technical issues getting schools to use war-zone footage

[David Bogie]

Give us a few more days, the wonks will come by with better advice, I’m sort of rambling.

How do you deliver these clips? Via the Web or on disk?
The two lowest common denominators are MPEG1 and DV. MPEG1 is out of the question, it’s too low rez. DV is a compromise because you will either have to letterbox or pan and scan to selectively frame yoru shots within the DV window while not scaling the pixels.

DV is good because you can create AVI and QT DV files.

HDV is a problem because it’s a variation of MPEG2 and requires transcoding in most video apps, not all. I wouldn’t even bother with HDV but that’s just me.

bogiesan

[Karin Muller]

Dear David,

Thank you for responding so quickly!

The schools send a hard drive and I load 450 gigs of clips onto them (37 hours of HDV footage). It’s rather important to stick to HDV since this is a selling point of the project – hi-def, professional footage shot by a Nat. Geo field producer. I may be able to create a second, DV set of the clips for lower-end schools but I already have close to 20 hard drives with various versions and backups and don’t really want to go any further along that path. I will be setting up an online editing version for schools that are not up to speed technically.

Does this help? Would a phone call be appropriate? My email address is karin@karinmuller.com

Thank you again!

Karin

Karin Muller

[David Bogie]

Just my opinion. I was hoping the real wonks would offer some more concrete advice. Give ’em a few more weeks and try some other forums around the Net because you obviously shoudl not make any decisions based on MY dumb ideas.

Your problem, as far as i am concerned, is HDV. It’s just no good for editing.
You are forcing your users to figure out how to deal with your footage. For the technically challenged, HDV is a stumper or an inconvenient hassle of copying, transcoding, importing, and managing versions.

Figure out why you decided to distribute on HDV and then reconsider that decision based on your customer feedback. Personally, and I don’t mean to sound mean, your footage would have to be ultra-compelling for us to bother with HDV. We’d find a different source first before accepting the hassle.

bogiesan

[Karin Muller]

I appreciate your feedback – you’re not the only one who has suggested downgrading to DV. I think we will in future offer both an HDV version and a DV version. Surprisingly, of the 40+ schools who signed up this first year, not a single one has asked for DV. I will definitely put this question on the end-of-year evaluation and see what kind of feedback we get.

Thank you for the suggestion!

Karin Muller

Karin Muller

[Fernando Mol]

Hi, Karin

I couldn’t resist to check in your other questions after looking at the Take2 site. Interesting project.

I do not have much of experience using HDV (my experience goes with DVCPRO HD), but I have to say that there’s no such thing as a bulletproof format for HD video.

David is not so lost by suggesting DV, but that will totally depend on the final delivery of the sutdents projects. Today, most of the producers choose to shoot in HD even if the final delivery will be on SD. The quality of the image is still better.

Definitely the help you need is a volunteer. You can post your help request in the “SERVICES” section of the COW, under the Jobs forum.

There’s also an HDV forum, no harm asking there too.

*Always share a link to your site and rate the posts. This is a free service for you and for us.

[Karin Muller]

Thank you for doing this, Fernando! As it turns out, someone did respond to that post and has been INCREDIBLY helpful in coming up with formats. I don’t know what I would do without him, and make sure I always bring him Toblerone from Switzerland and spices from Zanzibar and anything else I can think of. We got it down to three formats and ask the teachers to test 6-second clips before they decide which one to use. Our next step is to lower the resolution sufficiently so that 2 hours of footage fits onto a DVD. Never a dull moment!

What editing software do you use?

Thank you again!

Karin
karin@karinmuller.com

Karin Muller

[Fernando Mol]

Great to know you found the help you needed.

For video, depending on the project and the computer I use, I work on Premiere, Vegas or Final Cut. However, in the past year most of my works were made fully inside After Effects.

I use Premiere for in-house projects.

Vegas works smoother with footage imported from a Mac or AVCHD files. I edited a 30 minutes short film on Vegas with footage captured in Final Cut and some fellow editors were shocked when I told them. There’s the perception that is not a pro choice, but as you know the editing is not in the software. Great audio tools there.

Final Cut was my only one for almost five years, but since I’m not working on a Mac anymore I just occasionally put my hands there. It’s a great software, very stable.

*Always share a link to your site and rate the posts. This is a free service for you and for us.

[Karin Muller]

Agreed on all points! It took us months to figure out the proper codecs to export Final Cut clips into Premiere, Vegas, Avid (this was the worst), FCE, imovie, moviemaker, etc. Without my brilliant friend and volunteer, I would have been utterly lost. It’s still not easy, but I think we’ve got it pretty much worked out. If anyone reads this and wants to try beta testing – I would be thrilled to hear from you!

Karin

Karin Muller