Tech

Insider’s Scoop On How To Skyrocket Your Sales Plus Decrease Your Advertising Costs.

If there is one constant between anyone who does business, or ever sells anything, it’s the big question; "How do I stand out above the crowd when I’m trying to reach my customers?" It is a question that has been asked ever since the human race started advertising and selling. It is only just now coming to the forefront about the amazing benefits and results of using video to do this.

Users Report Dramatic Increase In Sales With Use

The Internet is a wonderful way to advertise items, but has its advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantage of the Internet is that it can be impersonal. It is a well-known fact that customers will buy more when they feel appreciated, trusting of the advertiser, and receive that "personal sales touch". If you have an item for sale, potential buyers are much more likely to pull out their card to purchase if they are able to see the item as though they were right there with it.

The advantage, of course, of the Internet is the ability to reach tremendous volume of customers, which simply cannot be duplicated on a one-to-one sales relationship.

A favicon is a custom icon that sits next to your web site title in a persons favourite’s menu when they have bookmarked your site, it is an easy way to create an ‘eye drawing image’ to ensure that people always see you link in their favourite’s and should hopefully encourgae them to check out that ‘great site that they haven’t visited yet today!’

This is a quick guide that will provide instructions on how to create one for your site, it really is very easy and will help to create a extra tool to maintain your site in the customers mind.

All it takes is four easy steps…

1) Choose an image that you would like to use to represent your web site. Most people use a small version of their logo but you can use any image that you want. I would advise however that you choose an image that is reflective of your web sites theme and an image that will still remain recognisable when the size is dropped to 16 x 16 pixels.

Unlike standard television broadcasting, there are a limited number of viewers that an Internet television station can accommodate. These limitations are determined by the amount of bandwidth the network media server has available. A popular Internet television station would require large amounts of bandwidth to provide the broadcast to a large viewing audience.

Peer to Peer (Commonly referred to as P2P) broadcasting allows viewers using specialized software to re-distribute the media broadcasts. This eliminates the need to utilize costly centralized media servers to distribute the broadcast and results in cost savings for bandwidth consumption.

Any size business or group can establish an effective media broadcast presence without the huge costs normally associated with Internet broadcasting. Using this method, only a few data streams are required for a global Internet broadcast distribution.

P2P Internet broadcasting provides extremely bandwidth friendly results and can support a virtually unlimited number of users. This method also provides effective security against Denial Of Service (DOS) attacks which can cripple a centralized server network architecture.

There are both commercial and non commercial options that offer P2P broadcast ability for Internet television.

This article will cover free open source software.

One of the primary obstacles for video content distribution over the Internet is the cost of specialized software required to encode video. Video encoding consists of converting video content into compressed digital data that can be easily distributed electronically.

There are several software development companies that sell closed source software for video encoding and content distribution. The cost and available features of the different software packages vary. Some software companies require additional royalty payments for use of their encoding software.

Thanks to the efforts of several software developers, there is free software that does not require royalty payments. This software can be used for both commercial and non commercial projects.

NullSoft Video

Justin Frankel, the creator of the Winamp media software player, also developed NullSoft video. This format was specifically designed for distributing video media through the Internet and is based on the Shoutcast Internet protocol.

Both open source and closed source video codecs are supported by NullSoft video. Codecs are software programs that allow media to be digitally encoded or decoded using a specific compression architecture. These video codecs include the VP3 open source and the VP6.1 / VP6.2 closed source. The MP3 and AAC audio codecs are supported as well. The VP3 video and MP3 audio codecs are included with the NullSoft video tools download.

Have you ever noticed when you are shopping at most any retail store there is background music being played and if you need help understanding how a product works or need aid in purchasing the correct equipment there is always a person near by to help you?

This is what your ecommerce or online sales website needs to achieve that comfortable atmosphere where visitors to your online store will enjoy shopping. When you make your store online comfortable with audio or video your customers are apt to stay longer on your website and that means a better chance of a sale.

Using audio in the form of quiet listening music will aid in keeping your customers online and enjoying shopping at your ecommerce store. They will feel comfortable and at ease which will allow them to browse your store and buy.

Another way in which audio on your website can aid in getting you more sales is when you can personally talk about a certain product and how it works, what it does, and just how the item can make their life easier. You will then be transforming your website into the feel of a retail store, with salesmen that offer their help to customers. Your customers will appreciate this extra feature and will also be able to learn about the products through listening instead of just seeing a product on a page.

Things have changed quite a bit from when I started in the film & video business in 1988. Back then, many corporate programmes were still shot and edited on film. Video shooting was on “plain Jane”, non-SP, analogue Betacam. Video editing was on Low Band U-Matic - a process that required copious notes to be taken and a day or two of writing all the timecode numbers down for the (linear) on-line edit. Mastering was on bulky one-inch reel to reel video, that was so sensitive to magnetic fields, it couldn’t be taken on a London tube train. Distribution was either on Low Band U-Matic, Betamax (remember that?), or VHS.

