Helping YOU preserve your precious family stories on video.
Happy New Year!
Welcome
to the
January 2005 issue!
I hope your holidays were everything you hoped for and that you had a
wonderful time celebrating and reflecting with your family and friends. I hope
also that this time next year you'll have something additional to celebrate: the
completion of your very own family history video.
Family Legacy Video is cooking up a range of products and services to help you
turn your family history video dream into a reality. I invite you to visit
www.familylegacyvideo.com to keep
tabs on what we're up to. Rest assured that we'll also tell you about new
offerings via e-mail and this newsletter.
I hope you enjoy the January e-Newsletter. Let's all join
together to make 2005 the Year of the Family History Video. Cheers! - - Steve Pender
Make 2005 the year YOU capture YOUR family stories and history on video.
Imagine for a moment that the technological revolution that put computers and
video equipment in the hands of consumers like you and me took place, not just
within the past few years, but one hundred years ago. Now imagine that it's the
dawn of the new year 1905 and your great-great-great-great grandmother sits down
in front of her camcorder and records the story of her life and times and her
family history as she knows it.
Fast forward one hundred years to 2005. You're rummaging in a closet, or in your attic,
when you spot an old box tucked into a corner. You open the lid, and there,
beneath some old letters and a journal, you find a video cassette labeled
"1905." Curious, you head into the living room or the den or wherever you keep
your video cassette player. You pop in the tape, press play - and within seconds
your great great great great grandmother is speaking directly to you. Not only
do you learn a wealth of new family history, but now and again there's a flash
of recognition. You can't put your finger on it, but there's something very
familiar about the way she flicks away the lock of hair that falls in front of her eye and also
about the way she laughs.
Then it hits you. Your mother brushes away her hair in exactly the
same manner. And that laugh - it's your laugh too! In just a few moments
you've made a powerful connection with an ancestor who may previously have
existed for you only as a faded image in a photograph in a crumbling family
album.
Let's leap ahead another century to the year 2105. Your great-great-great-great granddaughter is enjoying her sweet sixteen party. Near the end of the
festivities, her parents bring her one more present. It's a small box, brightly
wrapped. "Honey," they say. "We've been saving this for a time when we thought
you'd really appreciate it. We think that time has come." The young girl tears
off the wrapping paper, opens the box and finds an old DVD labeled "2005." In
no time at all, she and her parents are in the family media room. The cover
comes off the antique DVD player. In goes the disc, and, within seconds, your
great-great-great-great granddaughter is watching YOU speak directly to her from
the year 2005. All the emotion and amazement and flashes of recognition you
experienced a hundred years ago are felt again by your young descendant.
Pretty powerful stuff.
Now of course there were no video camcorders in 1905. But they exist now.
While the first half of this imagination exercise is truly a fantasy, it's
within your power to make the second half a reality.
So if you're in the market for a resolution for 2005, consider embarking on a
family history video project of your very own. You'll find it extremely
fulfilling. Plus, you'll earn the thanks of your family - both now and for
generations to come.
Family Legacy Video's first year has been one of experimentation,
learning and growth. We've learned we have a lot of kindred spirits - that many
of you are dedicated to preserving your family storytellers and stories on
video. Some of you are pretty accomplished at video and just need some guidance,
others need a little more help in order to get the hang of video gear and
computers, while there are those who would prefer to hire someone to produce
their family history video. In the coming months Family Legacy Video hopes to
appeal to all of you. Here are some things to look for in 2005:
Video production. Family Legacy Video now offers full production
services. Hire Steve Pender to organize, shoot and edit your video.
Click here
for additional details and pricing.
Workshops. FLV's first workshop in December 2004 was a rousing
success. Everyone attending was excited to learn and passionately interested in
family video. Look for expanded workshop offerings in 2005, especially
multi-session workshops that help workshop members plan and produce their videos
over a period of several months. The hands-on workshops will initially take
place in Tucson, Arizona. But if you have a group or organization outside Tucson
that would like to sponsor a workshop, feel free to contact Family Legacy Video.
Teleclasses. Another learning option for those of you outside of
Tucson. A teleclass would essentially be a conference call, perhaps an hour
long, during which you could ask Steve Pender your family history video
questions. The form the teleclasses would take and when they might be scheduled
will depend on feedback from Family Legacy Video customers. If this is a service
you'd find valuable, please let us know!
Message boards. Family Legacy Video is considering launching a
message board as part of the FLV Web site. This would be the online equivalent
of a bulletin board. Message board members could post questions and reply to
questions posted by other members. This would be a free feature. Again, let
Family Legacy Video know if you'd like to help get a message board started. This
would be a valuable first step toward creating an online community of Family
Legacy Video customers and friends dedicated to helping one another preserve
precious family stories on video.
Personal coaching. Still want to produce your video
yourself, but feel you'd benefit from some personal guidance and one-to-one
coaching? Steve will soon be available for personal coaching at an hourly rate,
either at his office or in your home. Details to come soon.
