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HDMI is currently the best choice for Audio and Video connections.  Because it transfers both audio and video on one cable, in an uncompressed format, it’s perfect for high definition displays and setups.  HDMI is also compatible with the latest digital transmission standards like HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection).

HDMI has one main drawback.  Unfortunately it is not designed for long cable runs.  The higher the resolution and the longer the cable, the more the signal has a chance of become degraded.  This is because the cables are manufactured using twisted copper pairs of very small-gauge wire.  Unlike normal coaxial cable, this makes interference and degradation a reality whenever dealing with lengths over 50 feet.

Fortunately, the wise creators of the HDMI standard thought long and hard about their specification.  Because they choose to include a line for power within the cable, it has become possible to power repeaters that are internal to the cable.  Normally, signal boosters and repeaters need an external power source to boost the signal, but because of it’s design, HDMI can actually be extended without an external power source.

These types of HDMI repeaters come in several varieties.  There are cables with repeaters built in, as well as plug in repeaters that will connect two HDMI cables together while actively repeating the signal.  A converter can also be used to change the HDMI signal into a signal that will travel over standard Cat5 cable.  With this type of system, a unit is placed at either end of the cable run to transform the signal to go over cat5, and then transform it back to HDMI on the other end.

If extra care is needed for your signal, external power can also be used for your HDMI repeater.  This is a good idea because many HDMI sources simply don’t output the power needed to do a good job of repeating the signal.  Even cables with built-in repeaters often allow for an external power supply to be attached.  This is just a little extra protection for your signal and may be a good idea depending on the situation in which the repeater is needed.

Since HDMI is a digital signal, it cannot be degraded much before the picture and audio is not longer decipherable.  On analog signals, you can get quite a bit of degradation before the picture is totally gone.  On digital signals, corrupt is corrupt, you will start to see major artifacts with only a little bit of signal degradation.

This is why it’s important to use a proper repeater for all your long cable runs.  Do your research and find out which extender option is best for you: built-in, standalone repeater, or cat5 HDMI extender.  No matter what the situation is, there is probably a solution that will work for you.

If you want to put video on your website you must have a good knowledge of the basic video file types. What video file type to use? what are the pros and cons of each file type? These are just some of the questions you should ask yourself before proceeding with video implementation on your webpages.

There are three basic video file types on the internet. Mpeg, AVI and Quicktime. I believe the Quicktime file type is the most popular since a lot of huge entertainment and news sites use it exclusively on their web pages.

AVI is the oldest of the three main file types. It is a windows oriented video format but it's not the most popular because of the sound and video compatibility and synchronizing problems. Because the Quicktime format can be used on either a windows or a macintosh computer, the AVI video file type loses it's popularity every day.

The mpeg format is a popular video file type that uses it's high output quality to increase it's popularity over the Quicktime format. Mpeg is used on video games, cd-roms and other media that require high output quality. One disadvantage of mpeg is that it sacrifices file size to gain in digital quality. The mpeg video files are usually large.

Another disadvantage of the mpeg format is that you really need time and sophisticated hardware and software to convert plain video into mpeg. And let's not forget that the mpeg format is not supported by apple and macintosh meaning that if you put mpeg video on your website, those users with macintosh will not be able to see it.

Quicktime is by far the most popular video file type developed by apple for macintosh users, but is also compatible with the IBM-compatible machines and the windows operating systems. The hardware and software you need to digitize video into the Quicktime format is very inexpensive, compared to the mpeg format. So its much easier and cheaper to create video and put it on your website using the Quicktime format.

Online video publishing has indeed taken the Internet by storm in recent years, making the use of video for marketing, promotion, news and PR online a true key strategic component and a key business differentiator for internet marketers who want to communicate effectively about their product profile and benefits within the shortest possible of time.

Internet is full of information and the average attention span of a web user today is measured in seconds. When web users search for their information at a search engine, they will get thousands of search results; when they visit your website, they may only spend a few seconds and little efforts to scan through what you are selling or proposing and decide whether your content, style, look and approach are a good fit for what they were actually looking for. These first few seconds are crucial and if you can delivery clear and targeted message by offering a fast, highly visual way to get their further attention and engage their interest, you have done bingo.

Does this mean that you just need to simply put up 10-min video tutorial on your website or just slamming some video contents up on your web pages, you will instantly sell more products or services? If this is your way of marketing with video on the web and hoping to get high conversion rate of traffic-to-sales, you will more toward getting disappointments than good news.

