, Author at Rettew Creative

The ethics behind storytelling…

The other day, I was having a long creative session with a new client and the topic of ethics was the basis of our discussion. Yes, how can we tell stories without morally compromising an organization. Let’s dive into this a bit.

First, how can we tell stories of those who have benefited from the organization’s mission and are not compromised as leverage for public awareness. What do I mean? Imagine an organization wanting to tell their story, and as their mission they help people during tough times. But in order to explain their mission for the public at large to understand, they ask people to explain how the organization has helped them.

This brings up two ethical dilemmas:
1) privacy of those being served by the organization
2) the ethical barometer of the organization

We are all very passionate about a cause, we are all very passionate about sharing the story of our cause. But are we passionate enough to share the stories of those we serve, even though privacy is an issue, as a means to promote with an aim for helping the greater good? What is the greater good? Who is to benefit from the stories to be told? The people who have suffered and now have chosen to share to benefit the brand, the people who could learn from this experience, or the people who could learn that an organization exists and go seek help?

Let’s take a few scenarios:

First, think about Joplin, MO and the tornados that have ravaged this small town. In the age of social media and digital awareness, many flocked to help these people. Many people felt the need to give, donate time, or just go see with their own eyes. But there are many digital media enthusiasts who jumped at the opportunity to go capture the story, the many horrifying stories for personal benefit. Specifically, going to Joplin to capture stories to put on their blog, put on YouTube, shoot a documentary, raise awareness in a fashion that benefitted them personally, leveraging this horrible time for their personal gain. So many organizations wanted to be the first to report, grab the SEO, share it on Facebook….all for personal gain.

For you naysayers, I understand the public awareness this coverage brings for this international story. I understand that these digital media stories brought tremendous awareness, thus influenced tremendous giving, donations, and public outreach for those who suffered this horrible event.

But this leads me to my next scenario…Hurricane Katrina. I was on the ground the day after the storm hit. It was my job to go to the outlying areas surrounding New Orleans and capture stories, those explaining what had happened in their area. We journalists were the only means to communicate what had happened in the outlying areas…because all the communication channels were destroyed.

So many times, I would drive up to a house, town, area and someone was outside looking at the area and they were emotionally charged. At what moment do we begin to capture those stories when those individuals are in a state of panic and cannot make the conscious decision that what they’re sharing emotionally could be shown around the nation. This is and has been a huge ethical debate in the journalistic world. Who is winning here, who is benefitting from this story…especially if the journalist is recording with the camera because he/she knows this will win them some huge awards.

So, let’s implement this into telling stories inside businesses, non-profits, and organizations. Where does your ethical barometer lie when considering telling a story from inside your organization? Do you have the best interest of the person in mind, or do you have on your digital marketing cap, seeing the potential viral reach of a story? Are you leveraging this person’s story for personal gain? Are we conscious of the potential outcome from this story?

I see both sides of the issue…the one that sees the public gain from hearing a story and the desire to protect one’s story from the digital community. I do not think each of us can say exactly where we stand on this issue. Each person cannot say they have a hard line they can draw because each story is contextual and is affected by our own daily, personal biases. We as digital communicators need to be conscious of our decisions when we plan a storytelling strategy. We have to create a thoughtful plan that includes implications of telling stories that might ride the ethical line. But whose ethical line are we riding?

These questions lead me to my final thought…the velocity of the digital world and need to share as a derivative is blurring the ethical lines of storytelling. The need to share online, to collect information, has become competitive in nature. This capitalist idea has created the need to share the same content faster than the next, to generate SEO back to our blogs, websites, and other portals. Digital communicators are competing online for a stake in the SEO game…to gain a piece of the digital pie. This digital velocity accelerates during times of big digital news.

So where does this leave us? It leaves us in a place to seek and understand where we hang out in this ethical continuum of digital storytelling? Are we seeking to leverage stories for our personal gain or for the best interest of the great good. Are we raising awareness or just creating more noise in the digital spectrum?

