Video Production Support website and forum

[tonsofpcs]

My most recent project is a (free) Video Production Support website with content, howtos, etc. and community forums, intended to build a community of both video professionals and amateur video makers.  Feel free to tell me if you like it, what needs improvement, or even if you despise it.

Thanks,

[Carol Haynes]

Perhaps chicken + egg syndrome ... need contributors/articles etc. to have something to look at but is hard to get a community going without something to attract people.

How about starting out by having reviews of useful software for video production? Including quick/free/cheap ideas as well as mid range and pro offerings. Reviews may at least stimulate some debate.

A few getting started tutorials would be good too to attract newbies to the site.

You are facing a lot of competition in this area as there are some cracking sites already doing what you want to do.

[tonsofpcs]

Perhaps chicken + egg syndrome ... need contributors/articles etc. to have something to look at but is hard to get a community going without something to attract people.

-Carol Haynes (August 17, 2007, 10:20 AM)

Yea

How about starting out by having reviews of useful software for video production? Including quick/free/cheap ideas as well as mid range and pro offerings. Reviews may at least stimulate some debate.

I don't plan to be a ratings or review site, I plan to offer a community and learning/support/troubleshooting environment. 

A few getting started tutorials would be good too to attract newbies to the site.

Yea, I wrote one (it's not a "getting started" tutorial, admittedly), but  I would like to encourage others to submit content as well. 

You are facing a lot of competition in this area as there are some cracking sites already doing what you want to do.

Really? The only thing close that I have seen is forums and howtos for specific products from commercial ventures. 
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[Carol Haynes]

Check out:

http://www.videohelp.com/
http://www.doom9.net/ (OK not specifically what you want to do but there are a lot of useful resources and tutorials here for related stuff).
http://www.afterdawn.com (similarly has lots of related stuff).

these are just the ones I have looked at regularly and listed off the top of my head.

http://www.mediacollege.com/video/ looks promising and more like what you are talking about.

Actually I did a search on google on "Video Production Tutorials" and came up with over 2.7 million hits. OK a lot are related to specific software products but if even 1% are relevant to you plans that accounts for a lot of sites out there.

I'm not trying to discourage you as you may have something unique and useful to offer - just an observation that you will need more content to attract visitors, especially those who have already found useful forum sites out there.

[tonsofpcs]

I have read and/or am a member of all of those

Video Help is targeted at the hobbyist and is mainly support for software and file formats. 
AfterDawn is similar, targeted at the hacking culture and the hobbyist for how to get things working.
Doom9 is targeted at "DVD backup resource(s)" and while more general than the above two, it has a similar target. 

Video Production Support is targeted at the professional and prosumer (and maybe even the consumer) markets for helping with production as a primary focus, not the software/hardware used for it (although it will help with that). 

MediaCollege is the closest to what I am doing by far, but the community there is mainly users of Dave's MC media player and not a general community. 

I know that I need more content, the problem I have is that I do not want to make all the content myself and discourage visitors from submitting their own.  I have begun an IRC channel for the website and hope to embed a java client on the page soon, hopefully this will get more visitors, but ideally the forums is where "it will all happen"

I suppose if even with me explaining it in a forum such as this that some people are not seeing exactly what I plan to do that maybe I should put a more in depth description of what I plan on the site. 

[tonsofpcs]

Well, it's been a few months and finally the IRC channel that I started ( ##video on freenode ) for the community has begun getting users.  Hopefully soon we will see the forums getting used as well as people who aren't planning to be "regulars" visiting and staying around a while