Over the past months I’ve had the unique experience of dealing with quite a bit of video.
I’ve always created short little videos for my website Home Studio Corner, but those were rudimentary at best.
Recently I’ve been branching out creating weekly video content and I’ve become heavily immersed in creating videos.
In addition, I’ve had the opportunity in the last few months to record several live bands, capturing both multi-track audio and multi-camera video footage – all while still putting on a live concert.
I have a new respect for video guys. There is so much involved with video that goes way over my head, but I’m grasping it more and more, and I plan to continue to grow my video expertise.
Why?
Why not just focus on the audio? Why concern myself with video? I have a few reasons.
HD Video is Everywhere
Unless you live in a cave, you’ve probably noticed that the entire world is obsessed with HD video.
• YouTube offers videos in HD (all of my tutorial videos on YouTube are in HD, and they look quite nice).
• Flat-screen high-definition TV’s are a hot item.
• Every cable company has a super-duper HD package that costs an arm and a leg, but it looks amazing.
• All the major networks are competing to have the best and most show in HD.
• BlueRay discs are gaining popularity.
• The XBox360 and PS3 are setting the standard for HD video and gaming.
What do you not see here? I’ll tell you. You don’t see people obsessing over high-definition audio.
The people who rushed out each year on Black Friday at 5am to grab up those $600 Sony HD TVs at Sears are the same people who listened to mp3s on their iPods in the car on the way to and from the store.
People simply don’t care about SACDs and 1-bit High Definition recorders. They don’t really care if the mp3 codec used to encode their mp3s adds lots of artifacts.
Most people can see the difference between standard definition video and HD video much more easily than they can hear the difference between a crappy mp3 and a 24-bit wave file.
My point? The world has voted for HD video. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put any effort into your music. A bad mix will still be a bad mix on a 64-kbps mp3. A good mix will still have people bobbing their heads, whether the quality of the actual file itself has been degraded.
What this does mean is that you should seriously consider adding video to your portfolio.