Today my wife had the television on and the program was one of those old classic black and white movies. What a treat to watch a master film editor work. The scenes built on the story and didn”t have a bunch of graphic pictures that you see in today’s movies.

That got me to thinking. Today many of the “video experts” tell you that the way to make good looking video is to watch what everyone is doing today on TV.

But that’s wrong. Just because someone has a video editing suite in their computer doesn’t make them video editors. In fact, all it does is make everyone think that it takes no brains to become an editor. Just take your raw video, cut out some scenes, add fancy transitions, paste in some credits, and you’re done.

But watch an older movie and see how the edit builds on the story. No fancy transitions between scenes. The transitions are just fades and cuts.

I was privileged to spend a month with an expert, my friend Leonard S. Smith, Jr., an Emmy winning member of the Directors Guild of America. We spent one full month editing thirteen hours of video into a 40-minute video. It was truly magic to see how he worked. And often we only got one or two minutes of finished video in a day!

Today you can get hundreds of transitions because some software programmer figured out how to write the code. But having those transition doesn’t make them work.

I know, you see them all the time on TV.

About those geometric transitions you see on TV, are they there because of good editing or because the “editor” had so many that he/she just had to use them?

What to be producing good looking videos?

Then start watching the classic movies on TV. Don’t fall into following the story line. Watch how the edit is done. And maybe you’ll discover what professional editors have known all along. Good editing is a work of art.

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I’m always surprised how many companies on the Internet think that once you buy their product they don’t want to hear from you ever again. I think they should be getting the Dilbert Award for Marketing Achievement. And don’t think that’s a good award!

But every so often I find someone or some company that goes beyond what I expected. This last week I found one of them. And while I know this blog is about multimedia, I just had to share this experience with you.

On Friday I turned on my computer and I got the warning that my AVG Resident Shield failed to load. Now, if you don’t know what AVG is, it’s my virus protection software. I used to use one of the other big two until I met a computer security guy who told me what the best software to protect my computer was. So now I have all three of our operating computers using AVG. Except my main computer wasn’t working correctly.

I sent an email to tech support. I believe Grisoft’s home is in Europe. Since I’m in the Pacific Time zone that means Europe is eight to ten hours different from me. And since it was a Friday I didn’t expect to get any email until Monday. But I did get an email with suggestions on what to do.

But nothing they suggested worked for me. So back went another email. And Friday night I got a request for more information within my computer. So I sent the captured files requested. Saturday morning there was a detailed set of instructions on how to fix my problem PLUS a request that I let them know if this fixed it. Imagine, they wanted me to send them an email to let them know if I was successful or not.

Well, the instructions called for removing all AVG files and reinstalling.

All went well until I tried to load the license… I couldn’t find it. The information I’d copied before removing was not the license that I needed. And my files had three license numbers for all three computers, but only one for my notebook computer was still good. I searched all my email files with no luck.

Now I had my computer with no protection at all and it was late Saturday afternoon.

So I sent another email explaining my problem. Since it was so late I didn’t expect an answer.

But sure enough, they sent me my current licensing information.

And within minutes I had my computer working again with AVG on alert.

You better believe I sent them an email telling them what a great job they did for me. I can definitely recommend Grisoft AVG virus software. They do deliver.

Now, how do we small business people create the same type of customer response? Certainly if you’re a one person show trying to respond immediately is a problem.

First make sure you’re customers can reach you. I use a contact page that has a simple form that can be filled out by your customers and will be emailed to you. I made the mistake earlier of having my email address on my sites and now I’m on just about every spam list in the world. And today most spam comes from outside the United States, so there is no control. I even get emails in Russian!

econd step is to create the FAQ (frequently asked questions) listing. That helps to answer a lot of questions. My favorite is to make screencast videos to answer persistent questions. They are much more effective than a written report.

I’m making about fifty tutorial videos for some software that is about to be released showing how to use it. This is helpful for both the customer and tech support. But I know I haven’t answered every question that will come up. So as tech support gets asked questions I’ll watch to see if we need to add another video to answer that question.

