Bill Davis
Forum Replies Created
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My opinions…
Paragraph 1 – you said “they paid full price for everything.” So in my book, they OWN everything. It’s theirs, not yours. Period.
Paragraph 2 – coyaly schmoilly. They are asking for their own property. Any “coyness” on their part is a reflection that they’re not jerks and feel uncomfortable. Good for them. But again, they’re asking for what is already theirs. As to someone else doing the work, again, it’s THEIR work. If they want to give their donut to 10 other shops to work with – that’s up to them.
Paragaraph 3 – A) running a business create countless problems. Get used to it. B) if they leave, they leave. What they owe you (being paid for the work you do for them) is already settled. They “owe” you nothing else. As to “I do charge pretty high, but I’m worth it.” this is your opinion. Up to now, they’ve obviously shared it. Perhaps they question that now? Or have come to believe it’s no longer true? Both happen in business all the time. The critical thing is that the “I’m worth it” part is now revealed as possibly something seen one way by you and another way by the client. Again, welcome to business. This is typical, real, often variable, and hugely affected by changing market conditions. Good lesson.
If it’s true and they can’t get similar service from another, less expensive vendor, they’ll likely be back as long as they value the quality product more than the extra costs. But just as likely, they might find 80% of your quality at 50%of your price. And that might be a better deal for them. So you’ll lose them.
This is the nature of business and of competition. It’s why all of us have to constantly monitor our position in the market, our products and services, and adjust them accordingly.
This is what business is. Period.
As to your questions:
Re: #1. Nobody but you knows. There’s no one right answer to questions like these. Hypothetically, if you charge Amount A of two different vendors in this situation, the first might be delighted and the second might bad mouth you as overpriced and arrogant for the rest of your career. Pricing standards that once might have given you a clue are largely gone. It’s a three way balancing act between your income, your market reputation and your personal growth as a business person. Good luck.
Re 2., Heck no. It’s not “unprofessional.” However, it’s very, delicate. You need to talk about a very uncomfortable area with someone who (from your own description) probably already feels guilty about having to pull the work from you. If you have friends who you respect who have a very high level of “emotional intelligence” and “interpersonal radar” talk to them about how to handle touchy situations like this. Then do the best you can and sink or swim, learn from the experience.
Re 3. Absolutely. Not whether you keep them or lose them as a client. But rather the larger game of learning how to manage business change. Because your business WILL change. That’s inevitable.
Good luck.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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We all “click in” to how things work at our own rate and only after we face the issue.
I personally struggled with keyframing in the timeline for the longest time, before I saw a guy invoke the clip based keyframe editor.
For months I didn’t even know that existed! I was adjusting all my keyframes in the un-expanded strip display which is a HUGE PITA.
I’m ashamed to admit how long I did it the dumb way.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Markus mueller] “I’m editing a video in FCPX and what really drives me crazy is the fact, that every clip I add to the timeline comes with the audio attatched to it.”
Moral?
If you’re being driven crazy by something X can’t do. Make sure it can’t do it.
After six months of almost continuous use, I’m still discovering new ways to do things inside X every week.
(there are obviously things it can’t do, but I suspect fewer than many people might imagine.)
FWIW.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Shane Ross] “Anyways…I’d love a kick ass laptop, but I need big dual screens for my work. I have a LOT of footage to sort through and need the screen space.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def”Shane,
Like if or not, this is the whole point of the database in X. Huge screen real estate is critical when you’re largely conditioned to locating clips visually. But when you tie them to a very functional database and smart keywording, screen real estate actually becomes much less critical.
Back before I upgraded my graphics card to be Open CL compatible to run X if you’d asked me, I’d have said not having my 30″ cinema display for editing was going to be a major loss. But a funny thing happened.
I now find that scrolling through pages and pages of clip icons is something I only want to do during times I select for creative exploration. For most edit purposes, where I already know what clip I need, keyword search was is so very much faster and more powerful that “clip scrolling” becomes a chore rather than something enjoyable.
It’s an alternate “option” that I highly value now. Like lots of my former thinking and editing behavior, what I used to do has altered from being the only “best practice” to my seeing it as “one of” my best practices after seeing alternate methods in FCP- X.
You may always want the “big display” of clip alternatives laid out visually. But having the choice to tap in a name and have the clip (or a smaller range of possible clips) for selection is a gigantic improvement, IMO.
Your mileage will surely vary.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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Not sure if this is on point, but theres a lot about the timeline that is “conditional” on your zoom level. For example, the time markers change increments as you zoom in and out.
