Rock, the Central Arkansas Refresh group launched in February 2009 to serve as a hub for education, networking and the sharing of ideas among like-minded web professionals.

The group is organized around the principles of the Refresh movement:

The Refresh Manifesto

  • Let’s Gather Great Minds
  • Let’s Share All Of Our Knowledge
  • Let’s All Grow And Learn
  • Let’s Promote Local Talent
  • Let’s Be More Than We Think Can Be
  • Let’s Make Our Cities Better

Membership is open to all interested web professionals, programmers and new media enthusiasts. Visit our Facebook page now to get involved.

Interested in being a corporate sponsor for the Central Arkansas Refresh Group? Visit our sponsors page for more information.

Facebook | Refresh Group Meeting

Filed Under: Central Arkansas Refresh, Miscellaneous, Wordpress™ Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Streaming with Ustream.tv

March 9, 2009 By 1 Comment

tools_ustream_logo This past weekend we did a test stream of our church services at The Church Alive using Ustream.tv and I couldn’t get over how impressive this service is.  We have made a few attempts in the past to stream using this service but have struggled because we didn’t have enough bandwidth on the upstream to carry this out.  Our upstream from our ISP initially was about 300kbps at best and this past week we had them up our allocation to where we now have 700kbps upstream. 

The video setup we are using is a homespun solution, we basically have a Windows XP machine setup to connect to a Canon USB Streaming camera that is plugged into our mixer board that has a t-bar setup on it.  It’s actually a very decent setup with 2 cameras that pan to cover our pastor and worship team on the stage.  With the addition of the control board we now have announcements that run on the screen as well as part of the feed. 

We practiced streaming at around 14 bitrate and our video settings were at 80.  This we figured out through trial and error would allow us to have pretty nice resolution without a lot of pixelation around the speakers face.  The reason we have been testing this so frequently is because we want to stream an upcoming conference we have going on this next weekend.  This should be the ultimate test for us.  I expect to have about 200 people online viewing the conference! 

If you have considered streaming your events online I strongly recommend Ustream over it’s competitor Mogulus, but that’s just me.  I know some people who have used Mogulus and really like it.  Here’s some info on Ustream:

Ustream.TV is the live interactive video broadcast platform that enables anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to quickly and easily broadcast to a global audience of unlimited size. In less than two minutes, anyone can become a broadcaster by creating their own channel on Ustream or by broadcasting through their own site, empowering them to engage with their audience and further build their brand. Click here to start a broadcast now or learn more about broadcasting.

Ustream’s one-to-many live interactive video encourages broadcast-to-viewer and viewer-to-viewer interaction, empowering a much more engaging experience for everyone involved.

With Ustream’s interactive broadcast functionality, viewers can personally interact directly with whoever is broadcasting — including personalities like their favorite musician or politician. Ustream viewers can watch specific broadcasts, explore our networks ranging from music, talk shows, sports and politics to discover a world of interesting new broadcasts, or review our past broadcasts.

Ustream opens up a new world of possibilities and experiences to broadcasters and viewers alike, which the pre-recorded static video that’s predominated the Internet to date just can’t provide. Today, people are Ustreaming everything including:

  • Major political events such as debates, speeches, rallies
  • Talk shows
  • Entertainment events such as premieres and ‘red carpet events’
  • Music showcases of their favorite music, of their own band’s performances, and live jam sessions
  • Conference sessions
  • School and business events and training
  • Sporting events at college and high school level
  • Personal milestones such as holiday gatherings, weddings, grade school events, parties, even births
  • Interactive games for viewers to watch or join

 

Ustream.TV: About Us. The company, founders, Broadcasters. John Ham, Brad Hunstable, Dr. Gyula Feher. Investors, Venture Partners, DCM, Western Technology

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