SEO: Google Plus One vs. Facebook Like -> Better +1 & Like

Last week, I wrote a post detailing the effects of creating Google Plus Profile and how it directly impacts your rankings in Google. If you look at the image below…you can see what I was detailing in my previous post, showing where my Google Plus Profile is located in a simple Google Search of my name.

But a friend of mine (Mandy Vavrinak) commented on the blog post raising a question about a Bing.com search.

So let’s take a look at what will happen with a Bing.com search of Bobby Rettew:

Notice what is the top item in this search, my Facebook Profile…interesting. Well Duh, this makes since especially given this article from CNN.com back in October 2010, the Bing/Facebook search deal. Bing.com is influenced by the number of “Likes” in a Bing.com search, as detailed in this blog post. BTW, my Google Plus account was way back in page fifteen of Bing.com with this search.

So, what are we learning from this little discovery, a Facebook Profile is to Bing.com as is Google Profile is to Google.com, when it comes to SEO. Thus the “Plus One” concept in a Google search result will influence rankings in a Google search similar to the influence of a “Like” in a Bing.com search.

So Google is looking at our impressions within a search result with the Plus One similar to the “Like” in Facebook. By clicking +1 beside a search result, it gives you stamp of approval. These +1’s will show up in search results if your are logged into your Google account, and allow you to click it you have a Google Plus account.

Three weeks ago, I noticed something new in my WordPress blog. I have the “1-Click/Retweet/Like” plugin by LinksAlpha installed. It let me know it was time to update this plugin. When I updated, it added the +1 for Google Plus as one of the options to share. Now I have it placed at the bottom of each post.

This allows people to give a post a +1 as a sign of sharing in Google Plus. Each plus one helps a blog post, a website, a brand in Google’s rankings. The same as clicking the “Like” for Bing.com’s rankings. Ultimately, it is a way to show approval and help your favorite pieces of content show up in search rankings.

So here it is…if you have a Google Plus account and a Facebook account, you need to “+1” just as much as you “Like” to help your favorite pieces of content in search rankings. This will ultimately share with your friends in both outlets the things that your like the most. This influencing our social networks and social rankings of content.

Oh…by the way, there is a change in my Google Profile ranking in Google. Last week (July 6, 2011), my Google Plus Profile was listed number four in a search for my name, now it is number one:

Google Plus & Social Outlets…WE have to stay grounded as Practitioners

We still have to stay grounded my friends…we have to stay grounded. As I was thinking through the hype of another social outlet to be added to the users’ menu, a song came to mind. Do you remember the song “Another One Bites The Dust” by Queen? This tune keeps on popping up in my mind, thinking through the lyrics. Now, I am not singing the same lyrics to the tune…I have changed to “Another One Called Plus”. Yes…I think Queen would probably baulk at singing these lyrics. There is an irony in the changing the lyris, I think.

Yes…there is another one at the playing table, and within a week Google Plus has the buzz of a major player in the user arena(s). The more and more I read in the social sphere…people are comparing Google Plus to other outlets. We are seeing more user reviews making comparisons to other social outlets, because that is all they know. But…it is just another platform to connect.

We as communication professionals have to be careful not to fall back into a paradigm as technicians. Not only jump on the bandwagon and focus on the technology and the excitement of the technology, but instead trying to learn how users might interact with this new platform. Now granted it is being reported the Google Plus has experienced close to 5 to 9 million users in the first two weeks of this beta release. This is all about how your interpret the numbers, like in this article from eWeek.com.

“Google+ has more than 5 million users in the United States alone during its first two weeks of existence, according to a couple of creative calculations by early users of the fledgling social network.

Open June 28 to limited field-testing, Google+ is Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) major bid to bite into the massive growth and influence of Facebook, which has more than 750 million users and poses a threat to Google’s display ad business.”

BUT…there are still communities still interacting in all the other platforms and digital media outlets. As this new platform emerges, we have to stay vigilant in our roles as communication practitioners. Each platform is going to apply to different communities of users and how they communicate. We have to sit back, educate ourselves with these new platforms, let the honeymoon dust settle, then see how/if we can apply this to what we are doing.

