Transvideo Studios focuses on Valley firms Transvideo Studios focuses on Valley firms (August 26, 2005)

Downtown company provides worldwide links to get the word out

By Katie Vaughn

If you ever tuned in to a CNN or ESPN program and saw a pundit or interviewee speaking from a Silicon Valley locale, you might not have known that he or she was making the broadcast from downtown Mountain View.

Tucked in a nondescript building on the corner of Villa and Franklin streets, Transvideo Studios has been broadcasting live to viewers around the globe for more than 10 years, working with such news organizations as ABC, Fox and CNBC.

"We have broadcasting agreements with all the major networks," said Patrick McDermott, Transvideo's vice president and general manager.

But perhaps more important than the 400 to 500 broadcasts the studio puts out each year are Transvideo's wide range of corporate communications services. Highlights include full in-studio and on-location video production, post-production editing and duplication, audio production, graphics, special effects and Webcasting. The company works with clients on a variety of levels, from creating a complete media project to simply renting out equipment.

From Transvideo's sleek lobby, hallways with deep purple carpet and colorful walls lead to state-of-the-art studios outfitted for all sorts of audio, video, broadcasting and Web projects. The facilities make use of various forms of technology, from analog and VHS to digital and DVD, plus other formats used around the world.

In a dark room on the two-story building's bottom floor sit a desk, small backdrop, huge camera and light. Used for live one-person broadcasts, the room is always set up and can be made ready to go on the air in six minutes. Another noteworthy facility is the huge, 60-by-80-foot, two-story room featuring several broadcast sets with desks, blue screens and city scene backdrops. The sets come in handy, McDermott said, when companies want to make instructional videos or hold Silicon Valley-style business meetings.

"Sun [Microsystems], for example, doesn't have meetings, it has broadcasts," McDermott said.

On any given day, the dozen employees on site -- perhaps with help from the company's nearly 100 contracted workers -- manage a variety of large and small projects, almost always in a different phase of production.

A few newly completed projects illustrate the diversity of services the company offers. For a Volkswagon trade show, Transvideo employees put together a short video that starts with a comic book-style image of a woman driving a car, and then morphs into video footage of the same scene. The company has also created a time-lapse video documenting the construction of the new Palo Alto Medical Foundation building in Fremont.

Recently, the city of Mountain View called on Transvideo to design its yet-to-be-launched Web site, and the company produced a video on doing business in the city, which will be incorporated into the site.

Additionally, the company has made promotional videos for Sun Microsystems and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation to use internally, give to clients and, in the case of the medical clinic, serve as part of a multi-million dollar fundraising effort. Employees created both videos in a documentary style, shifting from historical drawings and photographs to contemporary video footage, and incorporating interviews, to show the role Sun plays in London's Underground transportation system and the history of the medical foundation.

McDermott said such videos provide a clear message and can save corporations money when they are used often. Furthermore, he said, most people are more apt to throw in a DVD than peruse printed material. And if the video is made well, people will watch it out of interest, and receive the company's message as a byproduct.

"You can't really tell it's a promotional, educational kind of piece," McDermott said.

E-mail Katie Vaughn at kvaughn@mv-voice.com

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