In order to make your video to effectively market your products/services online and convey your product/service key traits and characteristics within a very short amount of time in a unique, memorable way. These are a few rules of thumb to follow:

<strong>1. Get Your Video Seen</strong>

If you want your video to be your effective marketing tool, it must be able to see by as many web users as possible. Hence, don't just keep and tight your video inside your web site borders. Let your video content be free and distributed to the majors video sharing websites such as YouTube and Google video so that not only others can watch and talk about it, but they can easily download it, redistribute it, if not even publish it directly on their own sites.

<strong>2. Small File &amp; Load Fast</strong>

Statistics show that average web users spend their time waiting for a page to load is about 7 seconds. Web pages that take longer than 7 seconds to load, their visitors normally are on the verge of clicking away and visit other website. Hence, you need to make sure your video file is small enough, ideally less than 1 megabyte and load almost in real time to keep the interest your visitors. AVI is the most common video format, the file size can easily exist 10 megabytes for a short 2-3 minutes video; hence if you share your video in this format, you most probably will get &quot;click away&quot; from you visitors because of long loading time of your video file. Hence, you must get a video format conversion tool to convert your video to a more internet friendly format such as SWF format.

<strong>3. Let Them Know It's A Video, A Short Video</strong>

If the web users do not know that it is a video, they won't click it and play it; hence your video will get watch. So, you must let the web users know that the &quot;box&quot; is a video; the best way is to make it look like a video / VCR-like by having a play and stop button where the web users can click to play the video and stop it whenever they want to stop it.

Let the web users know also this is a short video. No one wants to sit through a 30 minute presentation on the history of your company; be focused on your products/services and deliver your messages preferable within 2 minutes.

<strong>In Summary</strong>

Effectively market with video on the web is not just slamming some video content up on your web pages, it more toward effective video communication through video publishing &amp; sharing on the web.

Free music? Of course! But free and legal music? Yes, it’s possible. Everybody who has ever surfed the Net knows that music can be downloaded freely. Although there are many questionable sites that offer free music, you do not have to do anything illegal to find good music on the Web.

So, where can you download free and legal MP3? Below are some great sites where you can download good music without having to break the law.

Download Free and Legal MP3s at Amazon.com

Amazon.com may be best known for its books, but the site also features a Free Music Downloads section where you can download free and legal MP3s. The site offers music from different genres, including Alternative, Indie, Punk, Blues, Broadway, Children’s Music, Christian, Classical, Country, Dance, Folk, International, Jazz, Latin, New Age, Opera, Pop, Rap, Hip Hop, Rock, R&B, Soundtracks, and more. If you’re a musician or an artist, you can also upload your own MP3s here for free and let music lovers discover and experience your own brand of music.

Download Free and Legal MP3s at eMusic.com

Perhaps one of the best places to look for and purchase MP3s online is eMusic.com. This is because the site offers files that are not copy-protected, thus letting you download an unlimited number of songs to satisfy your music needs. The music may not come for free but for every new sign up, the site offers up to 50 files completely without charge.

Download Free and Legal MP3s at GarageBand.com

GarageBand is where you can find the best Independent music from the most talented Indie artists. The site has recently partnered itself with MSN music to realize the Internet’s true potential in providing a means for both artists and music fans to connect and transform the music business. 

Download Free and Legal MP3s at IUMA.com

IUMA is where you can find and download free and legal MP3s from famous, not-so-famous, and unsigned artists all over the world. If you’re into Indie music then this is the place for you. IUMA is mainly dedicated to bringing you music from undiscovered artists whom you should know about.


Download Free and Legal MP3s at Download.com

CNET’s Download.com is one of the premier places where you can download free and legal MP3s. The site has one of the largest music archives on the Web so you can have your choice of music to suit your taste. At this site, you do not only hear the artist’s music, but you can also take a closer look on how their music came to be by reading artist’s bios and stories.

Download Free and Legal MP3s at AmpCast.com

Ampcast is another music site where you can download free and legal MP3s. Search through their entire archive for Independent artists or music from popular rock/pop groups. And if you don’t like to download anything, you also have the choice to feeds from the Ampcast Surreal Radio. The site also offers great music videos which you can watch through video streaming and community features such as forums and chatroom where you can talk with other music lovers or Ampcast artists about your favorite topic – music.

