I started in video. 3/4-inch tape for news and 1-inch to make the fancy edits. It took hours to produce 1 minute of transitions, special effects and graphics. More than once I snarled the tape in the machine, usually 30-minutes to air. Such was the life of an analog editor.
In 1994 I discovered the Media 100, one of the first Mac-based non-linear editing systems. Talk about a revelation! Since then digitial video editing is the only way I would ever edit.
Still many in-house agencies shy away from using video; it’s too hard, too much investment, etc.
I’ve been experimenting with Jumpcut, an online video editing tool. Upload your clips, rearrange them, add graphics and share. Pretty simple stuff and pretty fast. Imagine being able to pull in some clips, add some graphics and have a training piece available to your employees in less than an hour. That’s the power of Jumpcut. You can make your movies public or private, ensuring your internal video doesn’t get remixed by someone else. Overall, an easy tool to reach internal or external audiences.
Streaming live video used to take hours of preparation, planning for the number of users, encoding the video, praying, calling tech support and then having the whole thing sputter out 3 minutes into the presentation. However, even those problems are avoided with ustream.tv. This is sort of Justin.tv except anyone can walk around with a camera attached to their temple. It uses Flash Streaming to accomplish the broadcast and it’s as simple as attaching a camera, clicking broadcast and performing. I used it to demonstrate how to extend live meetings to departments at remote locations and the performance, while somewhat touchy, has proved acceptable to allow me to provide training and employee orientations.
Many other tools exist making video a practical tool for reaching internal and external audiences:
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