About SimplyDV


Well, SimplyDV is really just one person at the moment - but here's a bit of information about the site's founder, editor, chief writer and webmaster


Would you buy a used car from this man?
I'd been writing reviews, how-to tutorials and user features about video makers for UK consumer magazines like Camcorder User (until very recently Digital Video but now no more), What Camcorder (long departed this earth), Computer Video (sadly no more either) and Mac User magazines (still with us), among others, when it occurred to me that the words I'd gone to great efforts to string together would disappear from the planet once next month's issue hit the newstands. It was 2001, and this internet thing was getting to be pretty popular, with the tools to create websites becoming more user-friendly and accessible. Inevitably, I thought: "I can do that!", and after a prolonged search to find the ideal domain name, SimplyDV was born with the aim of extending the life of my written works.

The basic philosophy behind SimplyDV is, and always been, that it should provide a place on the web where people can come and find out about what equipment is available and how they might use it to best effect. I've always been a believer in the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) philosophy, and this is reflected in the domain name - SimplyDV. It's simply about digital video. The strap-line The no-nonsense guide to choosing and using digital video sums it all up, I hope!

Background


I first got interested in film-making and photography when in my teens whilst living in Plymouth, Devon (in the UK's south-west region). I loved Standard-8mm and Super-8mm, and this interest got me part-time contract at the then regional ITV company, Westward Television, in Plymouth. I worked on the UK's first regular young people's open access TV show as an editorial advisor / contributor, and it was here that I tried to combine researching, writing and presenting items for a bi-weekly TV show with my GCE studies at school. The contract took me out on location with 16mm film crews as well as plonking me in front of studio cameras (without Autocue) in order to present segments as live to camera in WTV's Studio One in Plymouth. This experience was repeated when I was later taking my A Levels (which explains a lot) and I loved it. What an experience - and to think I got paid for it too!

Later, as a student of educational film & video technology, I spent much of my time with 16mm film, but what really caught my eye was the new technology coming out of companies like Sony and Hitachi Denshi. Unlike the huge 2" Quad videotape recorders that were the staple of the broadcasters I'd worked with, here we had the opportunity to use small, portable videotape recording technology that didn't need a room the size of a ballroom and a compressed air supply before it could be operated! I was hooked. My love-affair with small-format video was born - and it's never left me. Now, we could all make our own "television" to suit ourselves. The revolution had begun!

This experience got me my first salaried job with Channel 40, an experimental community cable TV station in Milton Keynes - the new city which was growing rapidly just north of London - and for the three years I was there I learned how to shoot, edit and transmit video material on a fast-turnaround basis. Often, I was editing to within a couple of minutes of transmission. Not only that, but I had free reign of a 3-camera TV studio and an outside broadcast facility built into a Ford Transit. Moreover, we were recording to the growing Sony 3/4" U-Matic cassette format and editing with one of the very first Convergence ECS1B VTR edit controllers in the UK. BBC people would look in and say "Small-guage video will never replace film or proper 2-inch videotape in the studio". Oh yeah?

Corporate Video


A three-year period as in-house Video Producer for the brewing and retailing division of Grand Metropolitan PLC in London, during which time I wrote and produced training video programming for the whole licensed house network, was followed by further 15 years as a freelance video producer in the corporate and education sectors. During this period, I devised and oversaw production of training and promotional programming for many blue-chip companies like Xerox, Kodak, Rover Group, Audi, Volkswagen, Marshall Amplification, Digital Equipment Company (DEC computers), Cambridge University, The Open University, BBC TV, Television South West, Daler-Rowney Artists Materials...... and more I've forgotten about. Way back when "special interest video" was becoming popular on VHS, I produced directed several how-to video programmes on the subject of drawing and painting.
Composite image of Colin's four books
When the DV format emerged kicking and screaming into the world, it became obvious that video production would go through necessary changes; now, people could shoot their own video footage (however badly) and sure enough the revenue from businesses went into decline.

It was at this time that I got into writing, which I'd always enjoyed from my earliest TV experiences (a big thank you to Angela Rippon for showing me how to write a 90-second piece to camera properly!) and very quickly I found my material being in demand by the UK magazines mentioned above. My monthly column, Video View, gave me free reign to write on any subject related to digital video and ran for almost 4 years in Digital Video magazine.

Thoughts for the future


The internet has already changed everything, of course. After working for four years as a new media Projects Manager at the UK's Open University, I got a taste for what's possible with increased internet access via broadband technology, and I liked what I saw in the crystal ball. It's ironic that as technology enables higher and higher production and distribution quality for broadcast TV programmers, the quality of programming itself is on a downward spiral. What was the finest example of public service broadcasting in the world (the BBC) is now emulating that which the British people have long regarded as the inferior standard and quality that is US broadcasting. Our leaders - political and commercial - just don't understand what they're letting us in for, it would appear. Do we really need more Big Brother - in High Definition? Are our standards and expectations really that low?

Think about it. You have a very high quality digital video camcorder, the means to edit your material to a high technical and creative standard, and thanks to broadband internet you can start your own internet TV station. Do we need broadcast TV? The resources are at last there for you to do your own thing - to shoot what you want to shoot and share what you want to share. You only have to look at the expanision of so-called IPTV and also at the success of internet-based digital video portals like YouTube and Google Video to see where it's going. Now you can choose what you want to watch when you want to watch it - and you can contribute to it too. The revolution is here!

Which kind of takes me back to where I started over 30 years ago. Enjoy!

Colin Barrett
Founder and Editor, SimplyDV

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