Video Production and Distribution for Communities of Interest
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It all started ................Somewhere between the dot-com bubble bursting and YouTube being purchased by Google Metro Video Producer was conceived and launched. It was a streaming video company with the “pie in sky” dream that there was a market for video as streaming content somewhere between Broadcast TV and DVDs. The dream was to provide streaming video for small communities of interest which would be delivered live or as Video on Demand using low cost off the shelf technology. Well thought out workflows were created to keep costs down, provide content in timely fashion and use modest amounts of bandwidth. At the time the weakest link was web applications for delivery of content and we suddenly realized providing custom content deliver sites would sell video production. Web technology was easy given our experience in the dot-com era so an OEM video site became the “razor” and video production became the “razor blade”. On large scale projects the Achilles heel was variable bandwidth requirements it was easy to buy fixed usage at reasonable rates but large spikes were cost prohibitive. We initially co-located Windows Servers as our platform because of the simplicity of Windows Media Server. The rest is history, we now have free services such as uStream and reliable for fee companies like NeuLion . We still maintain delivery capabilities with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) but find outsourcing is the most cost effective for our clients. “Three Screen Strategy” TV, PC and Mobile Device is the focus of our workflow and as always we predicted the demise of the TV far too soon. The convergence of TV and PC is happening, but we constantly alter our workflow to match these changes. We are more and more a production company with emphasis on producing with gear that is in the convergence of DSLR and Video camera. We were creating “authentic content” long before it was in vogue. This was mostly driven by budgets of our clients who wanted informational and entertaining video in a timely fashion. Social Media video has really driven production, we no longer have weeks to edit, we have less than 24 hours so our workflow has moved towards videographers who “shoot to show”. We constantly strive to add more value for our clients in this rapidly changing technology arena with the emergence of HTML5, new monetization strategies, server technology, Codec standards and changes to video production tools our clients need more than just a “shooter”. |