PPVA March 2012

PPVA Meeting Minutes Monday, March 19, 2012

President Eric Pensenstadler of Video Horizons called the March meeting to order at about 7 pm. John Tonti from Express TeleVideo read the minutes from the February meeting.

Eric Pensenstadler outlined the agenda of topics to be covered at the meeting, including nomination of officers, membership dues, tapeless workflows, and video awards ceremony dates.

Dave Malinaric reviewed his summary of story about the importance of staying motivated and conveying that enthusiasm to people we meet that may have an interest in our services. Bob Pennington added to the information by reading an excerpt from one of Seth Godin’s blogs related to planning and marketing business services.

Joe Nolfi from Nolfi Video Services presented information about his recent experience with P2 memory cards and solid state recording on his new Panasonic 170 camcorders. He compared tape recording formats with SD cards and CF cards for field acquisition. He said that while cards are expensive, their reliability in all sorts of low or high temperature conditions, as well as the fact that the speed of file transfers for copying and editing, makes them very cost effective. Battery running times are improved, and increased reliability of the camera are other big advantages inherent in the tapeless workflow environment Joe now uses for his projects.

James Sanders from Sanders Video Services added that he got similar benefits when using the solid state audio-only recorder from Roland Systems at his last event. Eric talked about his mostly positive experiences with his Sony cameras that use solid state recording in Sony’s own format. Alex Litz from Gippos Studios mentioned the advantages he gets from the DataVideo DN 60 recorders connected to his Canon cameras.

The nominations of officers to manage the association, meetings and events was the next topic of discussion, led by Eric. He announced that he would not continue as President and suggested that coordinating the meetings should be shared by different members, starting in April, on a rolling basis. Other than President, other officers will continue for the next calendar year.

Eric reviewed his list of members who are scheduled to make presentations to the group on topics of interest in which they have particular interests or experiences to share with the group. We further discussed that each presenter could facilitate the entire meeting during his or her month.

There was further discussion of alternate meeting locations, which group members seemed to be open to, should someone make those arrangements at a suitable venue. Bob Pennington suggested that this may tend to draw more members to the meetings and even attract new members to the group to grow it.

The next meeting will be at Denny’s in Monroeville on April 16, 2012.

Submitted by
John Tonti, Express TeleVideo
Secretary, PPVA
April 11, 2012

PPVA February 2012

PPVA Meeting Minutes February 20, 2012

President Eric Pensenstadler of Video Horizons called the meeting to order at about 7 pm. John Tonti from Express TeleVideo read the minutes from the January meeting.

Eric passed out nomination forms for elections of officers for the year beginning April 1, 2012.  Nominees will be contacted before the next meeting.  Eric passed out forms so that members could draw the month they would be expected to make a presentation on a topic of interest to the group, and collected them along with the nomination forms for officers.

New Business
Eric  reviewed the need to discuss the annual PPVA video awards. He planned to review some stories of interest to the group. He announced that Alex Litz from Gippos Studio will lead a discussion about using green screen effects in his studio. Frank George will go over the newest AV products from Roland Systems Group.
Eric led a discussion on the importance of recording room tone when shooting in the field to enable audio enhancements when editing.

Eric presented some information about the growing use of HTML5 and the declining use of Flash for video and audio sharing.

Eric talked about alternative dates available for the video awards program and questioned whether we should have one this year due to lack of participation by some members/companies. Others voiced opinions and compared dates and it was decided that we would move the event from April to August to allow more time to prepare entries.

Alex Litz talked about his uses of green screen techniques in his studio to meet the needs and requests of his clients. There were questions and comments from others that added to the discussion.

Frank George from Roland Systems Froup talked about the newest R-26 six channel and R-44 four channel field recorders from Edirol, and members were able to see and touch them, and ask questions about features and benefits of recording additional field audio with these solid state devices.

Frank also showed and demonstrated the VR-3 and VR-5 production switcher and SSR that easily connects to field equipment and batteries while enabling live streaming via USB, solid state memory recording and numerous monitoring options for many source inputs. There was a lot of interest in how these devices from Roland Systems, and Frank did a great job of pointing out how they could used to advantage at events that people want to send out or save to send later.

Submitted by
John Tonti, Express TeleVideo
Secretary, PPVA
March 18, 2012

PPVA January 2012 Meeting

Draft of Minutes from PPVA Meeting on January 16, 2012

Eric called the meeting to order at about 7 pm. John Tonti read the minutes from the November 2011 meeting. There was no formal meeting in December due to the Christmas Party at Dave & Buster’s at the WaterFront.