I do not think there is going to be a mass exodus from Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, and other social/digital mediums. I think people will will use the medium that best serves their abilities to communicate with the people they want connect with regularly. But, we must educate ourselves with these new technologies and see how/if we can apply our communication knowledge to this platform as practitioners. Whether we use online video to communicate our message, write a blog, create a Facebook campaign, do a media buy, or even implement a digital media strategy…we need to assess this platform and see how it might play into how we communicate our message.

Remember…it is about people, stupid!

Google+: Circles is getting us back to basics, communities! Removing the noise hopefully.

I think one of the big things many of us in the this social space have been feeling for a while is the explosion of noise in the social space. More and more outlets, channels, places to shout our information.

Twitter was so fun two years ago, not many people were using this outlet…so it was a smaller community base of people interacting. Now it has exploded.

More and more people are wanting to lock down and limit their friends in this “social space”, protecting against the mass markets. Yes we can “Like” pages, but there are restrictions. The one thing that Facebook has going for it, the ability to have community conversations.

I would take part in Twitter chats and notice many of those same people would jump over to Facebook to have more private, engaged conversations…away from the mass 140 character updates. The hardest thing about Facebook is the restrictions on some of the interactive flexibility to share different types of media. The other concept that helped Facebook, is the idea of being a “Friend”, which is a two way decision.

Twitter has a great concept, but the idea of “Followers” is a bit egotistical fundamentally. People would, and still do, focus on how many “Followers” they do or do not have. That name created a culture of competition, a race that fulfilled most American egos…I want more. This notion turned Twitter into a mass communication piece…just people buying into a culture of amplification.

This idea of “Circles” is intriguing. It takes the real time update concept of Twitter, combining with the ability to attach media with updates from Facebook, and combines the discussion idea of Wave…into Circles. I am actually wondering why they did not call Google Plus….Google Circles.

You have the ability to create a private room, a private place for a group of friends to interact and share. I have read so many people saying that they are going to go back to less numbers of people and move to a more intimate group of friends they know using Circles.

We want to be close to our friends. We want to share and be heard. Mass digital media has created so much noise that we are searching for a place to have conversations with friends we know in person and people we have met online. We want to have a closer relationship and feel open to speak freely, away from the public scrutiny of bad Tweets. The many politicians and public figures have shown us that Twitter’s amplification can hurt our credibility, especially when we share the wrong picture, say the wrong thing, or mis-represent the wrong brand.

We just want a place to be ourselves and share with our friends. It looks like Plus might provide that refuge…Circles is a place to be ourselves again and feel open and honest to share. So we do not have to change our handles to names that no-one knows and put avatars up to hide behind.

I am not sure how Plus will evolve, especially when they open it up to business accounts later this year. What are you doing when you go into Plus for the first time? Are you honestly re-thinking who you will let in, or are you just transferring the same online friendships and tendencies you had in other social outlets. Or, are you looking for a richer experience online with a tight nit group of friends. I know I am, I have a circle just for my Frat Brothers and one for my close friends.

I guess we will see what happens!

Google Plus: Circles…Circles…Circles…step back Facebook?

Circles…Circles…Circles…

Oh yes…I have been completely impressed by the Circles concept in Google Plus. But my only reference point here is my Facebook account settings and Twitter Lists…but this is completely different.

So may times I have wanted to only interact with a group of people in a discussion, but has the interactivity of Facebook. I have found a link, an idea, a video, a picture, or an opinion…and only share quickly with a specific group of friends. This can be done by just creating a Circle of connections (people) then updating your status for these to see.

This to me is where I am beginning to see some value, and where I see where Google Wave has some influence. I can quickly create a “Circle” where I add friends/people/connections, then I can interact with them and only them. No more worrying about trying to separate a status update from those who you feel do not need to see this information. So many times on Facebook, I wanted to share a video with just a group of friends…but was worried about either upsetting someone on my public timeline or marginalizing someone based on the content of this update.

If you look below…you can see how an update will go only to a group of people are just in my “Friends” Circle.

