Video 101: Shooting Basics from Vimeo Staff on Vimeo.

Lately I have been offering tutorials surrounding video production. In keeping with this format, I had to share with you the launch of the Vimeo Video School.

This video is one of many in a series designed to teach you how to be a better videographer, filmmaker, home movie maker or video blogger.

I am submitting some of my own videos to the group. Let me know what you think.

While I know that this request didn’t come from the official Yellow Pages twitter account. I still thought it was worth answering because I don’t believe the phone company should be burning through so much paper to send us a directory we rarely use.

In my opinion the phonebook should be something that you opt into if you want it. Otherwise it won’t be delivered to you.

I understand that this is a business that relies on circulation for advertising revenue. I just think that it’s a little bit outdated for those of us who use Google every day.

You have probably heard this story.

Your site is growing, traffic and sales are up and then it happens. Your host suspends you for too much traffic. No warning just pulls down your site asking you to pay more money.

If you don’t know this by now let me break it to you. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS UNLIMITED HOSTING.

Before you say “but MY host IS unlimited” check their Terms Of Service. Find me a host with true unlimited bandwidth and watch how quickly me and my porn biz buddies bankrupt them ;)

When you plan a project you need to at least look at bandwidth especially when delivering video. Understand how many people have to buy each month before you approach your limits. Move to a dedicated server, BEFORE you hit those limits and wind up with your site offline.

Understand your hosting terminology. Megabits and megabytes are not the same. 1 megabyte = 8 megabits

Megabytes/Gigabytes (aka MB/GB notice the caps) are the numbers we are used to. Your hard drive is measured in gigabytes, 1 GB is 1024 megabytes (just round it to 1000 in a jam). So a 200 GB hard drive has 204,800 megabytes

Megabits/Gigabits are the numbers used to measure the throughput of your network or internet connection. My home network is gigabit (ie: when I move a file to my wife’s computer) but my internet connection is 6 megabits.

So if you have a hosting package that allows for 10/mb sec that means an average of 10 megaBITS per second. To make it simple if you have 1 person hitting your 500 kiloBYTE webpage every second you are doing 4 megabits per second on average.

Some hosts will cap your transfer in terms of total gigaBYTES per month. 1 gigabyte = 1024 megabytes

If your members area has 1 gigabyte of data to download, and your host allows 500 GB of monthly transfer you will want to upgrade before hitting 200 members. Always plan ahead, be proactive not reactive with hosting.

Your ISP usually talks in terms of megabits because:

1. It sounds better to quote bigger numbers
2. That is how network bandwidth is technically measured

To put this into perspective the average cable or DSL connection is 4-6 megabits download and 500 kilobits upload.

I know much of this may be confusing. My best advice is this. If your revenue allows for a dedicated server now. Get one. You may notice increases in overall speed because you are not sharing the resources of a single computer with several other businesses.

When I asked my friend Ted Payne for an idea to blog about today, he immediately replied with this topic.

Ted shared with me the fact that when he first started in business he tried to play the part of an old man. Not just the way he dressed but in the way he interacted with other business people.

Once Ted realized that he didn’t need to play the role of anyone but himself, business got easier and more enjoyable for him.

If you find yourself dressing like someone you can’t stand to look at in the mirror, or playing the part of someone that isn’t congruent with your personality it’s time for a change.

Fear can be a good and bad motivator.

Sometimes when your back is to the wall, fear will kick you into action.

The problem is however many people today let fear guide their choices. I might suggest you try the opposite like George Costanza on Seinfeld. Instead of spending the day making choices to avoid pain, try making them to seek pleasure or maybe even to head right into the eye of your fear.

I remember the first time I wanted to film a blog video. I was SO scared. Scared of judgement. ridicule, criticism and more. Then I realized that you get way more kudos than criticism for putting yourself out there. The best part is the critics tend to be dealing with their own fears, and you recognize that if they do show up.

Don’t be so damn scared. You are safe, start making choices like someone who has choices.

How to fake 2 camera angles using video crop. Essentially you take a 1080P video and make 2 copies. 1 compressed to 720p and the other cropped to 720p.

You may laugh at how I illustrate width and height. People often mix these up.

This is a great way to place your scene cuts. When you see the camera angle change, you won’t notice a shift in my position or a break in my speech. I usually shoot in one take but when I am doing longer videos we do them in segments. Then we use these cool cuts to make the transitions seamless.

@DerekDwreckOHC (profile may not be safe for work) Asked me about how to get started and what to outsource. I think this is a tough question because everyone has a different set of resources to work with.

My best advice is to work on the stuff you are good at and outsource whatever you don’t know. The worst thing you can do as a startup is try to learn everything AND do everything. The learning will slow you down. It’s much easier to deal with professional designers and programmers than it is to try to become one.

As a for instance we do all our own video post production because:
1. We have the equipment
2. We have a trained Final Cut Professional in house
3. It’s faster to do the work than it is to explain what needs to be done


If those 3 things were not true I would hire someone to do my vid production pre and post.
If you have any advice for startups let’s get a dialog going here. I would love to hear your tips for people just trying to build their companies. Thanks in advance for sharing!

Internet merchants and affiliates are graduating into real businesses. Unfortunately there are still a group of people out there that make the rest of us look like douche bags. You know who you are.

What are your top signs of internet marketing douchebaggery? How does one stand out as the un-douche?

You’re probably asking yourself, how can Brad Gosse show me an upside to gonorrhea? If that’s what you were hoping for, sorry to disappoint. Unfortunately for you this is not a post about sexually transmitted diseases.

When I refer to the clap, I am actually referring to a trick we use to help video editors and sound editors sync up our multiple camera and audio tracks.

Essentially, I clap my hands before I begin speaking which gives the editor a singular point of reference with audio and video, allowing for faster syncing. It’s a little thing but it makes a big difference when you’re using two or more separate tracks. In our case even at bare minimum we are recording the audio separately from the video. Clapping my hands one time allows the two files to be merged easily.

Get organized with your traffic. Having your own in-house url shortener will help you to keep track of and update your affiliate and other links you place on other websites, PDF documents etc.

Once you install this free software you will never use a 3rd party shortener again. Here is the link to download it. http://floopis.com/short