High Def

Chances are you are reading this blog because you are thinking about putting together a video. Maybe your company has a product that needs demonstrating or you are looking to increase sales and you heard video could help. Maybe your competitors are using video on their website and you need to stay ahead of the competition.

Whatever the reason, you need to be assured that the Massachusetts video production company you ultimately decide on will be a good fit for you. How do you know which company will be able to translate your ideas into a compelling video that will provide strong ROI?

Obviously Boston Digital Video wants to win your business. But before we start working with a client we ask questions to make sure there is a good fit; and you should too. You might have your own questions but here are the top five questions you need to ask before signing that agreement.

1. “Do you have experience working with companies in our industry and have you produced videos similar to what we are looking to put together?” Let’s say you represent a medical device company and want to put together a clinician training video for one of your devices. You want a video producer that has experience in medical device video production and has actually produced clinical training videos. Have them show you examples. This is your best way of knowing if your end product will come out the way you envisioned.

2. “Paint me a picture of the type of communication style and procedures you go through during the production process?” You want your video producer to be a seamless member of your team. You have a lot on your plate. Most of our clients hire a video production company like ours because we create a balance between keeping them in the loop and not bothering them too much with details that are usually handled during the pre-production and approval process.

3. “Does your company have the time and resources to complete our project on time and on budget?” Ask them how many other projects they are currently working on. Ask them what happens when they get busy. How will they stay on deadline? Do they have a team of people that can handle all the elements that go into completing this type of project?

4. “If we decide to work together, can you provide creative and technical ideas and guide us through the entire production process?” That’s why you are hiring a Boston video production company. You are very good at what you do, though video production is not your expertise. You want the production company you hire to provide creative ideas such as content organization, motion graphics and distribution that will give you the best product for your budget.

5. “How much is this video going to cost?” There is never one way to put together a video and there are a series of factors that are involved in coming up with that final number. Always to be prepared with a number you can’t go over. The video budget is like buying a car. A no-frills Ford Fiesta is a basic car. It will get you from point A to point B but it won’t have a lot of style and it might not last very long. The Honda Accord is reliable, provides a comfortable ride and has some style. It also has more bells and whistles than the Ford Fiesta. A fully loaded Mercedes E Class will turn heads and have lots of bells and whistles. Your video should correspond to your audience and be a reflection of your company. A good MA video producer should never push a higher price if it won’t provide a solid ROI.

When DVDs first came onto the video production scene, this Boston, Massachusetts corporate video producer couldn’t have been happier. This meant the end of VHS. Remember those? About 15 years ago, VHS was the standard mass produced video production delivery system. The good thing was they were fairly inexpensive to duplicate. The bad thing was that it transferred my superior digital video camera format and downgraded it to a lower analog format. Thank goodness those days are over.

DVDs became the standard format for distributing high quality video content. Even though the quality is good, you are limited to 4.7 gb. In addition, there are duplication and postage costs to consider.

The popularity and low cost of video production for the web has enabled me to market my industrial video production services and upload any short high definition web video. My clients either post them to their website or take advantage of video channels or social media sites such as YouTube, Face Book and Twitter.

Full service video production companies like ours still produce DVDs for businesses who either want to feel their B2B marketing or training video in their hands or want to mass produce their video production together with a snail mail marketing campaign. DVDs still have their place at this time but more clients are switching to internet based webvideos. With everything going on the cloud, I believe DVDs won’t be spinning much longer.

Man on the street interviews or MOS are a very cost effective market research techniques used to gather information from a specific target market. Let’s say you are company that wants to get a sense of your product’s response to the general public. A Boston, MA corporate video production company will go around with a camera crew and your product and perform random product testing.

These high definition video productions rarely find their way to a company’s website or used in a social media context such as Twitter, Face Book and YouTube. These business video productions are typically limited to corporate executives in a conference room. There is nothing more powerful than presenting fresh product market research to to your product marketing team in order to define the needs of the market place.

This post is part of a series on putting together a business video production. Your online video marketing script has finally been signed off. All decision makers have given their input and before any post production or editing services begin, the time has come to professionally voice your web video script.

Some clients, when trying to trim a budget think that not using a professional VO media production talent can save them money. The reality is that using someone in your office with just a “good voice” will end up costing you more to produce your high definition online video. In fact I only use pros when recording a B2B video production script.  The money you save in doing the voice yourself will go back into the project in the form of longer voice over sessions, amateurish mistakes, word mispronunciations, low sound quality and longer editing. When quality is important, voice over is never the place to make budget cuts.

