Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQ)

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions about this site, Borehamwood Camcorder Club, or amateur videomaking in general, you are welcome to email us or visit us. See the "Location & contact" link on the left for details. Before you do, though, please take a few moments to look through the rest of this page to see if your question is already answered here...

A couple of general requests first:

• Do not add the BCC email address to mailing lists, especially commercial ones, without my permission. I already get far too much spam, and the people around me are tired of having to listen to my ranting about how spammers should all be used for medical experiments.
• Do not send unrequested attachments, especially large ones, or ones that are in proprietary formats. "Large" means anything over about 500K. "Proprietary" means any format that can't be reliably read by a program other than the one that wrote it. Yes, this includes Microsoft Word documents. Thanks.

Questions

Can I come and visit you?

Can I link to your pages?

Can I have a link on your site?

I have a really cool product or service that I'd like your members to know about.

I have some equipment to sell. Would any of your members be interested in buying it? or Where would be best to sell it?

I'm just starting in videomaking. What equipment should I buy?

We're making a TV series about X. Do your members have any footage that we could use?

I have a film festival or competition that I'd like you to enter.

Cine to video transfers

Answers

Can I come and visit you?

Certainly. There's no need to ask permission or get an invitation; just turn up on any evening that interests you. The best ones to come to are normally competitions or members' videos. These will give you some idea of the general standard of videomaking within the club. This in turn should let you figure out whether you'll be learning from us or teaching us ;-)

Can I link to your pages?

Yes. There's no need ask permission, although if you let me know about your link, I'll probably link to you in return. (See the next question.) Please link to the front page (http://www.borehamwoodcamcorderclub.org.uk), unless there's a good reason to link somewhere else. (Yes, I know this isn't the URL that appears in your browser's address bar. I use a redirection service to allow me to host the club site on the same server as my personal site.)

If your links have descriptions (like the ones on our links page), please mention that we're based in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. This is because one of the purposes of this site is to attract new members for our club. If someone is looking for a club to join, knowing where we are before they click your link helps them to decide whether our site is likely to be worth visiting.

Please don't include the club's email address. This is because the more places on the net an email address is visible, the more spam it tends to attract.

Can I have a link on your site?

Yes, provided that the following are true:

• Your organisation or site:
  • is at least vaguely related to amateur videomaking, and/or
  • has a real-world presence in or near Borehamwood.
  and
• You link to us in return.

Email me with the URL of your site and a brief description, and it should be done within a day or two. If your site is for a camcorder club, I'll automatically add it to both the alphabetical list and the list by region. We reserve the right to refuse to link to a site that meets the criteria listed here if we feel that the site's content is or might be illegal, offensive or otherwise inappropriate.

I have a really cool product or service that I'd like your members to know about.

If it's really cool, I might remember to tell them about it. If you have a website to promote, I'm more likely to take a look at it if you ask for a link exchange, instead of a free advert.

I have some equipment to sell. Would any of your members be interested in buying it? or Where would be best to sell it?

We're generally not interested in buying second-hand equipment. Consequently, we don't have much of a clue about how to sell it, either. We do hold auctions, but typically, they happen no more than once a year and are for members only.

I'm just starting in videomaking. What equipment should I buy?

Short answer: whatever best fits your needs and budget. Longer (and less glib) answer: if you come along to our meetings, our members will be happy to advise you on this and many similar questions, far more effectively than is possible through email.

We're making a TV series about X. Do your members have any footage that we could use?

Probably not, but I suppose if you don't ask, you'll never know...

I have a film festival or competition that I'd like you to enter.

If it's within the United Kingdom, we might be interested in entering. Otherwise, we're unlikely to bother.

I have some cine film that I'd like transferred to video or DVD. Can you do this? or Do you know of anyone who can do it?

Cine to video transfers are not something we are equipped to do. We've all used video for some years, and anything on cine that we thought was worth preserving would've been transferred long ago.

We link to several companies who offer various forms of transfer service. We do not endorse any of them (or any company that we link to), as we have never used their services. In other words, if your priceless memories come back in shreds or don't come back at all, don't blame us.