Now…only my friends are interacting with this content. Just the friends I have dragged to this circle below:

So what does this mean…I can do more collaborative discussion online. I can create a “Circle” for a discussion and interact with them on the fly, separating that discussion from others I have connected with on Google Plus. This opens up a new paradigm for a person like me. I can create a “Circle” for a class I am teaching, creating discussions between the class members. I can create a “Circle” for a client, using this as an opportunity to have discussions, share media, share links, etc…all on the fly.

The other thing I like, is that you can extend this conversation beyond a circle. You can click to add more people and select to add a “Circle” of people to include in this update. You can also select “Extended Circles” as an option where this update is extended to that “Circle’s” group of friends. So you have grown you network of influence of an update by selecting the option for an additional degree of people to take part in that discussion.

You can add other “Circles” or even make the update public. Very cool…you can decide on the fly who you will interact with in one drop down menu. This is under the assumption you have set-up all your Circles of contacts. Pretty Cool Stuff!

Here is a video from Google about Circles:

Google Plus: Is it going to help your search results?

So…while trying to set-up my profile in Google Plus…I am trying to work through securing my profile name just like on Twitter and Facebook. Basically securing my own Google Plus URL with BobbyRettew. In the process of researching, I felt like my account had gone through all the initial set-up steps…so I thought I would Google myself to see if/how this new social network would appear in the search results.

This is what appeared above. It was the 4th item listed in the Google search results. Wow, below was my LinkedIn, Facebook, then Twitter account profiles (in respective order). So recap this, this is the order of what appeared in a Google search for “bobby rettew” after having a Google Plus account for 30 minutes:

BobbyRettew.com (My Website) – Established in 2008
rettewcreative.com (My Business Blog) – Establish in 2009
BobbyRettew.com/about (The About Page on my Website) – Established in 2008
Google Profile (Which is my Google Plus Account) – Google Profile established in 2008 and Google Plus in 2011
LinkedIn (My LinkedIn Profile) – Established in 2007
Facebook Account (My Personal Facebook Page/Profile) – Established 2007
Twitter Account (My Twitter Profile) – Established in 2008

Notice the difference in dates of set-up and between Google Plus and the rest of the Social Networks, and how fast it generated a top search result. Look what information was presented for my Google Profile/Plus account:

It you notice, immediately people can see a few things:

My Google Plus/Profile Picture
Where I am located
Where I am working
My Tag Line
Link to my Personal Blog
Link to my Twitter Profile
Link to my Website

All of this was immediately established based on the creation of Google Plus account. So…this immediately provides an immediate portal for people searching my name to the places to connect with me! Now, look at the order from left to right of the links below my tagline. They correspond to the order I created my links in my Google Plus account.

Ok…so now I get it. This is showing a direct relationships between my Google Profile/Plus account and how I can be found via a simple Google search. This has me thinking…thinking through the ROI for me of having an account. Now, have to figure out what the ROI might encompass from investing time in this new Social Network.

Tomorrow…I will release a post about Circles in Google Plus. It is pretty cool what you can do with these things!

Google Plus: Working thru all the Hub-bub? WHY?

So I just received an invite and I working through Google Plus and checking it out. As I login, I have noticed a few things:

It is just another social network, another place to interact with people online.
As I am creating my profile, it is pulling a lot of my information from my Google Profile. So if you have an up-to-date Google Profile, it is going to populate your Google Plus profile based on this information.
It is basing your network of connections from contacts in your Google Account. Google Plus uses the term “Circles” as a name for your networks, and can be based on how you set-up your Google Contacts.
It has a stream similar to Facebook, allowing you to make an update and include a picture, video, link, or location.
Reminds a bit like Google Wave as far as the interface design and fluid interactivity.
I am thinking through the business application for enterprise level usage such as Facebook Pages.
Wondering how and when I am going to use this social network and if it makes sense for me? I am active on Twitter for both personal and business, Facebook for both personal and business, LinkedIn for business…so wondering where this makes sense for me? If at all?
The digital media interaction looks fluid, specifically people are posting animations and other interactive media with ease.
Google Plus looks like another extension of my personal Google Account. Yes…it is pulling information from my Gmail, Contacts, YouTube, Picasa, and Profile Accounts from one single Google login.
Since you have to have a Google profile to have a Google Plus account, a Google Business account cannot accept an invitation currently. Yes, BobbyRettew.com is self hosted and also uses Google products such as Mail from Google. So when I log into my BobbyRettew.com Google Account…I cannot create a Google Profile. Thus, the Google Plus invitation sent to my Bobby@BobbyRettew.com email account would allow me to accept the Google Plus invitation. My Google Plus account is via my BobbyRettew@gmail.com email/Google login.

