About Nikc Miller

Nikc joined Render Perfect Productions in 2006 after many freelance gigs with the region’s top advertising firms. Nikc is a Towson University graduate, a filmmaker, and a (arguably) talented musician. He is a co-organizer of the local Mondo Baltimore film series and a contributor to Microfilmmaker Magazine.

Value-Added Video Marketing Tip For February: Add a Landing Page

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Nikc Miller

Each month we’re posting a new tip to help you get your web video marketing on track. Assuming that you paid to have a video produced for your business, there is absolutely no reason to leave it sitting on the shelf. The key is to get your video out there and attracting new customers.

These tips are relatively easy and can be implemented successfully in just a few hours of work.
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Value-Added Video Marketing Tip For February:
Add a Video Landing Page To Your Website

Your website is a vast world that is difficult to explore. Make it easy for people to find your best services by adding landing pages through out your website.

Think of this way: Every page on your website is technically a landing page, it should be prompting the user to do something. When you create a landing page, there should be a strong call to action, a form for the visitor to connect with you, and some good content (preferably in the form of a video).

If you are unfamiliar with landing pages, you should check one out. They are a perfect way to create a super-specific pitch for a potential customer and video fits perfectly into the equation.

How To Ditch YouTube and Host Video Content On Your Own Terms

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Nikc Miller

We all love YouTube. But there are times when we don’t want our video content out there on the YouTube network for everyone to see. There are times when we want our logo in the lower righthand corner.

There are times when we need a more flexible video hosting solution.

Luckily, there are plenty of great video hosting services out there with tons of features. Of course they are not free (on average they run about $100 per month), but if you want to have a whole lot of control on how and where your video is seen, then here are some great services to check out:

Advantages: Unique extras like clickable call-to-action pages in your video, easy Mailchimp integration, and made-to-order transcription services

Disadvantages: The Starter package is essentially unusable with a maximum video upload of three. You’ll probably have to go with the Pro package to get anything done, which might be overkill.

Advantages: Bits on the Run isn’t open-source, but it’s awfully developer-friendly. So plugins and features are constantly being developed. You pay for the bandwidth and hosting that you use so Bits on the Run is generally cheap especially if you integrate Amazon Web Services for hosting.

Disadvantages: Bits on the Run has a more open framework which means they really don’t hold your hand when it comes to implementing their service. Chances are you are going to need an advanced web geek to help with getting this live.

Advantages: Unique features like social tags along with a robust ad delivery service (if you wish to make money from your content) make Viddler one of the best services out there.

Disadvantages: None that we can find. For the money, Viddler for Business seems to be the most flexible solution.

Advantages: At $200, Vimeo Pro is by far the cheapest of these services (with the exception of a lightly used Bits on the Run account.)

Disadvantages: Comparatively, Vimeo Pro runs a bit slim on the extras. You’re basically paying to host commercial content on the non-commercial Vimeo web space. You also get a white-label player which is a nice touch.

Advantages: Multiple encodes when you upload videos and it will intelligently deliver the correct encode to the right user. For instance, for visitors with a slower connection, Brightcove will deliver a lower quality encode that will play without interruption.

Disadvantages: Hard to find any, really. If anything. Brightcove might be way more than you need for hosting a few videos on your site.

Rest assured, all of the services above offer premium video hosting services that will work great when hosting your own content. And each service offer a plethora of options. The best way to pick the perfect services for you is to list the options that you definitely need and weight that against the price you are willing to pay for the service. If you’re still not sure, then take a few on for a trial. Each services offers a free trial period that will help you make the best decision for your business.

Case Study: Georgetown University’s Lacrosse Season Recap Video

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Nikc Miller

Georgetown University was our very first client and we have been working with their lacrosse program on their season recap videos since the beginning.

The final product ends up running about 20 minutes in length. A snippet of our most recent video with Georgetown Lacrosse can be seen below (see the full version here).

A lot of our video services go into this video including:

• Scriptwriting (Telling the story of the season)
• HD sports videography (A fast lens and a wealth of knowledge of the game come in handy here)
• Non-linear Editing (To compile a season’s worth of games into 20 minutes)
• Motion Graphics (Think ESPN titles)
• Graphic Design (For the DVD artwork)
• Encoding (For multiple delivery methods)

Starting in February we shoot games in HD video and capture the footage in our edit suite. In the meantime we construct a script with the coaching staff retelling the story of the season. As the season ends we organize the footage and then videotape an interview with Coach Dave Urick, letting him recall the season as it happened.