To me that’s one way of keeping your customers happy without overwhelming you.

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If you believe the marketers, just about every new software program is better than the previous one and you really need it to work efficiently. But those are the same marketers that are featured in the Dilbert comic strip.

For those who don’t know, Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) is an engineer who used to work for AT&T. And believe me, he tells it as it is in just about every big (and small too) company.

Anyway, back to software. More than one software program has been ruined when it was updated. In my last newsletter, Insider Video Alert!, I suggested using the Dazzle unit to convert VHS to DVD. One of the first emails I got after sending out my newsletter said, “Bob, I have actually created 10 DVD’’s with Dazzle and I can honestly say it is not a good program. I actually have Dazzle 150 with Pinnacle 8 through 9.43. The latest before they went to version 10. I won’t upgrade anymore. This program is plagued with problems. I’m only emailing you because I know you are trying to provide good information for your newsletter… and I believe backing this product in not a good idea. I still use it although I will be moving on to another product… and it probably will cost three times as much.”

So I immediately added some of those comments to my newsletter and sent out another notice to anyone who had already read it. I certainly don’t want to recommend any product that doesn’t provide the best solution for the problem.

And I’ve also found that many of the technical magazines (I take quite a few) are also not above recommending a product that does not work. Right now I have Roxio Easy Media Creator 8. The reviews on this product were excellent. It was rated the best on the market.

I had been using Easy Media Creator 6 and was happy with it. Only problem was there was a security issue and I had to remove the software for my security software to work. So I upgraded.

The new Roxio Easy Media Creator 8 continues to crash in my computer. The only way it works is to use the short cut on my desktop. If I opened the program through the normal way of Start > All Programs > Roxio it does not work at all. In fact, it never fully loads.

And no tech support unless I paid $35 for a brand new software program. And no way to contact a real person without paying $35. Plus Roxio has no software patches. The one they put out was withdrawn. Actually, they should have withdrawn the entire software program. Yet it’s still being sold today.

Bottom line, I’ll be more careful in the future with my research. Right now I’m looking for the best method of getting analog video into my computer so if anyone has suggestions please use the comments section below. I have Pinnacle Liquid Edition 5.5 (which has the analog breakout box) but I don’t want to put it in my computer right now.

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You may have noticed that there were a number of blog entries all dated about the same time. That’s because a few days ago I realized my blog software, WordPress, was not working right. And after a lot of soul searching, testing, etc., I finally realized that something was wrong with the software that I used to build the blog initially.

I did all the steps needed to save all my data bases and the plugins that built the look of my blog.

Then I erased the existing files and database so that I could rebuild WordPress all over. WordPress is truly easy to install. They talk about the five minute install and I believe it. Just build your data base, add a user (yes, they do explain it) and you’re ready to go.

My web host even included a bunch of videos to show how to do the entire data base step. Believe me, since I don’t make data bases everyday it sure helps to have videos showing me the steps.

I did try to re-enter my original data into the data base but I kept getting an error. So I had to manually enter all the earlier blog entries. That’s why you’ll see them all entered in just two days. But scroll to the end of each article any you”ll see the original post date.

Now the hard part, to make all the selections in WordPress to make my blog run the way I wanted it to. Once again I relied on videos to show me how. My source was Sherman Hu at WordPress Tutorials. Sherman is the Blog Expert that Ken McCarthy had at his last System Seminar. And believe me, after trying to set up my WordPress blog without Sherman’s help vs using his complete set of videos, using those videos is a no brainer.

I was up and running very quickly, with all the special extras that you just wouldn’t know about without Sherman’s tutorials.

Perhaps the most important idea I want to send you today is that screencast videos are fast becoming the key to using software on the internet today. Right now I’m producing nearly fifty videos for a new software program that one of my partners is about to release. And without those videos most of his customers would not know what to do. Plus technical support would be overwhelmed.

Of course, screencast videos have a number of uses beyond just software tutorials. You might even be using them differently that anyone else. I’d love to hear from others how they are using screencast videos now that my comments section for the blog is working.

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