So here ya go…my initial thoughts after playing with it for about 15 minutes. This is purely a surface level overview…nothing strategic yet. Still thinking through and wondering the if, how, and when about this social network. Bottomline…everyone is raving, but do I really give a dang about investing time in another place to interact with the same group of connections. Or…maybe this social network will open a whole new place for new relationships and new interactive experiences.

Bottomline…I think it is still another place for Google to try to make a play on Social Networking; leveraging all the other technologies that are already in place for an individual’s Google Account.

Take away for me (since I am a tech geek)…it is going to be fun for a while. But eventually it will have to bring value beyond the honeymoon for me to engage along with all the other social outlets.

So tomorrow…part two of three posts: “Google Plus: It is going to help your search results?”

Video message distribution is all about community!

Video over the web has transformed and made us re-think how we use this visual medium. As you know…I am big on the rhetorical triangle and how we as communicators use this daily to engage in common discourse. I have spent lots of time talking about audience…but one of the areas of the rhetorical triangle that really intrigues me is distribution. How are we distributing our message to our audiences. My thesis has always been that audience, purpose, and distribution are working in parallel and dependent upon the other to create the context of our communication. But, distribution is one of the major tenants of this triangle.

So let’s define distribution. Based on my interpretation and application, I view it as the vehicle by which we touch our audience with our message. It is a channel through which the audience receives and interprets the message for consumption. So if we look at online video, it can be a primary or even a secondary distribution mechanism for our message(s).

Think for a second, before online video…video was television. Our message was created and distributed via television stations and their trafficking of advertising campaigns. We would also use video to reach our audiences via trade show presentations, internal communication avenues, or where ever their was a television. The broadcast tube was the distribution mechanism and it was primary.

As the ability to distribute video over the internet grew, the screen on a computer was not the only way to distribute this visual message. Video messages have to rest on some URL, some individual domain for us to find and watch the information. But this is only a small portion of the distribution for video. With television, you could put it on a VHS tape, DVD, or pay for advertising space. The vehicle here for distribution was merely finding the right channel.

With online video…the primary points of distribution became “infinite” with huge different channels of URL’s…making it hard for audiences to find this content. This is how the social media space began to explode…beginning with email. Email to me is a social media outlet. It is social and just as asynchronous as Facebook or Twitter. You can send an email and have to wait for a period of time for someone to read or respond. It also created personal, social dialogue. So using video via email became a natural fit. Why…because we could send a message to our address book and they would watch. Obviously we know where this went, email addresses became wide spread and more groups were creating and purchasing books of email lists to send messages.

Now audience analysis has become more important when creating online video messages. It is no longer spending money just to create the message, you have to begin to figure out how to distribute this message to the target audiences. Organizations that are spending large dollars on great video production now can track viewership, and the ROI is more about the tension between the message and how the message is distributed.

So online video production houses are having to move from just content creation but to content distributors as well. In order to keep business rolling, they have to act more as communication practitioners combined with their video production skills. These plans include looking at social outlets beyond traditional outlets as touch points to audiences. We now have to leverage keywords, SEO, YouTube, bloggings platforms, permalinks, and other distribution parameters to find their audiences.

If you want to create a video campaign and realize the value of using Twitter or Facebook to connect and distribute a message, the community building effort must start long before the video message is created. This is why community building is huge in the minds of digital media content creators. If you are a small company and want to get your video message in front of the right people, you have to define…where does the community exist and how do they communicate?

Social outlets are not always the answer. I finished a huge project for Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church. They wanted to capture and tell stories of rural churches in North Carolina. These stories would be showcased at the annual conference, in-front of 2000 pastors, staff, and other support staff. The distribution was simple, burn to a DVD for everyone to watch at one time…then we would put on YouTube for them to find, and share afterwards. The community was in one physical room. Then, once the community was exposed to the message…they could use technology like YouTube to share with their friends.

