DC Video Production Company

Here are some thoughts from our last amazing intern, Nelson Benavides, who worked his butt off this summer for us!

August 19th, 2010
As the car had finally reached its stop, I woke up to the nudging of my mother telling me to wake up and to get ready to clean. Almost every Saturday, I would help my mother clean offices and I thought of it as a chore more than a possible opportunity for myself. The first time I was in the PMG office, there was a large amount of video equipment lying around, blues memorabilia hanging on the walls, and software I had become acquainted with in my computer graphics class. My mother told me that the people in this office make videos for a living. I was quite interested in what projects this company had done because it would be my responsibility to dust the place and I would always come across this impressive display of trophies and awards to clean off. After my freshman year of college, I had returned to Northern Virginia to stay at my parents’ place for the summer. My goal for the summer was to find ways to teach myself Final Cut Pro because it’s apparently an essential program in my curriculum and I didn’t want to be stuck using Window’s Movie Maker while everyone else was using professional software to complete and edit their projects. I also wanted to find a place that would possibly be interested in my skills as an animator. I thought about finding an internship in No.Va. but there weren’t any places listed that interested me.  After telling my mother that I couldn’t find anything, she asked me, “Why don’t you ask Mr.Puritano to give you a shot?” The idea had never stuck out in my head and I felt dumb for not coming up with that in the first place. After my somewhat embarrassing first meeting with Charlie and Alan (never bring your mother to a meeting with the people who might hire you), I started working for them. Between all of the funny viral videos, hours of assorted expo tapes, encounters with potential music video clients, trips to Maryland, animation cycles, renaming and finding license-free music, and video camera tutorials, I have learned a great deal about the inner workings of how a production company conducts business, manages clients, and creates professionally made videos for a wide array of companies. I’ve learned the importance of white-balancing a camera (or the people in your video could end up looking like carrots), basic use of Final Cut Pro and other Mac-based programs, managing files for the sake of organization and emergencies, and to do what you enjoy.

Well it just did! Well it did about 25 days ago, but this is still big news for most users. You might know that the length limit for YouTube uploads for most users is 10 minutes, well that is all in the past now. The new length limit is 15 minutes. This is really big news for us and it’s big news for our customers. A lot of our programs are a good deal over 10 minutes but under 15 minutes; well now no more annoying chunking videos into multiple parts. Hopefully this will mean viewers watch more of your video, because most of the time most viewers don’t get past “Part 1″. And thus with less need to make multiple parts the viewer will stay with your video, because it’s now easier to do that. Of course your typical YouTube user constantly looking to move onto the next and newest thing, only time and analytics will tell what this new  15 minute limit will mean.

Hey Everyone you should update your Adobe Reader for Mac and PC now! A major patch has been release by Adobe and they recommend that everyone update. Check out the details from Adobe below.

APSB10-17 – Security updates available for Adobe Reader
and Acrobat

Originally posted: August 19, 2010

Summary:
Critical vulnerabilities have been identified in Adobe
Reader 9.3.3 (and earlier versions) for Windows, Macintosh
and UNIX, Adobe Acrobat 9.3.3 (and earlier versions) for
Windows and Macintosh, and Adobe Reader 8.2.3 (and earlier
versions) and Adobe Acrobat 8.2.3 (and earlier versions) for
Windows and Macintosh. These vulnerabilities could cause
the application to crash and could potentially allow an
attacker to take control of the affected system.

These updates address CVE-2010-2862, which was discussed at
the Black Hat USA 2010 security conference on Wednesday,
July 28, 2010. They also incorporate the Adobe Flash Player
update as noted in Security Bulletin APSB10-16.

Adobe recommends users of Adobe Reader 9.3.3 and earlier
versions for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX update to Adobe
Reader 9.3.4. (For Adobe Reader users on Windows and
Macintosh, who cannot update to Adobe Reader 9.3.4, Adobe
has provided the Adobe Reader 8.2.4 update.) Adobe
recommends users of Adobe Acrobat 9.3.3 and earlier versions
for Windows and Macintosh update to Adobe Acrobat 9.3.4.
Adobe recommends users of Adobe Acrobat 8.2.3 and earlier
versions for Windows and Macintosh update to Adobe Acrobat
8.2.4.

Note that the August 19 updates mentioned in this bulletin
represent an out-of-cycle release. The next quarterly
security updates for Adobe Reader and Acrobat are scheduled
for October 12, 2010.