Put Your Demo In Your Pocket!

By Steve Allen with Steve Yankee

If you've got a great demo reel that you want to be able to show more readily, take your demo with you everywhere!

We'll tell you how to transfer your demo to your
iPod or your cell phone, or any other Personal
Video Device. And do it quickly, easily
and inexpensively.

Ever stand in a long checkout line and overhear the person behind you talking about their wedding plans? You can casually tell them about your business, and how wonderful your wedding plans are. You give them a business card and never hear from them again. You HOPE they go home and watch your demo on your website, but who knows?

What if you could show them your demo right then and there -in the checkout line or anywhere else you stumble upon a future bride (or prospect for a corporate video)? Get their interest up, and let them get a chance to see how wonderful your videos can be.

Put Your Demo On Your Cell Phone.

Steve Allen of Sonrise Productions says, "I can show my demo to anyone, anywhere, anytime, just by reaching into my pocket and pulling out my cell phone. They can watch my demo right then and there. If they have a cell phone with video capabilities and Bluetooth, I can actually transfer it right to their phone, too! (My 16-year-old daughter showed me how to do that.)

"Cell phones have come a LONG way. All the newer phones now have video capabilities. My old Motorola phone broke down so I bought a new one for just $49 with a contract renewal.

"I then purchased a 1-gigabyte micro SD card for my phone. About the size of a watch battery, it has twice as much storage as my first computer did. I was amazed as I held it between my fingertips. I can fit three full-length DVD movies on it, plus about 250 mp3's. Awesome.

"I also bought a USB Bluetooth adaptor for my computer so I could transfer files to my new phone. You ccould also use a USB-to-phone cable and do the same thing. OR I can put my micro SD card into the SD card adaptor and load files in that way.

"My demo program is about five minutes long. I had to encode my 99 mb .avi file to an 8 mb mp4 file. I used a free program called Nero Recode CE. (Download it right here .)

"You have to use the mobile-AVC profile to convert it to use on a phone. The quality isn't wonderful but...it's with you all the time."

Put Your Demo On Your iPod or Other Personal Video Player

The Nero program Mr. Allen mentions does allow you to encode files to PSPs, PVPs and iPods. However, it costs upwards of $75. For considerably less, you can pick up a copy of AVS Video Tools. This is a bundle of four video tools that allow you to convert video, split, join, remove commercials, edit, rotate, capture, transfer, copy and burn DVD's. You can convert video between almost any files, prep video files for iPods, cell phones or any other Personal Video Player, make flash SWV, Real or WMV files from your small video files so they can be streamed on the Internet, or from your own website. It's under $40 and instantly downloadable, of course.

Another resource for burning your video unto an iPod; Videora iPod Converter is a free iPod video converter that converts video files, YouTube videos, movies and DVD's so you can play them on your iPod. The software, developed by the creators of Videora, can convert all types of video files (avi, divx, xvid, flv, x264, vob, mpeg, DVD's, YouTube, etc.) into the proper video formats (MPEG-4, H.264) that play on the iPod.

With Videora iPod Converter you can convert videos for any type of iPod that plays video. This includes the new iPod touch, iPod nano and iPod classic in addition to the 5th generation iPod. You can also convert videos for the iPhone.

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