December '08 Holiday Gathering
As always, we ended our 2008 meeting year with a party - this year we gathered at the Fox & Hound English Pub and Grille by the Fairfield Mall in Dayton.  Everyone enjoyed libations and food compliments of the Chapter and Industrial Video Corporation - many thanks to IVC for their generous donation to our Holiday Gathering.  It was another great year of meetings for our MCA-I chapter, and we're excited to keep it going in 2009!

November '08 Meeting
For our last regular meeting of 2008, we met at the facilities of Curtis, Inc. in downtown Cincinnati.  After enjoying LaRosa's pizza courtesy of our host, the group made it's way across the parking lot to the second building which houses Curtis's video studio and ancillary offices.  In the studio, company owner Curt Sellers welcomed the MCA-I members and our guests from the Cincinnati area, and talked about his company which is one of the top media production companies in Cincinnati.  After Curt's remarks, we went back to main building to tour Curtis's impressive production facilities, including their audio recording studio and control room, HD graphics and editing suites, and master control room.

At the conclusion of the tour, we gathered in the large main conference room and sat around the huge table (set with plates of cookies - yum!) to listen to our guest speaker.  Jim Liles is an attorney with the Cincinnati office of Porter Wright who specializes in intellectual property and copyrights.  Jim gave a fascinating talk about these and other legal issues faced by media producers, including definitions and explanations, current statutes and positions, and much more.  Jim's presentation prompted many questions from the audience and stimulated lively discussions of media-related legal issues.

This was one of our best MCA-I meetings of the year - a large turnout of members and guests, a premier video facility to tour, and a top notch guest speaker who addressed an always-interesting and pertinent topic.  Many thanks to Curt Sellers and everyone at Curtis, Inc. for hosting our November meeting, and to Jim Liles for his fascinating presentation, and special thanks to chapter member Anne Kunimura for her help in organizing the meeting.  Also thanks to Tom Parrish and Panasonic who was our November Sponsor of the Month.

October '08 Meeting
As we've seen in past meetings, there's a lot of video production going on in places you wouldn't expect.  We visited one of those places in October - the United Theological Seminary that has a video production facility and offers a degree in Media Ministry.  Our host Jim Eller, who heads up the media program at UTS, gave us a tour of the video control room and studio and talked about the many video production activities they handle.

After our tour, we convened to the meeting room for a lively panel discuss on Video On the Internet.  Our panelists were Andrew Estevez (City of Dayton TV), Brian Mills (U.D. Media Production Group), Andy Nick (Real Art Design Group), and our meeting host Jim Eller from UTS.  We discussed current trends in putting video on the internet, applications, compression software, production techniques, and our panelists addressed many questions from the audience.  This was what MCA-I meetings are all about - media professionals sharing their knowledge and insights.

Thanks for Jim Eller and everyone at UTS for hosting our October chapter meeting, and special thanks to our panelists, and thanks to Industrial Video Corporation who was our October Sponsor of the Month.

September '08 Meeting
Like many professional associations, the MCA-I Ohio Valley Chapter has seen declining membership and a lack of members who are willing to help lead the chapter.  This eroding situation prompted us to hold a "Future of the Chapter" meeting at the Miami Valley Communications Council in September.  Interest in keeping our chapter going was very strong as evidenced by the huge turnout of members who came to express their support and make suggestions.  We sat in a large "round table" discussion about the state of our chapter - we discussed meeting nights, times, frequency (how many per year and when), and meeting topics of interest, as well as our annual professional development workshop and other chapter activities.

While several members stepped up and offered to help run the chapter in 2009, it's still down to a few dedicated people to organize the meetings, keep the books, plan the activities that keep our MCA-I Ohio Valley chapter alive and active.  It was decided to cut back on the number of meetings in 2009, and perhaps supplement our meetings with informal get-togethers at a pub, or with a tour of a media-related facility.

2008 is our chapter's 25th anniversary, and we hope to keep it going for many years.  HOWEVER, it will take a few more members who are willing to make the time to help lead our chapter for it to continue.

Thanks to the MVCC and our hosts Carl Suchomel and Rich LaRue for hosting our "Future of the Chapter" meeting, and thanks to Industrial Video Corporation who was our September Sponsor of the Month.

August '08 Meeting
The recital hall at Kettering Fairmont High School was the venue for this year's Production Showcase, our chapter's annual "show and tell" where members and guests bring samples of their productions to share with the audience.  Although the attendance was smaller this year, the production samples presented by our members showed once again the amazing variety of video and media productions being done in our area.

Presenters at our 2008 Production Showcase were:
• John Rabius (Shiloh Church) - 4 TV spots for Shiloh Church
• John Pugnale (MVP Video Creations) - oral history video on cold war aerospace tech.
• John Velbeck (Insight Media) - interactive training CD for Day International
• Rick Davis & Chris Fake (DH Productions) - TV spots, and video for Hobart Corp.
• Bruce Linebaugh (LineMark Communications) - training video for Stolle Machinery
• Scott Fritz (Crown Equipment Corp.) - training video CD in English and Chinese
• Kurt McGlocklin (AMG Digital Studios) - animation demo TV spots, hockey animation
• Norm Kern (Kern Video Productions) - TV spots for car dealer

Thanks to Laura Hutchens and Fairmont High School for hosting our meeting, and many thanks to Industrial Video Corporation who was our August Sponsor of the Month.

June '08 Social Event
On Saturday, June 21st, our new chapter President-Elect Rick Davis hosted a swim party and cookout at his home near the Dayton Mall.  Everyone who came had a great time - the food was delicious and the pool was wonderful - a refreshing and fun way to spend an early summer Saturday afternoon!  Many thanks to Rick for hosting our summer social event, and to our June Sponsor of the Month Panasonic.

