It occurred to me a few years back that performers lack technical skills to promote themselves effectively on the web. So I developed a recording system that takes advantage of currently available technology and free services and software.
What I use to post video:
1 computer with a Pentium 4 with about a gig of memory. The computer is also equiped with one Hauppauge PVR-150. The computer's software is provided for free by the Linux Community. Specifically I use Ubuntu 7.04. The software hasn't let me down yet. It performs predictably every time I use it. I also use a $10 Audio/Video switch from Radio Shack. The switch allows me to change between angles from four different cameras. All of the audio that I capture is done by plugging into the audio mixer provided by the band. I received a lot of help from the free software community. The most helpful of all was the Ubuntu Florida Loco Team
Even if you don't live in Florida, you can stop by the site and see how everybody in my area is trying to get the word out about Ubuntu.
All of my videos were hosted at Google Video, but due to recent changes in Google's policy all of my new videos will be hosted on youtube. Youtube's interface is much prettier than the Google Video system. All of my old videos can be found at http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=jokersmild&emb=0&aq=f&aq=f#
With my system I am able to remove all technical questions that the performers might have and provide them with the highest quality video. At the end of each show I burn the .mpeg files to a DVD for the band to take with them. I also upload all of the video that I capture directly to Youtube to be viewed and linked to by the band. This saves the band a lot of time. Each video is about 300-400 megabytes in size, and takes about 1 1/2 hours to upload. Multiply 300 MB by 25-40 videos and I usually end up spending 2 days to upload 4-6Gigs of data every week. I love that youtube doesn't charge me for taking up so much space on their servers.
Some of the bands that I have done video for have started to branch out and market themselves. Some of them have started to get other types of gigs because of the video that I produced for them.
My eventual goal is to have a studio of my own that will allow performers of all types to promote themselves in the most effective ways available.