Try going another level of zoom in and perhaps that may allow more precision?
If so it’s a classic case of “this is not a bug, it’s a feature!”
YMMV,
Good luck!
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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I typically use Telestreams Episode to do WMV encodes – but you might try their much less expensive Flip for Mac software. It may use the same encoding engine, which is generally first rate.
(IIRC Flip for Mac was originally a Microsoft product, but Telestream acquired it and it’s been under their brand for a while now.)
Good luck.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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Eric,
This is a case of someone who “thinks” they know what they want but doesn’t.
You could probably get somebody to rig up a pinhole camera in a hard hat, run the feed to a hard drive recorder – and generate “real time” footage of someone doing an inspection.
On it’s face, thats what your client THINKS they want.
The reality, however, is that watching even two hours of shaky “point of view” video is pretty much guaranteed to make an audience want to get sick.
You see in the human brain, stuff like bending over is visually compensated for by the ability to focus your eyes on a fixed point – combine that data with other sensory stuff like inner ear position and muscle feedback – all of which which allows your brain to decode the fact that the world isn’t actually tilting.
Disconnect the images from the eye-brain system and what you get is a vomit inducing visual field that careens around like a drunken pogo jumper.
NOBODY will want to watch this stuff. Period.
When you watch a television “home remodeling show” what you’re actually seeing is multi-thousand dollar steadi-cams that make it LOOK like someone’s walking through a home – but those shots are, in fact, the result of big money equipment and serious camera operator training.
You can’t get that strapping a camera to your head – nor, typically from handing an untrained inspector a camcorder and telling them to leave it on while you inspect things.
It just doesn’t work that way.
FWIW.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Simon Ubsdell] “My point was based on my observation of the majority of users of FCPX who post on the various forums – for now the hobbyists vastly outnumber those who may or may not be using FCPX to make a living. From looking at the take-up on FCPX templates (which is obviously an inaccurate guide), there is a huge enthusiasm for cheesy graphical and other cliches and virtually none for templates like this which address issues of technical delivery.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
https://www.tokyo-uk.com“Simon,
Hang in there.
This is history repeating itself. With FCP-Legacy, for the first 3 versions, only a few of us who wanted to play.
When the “masses” of editors caught up around Version 3, those of us who already had the FCP skills to shine were the ones able to concentrate on the work, rather than playing “learn the software” catch up.
I suspect the same thing is happening here.
You and I and Craig and Jeremy and the handful of others who’ve seen the truth behind X have to build as great a lead as we can in these early days.
With your talent for creating tools, just keep learning and refining. The market WILL catch up. Because every time an editor with similar general purpose editing requirements like me – someone who does corporate communications, web, training, and other non-broadcast “meat and potatoes” editing decides to actually learn and give X a truly fair shake, I suspect like me, they’ll never want to go back.
Once again I had a client the past 24 hours who required me to re-cut some work in Legacy. It felt like I’d taken a HUGE step back in time. And I literally couldn’t wait to get that project out of my shop because I know that every minute I’m cutting on it – I’m NOT learning more about X.
Peace.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Simon Ubsdell] “[Marvin Holdman] ”
More like they won the world series”Can you guys please start talking English so the rest of us know what you’re going on about!!!???
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
https://www.tokyo-uk.com“Simon,
It’s a US based tortured metaphor free-for all.
As the father of a number of equally lame attempts to anthropomorphize this piece of inanimate computer code and extrapolate it’s features into something easier to understand, I understand the temptation.
Human teen sports players, no matter their talent and ability, get attached to drugs, or drink, bad moral behavior, inflated egos, or simply blow out knees with appalling regularity.
A stack of code either works or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t it can be re-coded so that it does.
It’s an argument of features and implementation, not human fallibility.
Everyone posting here is smart enough to know that in the real world, the performance of a nearly endless recurrent waterfall of computer code shares very little in common with any biological organism.
But this kind of imaginary “what kind of friend would FCP-X be to ME if it was capable of friendship.” is fun. But not really all that useful, IMO.
FWIW.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Thomas Frank] “Interesting theory but then you saying the Mac Pro is the iPod shuffle in Apples computer line up.
So we will see new one soon. :)”Don’t forget – one view of the iPod shuffle is that it’s merely the “gateway drug” into the Apple gestalt.
“Wow, Bobby, this thing is tiny, beautiful, and ROCKS!”
: )
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor