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Editing your raw audio recordings into professional quality sound effects is the step that takes place after the initial recording period. Hunt down an audio editing software that has eqs, the ability to cut audio, normalization, and fade in/out capabilites. You may use either a freeware readily found online or purchase one of the many digital audio workstations (DAW) available on the web.

Open your audio software and import all of your new raw .wav recordings. Take a large batch of 40 or so .wav files to import and solo each track, thus muting the others, as you work on each file one by one, though you may of course choose the less efficient method of importing one at a time. At this point you can begin editing your recordings and then mix them into finished sound effect products. The advice that follows provides useful information on creating the most valuable sound effects possible from you .wav recordings.

1. Use normalization on each recorded sample first. Normalization increases the amplitude of each .wav file, in other works amps the volume as loud as can be.

2. Secondly, some frequencies may affect the quality of your sound effect and you should use eq to eradicate these sonic culprits. A great sounding bird chirp, for example, may be compromised by an offending air conditioner. But, by cutting all frequencies below 2,000 Hz you can get rid of the AC and keep the lovely bird sound.

3. When your sound is normalized and cleaned up with eq find a clean beginning point to the sound and either create a fade-out or more desirably let the natural reverb ring out for 1-2 seconds.

4. Bounce your sound down to a 48k 24bit .wav file for video editing. 48k 24bit are high quality files that are valued by sound effect libraries and licensees who pay good money to use sound effects in their productions.

5. Make as many versions of each sound recording as possible to increase your number of products. For example, if you have a dog barking 20 times then create sound effects with one bark, three barks, six barks, 10 barks etc. switching up the combinations of barks. This could easily give you 50 or more sound effects from just that one sequence of dog barks.

6. You can further increase your number of effects by using pitch shift or other filters on each sound sample. For instance, the sound of a stream can be pitch shifted up to make it sound lighter and less tumultuous and pitch shifted down to make it sound larger and deeper.

With a little knowledge of audio editing, simply follow the above advice to transform your audio samples into professional quality sound effects for licensing in media productions.

Online data storage has been, for many years, a topic that most of us hardly thought about. But with many computer functions moving online from your desdtop, the subject is now assuming increasing significance. This presents the latest overview of current technology.

~ Reliability ~

Online data storage is now more reliable than local storage on a DVD or external hard drive. That is because major online file storage companies store copies of your data on multiple servers. These servers are connected together in a storage network. If any one of these fails, your data is safe on all the others. On the other hand, if your backup DVD fails, guess what happens to your data.

~ Cost ~

Lets say you wanted to store 500 GB for 24 months. Using redundanrtr disks and servers for super reliability, your cost would be around $3000. And that doesn’t include floor space, air-conditioning, security, electricity bills, building maintenance costs, hardware repair expenses and hardware/software maintenance contracts. Assuming all these at a reasonable 10% per year, we’re talking $600 in overheads, for a grand total of $3,600.

One of the most reliable online data storage networks charges 15 cents per Gigabyte per month for storage. 500 GB would cost $75 per month. It would take 48 months to cost $3600. In addition, the cost of online storage space will steadily decrease over those 48 months, so loking at cost over the sensible long-term, you’re seeing a good picture.

~ Speed ~

Let’s say you have a popular online photo-sharing site. There are times when there are thousands of photo uploads per minute. To exemplify what I’m going to say, suppose you had all the photos stored on a web server consisting of one or two CPUs. How would they react to the demand?

They would slow down. Your users would probably have to wait at least half an hour for their downloads to start.

Not so with an efficient, large online storage service. As mentioned earlier, your data is housed on multiple servers (CPUs) , and additional servers kick in as required to serve the downloads. No single server is overloaded, and no user experiences a delay in his download to start (incidentally, this delay is called ‘latency’).

~ Finally ~

Online data storage is now equivalent in cost, faster and more reliable than storage on small CPUs or web servers.

It’s time to start considering online data storage seriously, whether it’s for backing up a few GB of personal files or for storing a multimedia database for paid services.

How do you know what photos you will take? Are you going to a family reunion? Are you going out for a hike and hope to see some wildlife? There are many questions when it comes to photography. You will want to have a basis of photography techniques to provide the best photograph and once you learn those techniques the subject will be up to you. Most photographers whether they are professional or amateurs like you will have a medium they work with. It is the same with other artists; you have painters, sculptors, sketch artists, and much more. Photography is art and therefore requires an eye for the right photograph.

How do you know what subject you will shoot? This is where your interests lie. If you wish only to take pictures of wildlife then you will have to wait for the subject to come into view. Obviously you can go to a wildlife park such as the Rocky Mountain National Park and hope to find subjects. Most often it will depend on the time of year. Elk and Deer are more prominent when they come down the mountains to mate and eat. Birds will always be available, but the type of birds will vary. If you are in Alaska chances are you will have several chances of shooting a Bald Eagle, while in Florida you may find heron or cranes.

High Paychecks and glamour’s Lifestyle of hob nobbing it with the rich and famous might be the dream of many young shutterbug, however it is not easy to reach the golden Staircases of the well-known fashion houses and magazines. For every one talented photographer, hundreds are left panting at the sidewalk, only dreaming about the moment that their photo will be chosen.

Once you choose your medium you will then go in search of subjects. The subject that speaks to you is what you should choose to shoot. If a tree and the knots it’s formed interest you, you will want to check the lighting of the area. Deciding which angle to shoot from will also make the decision on the subject. The lighting may not be right for the subject you have chosen and the other side of the subject may not yield the best picture.

But Photoshop has not always dominated this genre. The program was created in 1989 by two brothers, John Knoll and Thomas Knoll. While the brothers developed Photoshop for custom uses they had at the time, it wasn’t long before the market potential of this software became evident. So, being smart entrepreneurs, John and Thomas founded a little company called Adobe and began operations in 1990.

Again your eye is the best tool for finding a subject. How you choose the subject will depend on what is available, the angle and the light. Moving slowly through an area such as landscape will help you determine the subject. Looking under leaves or rocks is often beneficial to finding something new and different. You never know where you will find a picture just waiting for you to click a picture.

In the time of modern technology, it is good to display your talent as a fashion photographer online as well. Set up a website; submit your photos to contests. Submit them to an online fashion gallery. This helps with getting your work seen and people can see what type of work you actually do and can do for them.

By now, everyone is well aware that the internet and its transition from text to video is the wave of the future. Hitting viewers and consumers with visual images is proving to be much more effective and profitable than the ways of the past. Many still regret being left behind during the first of the Internet boom or even the chance to take stock in now larger online companies such as Google. Thankfully an upcoming summit, the Video Search Summit Spring 2008, is giving the progressive minds of today an opportunity to capitalize on an idea that is sweeping the online nation.

Not only will attendees of this revolutionary conference get a chance to mingle with the most knowledgeable and influential players in the world of Video Search, but they will also get a chance to pick the brains of these experts. With 12 hours of networking time, numerous interactive round table discussions, and the encouragement of lively debate, all attendees’ voices will be heard and their concerns put to rest over the two day summit. It seems almost silly that anyone serious about getting involved with the video search market would not take an opportunity to speak with world leading video search experts, video search engine operators, research scientists, legal experts, and analytic experts, who are offering their knowledge and success to those that will listen.

The newest thinking and knowledge will be departed on attendees of the first ever, Video Search Summit, which is happening on April 8th and 9th, in San Francisco. Apart from the invaluable networking opportunities, attendees will also learn the newest and most effective techniques and guidelines for marketing and measuring online video marketing projects. Topics such as how to increase the traffic to your online video through video search engine optimization (Video SEO), and how to measure the effectiveness of your online video marketing campaign using analytics and measurement tools will be discussed and covered in depth at this conference. Legal experts will also show you how to avoid the common pitfalls that can result in online video legal troubles.

