charging for dubs

[Charley King]

For small dub orders, 1-5 say. I always had the policy that if the dubs were made within the session, they are just part of the editing process and included in the hourly rate (plus stock, etc). If I received a call for dubs at a later time. They were made at our convenience and the rate was $25 for first and $7.50 per dub thereafter, again plus stock. This usually translated to an amount close to my hourly rate for the room, for the amount of time it took. Dub houses are cheaper and that should be the way it is. The reason for the higher first dub is to cover setting. Hope this helps.

Charlie

[Bob Cole]

[Charlie King] “Hope this helps.”

It does help. Thanks. I’ve been undercharging.

— BC

[Charley King]

Oh by the way Bob,
These are the rates I set up about 1980, just never changed them. Saw no reason to.

Charlie

[Person Lastly]

we invested in a dub station for a few good reasons. A. all i have to do is lay the spots out and hand off to someone else to do so it doesn’t tie up the avid. B. you can charge a seperate fee C. it’s more efficient.

we purchased the pioneer 2 dvd burner deck. it’s probably already paid for itself. i think we charge something like $50 per dvd or something. it varies, but each project requires about 8-10 dvds (usually for approvals and revision viewings etc). and if you have any experience burning a dvd from a mac, it’s really really worth the investment. i rarely make any other kind of dubs (vhs, 3/4″, beta, etc). but if it comes up, i usually just make these right out of the avid, unless multiple copies are needed.

another thing are quicktime uploads to our website ftp. we do this quite a bit as many of our clients are not in town at the time of the screenings. and they’ve grown quite accustom to viewing cuts this way. it’s much better than shipping dubs to multiple locations at the 11th hr.. this process ties up the avid, but we charge sperately for uploads as well. i don’t work on long form stuff very often, so this isn’t too bad. each spot takes about 10 minutes to export, compress and upload. i think we charge something like $50 a pop for this as well. this can be knocked back based on the bid actuals by the producer here. one of those fudging areas.

[Grinner Hester]

If I wanted to get into the dubbing bidness, I’d have rates that are competitive with dub houses. I’m a post house though and I charge by the hour to edit. I’m a one mand band so basicly, people are buying me, my time and my gear by the hour. Doesn’t matter to me how they wanna spend that time but I do not change rates for thsi or that. I’m at a certain amount an hour. We can digitize, edit, animate, talk golf, or dub during that time. It’s up to the client.
The way I am set up, it ties up the whole system to do a dub right. Doing dubs at a cut rate would be canabalism for me.

[Mark Suszko]

If your area competition is cut throat, this is one of those “value-added” areas where short-run dubbing is a loss leader that distinguishes you from others. Likewise with the FTP and encoding services, those will really take off in the near future.

[Jon Boffa]

I am now in the market for a dubbing machine as my main dvd-burner is taking a beating with clients wanting numerous copies. I see it as a good way to keep more contact with clients doing this odd-job that will just occupy a machine. My local competitors charge around $25 for 1st, then $10 for each thereafter (inclusive of media). Any dvd-duplicator recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
I am also very curious to find out more about FTP uploading / web video applications. I see this also being a lucrative revenue source and an option to duplication.