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Test Drive: Apple Mac Pro, Part 1

When some people get a powerful new computer, they want to produce a new video, play games, or show it off to their friends. I just want to run as many tests as possible to analyze its performance, which I guess means that I’m well suited for this portion of my job description.         This navel-gazing aside, …

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Video advertising is more effective than Flash animations or simple images

If you're looking for hard data that proves the effectiveness of video advertising over other rich meda formats, look no further. A new Doubleclick study entitled "The Brand Value of Rich Media and Video Ads" found that rich media ads containing vide

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H.264 Royalties: what you need to know

Whenever I speak at industry groups about H.264, and detail the upcoming royalty obligation, some attendees are invariably surprised that using H.264 will generate royalties. Here's what you need to know about H.264 and royalties, in an except fro

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Video tutorial: producing H.264 video for Flash Distribution with Sorenson Squeeze

This is the second in a series of video tutorials on producing H.264, in this case detailing how to do so using Sorenson Squeeze. Here's some  background information explaining some of the encoding decisions made in the tutorial. First, the

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Video: streaming production: improving your video quality

streaming quality, shooting for streaming, bit rates for streaming,

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According to IDC, 94% of consumers can play streams of 1200 or higher

I was reading through some material on Adobe's web site (specifically, here) and noticed the following table, which I've copied verbatim, along with the explanatory note. Citing an August, 2008 IDC study that's referenced below, the table states that

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Video tutorial: Producing H.264 video for Flash distribution with the Adobe Media Encoder

This is the first in a series of video tutorials on producing H.264, in this case detailing how to do so using the Adobe Media Encoder. Here's some  background information explaining some of the encoding decisions made in the tutorial. Firs

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Producing H.264 Video for Flash: An Overview

How to produce H.264 video

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Test Drive: Intel Nehalem, Part 1

A few months ago, I ran some Adobe Creative Suite 4 (CS4) benchmarks on different computers that isolated how CS4 performed with formats ranging from DV to Red. Now that Intel’s Nehalem processor is upon us, those numbers are obsolete, so I’m updating them with results from two Nehalem-based workstations that I’ve been testing. In this installment, I’ll explain the tests and share DV and …

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How streaming video can improve product sales – a user study

I found this snippet on the Really Practical Marketing website. It's third hand information, but it shows the results of some user polls taken by online video company Vzaar. Specifically, Vzaar polled their customers on how using streaming video impr

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