We then compile all the footage according to the script, adding in soundbytes from Coach. We add motion graphics and transition to tighten everything up. Finally, we design the DVD label and encode for DVD and YouTube.

The Georgetown coaching staff enjoy the video because it gives them something memorable to present at their annual banquet. Furthermore, it helps them in their recruiting efforts by showing prospective players the story of the school, the ability of the team, and an overview of the Georgetown LAX experience.

Video Highlights From An Excellent 2011

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Nikc Miller

We had a fantastic year at Render Perfect Productions. Between our big move to Towson, launching our new website and rebranding, receiving a copious amount of Telly and Communicator awards, and creating great videos & web design projects for our wonderful clients; we had a great time bringing the most powerful web marketing and video production to our clients.

With ever-continuing advances in the world of web design and video production, we plan on making 2012 an even bigger and better year for us and our clients.

Here are two video highlights from 2011:

One of our favorite video projects to come through our studio was for Back on my Feet Baltimore. This amazing group uses running as a means to help recently homeless individuals get their life back together. The video we produced was for their yearly bash. We met and interviewed some extraordinary people for this video. The video received a great reception at the bash and was a huge success.

Another fun project was documenting the National Harbor Wine and Food Festival. We do quite a bit of work for Trigger Agency and they always have a great time hosting some of the best events in the region. This festival was no exception. We shot on-location during the two day festival, and put this video together with a fun fast-paced edit and eye-popping motion graphics.

We look forward to creating some great videos and websites in 2012. From all of us at Render Perfect Productions: Have a happy New Year!

Easy YouTube Closed-Captions and Increased Search Visibility

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Nikc Miller

It is no secret that adding closed-captioning to your YouTube videos is a big win when it comes to increasing search results and user engagement. ReelSEO confirmed this a while back in this great video:

What you probably haven’t heard is how easy it is to add captions to your video. We’re not talking about the auto-transcription created by YouTube, but rather a real 100% accurate and timed closed-caption that will help your video get better search results.

Here’s how to do it:

1.) Compile the transcript of your video. You might be able to easily do this if you have the original script lying around. If not, you’re still in luck since YouTube automatically transcribes every video that is uploaded. The YouTube auto-transcriber tends to get a lot of words wrong but it’s still a good starting point.

To get the YouTube transcript, go to My Videos and choose a video. Click “Edit Info” and go to the Captions and Subtitles tab. You’ll find a file called “English: Machine Transcription” and a download button. Downloading will produce a file called “captions.sbv”. This is not a very common filetype, but it can be opened in most text editors. Here you will find timing and transcription info that will be a useful starting point to transcribing your video. With any luck, the machine transcription will only need a few changes.

Copy the text into a new document. Don’t worry about the time info yet. Just fix all of the errors until you’re happy with the complete transcription.

2.) Time your transcription to the video. Since YouTube has a feature called “auto-timing” this part is easy. Watch the video as you read your transcription. For every pause, start a new line. For every longer pause, skip a line completely. That’s it! No numbers or timecode needed, just blocks of text spaced out organically. Save the document as a .txt file.

3.) Upload and test. You can upload your txt file on the page where you found “English: Machine Transcription.” Upload the file and within a minute you will be able to see your new captions in action. Watch through twice to make sure that they are complete and correct.

That’s it! Within a few days your captions should start ranking in YouTube and Google Video search results.

YouTube Tricks: How To Render In Perfect MP4

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Nikc Miller

I’ll admit that the name of this post is kind of a joke. In Google Analytics (an app we obsess over) I see that people commonly search for “how to render in perfect mp4” only to land on our company website. In reality, that’s not such a bad thing because we really do render in perfect mp4 with a wonderful hardware based encoder (just ask us, we’ll tell you all about it)! Yup, renderin’ perfect is something that we know how to do really well, so why not give the people what they want? So here it is:

HOW TO RENDER IN PERFECT MP4! (Ta-da)

First off, I’m taking it that you wanna render your video in mp4 to place it on YouTube, Vimeo or another video hosting service. Keep in mind that these sites change their preferences on what seems like a daily basis. So just because these are the best encoding settings today, doesn’t mean they will be a year from now. Secondly, I’m just gonna assume that your video was produced in HD.

