These corporate behemoths have seen the future, and it scares them. They've seen how a little technology called MP3 shook the record labels and threatened their future. Internet video technology threatens to do the same, and independent producers can now leverage it, control the distribution of their films, and give the studios a run for their money. Many Internet sites have sprung up, offering to make short films and animations from indies available on the Internet. In return they offer the producer the chance to reach a global audience, and maybe catch the attention of that scout from Dreamworks.
Producers can also post their films on their own web sites and reach the same global audience.
DV cameras are cheap, light and available, so you probably have considered shooting your next film digitally, if you haven't already. But contrary to what you may have heard, shooting in DV does not automatically mean your video is Internet ready. Nor does it mean you'll automatically get better Internet video quality from a DV tape. This encoding process requires a computer with capture hardware and software that compresses the video signal into a small digital file. But even with a firewire device, the source video may still contain artifacts which degrade the picture quality of the encoded file.