Many creative video production voice talents work out of their home. They convert a closet into a recording studio, use state of the art recording equipment and provide a live phone tap so multiple decision makers can hear the recording session during a conference call.

It doesn’t matter what industry you work in, either life science, medical device, software, or original equipment manufacturing. Whether the final is a webvideo or DVD video production, finding the right voice to compliment your promotional video script comes with experience. A good rule of thumb in corporate digital video production for the web is to have the voice blend with all the other multimedia elements in your final video or DVD. The voice shouldn’t be over powering or under performing. Think about why you are marketing with video, who is your audience and why are they watching this mobile video production. The voice quality in customer service training videos will be much different than a marketing strategy piece, viral video or even a direct response television video. Sometimes a female voice will work best and other times a male voice will add just the right touch. Think about who your target is. Will this internet video marketing piece be shown in Boston Massachusetts,  nationally or have a global interest? Creating multiple versions of your internet video with different languages might be cost effective in reaching your target audience. Even other English speaking countries have different dialects. A North American voice over talent might not be effective in Britain.

What ever voice style you decide on, ask for choices. Have your professional corporate Massachusetts video production company hold auditions. Let your videographer or web video producer filter out the weak applicants and then choose from the best of the best.

Boston Digital Video, a Boston, MA video production company recently produced an internet marketing video (MA) for Hamilton Storage. The company provides automation solutions to customers in life science and clinical research. Hamilton develops modular, scalable systems that automate sample storage, management and processing. Boston Digital Video created a series of full resolution HD videos to be shown on large screen monitors at industry trade shows. The videos, shown on Blue Ray disks included 3D animation to better demonstrate the company’s capabilities.

Boston Digital Video is full service video production (MA) company.

Boston Digital Video just finished a medical video production (MA) for Smiths Medical focusing on connecting and disconnecting accessories involving a neonatal and pediatric Tracheostomy Tube. This online video marketing (MA) was repurposed with new graphics, music, voice over and titles. The final custom video production (MA) was made into a PAL DVD and used throughout Europe.

High definition video is everywhere. It’s playing at trade shows, our living rooms and even board rooms. High definition video production (MA) is becoming more main stream every year. YouTube has gotten into the HD game by offering you to upload up to 2GB of your favorite high def videos. These can come from a professional high definition camera or from even an iPhone.

SD or standard definition is still widely used by videography services (MA) and website video production (MA) companies. HD is still more expensive that SD. The cameras are more expensive, the edit process takes longer due to transcoding and it takes longer to export and compress to high resolution files. If you are incorporating animation in your production, HD will increase your budget.

Don’t get me wrong. high def is great. I shoot on it all the time and it looks terrific. It should definitely be used if your corporate video production is shown during a large presentation such as a trade show or displayed on a large plasma screen. If you are just showing your video production on the web and you are on a tight budget, HD might be something you can do without. Hi definition does look slightly better on the web than SD but it might not make that much of a difference to justify a larger budget.

Boston Digital Video, a video production studio in Boston, MA has recently been hired to produce a high definition (HD) training and equipment preparation video for the Vision Sciences Esophagoscope. This medical video production (MA) will be shown to clinicians who need to learn proper operating procedures.

This high definition video production (MA) is scheduled to be completed in late 2010.

Have you ever tried to e-mail a large video file and the message gets bounced back? Most e-mail programs don’t allow you to send more that 5-10 MB of information in a single e-mail. There are a number of methods of getting your video file from point A to point B. In the Stone Age we overnighted VHS tapes. They were expensive and you ended up with a low quality product.

Today promotional video production companies (MA) have many options at their disposal. You can send high quality (HD) high definition video over the web at reasonable costs. An FTP or file transfer protocol allows users to copy files between their local system and any system they can reach on the internet. The only problem is that uploading and downloading can be a bit complicated for the technically challenged. It’s not as simple as downloading with one click.

Many non-video production studios (MA) use free services such as YouSendIt. They allow you to easily upload and send large files for free as long as they are under 100 MB.

Most Boston MA videography services need to send very large files. Boston Digital Video is a MAC video production house and we use Mobile Me. It allows us to upload GBs of information and enables our clients to download them by clicking a single link. Mobile me also allows us to create public folders where our clients can access a number of password protected files at their convenience.

MIT recently hired Boston, Massachusetts video production company, Boston Digital video to edit a promotional video for MIT’s GEM4 project. GEM4 a global program focusing on cell & molecular mechanics in biomedicine.