As you can see, there are plenty of sources of free and legal MP3 music on the Internet, you just have to know where to look.

Early on, there were only comic books and video tapes that people brooded over to have a good laugh, but today there are so many websites available for the same. These websites are filled with funny crazy pictures, funny video clips and allow the user to surf through and watch any video they wish to. They can either watch the top rated ones or specify a search keyword and look for that one particular video. However, building a funny video website is not as easy as it seems. If an individual wants to create a website, they need to go through a rigorous process. And so, you can imagine the amount of details involved for a company to launch a website. Their main content would be based on humor and interactive flash games only.

Once a company decided to get into the funny video website category, they will need to assess the other websites already existing in the market and what they can offer that isn’t already there. As they discuss these issues with their team, they will also have to touch base with a good web hosting company to figure out if they can use their domain for the upcoming website. A funny videos website consumes a lot of bandwidth, so a dedicated server is usually required for hosting. The one thing to keep in mind is that every step of the way takes a lot of effort, so one must have a clear cut budget before delving into this pool.

A website needs bright appealing colors, simple easy to use layout and most importantly content that will catch the eye of the person browsing through the site. If they find it interesting, they will stop and spend couple of more minutes, else will move on to other websites. A good PHP or ASP programmer can do the customized coding and put in all the necessary links, but it is difficult to find someone who will understand your needs and create a site that satisfies your dreams. The funny images and videos that you put in your site should be unique and be humorous. Some also have the html code for the video to be embedded in other websites, like MySpace or Blogs. This will help your site stand out among the crowd and get people to notice it. Finding interested people to contribute to the funny crazy pictures, flash animation videos will take time for a start up venture.

Will there be categories to sort the videos into? For example, if a person wants to upload videos about his dogs, will your sites have a category labeled “Dog Videos”? This will come in handy when a new visitor is looking for funny videos related to dogs. This makes it easier for them to navigate through your site and find what interests them, making them stick around longer to browse the other features on your site.

Some of the crazy pictures and funny video clips on other sites have the option for the viewer to rate the video, and post a comment. These are added features that allow the user to feel important making them come back to the site. The company should therefore think through their plan and get their facts together before putting their site out to the public. And if it is not interesting, or the pictures aren’t funny enough, you will have lost a prospective member. It is therefore advisable for the company to spend time in doing their research to try and come up with an idea to outdo the other funny video websites.

Fcschat.com has released flash video chat, video messenger , 1to1 video chat plugins for webmasters. These plugins can be easily integrated in any existing websites. The flash video chat plugins are compatible with postnuke,phpnuke sites too.<br><br>

fcschat.com provides professionally developed, fully managed flash audio video chat solution for websites. It is a multi-user flash audio video chat software developed in macromedia flash MX 2004. It uses Macromedia flash communication server for its good quality audio video compression. You can adjust the camera bandwidth/compression and quality for flash video chat as per your site requirements. You can also opt in for a Firewall/Proxy version that works with firewall using HTTP Tunneling on port 80. It is the one of the best flash video chat available on net which can be customized to meet the looks of your site. Some of its features are:<br>
1) Stable Flash video chat front end <br>
2) Compressed audio video streaming <br>
3) Set video Bandwidth <br>
4) Set video Quality/compression <br>
5) Customize Gender, webcam icon <br>
6) Create Private rooms(Advanced and Premium Plans) <br>
7) Create static rooms <br>
8) Create dynamic rooms <br>
9) Control audio volume <br>
10) Publish/un-publish camera, mic <br>
11) Private messages <br>
12) One click room change <br>
13) Bold,Italic,underline text chat <br>
14) smileys support in chat <br>
15) color palette for font colors<br>
16) Ignore/un-ignore users <br>
17) View number of users in rooms <br>
18) automatic detection of camera and mic <br>
19) Easy to integrate <br>
20) View Multiple cameras in Premium chat Plan <br><br>

You can get an additional admin panel for flash video chat to control the chat in advanced and premium versions. <br>
The admin features are : <br>
1) Administer flash video chat in invisible mode <br>
2) View public/private conversations <br>
3) View/listen any user in chat <br>
4) Kick users <br>
6) Ban users for a fixed time. <br>
7) Realtime Data Transfer Stats <br>
8) Auto Deleting Dynamic Empty rooms <br>
9) View Private Rooms. <br><br>

Flash video chat Integration: It can be easily integrated with postnuke. Users logged in postnuke can be loged into the chat without any need to provide their userid again.
It can be integrated with asp, php, cold fusion, jsp... etc. There are no special requirements for its integration.

