Client issue with DVD

[Bob Cole]

When I faced an arcane situation (ultra-widescreen), I created a graphic which showed the intended boundaries of the frame with arrows and bounding boxes.

You could create a “resolution graphic” with text or lines which, the label states, should be legible. This may have to be on a separate DVD, if the client wants to pop the final product in and have it play without menus.

At least that way the AV team could have both a reference and perhaps more motivation to make the DVD look right. It’s all too easy to blame someone besides yourself. An official-looking test pattern/graphic might persuade them to try just a little harder next time.

Bob C

[Mike Cohen]

see this blog post of mine – I had to do a DVD loop using all SD 4:3 material and one HD 16:9 video – thus I was committed to 16:9 SD – and I knew this owuld play on widescreen monitors and the hotel tv system. Lowest common denominator.
https://blogs.creativecow.net/blog/491/video-grab-bag

[Rob Jackson]

I am an AV technician at a 5 star resort. (I add the 5 star comment because we deal with clients who are paying for, and expecting, nothing but the absolute best in equipment, treatment, and technical knowledge. And they, as the client, can NEVER possibly ever be wrong…about anything.) We get dozens, if not hundreds of clients every year that show up with DVDs produced by someone not in-house. Most times they have never tested the DVD ahead of time. There definitely is a “certain media don’t work with certain players” effect, but we as an AV company have multiple brands on hand just in case. We get thrown under the bus by the clients, the hotel staff, and the DVD producers. We take it, apologize for the inconvenience, and bust our asses to get it fixed before the meeting starts. It is absolutely unacceptable for us to blame anyone else. However, if they never tested the DVD ahead of time, and won’t call the producer to get encoding information, there’s only so much as a 3rd party AV company that we can do.

That being said, hindsight is 20/20 and you can’t tell the client they messed up. Has the client seen the DVD work on a different monitor? Perhaps let them see that your disc does actually work and just keep them informed as to your progress in working with the AV company to find the cause of the trouble. If they see your disc working on a comparable set up, they may ease off a bit and at least spread the blame around. If the AV company is, shall we say, less than helpful, relay that (respectfully, not whining) to the client. If they see you’re trying to get to the bottom of the problem, they’ll at least appreciate that you do care things didn’t work properly and will make sure that it never happens again.

Clients who want $100,000 production on a $1,000 budget tend to be severely disappointed. Sounds like the budget wasn’t there for you to consider needing to coordinate with a different AV company and do production management of their event. All 3 parties in this case messed up. Do what you can to maintain a good relationship with the client, but understand there are some very underhanded AV companies out there that will screw things up, fix it after the event, then claim there was nothing wrong in the first place.

Good luck.

[Rob Jackson]

The timing couldn’t have been better. Just yesterday I had a client come to the resort with 2 DVDs produced by a NY production co. Of course the producers had finished it, delivered it, and were not present or available to contact during the event (we’re in SC by the way.) The client had tested the DVDs multiple times, on several DVD players. Came to the resort, we fired them up, and the DVDs played fine…for a while. Turns out for some reason with those 2 particular DVDs, (there were others on different media brands encoded by different companies that had no problems), our seamless switcher/converter didn’t like the video feed. The preview monitor showed the image fine, but nothing came off the projectors. The DVD played fine off a laptop and everyone was happy.

I’ve given the presenters my cell number and told them if the producers would like to contact me so I can describe the situation, I’d be glad to. Can’t blame them, except for only leaving 1 second of black at the beginning, none at the end, and having it auto-loop, but I’d like to find out from them what the encoding technique was.
This was a situation where there’s no known explanation yet, and I can’t accept blame as the other DVDs were fine, and they can’t accept blame as it plays on all DVD players, but they couldn’t have known what switcher we were using.

Always have a backup plan.

[George Socka]

Rob’s last point was worth the price of reading this whole thread. If the DVD is not supposed to loop in a booth, for instance, then black at the start and end to allow a player to sit on pause. or even just play without the dumb player screen saver is vital for playback flexibilty.

This had never occurred to me until I saw a client start a DVD, pause it, and then hold a card over the lens of the projector waiting for the right time to start the clip.

George Socka
BeachDigital
http://www.beachdigital.com