Critics Help

[Brendan Coots]

First of all, your clips don’t play in Firefox, which is a big problem.

Secondly, they play in Internet Explorer but skip and stutter horribly, as though you have the bitrate or other settings way too high. I am on a 6Mbps connection, and an extreme top-end machine so it’s nothing on my end.

From what I could see of the clips (even though they stutter) it looks like decent work but many of them seemed to be the same concept and execution style, just with minor variation. Also, it’s pretty clear that they are just little “test” clips. The biggest hurdle anyone must overcome getting work in this industry is the appearance of having no experience. When your clips are all just “tests” hiring managers will know you don’t have much real-world experience and will pass you by.

To remedy this, I would suggest doing at least one or two real-world promos to replace some of the stuff you currently have. Maybe one could be a 10-15 second show-opener or network ID, and the other a 30 second commercial for a product you like. The whole idea is simply to show that you know how to work on a real project, not just a simple effects test that only you had to approve or work on.

Good luck!

Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com

[Frank Thomas]

I also use Firefox and by using the “Unplug” extension, I was able to open the controller.swf in a new tab. However, as Brendan pointed out, the playback was jerky and stuttering. And, yes, they appear to be just variations of the same style/theme.

I assume, due to Brendan’s note about I.E. having no problems (apart from the stuttering/jerkiness), that you designed your site for compatibility with I.E. (known not to conform fully to W3C standards). By designing for I.E., and ignoring other browsers, you’re excluding a large potential audience. It’s also akin to saying, “I approve of and support Microsoft’s arrogant disregard to standards and their right to be a law unto themselves”.

Fix the browser compatibility and bitrate issues, so we can make a fair assessment of your work.

[Eyad Abutaha]

Brendan and frank,
I want to thank you for your feedback.
As for the skip and stutter; you are right, this happened after I captured the video using camtasia; I don’t know exactly which settings to use, if you guys could help me in this area would be nice. To render I used animation/motion jpeg A.
As for the design itself; yes they might have the same concept; and they are short; but give me a brake here I’m new to after effects, and I was browsing Andrew tutorials, am working on longer promos now.
Now for Firefox, I was not aware of this problem, I will try to fix it ASAP.
Frank, windows users do not hate Mac users and we are not arrogant; believe me. I love to use Mac, in the future maybe.

Any ways you guys been helpful,
Thanks.