Creating your own Streaming Audio audio studio has never been easier. There are so many great products around today that will allow you to produce high quality streaming audio for a fraction of the price it used to cost.

HARDWARE

The first thing you will need is a compatible computer. Today every new computer is already set up with everything you will need. A basic sound card with a mic and line in jack. If you do not have a sound card they are very cheap and you can get a good one from any standard computer shop.

Next you will need a good mic. These come in all sizes and shapes with different configurations however a general all round mic like the Logitech Noise-canceling microphone is fine for beginners. I suggest you get a desk top one to start with, as you may want to move into video later and so you wont want a headset in your videos.

Of course you could go up a stage and get a preamp with a professional mic but this will start running into dollars and the whole aim of this article is to help you get started.

Next you will want to get some cables to connect up your tape recorder and other audio equipment. Again the computer stores now have packs that will connect up pretty well any device into your computer to digitalise your sound. You want to record directly onto your computer however you can get those old tapes and Vinyl records into a digital format also.

SOFTWARE - RECORDING

Recording your audio is probably one of the most critical parts of this process and again you can get software that ranges from free to many thousands of dollars. For this exercise I suggest you download the free copy of Audacity. This is an excellent free software package that will allow you to record from your microphone or any equipment you have.

It provides excellent editing capabilities and also will allow you to edit multiple tracks and then combine them into one single track. For a quick overview of how to do this you can watch this video and also download the software

http://mp3soundstream.com/Audacity_Tutorial_-_Free_Audio_Editing_Software.html

SOFTWARE - CONVERTING

The next piece of software you will need for your studio is a converting program that will allow you to convert different formats. For example you may have a real audio file and you want to convert it to mp3. dBpoweramp is like the Swiss army knife for the audio industry and will convert just about any file to any other file format.

Convert from one format to another, just about every audio type is supported: mp3, mp4, Windows Media Audio (wma), Ogg Vorbis, AAC, Monkeys Audio, FLAC and many others whilst preserving ID Tags. It will also rip CDs for you.

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm

SOFTWARE - REDUCTION

If you are going to stream an mp3 direct then you may want to recompile the file to a smaller format. RazorLame is a so-called "front-end" for use with LAME. LAME is a great MP3-Encoder, it's very fast, it produces high-quality files, has many advanced features (like Variable Bitrates and Joint-Stereo), and it's open source. Unfortunately, it is a command line utility, and that is where RazorLame comes in: It provides an easy-to-use graphical user-interface which makes MP3-encoding even easier!

The best way to use this software is to get one file and compile in a number of different formats to test the size against quality.

http://www.dors.de/razorlame/download.php

SOFTWARE – STREAMING

There are a few different ways of streaming your new audio files. If you have Macromedia products you can simple organize this your self however there are some great third party programs around that will do it all for you at a fraction of the cost.

MP3 SOUND STREAM

This is a simple piece of software that takes any mp3 or wav audio and converts the whole file into a swf file and then attaches a button so that viewers can listen on a web page without needing to download any extra software. This is because the flash plugin is on 98% of computes and if not it will automatically detect and load the small plugin. This is great for anyone not wanting to get into all the technical aspects of streaming audio.

You will not need to reduce your files at all with this program as it does it all for you. This is perfect for anyone wanting to stream one file at a time and wants to do it quickly and efficiently. It will stream even over most modem connections.

http://www.mp3soundstream.com

MSIJUKEBOX

For people wanting to stream a number of files then MSIJukebox is a great alternative. This software lets you choose any number of mp3 files and then organises them using an XML file. By using the above free programs you can significantly reduce the size of these files to save on bandwidth.

Because MSIJukebox streams the actual mp3 you can also have a lot higher quality playback including stereo files. This is much better for those wanting to stream a number of very high quality mp3 files.

http://www.msijukebox.com

SUMMARY

So there you have it. A complete studio set up for under $100. Just download all the free software and purchase any of the streaming audio products that you want. You can then create, edit and manipulate any audio files you like. You will also be able to add these audios to your website.

With the web surfer becoming much more "web savvy" than they were a year ago, they are expecting not only information but also an entertaining web experience.