So here are 3 settings that “The YouTubes” LOVE right now:

Keep Your Frame Size Consistent
Why: Youtube’s HD settings go as high as 1080p. So if your video originates in 1080p, congrats! Upload it full frame. If your video is smaller, don’t try to enlarge it in the encode. If it’s 720p, keep it 720p. 480p to 480p and so on. It will look its best at its original size and accordingly on all smaller sizes.

Encode At Datarate Of 5mb/s For Video
Why: Logically, it makes sense that a higher bitrate video would produce better looking video. However, YouTube is going to transcode whatever you upload to its own max bitrate (about 4mb/s). So encoding at the higher bitrate is just gonna mean larger file which ultimately means a longer upload with (arguably) the same results.

Use A .Mov Or .Mp4
Why: A lot of sites will tell you that your video has to be a MP4. To tell you the truth the file extension MP4 or MOV doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it’s compressed with the H.264 codec which is usually associated with the MP4 extension (Confusing huh?). Whatever you do, please just don’t upload a Windows Media file (.wmv)!

Anatomy of a Company Promo

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Nikc Miller

Creating a web promo about Render Perfect has been a long time in the making. We’ve talked about doing one for years. We knew that just having a reel on our front page was not enough to describe the truly full-service brand marketing via video content that our company executes on a daily basis.

So why did we wait? Well, besides managing the day to day of working on videos and websites for our clients, it was just really tough to get started. The truth is that even as a video brand marketing company it’s difficult to look in the mirror and create the story for ourselves.

Writing and developing a script that we were all happy with was a painstaking process. But once we ironed out the details, everything came together fairly quickly. It was a valuable learning experience that truly evolved our web presence.

With that being said, here are 4 simple guidelines to get started planning your company’s web promo:

1. Share A Story Through Images

We wanted people to “get” our company quickly. We figured we could do this in two ways: show off a bunch of cool technology that we use and that most people probably don’t care about or explain our services in a simple way using creative graphics that are easy to identify.

In our opinion the best way was the latter; using motion graphics to creatively describe our service offerings. Creative graphics tell a story intrinsically and leave a memorable impact on the viewer.

2. Show Yourself

One of our biggest concerns when producing our video was making sure that we made a physical appearance within it. It is important for a potential customer to know exactly who they will be dealing with if they give us a call.

Many video companies hide their presence on their website. Sometimes it’s even tough to find out where their studio is located. This elusiveness-by-design is caused by the fear of a potential customer becoming turned off that the production company might be too small or that their office is located at the opposite end of the country.

That’s not the case with us. We are a small company. And we find our ease of scalability to be one of the things our clients love about us the most.

3. Short Is Better

Realizing that a web audience’s time is valuable and their attention is pulled in a multitude of directions, we wanted to keep this video overview as short as possible without missing any crucial information. The 1:15 runtime is the absolute longest we wanted to go with this video. Ideally shorter would have been better, but would not have been as complete in its message.

4. Create An Aesthetic That Emanates Your Brand

Similar to the way we wanted people to understand our services through the visuals, we also wanted our video to evoke a feeling. The video ends up being a sweet piece of meta-advertising showing at a glance that:

We design graphics and motion graphics.
We shoot video and interviews.
We post and use this video effectively.

By design, the video in itself is exactly what we offer: the opportunity to market with video effectively.

The Blu-ray Debate: When To Demand A High-Def Deliverable

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Nikc Miller

Upon an approaching deadline, it is not uncommon to get a request for Blu-ray at the very last possible minute and oftentimes our clients feel that this need is crucial to the delivery of the project. Blu-ray Discs (BDs), better known as the high-definition replacement for DVDs, are great at displaying awesome HD video quality on a disc the size of a standard DVD. Although delivering on Blu-ray Disc is never a problem, typically we do not deliver on them unless requested.

The reason is two-fold. First, BDs are more expensive than regular DVDs, so we see no reason to charge our customers for them unless it is a must. Secondly, Blu-ray is still not a widely adopted format, and in our eyes playability is a much greater concern than a slightly larger resolution.

