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Upload Fees?
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Todd, everything you’re saying here is stuff my partner and I have discussed many times. Recently we did a spot for a car dealer that was going to 14 stations in three different markets. But every station got a different version of the spot, with a specific phone number graphic that allowed the client to track which buys were generating calls.
So that’s 14 different exports. And of course, one station wants MPEG-2 with slate, one MPEG-2 without slate, some QT H.264 with slate, some without, some MPEG-4…you get the idea.
My solution has been this: it’s editing time. Whatever time it takes to export these files takes my time, computer time, knowledge of compressions, proper software, constant communication with the stations to determine what their specs are….so I just charge them the same hourly rate as I do for editing. And really, when you calculate how long it takes to export, upload, etc, it ends up being about the same cost as a Beta dub for the client – I might be able to do 6-8 per hour, and our rate is $200.
Regarding DG, I believe that even if you upload just one spot, that as each station retrieves it, the advertiser or agency is charged a fee – something like $25 (if anyone knows exactly please correct me), so the client would still be paying the equivalent price of the dub. And we just found out that for HD delivery, DG is charging $250 per spot!
Like you, I’ve been doing this a very long time, and I still have to slap myself whenever I hear the words “simple” or “easy” come out of my mouth. Nothing is ever as simple or easy as it seems.
Larry Melton
1041East
https://www.1041east.com -
Todd, I’m surprised that the local stations in your market seem to handle Beta SP dubs with care. We went with DG because we were tired of our local stations jacking up the tapes we were sending out. It seemed like a no-brainer since DG’s internal QC is pretty good. Their mpeg 2 specs are really specific, and every now and then we’ll even get a call from their people about some problem in a spot that we didn’t catch.
But in the end, I’m not sure if we receive fewer complaints about spots looking horrible on air now or before we started using DG. What plays on the air is obviously not what we sent the stations, and they just don’t seem to care. It seems that once a tape/file is in the hands of a local station, all bets are off.
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In response to Larry’s post, DG does charge the client or agency a fee. So if we (production company) upload to DG, we charge the client a fee, and when DG sends the spot to the stations, they charge the client a fee. Hence the reason a LOT of ad agencies DO NOT want to use DG. If they send a spot to 300 stations a month (nothing for a large advertiser), and DG charges them $25 per send, that’s $7,500 a month or $90,000/year. If an agency has their production company send directly to stations/cable systems, they can eliminate that expense!
We even know ad agencies that don’t tell their clients this and continue to charge the same fee for the traffic delivery as before. They now pocket that $90,000. A little shady in my opinion but it’s being done.
On the DG quality control. I agree they likely do a better job than stations, but when we were using DG, they’d take our file, then they’d re-encode it for satellite delivery. Then every station in our market would take the DG MPEG2 file and they would RE-ENCODE it into their system. So by us sending them an MPEG2 file we at least eliminate one encoding pass and one chance at it being screwed up.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
gotta jump in here. We use a combination of DG and Beta and FTP uploads. FTP is mostly for local and cable that accept HD files for spots. Local stations who accept Beta and are SD only get Beta. We use DG Fastchannel for SD spots delivered to cities in other markets or statewide buys.
We charge $40 per spot no matter what, and $50 per spot if it is a :60. DG charges $25 per spot and :10 for each :30 increment over the initial :30. A beta costs less for just the stock and by the time I output and make labels I could have encoded and uploaded the spot to DG.
DG is greener. Tape is toxic. Do we need more tape? I can encode the file once and send it to 20 stations in a few clicks. I charge $40 each and I am making money.
Someone said each station has different requirements and that is true and that is why DG is a better and faster option if you are sending to multiple stations the same spot in SD.
We have not seen any difference in our market between a DG delivered spot or a Beta spot. BUT, DG’ audio will be digital 48k stereo all the way to the server, but Betacam audio is about as good as the cassette deck in your 73 Gremlin. DG sounds better….is that important.
I just did four spots to 25 stations, delivered them all via DG, took about a half hour and I gave the client a break on price because of quantity.
We have been very proactive sending HD spots to the stations who will take them, so we go the extra mile to encode those to the right specs and send em out.
I prefer DG for larger orders of the same spot to many stations, use FTP for HD spots or if I am only sending a single spot to one station who we have an FTP for. Beta for local SD stations sometimes.
$40 per spot per station…..oh and I will discount if I put multiple spots on a Beta….$40 for the first, $10 each additional.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production and Post
Owner/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com
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