The point here…is we have to think about distribution and how it relates to the audience. If we want to create a year long social media campaign for a community to watch, there has to be a community. You just cannot set-up a Facebook page or a Twitter account, then start tweeting about the video. If you are trying to hit a large audience of people and you only have two people in the community…then something is not working. A community of people have to engage with a common interest online before you can start sharing a message.

Example, a few years ago…I worked with Clemson on a project. They wanted to create a video invitation to send to all of their students via email. They wanted to invite the students to an event called Legacy Day. This was a day where students, faculty, staff, could come together to meet those who had left money to Clemson in their will. They were also going to be having a book signing for the new Clemson history book.

After talking with Clemson, we came to the conclusion that email blasting a video to the students would have as much effect as going out in the center of campus, during spring break and holding a sign up to come to Legacy Day. No one would open, read, click the video link, watch, then attend. So, instead…we knew that Clemson students are highly active on Facebook. So, we engaged with a group of students to help us with the project. We found some students, got them to help us with the video production, they create a Facebook event and shared with their friends, and we posted small video vignettes once a week leading up to the event.

So what is the point, we realized that Facebook is the distribution mechanism, BUT we needed to engage the individuals in the student community of Facebook to invite their friends to join. Then they could share the video with their friends. We nearly double the expected attendance projections…and we used video to tell the story of Clemson Legacy. We were leveraging the online community of students.

Distribution is a powerful tool…a powerful consideration…a powerful part of the Rhetorical Triangle.

Converting Passionate Writing/Blogging…

As I took part in #BlogChat Sunday night…I was so pleased to see the conversation move away from technology, which blog platform to choose, and other topics sometimes I browse through. Finding passion in your blogging and writing has always been my position. Regardless of you blog for advocacy, business development, or even to generate income…you have to have some passion behind your message.

Above is what I think…”Passion is food for the soul…if you can blend that passion into your writing…it can become infectous!” So tell me, what blogs do you connect with…that touch you daily. Is a photo blog, video blog, a business blog, one of advocacy, what is it?

As I was thinking through this topic, the one thing that always finds a way to make it’s way from my subconscience to the forefront of my thinking, how can we convert passionate writing into revenue and a business development tool. I even wrote a blog post about this very topic: Does Passionate Writing (Blogs) Generate Revenue? These is a method to the passion, writing content that passionately connects…thus the SEO argument.

Regardless…this has made me look back at my work and do an assessment, an assessment of my writing and my direction. So the best way I know how to do a simple assessment, create a word cloud from all my writing in my blog.

Here is a word cloud from this blog, my business blog:

Here is a word cloud from my personal blog (https://rettewcreative.com/personal-blog):

I chose not to do a word cloud from my tags, because that is just measuring frequency of the words that I deem searchable for each blog post. This is a subjective viewpoint of my writing, looking through a lens completely focused on SEO. Instead, I used Wordle.net to pull all the words from all my posts to assess frequency of the actual content I am actually writing. I am focusing solely on the content in this simple assessment.

So begs the question…are the largest words in the word cloud (which shows the largest frequency of usage my my blogs) match the purpose and mission behind my passion for both my business and personal blogs. My business is based on video, media, blogs, people and those are the largest words in the business blog word cloud. But…based on this simple assessment, I can see words that are apparent that I might want to focus more in my writing. I also see areas in my personal blog that I might want to re-focus a bit…I am wondering if I am talking too much about business in my personal blog?

Passion can be focused!

Is video tape media really dead? Is SD media cost effective? [techy blog post]

With the announcement of the new Final Cut Pro X and other Non-Linear Editors (NLE) like Avid Media Composer moving more consumers into the pro-sumer market…the question begs an answer: is tape media dead? Outside of more consumers using non-video tape recording cameras, more and more pro-sumers and professionals are moving from tape media to SD media.

