Symmetric Media Video Production

May 21st has been declared Dennis Richmond Day by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose. And tonight Dennis will sign off for the last time after 40 years with Oakland based KTVU Channel 2.

Dennis has been a favorite of mine. His straight-talk way of reporting is genuine and many people around the Bay Area love him for that. With Dennis, there is no BS, just the facts. His delivery is calm and calculated, yet his presence emanates intense energy. There were some stories - the truly heartbreaking and devastating stories - where I thought Dennis was going to explode right there on my tv set. Now that's extraordinary news reporting.

Dennis began at KTVU as a clerk typist in 1968. He soon moved on to reporting and became anchorman for KTVU's 10 O'Clock News. He announced his retirement earlier this year.

Six months before he was to retire, Dennis' doctor discovered he had prostate cancer. Luckily for Dennis the cancer was found early and he was able remove it with surgery. Since then Dennis has gone public about his brush with cancer. His message is simple: routine PSA blood tests can save your life.

I'm going to miss Dennis. The 10 O'Clock News won't be the same without him.

A look back at Dennis Richmond's career reporting at KTVU:

Dennis shocks the world with his retirement announcement:

About his recent health issue:

Three cities declare Dennis Richmond Day:

We're having a blast with our new addition to the studio. The Sony PMW-EX1 XDCAM is a full High Definition camera capable of recording video at multiple frame rates. It uses SxS ExpressCard memory instead of tape, which gives us the ability to pop the memory card into a laptop and view the footage right there on location. This feature alone has already saved us time during production.

The image quality is stunning. I'll have samples up soon. Drop us a line if you're looking for a local cameraman with a Sony EX1 in Oakland, San Francisco, or the Bay Area.

Conference and event videography is our specialty, and that's why Prosper.com (the people-to-people lending marketplace) hired us again this year to cover their annual conference in San Francisco. Videos from Prosper Days 2008 have been posted to Google Video and YouTube. Hi-Resolution Flash videos are also available.

Need video coverage for your big event? Drop us a line. We'll create a custom package based on your needs.

March 8th was International Women's Day. Celebrating 20 Years of grantmaking, The Global Fund for Women partnered with volunteers from across the country to organize house party events to celebrate and build awareness for women's issues. I created the DVD that was included in the event kit. They loved my idea of making a true or false quiz using DVD menus. It turned out great.

I also took care of the disc duplication and printing.

Have you ever downloaded a video and found it wouldn't play on your computer? That's because not all videos are alike. In order to play a specific video, you'll need the software that's required to play it.

Macs users can add support for most video formats by downloading two programs, Perian and VLC. Perian is a free tool that installs the necessary QuickTime components for many popular video formats. It saves you the hassle of installing each software package one-by-one. VLC should fill in any gaps left by Perian. VLC will play pretty much anything, and it's cross-platform so PC and Linux users can use it too.

Another tool to consider is the Flip4Mac plugin for viewing Windows Media files in Apple's QuickTime player. Microsoft doesn't support Windows Media for Mac anymore, and instead they have acquired Flip4Mac to replace Windows Media Player.

These tools should enable your computer to play just about any format out there. Enjoy!