euge.tv

If you’ve ever wished you had a safe, secure place to store working files online, and you have a gmail account, then this post will be of interest to you…

Let me explain:

I regularly bounce between 3 different computers:

1. My work PC
2. My home workstation
3. My home laptop

As a result I’m often working on the same file, but on different machines.

To date the way that I’ve dealt with this problem has been to store the files onto a SD memory card, and remember to copy the latest version to and from the SD card before I move on.

Well, in laziness today I was looking for an easier way (and FTP is not an easier way).

Then I stumbled upon a cool little program called GMail Drive Shell

As the name implies, it allows you to use your gmail account (which has 1GB+ of storage) as an Internet file system.

After you install the program you get a new “Hard Drive” on your computer called your “Gmail Drive”.

You double-click on it, and it asks you for your gmail login details.

Then you just copy and paste to your Gmail Drive.

It then stores these files in your gmail inbox (or your “Drafts” folder if you set it up to do so).

It’s simple, easy, and it works.

Ways it could be better:

• You can’t really “work” from the gmail drive. You really need to copy and paste to it.
• I can’t work out how to use another folder instead of the inbox or drafts folder to store files in.

But then again, it’s free :-)

Give it a go.

Gmail Drive Shell Extension

Download location of the Gmail Drive Shell Extension

If you like to watch online video you’ll understand the importance of bandwidth (particularly if you’ve ever tried to view video over a dial-up connection!)

However, one thing that most people don’t realise is that if you’re a video content creator, then, it’s not just how fast you can download your video that counts, but also upload.

Most people when shopping around for the fastest Internet connection only look at the download speed (8Mbit, 24Mbit, etc).

But they forget to the look at the number after the slash.

Ie. 2Mbit/128kbps

That number (the 128kbps) tells you how fast the upload speed is.

So… why should you care? Here’s why:

If you’re creating any video content for the web, and you need to actually upload it to a website, then you’ll care… bigtime!

Got a 100MB 45min video to upload. You’ll start to care… pretty darn quickly.

The common wisdom with Internet connections is basically that Cable Internet is generally the fastest, whether you are looking at standard cable (usually 10Mbps) or Cable2 (usually around 18Mbps).

But, given that cable is a shared medium, the uploads are often crippled.

For example, I’ve got cable broadband at home, and until recently I could only upload at 128Kbps (or 16 KBytes / sec).

So, you might be asking?

Well, last night I had to upload a 4.5 GB file to lulu.com

And at 16KBytes / sec it would take almost 2 days to upload the file. Whereas at 32Kbytes it would take about a day.

Big difference!!!

So in this respect, ADSL wins out.

So for online video content producers, perhaps ADSL2 is the way to go. Or get the best of both worlds, one of each :-)

If you’ve done anything in video for a while you’ll know how it’s so easy to be overwhelmed with the choice of codecs (or video compression systems) that are available.

Video is available in so many formats, and it is a common requirement to convert from one format to another.

For example, I own a PalmOne Treo 650

And the media player that I use can only play video of certain formats, and more importantly, only certain bitrates.

So, part of the challenge of getting video onto my Treo is getting it into the right format and bitrate (I can’t play files that are too big).

I used to use a program called VLC to do all my dirtywork. But it’s not really set up to be a transcoding program (that’s what changing one compression system to another is called)

But, I stumbled on a bit of software today that IS.

It’s called MediaCoder and from all accounts it is just what the doctor ordered.

You can convert from pretty much any format to any other format.

And the best part…

It’s FREE! (I love that word).

I haven’t given it an extensive test yet, but when I do I’ll do a bit of a review, and post up my pros and cons.

Happy Transcoding!

One of the most awesome secrets out there, is that you can easily produce DVDs on demand… for $0 (yes… that’s FREE) cost.

Having produced 10s of thousands of DVDs I can tell you that they’re not cheap to do in quantity.

Many places will have a minimum quantity of 1000.

So if you’re paying $2-$4 a disc that can add up to some serious moula.

Particularly if you’re also including printing costs for slicks and cases, etc.

Not to mention if you have a whole lot of DVDs to produce.

The solution is to use a DVD-on-Demand service, where you just simply pay “per unit” ordered. So you don’t have to front thousands of dollars upfront. You pay as you go.

The downside, however, is that you’ll probably pay more for each disc as a result.

But if you’re trying to boopstrap your information marketing business, or your’e an independent business, you probably want to conserve you pretty pennies.

The other downside is that a lot of the cost of creating a DVD using regular replication is that actual set up and creation of “glass masters”, that are used for pressing the DVDs.

Currently it’s not really feasible to “press” DVDs on demand due to the setup costs.

So most DVD-on-demand services basically “burn”, then print your label onto the disc’s surface.

Why is this bad?

Well.. several reasons:

1. Burned DVDs have less compatibility then pressed media.
2. The printing on the disc may not look as professional as proper screen printed discs
3. There is a real possibility of errors cropping up on your discs.

But for the most part these are acceptable compromises, because:

• Most DVDs made in the last 2-3 years can burn DVDs fine.
• There’s almost an inversely proportionate relationship between cost of the DVD player and compatibility. Usually, the cheaper the player, the more types of media it can play!
• DVD players are so cheap now, that for some products, if people have problems, it’s almost feasible to send them a new DVD player!

So, who do I recommend?

Well, there’s lots of services out there. But I like lulu.com because there is NO set up costs!

Yup.. you heard me!

It’s free to set up, and you only pay when you order your first disc!

One other thing to note, is that most DVD-on-demand services have a certain format that they require all the artwork uploaded in (eg. for DVD slicks and disc artwork).

The only drawback I’ve found with lulu is that they need a PDF file at a very specific width and height.

I tried creating the PDF with two or three PDF programs with no success.

Finally I had to download Adobe Acrobat, and then it was fine.

So, while lulu is free, it’s a shame that you need to get Adobe Acrobat (the full version, not the reader), which isn’t cheap, to create your artwork. It would be better to upload ad JPEG or PNG, in my opinon.

But, I guess you can download a 30 day trial from adobe.com so you can always do all your artwork in the first month, and then use your profits to pay for a legit copy of acrobat.

I’m setting up a disc as I write this, so I’ll let you all know how I go when it’s up and going!

For those who are interested in the status of my DVD series. It’s almost finished. For a lot of reasons it’s taken me a lot longer that I’d anticipated because I’m a bit of a perfectionist.

The video component currently will consist of 8 DVDs:

• Session 1: Why Video
• Session 2: Screencam Video – Video without a camera
• Session 3: Screencam Video (For DVD) – Video without a camera
• Session 4: Full Motion Video (Part 1) – Video with a camera
• Session 5: Full Motion Video (part 2) – Video with a camera
• Session 6: DVD – The Home Theatre Experience
• Session 7: IPTV – You Are TV
• Bonus DVD: Finding Music & Putting Video On The Web For FREE

I’ll be putting a sales letter up on my digital video secrets site in a week or so. I’ll post here when it’s ready.