It's that time of year when we dust off our pile of good intentions and decide how this year will be radically different and dramatically more productive! Well, according to one video editor in Virginia, those don't have to be hyperbolic statements if you follow five easy steps to boost your system. With some essential upgrades to your hardware (and software), you can actually see some of the drama everyone is talking about with Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, such as video encoding that takes two hours instead of ten and ensures you can actually meet the rush deadline that just came up.

Won Novalis' article, "Essential Ugrades to Boost Your System," for the After Effects user site ae.tutsplus.com presents an incredibly useful upgrade guide to start the year off right. Won breaks it down into five steps complete with supporting graphics and videos, including:

   1. Get a Bigger Desk (Memory)

   2. Get Lighting That's Easy on the Eyes (Monitor)

   3. Hire a Video Specialist With Her Own Office (Video Card)

   4. Get More Storage Space (Hard drives)

   5. Get a Presentation Room to Review Your Work (I/O Card)

Today, we're excited to announce a recent addition to our executive team: sales and software veteran Daniel Marshall. As our new VP of Sales, Dan will spearhead development of a global sales team and worldwide sales strategy to drive adoption of Elemental’s enterprise-class video encoding products. After 25 years in the trenches of the enterprise storage, media and broadcast industries, Dan has had an influence on every part of the sales cycle. Learn more about his past successes in the news release. Dan has built a legion of relationships in the video industry in boardrooms, trade show floors and cocktail lounges around the world. Oh, the stories he could tell...

When he's not racking up frequent flyer miles like George Clooney in Up in the Air, Dan calls San Jose home (where he also houses his collection of rare comic books and vintage guitars). An accomplished guitarist, over the past 30 years Dan has played everything from folk to heavy metal in music venues around the Bay Area and with such legendary bands as Silk and Steel and Yellow Hurl.

What will it take to create a video processing system that maximizes content output and minimizes management input?

Producing a "smarter server" will take a lot of time and effort, but the seeds of innovation are clearly in the market today. While an industry roadmap is not yet established, Elemental CEO Sam Blackman weighs in on the development potential for a smarter server. Here's an excerpt from the Streaming Media article:

Last month at the NewTeeVee conference, Beet.TV spoke with Sam Blackman, Elemental's CEO about the launch of Elemental Server, a new appliance for transcoding HD (and SD) video at "faster-than-real-time" rates and market implications for online video technology and products attempting to satiate the demand for video.

Fresh off back-to-back demos of Elemental products over in Amsterdam at IBC and down in California at the GPU Technology Conference and Adobe Max, we figured it was about time to give the home turf some love.  Just like our software, we’re catering to multiple audiences, so whether you’re a software developer, investor, videographer or just a curious technology enthusiast, there’s an opportunity for you to check us out this week or next week.

Wednesday, 10/21, 12 to 2 p.m. : Elemental hosts Lunch 2.0

Elemental Technologies, 620 SW Fifth Ave.

If you’ve never been before or attend every month, Lunch 2.0 is always different (new food, new faces, new technology).  According to organizer Jake Kuramoto, “Portland Lunch 2.0 is a networking event, and we like it that way. Because it’s during the day and not as tech-focused as other Portland events, you’ll see new faces. But never fear, you’ll also see the familiar faces you also see at the myriad of evening and weekend events.”