The people who make software used by television operations are hoping to sell you their new ‘integrated’ extensions to their existing products. They may or may not suit your needs - but don’t forget that digital video standards for the net are supported by a great many tools, a lot of them free. Don’t get into the ‘nobody gets fired for recommending IBM (now Microsoft)’ trap - use the tools which work well for you; and if you can use the least expensive ones: these things change so fast you don’t want to be worried about “losing your investment”.

Heh, not at my station, pal. The buck stops with out-of-touch old men scrambling wildly to play catch-up with the rest of the web-savvy world.

and here i thought we had another story of traditional anchormen going web.

It seemed the ideal tool to complement the Rosenblum style of video journalism without demanding advanced post-production skills. As a bonus, it facilitated high-quality green-screen work with a patented ‘vector keying’ technology.

The only real weakness I saw was the rather ‘last century’ style of the template options, but I’m a design snob!

It seems to me that SeriousMagic was doing a great job selling this product in both the corporate and ‘house of worship’ sectors (the latter being one not to be underestimated as a market demanding user friendly, simple tools).

When Adobe bought SeriousMagic last November I was delighted that the software’s potential had been recognized by a major player.

Unfortunately I was also obliged to cancel a project for which I need several sets of the SeriousMagic software, since the product was withdrawn pending re-packaging by Adobe.

The project configuration involved several VJ ‘contributors’ all using a designed set of greenscreen backgrounds and graphic overlay style to lend coherence to their packages which would originate from all over the world.

We’re talking about a $300 software investment per workstation only… and free file transfer via Pando from anywhere with email connectivity. ‘Do-it-yourself low-budget media’ (the term I prefer to user-generated content) aggregated for a daily feed via Brightcove.

Okay, if ideas like this can work for a guy with precious little to invest they can work for newsoperations- television, print or radio - looking to migrate to Media 2.0.

Now I’m waiting to see how Adobe finds the right fit for the SeriousMagic software in their range of applications. It should, I think, be interesting.