video, dance is all about movement, if you're previewing or featuring work it needs to be filmed. the only downside is the amount of time they take to produce and prepare professionally and they are a massive bandwidth hog but it's the only way forward.

Michelle,

- It doesn't necessarily take a lot of time to videotape and edit a video segment for online distribution. But it does depend upon what a dancer/dance company wants to accomplish.

- On issue of professionalism, there's not really any clear-cut standard. A dance video you put on MySpace might be different than a video you want to try to sell online (hopefully dancers will start to do this soon). And even the concept of professionalism can be overdone when it comes to the YouTube culture. That said, there're probably general rules of thumb that dancers will benefit from following when it comes to online video creation and distribution.

- On issue of bandwidth, I don't see this as issue. There are many video websites where your video can be hosted.

Thanks for your comment.

I think there are definitely clear cut ideas of professionalism in video production, such as; image quality, exposure, composition, colour rendering, editing, sound production, graphics, etc are all part of the game.

The Flash based video compression offered by YouTube, MySpace and many others is just not up to the task. It's all right for talking heads, of little use for fast moving dance across complex backgrounds.

Dance suffers because of poor marketing and that goes for online presentation of images and video and, to a lesser degree, web site design. To succeed the bar needs to be raised way above where 99% of video sites are in terms of visual quality.

The freebie storage providers cannot match professional, paid for hosting.

Services such as Brightcove offer a limited spectrum of compression technologies (mostly Windows based) and nothing short of high resolution video will do for sales.

as an example:

http://tiggertoo.vox.com/library/video/6a00cd96fe646b4cd500cdf3a196edcb8f.html

http://www.article19.co.uk/06/feature/wired_aerial_theatre.php

Both of those videos are sourced from the same master, one was compressed by us, the other by a Flash based video compressor, which would you rather watch?

I write romances that center around ballroom dancers and I can tell you that exept for one reader, everyone that has commented on the stories has had their interest piqued in dance, i.e. to watch a show, attend a comp or event. That tells me I'm creating something worthwhile for the dance industry.

Michelle,

A few thoughts to follow-up on your comments:

- I think we are using the word "professionalism" in slightly different ways. In part, I was referring to difference between formal and informal when I was talking about "YouTube culture." As YouTube and other sites have shown, sometimes a low-quality video from a production standpoint can generate a tremendous amount of buzz for a person, product or company even if the video is made with a cheap video capture device sitting on top of a computer in a bedroom. Clearly it makes sense to create the best quality video you can in terms of shooting and editing your videos -- but this isn't always the deciding factor in terms of the videos effectiveness.

- At this point, I don’t think we (people within the dance community) know in concrete terms what the actual benefits of online video are. I start with the premise that video is an invaluable tool for dancers. But we don’t know to what extent making video available online helps build audiences and helps dancers and dance companies get more bookings. And we also don’t know if the quality of video (within certain ranges) makes a difference in whether somebody will or will not attend a dance performance.

- I have to do more research about the best web-based video hosting services and applications. But with the huge growth in such services, I'm confident that dancers and dance companies can find a free or very inexpensive ways to deliver high-quality videos. Here's an article that links to two separate lists of online video applications - each list includes over 60 video services.