For everybody who has the drive and desire to become the next Gary Baker (CEO of Clipblast) or Suranga Chandratiilake (CEO Blinkx), the Video Search Summit Spring 2008 seems to be the best place to start. Everybody who attends the summit will be enlightened on topics such as accuracy, advertising, marketing, indexing, monetization, user experience, and new technology. With 80,000,000 video clips already posted in the online world, it is safe to say that video search numbers will be not be going anywhere but up in the coming years. Those that do not attend are going to miss out on learning and gaining the understanding of how exactly people and video searching market work together. When it comes to just about anything life, knowledge is key - and the Video Search Summit Spring 2008 is offering the key to the future.

Online video has finally hit prime-time. In 2008, video marketing and video sharing is the newest and most exciting field of online promotional marketing.

YouTube is getting larger and larger with each passing day. It has become one of the most popular destinations on the net. The site does its own Flash conversion that is very tough with regard to digital video garbage handling. Some of the videos on YouTube simply look better than others because they came from better sources. With a little know-how, you can prepare your optimized video for YouTube.

In order to be able to share video online, you need to first have the equipment available to shoot video, capture it, and edit it for online usage. As for cameras, if you dont have a camcorder, most digital cameras, and even some cell phones have video functionality. As for Video editing software, there are many choices for everyone from the beginner to the expert. If you are short on change, most computers already come with tools like Microsoft Moviemaker or Apple iMovie in addition to the literally hundreds of free web-based video tools that you can use online.

Of all the free tools out there, I would suggest that you use something other than Microsoft Movie Maker as it will give you more difficulty when trying to edit videos from a mobile phone source. Quicktime is nice with almost all formats.

Keep in mind that Youtube only offers support for some of the various video formats that are out there. If possible, I would suggest either a .mov or mp4 file as the file that you upload to Youtube. If the software that you have is not capable of handling export functions in these formats, then I would suggest trying something else.

As for the size of your video, Youtube recommends 320*240 QVGA and I would also agree with this recommendation which, unless you are using a webcam, most often your camcorders will shoot at a higher resolution. You will need to resize the video but try not to effectively pull or stretch the frames.

It is advisable to make your video as bit-rich as you can. You can use a bit rate around 1000 kbps. Around 1200kbps it would probably overkill and take the video longer to process. 700kbps and 1000kbps should be the ideal range, you should be looking for.

Now that we have covered the size, quality, codecs, etc… what about audio? The best choice for the audio format is for you to choose the MP3 codec which most video editing software programs should have as a default setting option.

Take the output of your video file as .mov or .mp4 and before you move further it is time to have the preview of your video file. It should look nice. If you are satisfied with the outcome, go ahead with uploading your video.

After your video is uploaded to the servers of YouTube it can take up to an hour or so to get actually published on the site. As YouTube formats your file and encodes it for their flash streaming. This process is fully automatic. Now all of your efforts would produce a real gem a really optimized video that looks better than others.

In terms of video search engine optimization, it is always important to know the keywords and phrases that are most relevant to both your content and of course, your target audience. You will want to be certain that you include these words and phrases within the video title, description, and tags. It is also important that you choose the most appropriate category on Youtube to submit your video to.

Also choose an appropriate and hopefully highly viewed category. Finally, allow users to rate, comment, and share your video with others as this generates buzz and often results in external sites linking to your video on Youtube. If this happens, you will have a better chance to be seen in the organic search results of Google.

Good luck video sharing on youtube. I would also suggest trying some of the various other sites out there.

With the incredible rapid growth that online video sharing and video search sites are realizing, more and more advertisers are pumping money into video advertising. According to the latest research, online video advertising revenues in the US are expected to reach $7.1 billion by 2012 which is a 72 percent compound annual growth rate for the next five years. In 2008, the projections are just shy of $1billion.