Eric asked that Gary Ferraro of Random Acts Production introduce himself to the group, and others introduced themselves and their companies as well

New Business
We reviewed alternative meeting locations such as Panera Bread in Oakland that would be more central to the membership. Eric stated that whoever wants to make this happen should make inquiries and let everyone know so we can agree to make this change.

Dave Malinaric talked about shooting and editing wedding and event video in 3D.

The proposed Certification program was discussed by Eric, Tom and Gary, and the current application form was passed out for review. Questions came up about how equipment, work product, and policy qualifications and ground rules should be handled by the Committee. Certifying video service companies versus the individuals who actually do the work was part of the discussion. We agreed that this effort is a work in progress that would have flexibility built in to the requirements.

The logo created to distinguish a certified member or member company was discussed, including current use of the standard logo that some members use of their web sites. Drug and alcohol policy requirements of the certification application were also discussed.

Eric reminded us that nominations for next year’s chapter officers need to be made soon, so that we can elect new leadership during the April meeting. At that time we will also draw assignments for a month in which each member or member company would lead a discussion or conduct a demonstration on a topic of interest to the group.

The “membership year” was brought up so that dues, elections and schedules might be better administered, since member attendance will now be tracked in order to meet proposed requirements for Certification.

Eric talked about ThunderBolt technology developed by Intel and offered by Apple, including it features, promises and delayed availability and likely adoption. Various connector types and their backward and forward compatibility was part of this topic.

Sanders Video Services Played a short video of their Disney World vacation.
AB&G Digital played a video of South Fayette Township football highlights they created.
Video Horizons played a video of a flashmob event at Overly’s Country Christmas event.

Ambiance Video asked about the New Year’s Eve calls to some group members from Bella Pictures to cover a Pittsburgh wedding on an emergency basis.

Submitted by
John Tonti,
Secretary, PPVA
February 14, 2012

PPVA November 2011 Meeting

There will be no meeting in December.  Our annual Christmas Party will again be at Dave & Buster’s on December 12th.

This month we finalized the new program for our members on PPVA Certification that begins in January 2012.  Gary Carmichael did a presentation on the www.squareup.com which is today’s more convenient and cheaper alternative way of taking credit cards rather than having a merchant account or even using some of Paypal’s services.  Inexpensive cell phone services such as www.republicwireless.com was also mentioned.

James Sanders did a presentation on how the use of sound fx can help create a deeper impact for viewers.  The presentation had sound fx from Digital Juice used on a High School sports video.

See you next year!  Happy editing!

PPVA October 2011 Meeting

With The CES- Continuing Education Series, Anne Marie Herm presented  Tape to Tapeless work flow, based on experiences with their HD system.

Bob Pennington talked about digital asset management concepts, metadata, storage, class cards, raid arrays, linear tape backup, file management systems and best practices we need to be aware of.

John Tonti shared unique footage from a wedding reception and James Sanders shared a high school sports edit.

There was also discussion from Alex Litz and Joe Nolfi on how to best communicate to brides the editing process and delivery times of their wedding videos.

PPVA September 2011 Meeting

PPVA President Eric Pensenstadler opened the meeting by playing a DVD of Gary and Becky Carmichael’s wedding re-enactment from 25 years ago, edited together with a slide show retrospective.  Guest, Ralph Keller,  introduced himself and discuss his video service business, commenting on the difficulties involved in live wedding and event production work.  Dave Malinaric showed and talked about his latest camera, the FujiFilm 3D still and video camera, noting it has a sweet viewing spot to really see the its 3D effects. Glasses and viewing options were described and compared by Dave and Eric.  Bob Pennington added his expertise in describing memory card options we must keep in mind to take advantage of new camera systems, noting the differences between class 6 and class 10 memory card speeds.  Eric read from a tech story about the proliferation of 3D TV viewing and production trends.

Gary led a discussion on Return on Investment, which we must keep in mind when making equipment purchasing decisions. ROI is your Gain from investment, minus cost of investment, divided by the cost of investment. He looked into this more closely when trying to make a decision about whether to purchase a mass BluRay duplicator, and had to consider other factors such as requests to stream and upload vs. produce physical discs.

