What do we need to know…beforehand

[Allen Zagel]

Hi

There’s a free piece of software called G-spot that should give you all the info you need about a video clip. Format, Specs, Etc.

https://www.headbands.com/gspot/

It really doesn’t install, just unzip it, run it and bring in the clip.
Allen

ASX Media Group, Inc.
http://www.asxvideo.com
NEW DVD – Europe, Trains-n-Trams

[Brian Nardone]

Well that sounds really great Allen and thanks for your idea. I’ll definitely download that this morning and see if it answers our need. Thank you very much.

[Brian Nardone]

Thanks again Allen. That is a very useful program and I’m sure I’ll use it a lot. In addition though, despite all that info, I’m not sure what to include on a list of important questions to ask and things to know. That’s not readily available. Do you know of a list? Thanks again.

[Allen Zagel]

Hi Brian
No pre determined list. Just ask away when you have a question. There’s no such thing as a stupid question. If you need any help, this is the place to be!

Allen

ASX Media Group, Inc.
http://www.asxvideo.com
NEW DVD – Europe, Trains-n-Trams

[Rob Mack]

If your sources are all acquiring their own footage from camera and then editing it before giving it to you then I’d think you could specify the format they deliver to you, within reason.

As far as I know, SECAM is pretty much the same as PAL, so if you’re asking for standard definition video you’ll essentially be dealing with PAL or NTSC video. If they are doing the acquisition and editing then analog is probably out of the picture – they should deliver digital video.

The simplest thing for these sources to do would be to send you DV tapes. Then the main issue is PAL or NTSC, both of which are easily handled by Vegas. Asking for DV on tape standardizes everything and pretty much eliminates any problems of unreadable files from FCP systems.

There are down sides to this, of course. While DV on tape has a certain easy consistency, DV is not a very good format for final renders because it doesn’t retain a lot of color data. Text and graphics will suffer. Also, You have to get tapes shipped from all over the world, which might not be what you want. Finally, you’d have to have a camera or deck to play the tapes so you could recapture them into your local computers.

You might be thinking that since the video providers are all over the world that it’d be easier/more timely for them to send/make available the edited files to you over electronically. You could certainly do that but master files could be prohibitively huge. If that is the case then why not ask them to make the mp4 files for you — they have to render them to something small enough to efficiently move around the internet so why not just have them do the renders you need?

Rob Mack

[Brian Nardone]

Hey Rob,
That is good info and helps me to alter my plan productively. It does occur to me now that you pointed it out that I can simply pay them to have the film rendered to .mp4 so we can apply relevant titles later.

Can you think of any specifics about the .mp4 format that I should request from them that I wouldn’t be able to do to the film after it is rendered, like viewing size or frame rate of 15 for multimedia?

Brian

[Rob Mack]

You say that you want to add titles after they deliver edited video to you.

I wouldn’t just run with my recommendations, just take them as a jumping off point. I’m not going to recommend that they deliver video to you in one format or another, except to say that you should specify what they deliver.

But let’s take some points here. It sounds like you want them to shoot standard def video and edit it before delivering to you. The sources are worldwide and will be PAL or NTSC. You haven’t said how you want them to get the video to you but your choices are for them to ship a tape, ship a data or mpeg2 DVD, or deliver electronically.

Shipping adds time to the process. Shipping tape means you need a deck and also time to ingest the media. Data DVDs or Video DVDs are cheap to ship but their capacity is limited. Electronic delivery ties up a couple of computers to upload and download a file. Files could be a few GB and if many people are providing files you might be better off with shipping than trying to download a handful of files at once.

We actually do this where I work for a client’s quarterly meeting in either San Jose, Texas, or Germany. We’re in San Francisco. Generally, we have a very strict deadline to meet so what we do is edit the project, add titles based on the client’s artwork, deliver lower resolution WMV files for review, and then deliver a high resolution WMV over the web while also shipping a tape or disc. We deliver both ways simply as a backup and shipping is timed to meet the deadline. If something goes wrong with shipping then the client still has the online version available.

I don’t know if I’d want to add titles and rerender an mp4 file. No experience there. Maybe it works out fine.

Maybe there’s a way for you to create XML title files that exist separately from the video. The potential advantage might be that you can create localized versions in sever languages.

Rob

[Brian Nardone]

Thanks very much Rob, you’ve added some interesting options.

Brian