Since video sites have been realizing more and more traffic growth, they have had a unique opportunity to innovate and test various different online video ad formats. And the advertisers as well are more than happy to experiment as they are looking to these leaders to develop the most effective online video advertising formats. Traditionally, pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll ad formats (aka in-stream ads) have been favored by advertisers due to the availability of inventory and prominence of the advertisement itself.

Pre-Roll Format - Ads, typically videos in duration of 15 or 30 seconds are streamed before the video itself plays. This make the advertising incredibly prominent but causes plenty of issues with regard to user friendliness and many studies show this format to be unpopular with users.

Post-roll Video Ads: In post-roll ads, just like pre-roll, a 15 or 30 sec clip is streamed at the end of a video itself. This is usually launched in conjunction with pre-roll as well as often times, the advertiser never gets their ad seen as users most often only watch part of the video.

Mid-Roll Video Ads: Again, like the other in-stream ads, mid-roll streams a short video clip within the video player itself, only with mid-stream, the ad gets played in the middle of the video almost like a normal TV commercial. This seems to be somewhat less offensive to users.

As stated earlier, due to the demand, many of these video websites have begun to test and offer new, innovative ad solution for video. One of these experimental format is the In-Player ad: With in-player ads the player skin itself can be used to place relevant images or text content for the advertiser so that the ad is displayed for the entire time that the video is played.

The buzz in the past year has been with regard to a newer method of video ad delivery that attempts to match relevance by choosing video ads to run with only video that is similar in subject. This is known as contextual video advertising and it can take on a range of different formats with images or text being displayed within a portion of the video window, only being activated when clicked on.

Some of the video sites like to go through the video and include only relevant in-video text advertisements, which match the contents of the video and at the same time it does not disturb the process of video watching by the viewer. Youtube was one of the first sites to adopt this format as a standard and it is called Overlay Video Ads.

I have given you a brief overview of the most common formats of video ads that are being tested and utilized at the moment. That being said, with growth being what it is, and video discovery as new as it is, we will certainly see many different companies innovating in regards to developing new and exciting formats for online video advertising.

Most people–no matter the gender, the age group or the social strata to which they belong to– possess at least one cell phone. And if you are like most people then you probably have ring tones for your cell phone. And if you are so tuned in to the latest in cell phone technology then you most probably have different ring tones for specific groups in your cell phone address book.

Phones have made noises to get our attention for a long, long time. From the phones that were screwed into your wall or the phones that occupied half of the available countertop space in your kitchen, they all made noises. Now, with the portability of cell phones, it is important for some, and just plain fun for others to be able to customize the ring tone coming from their phone to tell them who exactly is calling them.

The popularity of ring tones for cell phones can be attributed to a very practical purpose which is to determine whose cell phone is ringing. Imagine being in the company of other cell phone users and having the same ring tones. That would probably result to a mad scramble with each one trying to determine whether it is his cell phone that is ringing or not.

The beginning of ring tones is not very well known. In 1998 an inventor named Vesa-Matti Paananen and a Finnish mobile company, Radiolinja, came up with the idea. Ring tones are very popular not only in the United States, but also in Asia and Europe and other parts of the world.

There has been a billion dollar industry created by the ring tone craze. You see them advertised on TV, print media, and of course the internet. It is so popular today that if there is a new song out, you can bet a ring tone of it exists somewhere.

Cell phone ring tones vary from the popular pop songs which have evolved into Real tones, customized ring tones or composer ring tones which can play animal sounds, baby coos or cries and other personalized sounds or the latest karaoke ring tone. You can also choose from a monophonic ring tone (common in old cell phones) or polyphonic tones (characterized by up to 72 tone types),

No matter if you use your cell phone for work or play you can make them more useful by assigning ring tones to everyone in your address book. This will make it easier for you to identify who is calling even before you look at the cell phones screen. Just keep in mind most phones still have the vibrating alert. Using this feature could save you some embarrassment in certain situations.