As a video client, it is important to know that when your project originates and is handled in high-definition, transcoding it to standard-definition presents very little noticeable loss in certain situations. Furthermore, it’s much better to transcode down at the project level, rather than to rely on consumer-level projection equipment that will downgrade your image on the fly. So when considering which product you wish to walk away with, the biggest factor to consider between HD and SD is control of the equipment that will be displaying your video. Since there are a variety of ways to display your media, you are going to need total control of the presentation and the equipment associated with it.

When To Demand HD

One-on-one Presentations
Specifically for presentations that happen in your own office. Here you should have the opportunity to customize your A/V setup and really deliver the visual impact that your video is designed for.

Tradeshow Presentations
Again, this would rely on equipment that you bring or have delivered to a specific venue, so you can rely on having all of the equipment you need to present your HD video properly.

Detail-Oriented Video
Video produced solely to show off the fine-detail of a product is the perfect use of HD and should not be neglected. Do whatever it takes to show this video in the highest quality possible. The following video is a perfect example of the type of video that shows a good deal of fine detail and an ideal candidate for a Blu-ray deliverable.

As a video company we understand how frustrating this BD vs. DVD debate must seem to someone who simply wants to get the picture quality they paid for. Still unsure? A quick call to your video production company should be all you need to determine which format is best for your specific project.

Powerful Web Video Marketing Comes To Towson!

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Nikc Miller

We’re excited to announce that we have moved our video production and web design studio to Towson!

That’s right, Render Perfect has uprooted and moved over to 604 E Joppa Road in Towson Maryland! This move is just the first of many exciting changes in the growth of our company. In the coming weeks we will be unveiling our newly redesigned website including blog posts and video tutorials on how to best use your brand’s content to gain efficient and effective web marketing.

Rest assured, we still offer all of the same services that we did in the past, just in a location that we feel is more central to our client base. We invite you to come check out our new studio and look forward to helping you make the most of your video and web marketing in 2011!

Download our V-Card here to make updating your address book easier.

3 Tips For Working With A Video Company

Posted on November 9, 2010 by Nikc Miller

Recently I received an email from a previous client whose organization was planing for a video they needed to produce. The question he asked was timeless in our line of work:

About how much does it cost to produce a 60 second animation?

I ended up writing him a response that addressed a lot of problems with that question. I decided that it might be useful to post an informal primer to help businesses communicate more effectively with a prospective video producer.

Have a specific goal in mind for your video
This is the cornerstone of all video production. Having a clear goal guides every other decision you will make in the production process.

Instead of,

“My business wants something we can put on our YouTube channel.”

try,

“I want a YouTube video that has a humorous edge and can promote my top-selling product. A video that will be shared amongst 17-30 year old males, and will gain 10,000+ views within the first 3 months.”

Immediately the picture is clearer. A talented producer will be able to tell you immediately if her company is right for the job. She will also be able to start piecing together specific details about the scope of the project. A writer and talent will have to be brought on board. A distribution strategy will have to be developed.

Name Your Price
Many people feel that if they name how much they want to spend, they will get taken advantage of. However, when you name your price, you name the level of production that you wish to achieve. A commercial can be made for $30 or $3000, it really depends on the level of production. Knowing the goals for your video will be the key to figuring out how much money to invest.

WARNING: Measuring your budget against a proposed hourly rate is not a good strategy. Just imagine you had to hire someone to type a long document for you. One applicant is the best in her field, has worked as a stenographer for 10+ years. Her rate is $100 an hour. The other applicant was just introduced to a computer three months ago. His rate is $30 an hour. Who would you hire? In one situation you pay a higher hourly price, but get your job completed quickly and with few mistakes. In the other situation, you have to wait longer for your project to be completed, it’s probably riddled with mistakes, and you actually end up paying about the same total amount because it takes up to 4 times as long for the typist to complete.

If naming a price is still over your head or you just have a clue where to begin, try this approach: View past work by the video company. Find a video that you feel might be similar to what you want, then ask how much that particular video cost to produce.

Have A Deadline
Nothing gets more convoluted than a project in limbo. Goals expand, mindsets change, and suddenly the scope of your video can become much broader. Have a deadline for when you want to launch and remember: video has the option of being re-purposed. Release your video, analyze effectiveness, and tweak to maximize. It is very rare for a message to be totally successful right out of the gate. But the only way to see what works, is to get your video out of the boardroom and into the hearts and minds of your viewers.

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Want to see more posts like this? Ask us for advice on proceeding with your project. Seriously, it gives ideas for some great posts!