May '08 Meeting
Every May, we take a virtual tour of the giant NAB Tradeshow that's held in Las Vegas in April.  This year, our NAB Review was held at the offices of ROSCOR Ohio in Sharonville.  After enjoying food graciously provided by our host, Rich LaRue presented his famous slide show of his and MVCC associate Carl Suchomel's trip to NAB.  Rich's slideshow and commentary are the next best way to experience NAB without being there, and a whole lot easier on the feet! 

After the slide show, ROSCOR Ohio president and our host Tom Navaro made a few introductory remarks, which were followed by presentations by reps from three major equipment suppliers.  Tom Shirilla of JVC, Tom Parrish of Panasonic and Jim Bales of Sony talked about their companys' new products, which featured a number of new lower-priced HD cameras and related equipment.  Following the three manufacturer presentation, Tom Navaro led a lively discussion about the NAB show and some topics from the attendees, including 2K vs. 4K video and the future of videotape in the evolving digital world.

Many thanks to Tom and his staff at ROSCOR Ohio for hosting our NAB Review meeting, and thanks to Industrial Video Corporation who was our May Sponsor of the Month.

Meeting Drawing - WE HAVE A WINNER!  Neil Sharrow from the University of Cincinnati RWC was in attendance when his name was drawn from the "golden bag of fortune" - and he pocketed a cool $110 just for attending the May meeting.  Congratulations, Neil!

April '08 Meeting
We welcomed the arrival of Spring by taking a road trip up to the SW Ohio countryside to visit Cedarville University.  There, Production Services Group Director Dave Winn gave us an overview of the well-equipped media facilities of this leading Baptist university.  His groud oversees the IMAG video support in the main chapel, video and audio production, and staging of large events such as commencement.  Although not in his group, WCDR-FM radio has a number of repeater transmitters to cover much of southern Ohio and surrounding states with their Christian programming.

Dave mentioned during his introductory presentation that Cedarville has a four year plant to replace and update all their major A-V equipment.  Dave took our MCA-I group into the huge 3500-seat chapel, which has multi-camera IMAG coverage with 2 large video projection screens.  We saw the open audio control area in the balcony with a large audio board and wireless mikes, and then went up to the video control room which houses the video control gear for the chapel IMAG system, as well as video editing system with Adobe Premiere.  Dave's production group also operates a full recording studio, but it was in use during our meeting and unavailable to tour.  Dave manages the staging of many large events, and has a 20' gib arm for breathtaking shots of commencements and other ceremonies.

Many thanks to Dave Winn of Cedarville University for hosting our April meeting and for providing the delicious food from Qdoba, and thanks to Tape Central who was our April Sponsor of the Month.

March '08 Meeting
In March, we visited Media Bridges - an award-winning public media and cable access facility in downtown Cincinnati.  Christian Appleby, Non-Profit Services Coordinator talked about all of the services that Media Bridges provides the community, including several public access CATV channels, video production for community-based programming, an on-line radio station (soon to add low-power broadcasting), and a bunch of Mac computers that can be used by community residents to access the internet.

After Christian's presentation, we took a tour of the facility, which is built in an old 4-story automobile dealership building which is owned by an architecture firm.  We saw the main TV studio and its control room, the edit and graphics carrels, the administrative offices, and a really cool outdoor patio on the third floor that overlooks downtown Cincinnati. 

Many thanks to Christian for the presentation and tour of the impressive Media Bridges facility, and thanks to Panasonic, our March Sponsor of the Month.

February '08 Meeting
With the big switchover to digital TV coming in a year (Feb. 19, 2009), we got an inside look at the issue by visiting WHIO-TV in Dayton (Channel 7).  Chief Engineer Chuck Eastman gave an extremely enlightening presentation about the impending switch from analog to digital broadcasting.  Chuck talked about the basics of digital TV (DTV), what you need to receive DTV off the air, multicasting on the DTV channels, the pros and cons of digital-to-analog converter boxes, and answered many questions from the meeting attendees in a lively discussion of DTV broadcasting.

After Chuck's presentation, we were treated to an extensive tour of the WHIO-TV facilities, including a visit to the news set in the main studio, the fully-automated news control room, the newsroom and its recently-upgraded video editing cubicles.

Thanks to our meeting host Morgan Howard of WHIO-TV, presenter Chuck Eastman, and to our February Sponsor of the Month Audio-Rabius for providing the meeting food and drinks.

January '08 Meeting
We started off 2008 by visiting the home of Norm Kern and Kern Video Productions in the Dayton suburb of Centerville.  KVP has recently installed a new video post production system based on Adobe Production Studio Premium, which centers on the editing software Adobe Premiere.  What makes this system so powerful is that Premiere can seamlessly interface with the other industry-standard Adobe programs like Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects.  Norm showed how Photoshop files can be placed on the Premiere editing timeline and manipulated as individual layers.  Also, vector graphics files created in Illustrator place on the timeline and rasterize to video on the fly while maintaining the image quality. 

When the video project is complete, Production Studio Pro makes it easy to create a variety of video files as well as burn DVDs without leaving the system.  Norm runs the software on a powerful new dual processor, dual core AMD computer equipped with Matrox Axio LE hardware subsystem and drivers.  Norm showed some samples of productions done on the Adobe system, including an industrial training video and some TV spots. Everyone in the audience was able to see what Norm was doing on the system thanks to a huge 60" Pioneer plasma video display brought in for the meeting by Dayton Media Technologies. 

Thanks to Norm Kern and Richard Penner of KVP for their presentation, and to Mike Makenzie of Dayton Media Technologies for bringing the large video display.  Also thanks to our January Sponsor of the Month Tape Central for providing the meeting food and drinks.

Read recaps of our 2007 chapter meetings