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Hourly Rate difference between SD and HD?
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Wes, that would be a good way to put yourself out of business. It’s not a matter or whether you work harder or not on a project. It’s a matter of investment money needed for the extra gear. Your time may still be worth the same but the equipment rental certainly isn’t. Would you expect to pay a private operator the same for a ride in a taxi as you would in a stretch limo? That being said, time is money and I think Walter has some very good points regarding skill level. Your hourly rate should be based on how much you can get done in that hour. If you take 8 hours to get something done that someone else charging $150 an hour can get done in say 4 hours, then you probably shouldn’t be charging that kind of money.
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[Wes Plate] “Me, I wouldn’t charge more. My time is worth the same whether I’m cutting cool HD stuff or lame SD stuff. In fact maybe there should be a “lame” surcharge. Let’s say you invest in an HD FCP room, everyone who uses it should help you pay for it, whether they’re in SD or HD. Are you going to work less-hard on an SD project than on an HD project?”
That’s tough to do with equipment investment and no, SD clients don’t necessarily use the same equipment as HD clients. For example, my AJ-HD1200A was $32,000 and it’s only used for HD projects. HD Plasma Screen, $3,500. Multi-Format CRT Monitor, $3,500 and so on. I made sizeable investment to support HD projects and thus HD clients have a higher hourly rate to offset those costs. As equipment becomes cheaper, SD and HD will start to come closer together. In fact my SD / HD rates are not all that far apart and my rates are definitely lower than Post houses in this market offering the same services. But I work extremely hard to keep my overhead down.
So an SD client shouldn’t have to pay any extra for my investment in HD since my SD investment was a lot less and most of that equipment is paid for. By the same token, my HD clients are not going to pay the same rate as the SD clients due to the equipment investment to support their projects. High Quality HD is not cheap.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com“The Rough Cut,” an original short film premiering December 7th in full High Definition in Atlanta.
rsvp@biscardicreative.com to reserve seats.
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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I would charge the room rental more and the edit fee the same. After all, rental houses rent HD gear for more money than SD gear. And when a client is over, they’re renting your edit room as well as your editor. It would seem to me not unfair nor uninviting to have a higher room rental fee for HD to cover the higher cost of putting that room together. But your editors are “editing” either SD or HD, so I’d keep the fee the same.
Chi-Ho Lee
Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Video Editor
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Trainer -
I agree with you about skill level, that’s why my day was an 8-hour day, even though 10-hour days are more the norm.
Back when I worked for a facility there was one rate to work in my suite, and it made sense to me. Whether my suite was being used for offline editing, high-res output, rendering or whatever, the room was occupied and unavailable to anyone else.
There was another place in town that charged one price when the Avid was capturing at low-res and another when high-res media was used. That never made any sense to me.
— Wes Plate
Automatic Duck -
This “pricing dilemna” is much like a real estate deal. Your house is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
So, you’ve done a few improvements, put on fresh paint, and spruced up the front yard. You feel like you can ask for 25% over the market because you’ve got the nicest property on the block. Go ahead. Stake out your position. You might get it and you might not. You may languish on the market for months waiting for that “sucker” to bite, or you may enjoy a bidding war that drives your asking price skyward. It all comes down to market and perception. You can’t control the market (outside forces) but you can influece the perception (your skill, sales efforts, client service, etc.).The HD market changes by the day. Newer, cheaper products are constantly blurring the “differentiation” between SD and HD. My advice would be to charge as much of a premium as your clients will swallow. Where they begin to balk is where your “value added” perception comes into play. The stronger your reputation, experience, “cool factor” the greater you can charge.
There is no “magic number”. Just like no one every pays the rate card, there is no “set” differential in your situation.mark
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i am all for charging more for the more lame the project is.
i edit for harvard, ill be a millionaire in a month!
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” This “pricing dilemna” is much like a real estate deal. Your house is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. So, you’ve done a few improvements, put on fresh paint, and spruced up the front yard.”
Adding an HD deck, monitor, and IO cards are substantial upgrades more like adding a new roof, building a new garage, a new bedroom and so on. So I’m believe it justifies the additionl cost.
CHL
Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Video Editor
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Trainer -
[Mark Raudonis] “So, you’ve done a few improvements, put on fresh paint, and spruced up the front yard. You feel like you can ask for 25% over the market because you’ve got the nicest property on the block.”
Um, no, it’s more like $50 to $75,000 worth of upgrades to our facility to support Uncompressed HD and real-time Color Correction. So that goes way beyond “sprucing up the yard.”
HDV is like putting on a coat of paint. Uncompressed HD is a major addition.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com“The Rough Cut,” an original short film premiering December 7th in full High Definition in Atlanta.
rsvp@biscardicreative.com to reserve seats.
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Yo, its the OP here. Funny, i kind of figured that no one would give me a direct answer( well okay, a couple of you did). For some reason, everytime rates come up on this forum, everyone turns into a philosopher. I guess I understand, it seems like most responders are editors who don’t own their facilities and are telling me its a question of labor not gear. Well, I’m not an editor,…hell, I dont know a timeline from shinola. I just need to set some new rates for our post facility.
From what I can gather, it seems like, Yes, I should charge more, but it should be a fairly small increase (say no more than 25%).
I guess I am in Walter’s boat. Our upgrade to HD isn’t just a change of some text in our brochure, its a large chunk of cash to support DVCPROHD and HDCAM properly. I can’t reconcile that upgrade without adding something to the rate card. -
[MatthewG] “I guess I am in Walter’s boat. Our upgrade to HD isn’t just a change of some text in our brochure, its a large chunk of cash to support DVCPROHD and HDCAM properly. I can’t reconcile that upgrade without adding something to the rate card.”
The most fair thing I can say is to increase the hourly rate by a percentage, what that percentage will be depends on your market and how much you’re going to have to spend to upgrade.
Then you charge an additional hourly rental for decks when they are in use.
So you can bump up and recoup some costs during all the hours your editors are editing, and then add an upcharge for the use of your HD Deck. Locally, a 1200A rental goes for $600 – $700/day. I don’t charge that much because the deck is here, but I do charge a fee for the use of the deck because I am saving the client money by not having to pay rental / delivery / pick up charges.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comDirector, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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