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Video Compression Prices
Even though I have been compressing my clients shows for maybe eight years now I find that the going rates for compressing to Quicktime, Real or Windows, not to mention mpeg2 and 4 are constantly in flux with no standard out here. This work for me has been simple as pie in many cases and complete torture in others. Some post houses charge by the, hour others by the finished minute, some have setup charges, and other do not.
I now need to give a quote to a client for seven 3 minute pieces they want compressed to Real Sure Stream. These edits are already on my drives. The other project is an 18 minute film they would like me to digitize from BetaSP and compress to Real.
I am curious how some of you would charge for these two projects.
Michael brassert
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3 Replies
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I always price by the hour in these cases. How much time do you spend doing the setup, how long does your computer take to do the compression, do you have to upload the files to a server? How long does that take? Do you need to test it once it is on the server? Your expertise has value and you should charge for it.
We charge the regular hourly rate for the machine and man, and when the computer is chewing on a longer compression that does not require your attention, we charge about 60% of the hourly rate.
Faster machines can compress faster so you can then charge less. As long as you can honestly keep your billable hours to a maximum.
Good Luck Michael.
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I’m with Dean on this as well. If I am on the box tweaking and being careful with the footage I’m charging a rate. but I also charge for the crunch time if it starts to add up.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
I have some low budget commercials to compress to windows media for streaming. I am in the process of writing up my contracts. Does 30$ cdn for the compression of a 30 second spot sound like the right price ?
I do not want to do this work for free, as I am already do the commercials for a very good price (Commercials are for DVD delivery for trade show)…Thanks for any insight,
Mark
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