Eric threw out a trivia question about why BluRay is called blue ray. John Tonti noted that it is because the blue colored lasers carry more information that is required for high definition imaging systems by packing more transmission and storage capacity in a smaller space, using shorter wavelength lasers than with older red colored laser reading and writing equipment.

There was a discussion on trends towards customers requesting shooting, streaming and uploading rather than DVD disc production, which makes it difficult to know how many watch a program, and more challenging to determine fair yet profitable charges. There may not be a call for DVDs or BluRay discs in a few years due to this trend.

Ralph Keller talked about the audience size and composition when streaming, and pointed out the dilemmas this will cause video producers. The rights to access our materials was mentioned and compared to current and prior distribution methods involving discs and tapes and postage. He mentioned he read that this is causing declines in revenue and participants in our industry.

There was a discussion and review of the Certification process PPVA will adopt for members who wish to mention their certifications and achievements to prospects via websites, marketing materials and in sales situations. Tom Herm, Gary Carmichael and others have created a list of criteria that will be reviewed by members, revised according to the input received from member, and adopted soon by PPVA, possibly at the next meeting in October.

PPVA August 2011 Meeting

Equipment presented at this month’s meeting were the Canon XF305 and XF105 cameras presented by Bob Pennington of www.Texolve.com. Also, DPSlider sent the Prime 720 camera dolly system. This dolly system provides excellent and unique camera smooth gliding movements. Check them out a www.dpslider.com.

With the Continuing Education Series, the topic was “HD Quality Standards and the Lack Thereof.” With Standard Definition, options were few and easy to learn. HD provides many variables making the whole process often confusing and frustrating. This was an ongoing enlightening on what we as videographers have to deal with.

Eric Pensenstadler discussed multiple topics from striking out clauses in contracts per client wishes, to reception venues requiring the hiding of equipment, to the future of 3D video.

Eric also discussed a personal story of dealing with customs when contracted for a destination wedding in Bermuda. Bottom line, know what work permits are required when contracting your out-of-town shoot.

John Tonti discussed streaming video – Skype and Logitech are great tools for video conferencing or collaborating with clients or other production professionals on projects.

The 2011 PPVA Annual Summertime Picnic

PPVA May 2011 Meeting

Old Business

PPVA President, Eric Pensenstadler reviewed last month’s topics of discussion

- Topics of interest were listed by members themselves and were assigned for 10 to 15 minute presentations by those who have knowledge or interest in those topics.

- Production contracts will be compared and discussed at a future meeting so that a PPVA approved agreement can be created and used by members

- Summer picnic dates were discussed; options were reviewed.

- Benefits of membership in Better Business Bureau were discussed.

- Eric reviewed the use of text and graphics in video productions so that they meet standards and provide pleasing results on screen.

 New Business

- James Sanders demonstrated a low cost teleprompter system he recently used on a project

- Eric Pensenstadler led a discussion on key elements of a production contract, and encouraged members to bring a copy of their contract so that important features can be made available to other members. Anne Marie mentioned that some publications encourage brides to bring their own contract to their videographer so they can be protected from problems that can arise when provisions and details are not addressed in the videograher’s contract.

- Eric Pensenstadler reviewed a tripod dolly he recently acquired, noting advantages and drawbacks it provides.

- James Sanders presented a review of the Digital Juice graphics and titling elements available to enhance productions and create DVD cover art. He reviewed features and benefits of the Juice plug-ins he has been using in his work, answering questions from members and providing examples of how to incorporate graphics, titles and animations from the Digital Juice offerings.

- Eric reviewed some news reports of shortages and temporary unavailablilty of video and media products and parts produced in factories in Japan that were shut down by the tsunami and affected by the nuclear power plant problems there.

PPVA April 2011 Meeting

With the April meeting, we had the third and final month of the PPVA used equipment swap and sell.  Thank you to all who participated.

In the ongoing push for continuing education, association members created topics that they wanted to have discussed at future meetings.  Look for exciting new topics to be presented this year!

Creative video presentations are often the result of the strategic use of elements.  Specifically, we discussed the proper use of lower third supers and other graphics elements giving your presentation the right look.

One of the benefits of the PPVA is it’s extensive library of member’s videos on DVD.  Members can sign out a DVD  from the library and study another member’s work.  This month we went over the contents of the library and reiterated to members the learning potential they have.

Final discussion was concerning our always fun and exciting Annual Summer Picnic!  The event will be July 24, 2011.  Stay tuned for further details.