Today, seventeen years later, the much heralded digital age is upon us. You can shoot on DV, edit on Avid, and burn the result onto DVD without a moment’s thought or any loss of quality. The only stage of the process that has remained more or less the same is the final one: delivery of the programme to the viewer. Be it by post, Fed-Ex, or motorcycle courier, someone has to take a copy of your finished programme, transport it to where your viewer is going to see it, and then play it on specialised equipment. If your programme has to cross borders into another country, chances are you’ll have to have special copies made to conform to that country’s TV standard, and the customer will have to pay a hefty customs charge as well.

Your PC may contain hundreds of video files, all encoded differently - AVI, MPEG, RM, WMV, DVD, VCD, MOV, etc. If you are looking for video conveter tools, here are some suggestions.

WinAVI Video Converter

WinAVI Video Converter is a nice tool for converting video clips to an assortment of formats. The attractive, modern interface features large, clearly labeled icons, so you won’t have to dig through the menus very often. You can convert a variety of file types to WMV, AVI, MPEG, and RM. Other notable pluses include a built-in DVD-burning utility, a batch-conversion tool, and a preview pane. WinAVI Video Converter is easy to use and powerful enough for experts. Burning VCD/SVCD/DVD is supported. WinAVI Video Converter supports almost all video file formats, including AVI, MPEG1/2/4, VCD/SVCD/DVD, DivX, XVid, ASF, WMV, RM, QuickTime MOV, Flash SWF. The program also has a powerful video decompress/compress engine that convert whole AVI movie to DVD in 1 less than an hour.

More Information: http://www.deprice.com/winavivc.htm

Aare AVI to VCD DVD SVCD Converter

Italy is without question the place to shoot high definition video. Nearly everything in this sun-drenched part of the world cries out for a photo or video capture. My feelings about the country have never wavered from this opinion.

Having said that, I must also admit that Italy - particularly in metropolitan areas - is a problematic country for videographers. Rome, among other Italian cities, has some of the toughest regulations and laws limiting commercial photography.

My husband, Wayne, and I formed our company - VITA Digital Productions - 5 years ago to shoot European video footage - both for our own specialty-market treadmill virtual walks ( www.treadmillwalks.com ) and to sell as stock footage to TV networks around the world ( www.hdeuropeanstockfootage.com ). We made the decision last year to switch over to HD (High Definition) footage after getting our first request for HD footage.

Our biggest concerns, in planning our recent three-week shoot in May 2005, were 1. the safe transport of our video equipment (all in carry-on bags, for obvious reasons!), 2. the ability to shoot in and around tourist-laden locations, and 3. finding ways to get video footage in spite of the stringent regulations enforced in Rome.

‘DVD Jon’, a Norwegian programmer, has tweaked Google video to make it play clips that are not on Google’s servers.

Google Video ( http://video.google.com ) is a web-based video search service that lets people use keywords to search for videos from numerous suppliers.

To watch videos on Google Video, a browser plugin is necessary. Google Video Viewer can be downloaded here: http://video.google.com/video_download.html.

Google has restricted his Video Viewer to only play back files that are stored on video.google.com. The Google Video Viewer is based on the open-source VLC player ( http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ ) which is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

When you download and run the patch of Jon Lech Johansen ( http://nanocrew.net/?p=114 ) to remove this restriction, you can also watch with the Google Video Viewer non-Google hosted videos! Running the patch requires a .NET runtime.

People are advised NOT to install this Video Viewer patch, according Google, as “It could result in security vulnerabilities on their computer and may disrupt their computer’s ability to access Google Video”. But why should we believe Google? Google is protecting his Video Viewer, but when you can use it for other content, why shouldn’t you do it? Give it a try and post your feedback on the wallies.info blog.

If you’re new to PC video editing then knowing where to start can be a bit daunting, so hopefully this guide will point you in the right direction.

To start with you will need a few items of equipment

Camcorders/Video Decks

Depending on your requirements or aims there are number of different solutions to discuss, so i will split these up into separate sections.

1. If you are starting from new then i recommend buying a new digital camcorder, this will give you superior video and sound quality as well as making getting started in video editing very simple, so ideal for the beginner. There are thousands to choose from catering for various types of budgets.

2. You may already have an old video deck or camcorder which uses the old analogue outputs such as composite or s-video (be sure to check first what outputs you have). For this kind of setup you would need a capture card/analogue to digital converter, this is discussed in more detail further on in the article.

A PC for Video Editing