If anything (or everything) on this list interests you, please let us know. If you
have an idea for a product or service that isn't on the list, tell Family Legacy
Video about that, too. We'll be happy to entertain any and all ideas for
products and services you need and desire.
Products to help make your
family history video a reality.
Make 2005 the year you capture your precious
family stories in a video. Here are two unique products that can help:
The
Family Legacy Video™
Producer's Guide: A "how-to" guide on CD-ROM packed with easy-to-follow,
step-by-step instructions that demystify the video production process and put
you in the producer's chair.
Family Legacy Video™
Producer's Music, Vol. 1: Generations: A wonderful collection of royalty-free
production music, designed specially for the home video enthusiast. These MP3
music clips heighten the excitement and emotion of your family video production
- and you can use them again and again at no extra charge.
Computer
tip: If auto start doesn't work, create a shortcut.
The Family Legacy Video™ Producer's Guide is designed to start automatically when
the disc is placed in your CD drive. However, computers being computers, this
doesn't always happen. The easiest way to keep from having to search for the
Index file each and every time you want to play the guide is to create a
shortcut, one of those little pictures on your computer screen (desktop) that
starts a program whenever you click on it. If you're a Windows user, here's how:
Insert the
Family Legacy Video™ Producer's Guide into your CD
drive.
Right click on the Start button at the bottom left of your screen.
A drop down menu opens.
Click on Explore.
Scroll down the folders list to the drive labeled FLV Guide.
Right click on the drive.
A window opens - it displays the folders and files on the disc.
Right click on the file labeled INDEX.HTM (or INDEX).
A drop down menu opens.
Click on Create Shortcut.
A message window opens. It says, "Windows cannot create a shortcut here. Do you
want the shortcut to be placed on the desktop instead?"
Click on Yes.
A picture labeled "Shortcut to INDEX.HTM" appears on your desktop.
Close the FLV Guide window.
If you want to rename the shortcut, here's what you do:
Right click on the shortcut.
A drop down menu opens.
Click on Rename.
The text in the shortcut is highlighted in blue.
Type in the new name (FLV Guide, for example).
Press the Enter key.
Now, anytime you double click on the shortcut (and you have the Producer's Guide
in your CD
drive, of course) the program will start.
On Friday, December 17, Family Legacy Video president Steve
Pender brought his passion for family history video to the Catalina Rotary Club
in Tucson, Arizona. A packed room of 100+ Catalina Rotary members, their
families and friends were inspired by Steve's story and by the sample video
clips he played. Many left resolving to make 2005 the year they captured their
family stories on video.
The Family Legacy Video
Theatre is the online theatre where you can view all the video clips streaming
from the Family Legacy Video Web site. The clips you see there will surely
inspire you with ideas for your family video, and you'll get to see Steve Pender
talk about his passion for family history video in two television appearances.
The Family Legacy Video
Theatre is always open and YOU decide when the show begins. Haven't been to the
theatre yet? Don't wait - click
here.
Ask
Steve - This month: What to look for in a new computer.
Q:
Hello Steve,
I am a subscriber to the newsletter and find what you do very interesting.
Recently I tried to transfer some digital video to my computer. It worked but
was jerky and the audio was broken up. I asked a computer person and he said my
two-year old laptop (Celeron 1.1 GHz) with XP Home probably did not have the
power to do the job. I am about to buy a new computer and hope you can tell me
what I need to do to get quality DVD video from a DV camera. - - Gordon
M., Clearwater, Florida
A: Hi
Gordon,
I don't fancy myself a computer expert, but I'd say your computer guy was
probably right. Here are some things to look for in a new computer that you plan
to use for video:
Fast processors. Get a computer with the
speediest processing chip you can find. My laptop and desktop computers each
have Pentium 4 processors (known as CPUs) and the slowest of the two is 2 GHz
(gigahertz). Also, get
as much RAM as you can, a minimum of 512 MB (megabytes).
Lots O'Storage. Video files gobble up huge
amounts of disc space. Just to give you an example, I recently finished editing
a family history video that ran an hour and nine minutes long. All the elements
that went into making the video took up 76.4 GB (gigabytes) of disc space. The
final video file I created was 14.4 GB in size. So that's 90.8 GB. The bottom
line: Get as large a hard drive as possible. It's a good idea to add an
additional drive to your desktop computer just for video. I recently added a 250
GB drive for just that purpose.
The right operating system. If you're a Windows
user, you'll be fine with Windows XP Home or Professional. Whatever system you
have, make sure the
editing software you use is compatible with it. By the way,
Windows XP comes with a free video editing program called Windows Movie Maker.
It's a very basic program, but is a good one to start with to learn some video
editing basics before you move on to more full-featured software. (If you're a
Mac user, System X comes with good basic video editing software called i-Movie.)
DV
connection. Make sure the computer you buy comes with a digital video
input/output connection. You'll hear these connections called FireWire and
i-Link. These are
just different marketing names for the same thing: the digital video standard.
Got a
question about any aspect of family history video production?
Send it to Steve at
steve@familylegacyvideo.com.
The