In a recent review by USA Today of the new Sony NX5U along with the emergence of using Digital SLRS to acquire video images…the claim is that video tape is dead. It is in the first line of this article: “Review: Sony NX5U video camera”. Jefferson Graham states, “The big takeaway from this week’s overhaul of Apple’s Final Cut Pro video editing software is that tape-based media is dead.”

Well here are my thoughts?

Storage costs money! Yes! Higher Definition images need more space to store these images! It all comes down to work flow…what do I mean, well we will address that in a second.

Traditional image acquisition in the video production world use video tape to record the image captured by the lens and processed by the camera. Once recorded on the tape, it would take equal amount of time to play and “ingest” into a computer’s non-linear editing suite (like Final Cut Pro, Avid Media Composer & Adrenaline, Adobe Premiere, etc.). Basically, if you recorded an hour’s worth of video, it would take an hour to put it into the computer.

With solid state media, video cameras are able to record the image as a file. The better the image, the better the camera, the larger the files sizes. Instead of just playing the video back for the computer editing suite during “ingest”, you could just transfer the file, the same process typically as copying any other file from a thumb drive to your computer. This cuts down time in the production process, huge amounts of time. BUT!!! Once you transfer the files to the computer, you can erase the media in the camera and reuse for the next production.

When you use video tape, many production shops do not erase the original tape and save just in-case the original video information needs to be accessed. More video tape means more money. Thus, the transition to cameras that do not use video tape, it appears to cut down on cost.

BUT…here is the thing that keeps me still acquiring on video tape and recordable media like SD cards simultaneously. Once you put the video from a camera that records it without video tape into the computer, you have to save the original media somewhere. It requires hard drives to store this original media…because you erased it from the camera and it is not on an original video tape.

So…for the production house and the consumer, you have to find a place to store this original video media. For a production house…this turns into Terabytes and Terabytes of storage of this original footage. Now this storage costs can be passed off to the client…but it takes space. Bigger and bigger storage servers…and if you are storing on servers that use hard drives with moving parts, they can fail. Yes, you can RAID these drives…but I have met more and more and more major universities, production houses, etc. where the RAID’s fail and the original media is GONE!

Yes…I was at a major university that lost a whole season of football footage to a failed RAID system. Those hard drives are moving parts. Yes…there is solid state storage but it so damn expensive, it is hard to justify the costs with the new technology.

Avid’s NLE’s allow you to erase media that is unused in the editing process, but keep the parts of video production used in the final product. BUT…what if you want to re-access that un-used media for another project?

Here is what I do…my current solution.

1. I use a camera that can record on video tape and solid state storage simultaneously. The video tape is there just in-case the solid state media fails. It has happened before during my ingest. I have lost a whole day of shooting on an SD Card, but had the tape as a back-up. If not, it would have cost me time and money.

2. I ingest into the computer using Final Cut Pro with the solid state media card. Why, because it converts to a Quicktime (.MOV) that is widely excepted by most major NLE’s. I can also ingest 83 minutes of HDV in 7 minutes compared to the 87 minutes it would take for me to play that tape into the computer. Then…if I want to edit in Final Cut Pro or Avid…I have the original raw media digitally. (Avid has to convert the files to their proprietary codec)

3. I save the original HDV video tape as a back-up…properly labeled. So, if I loose the raw media on the hard drive, I can open the project and use the tapes to re-ingest the media.

4. I save the project files from both Final Cut Pro and Avid Media Composer in two other spots outside of the edit suite: a back-up storage drive and my online back-up space in the cloud. So, if I loose everything digitally, I have the original project files in two places and I can pull the tapes out to re-ingest the media.

5. I back-up my raw media files of the current years’ productions at a un-disclosed storage facility on consistent basis. This allows me to save time if my systems go down…just go get the media and transfer the files.

Why do I do this…because I do not trust moving parts in hard drives. I have had more NLE systems and their hard drives fail with media. I have watched major broadcasting units not be able to put on a show because files got corrupted with lost media. Tape is a physical media that provides a great back-up solution for original media.

Now, this is not always going to be a great solution long-term…but I am researching and working with partners on solutions that will provide me and my clients a great solution.

* Image Credit: Westside Media Group & Ken Rockwell