[Bill Davis]

I just use the ubiquitous Costco “blue seat” cheap hard-backed chairs.

I don’t want ANY swivel. (10% of your interviewees will start the “nerve shimmy” given a swivel chair of any kind!)

I couldn’t find ANYTHING that was height adjustable and not also swivel-able. (is that even a word?)
If I MUST adjust the seat height – that’s why God allowed humans to invent apple boxes.

I don’t want to see the chair. I want to see the person in the chair – so it’s appearance is way down the list of important things to me.

My criteria are strong over flimsy – cheap over expensive – forgettable over distinctive – and something that can be the HERO chair one minute and a craft services chair the next.

That they stack to store is a sweet bonus!

End of story.

“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’Conner

[Bill Davis]

Am I misunderstanding something here?

I thought that exceeding 255 (digital value clipping) was ALWAYS catestrophic in the digital realm.

Oliver, are you saying that there’s some “hidden” headroom being applied in FCP-X and that the -20db out of FCP-7 which (as you indicate) imports as -20 in FCP-X is somehow a different level.

I’m confused.

“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’Conner

[Bill Davis]

Why not just output a full rez Quicktime file – Import that into FCP-7 – open the scopes – tweek things to your hearts content – heck, use the broadcast safe filter if you aren’t comfortable adjusting to scopes and are paranoid about illegal levels – and upload THAT resulting file for broadcast?

I’m betting all this stuff will come to FCP-X in pretty short order. But the interim steps aren’t that hard in the meantime.

Just a suggestion.

“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’Conner

[Bill Davis]

Look, I’m not arguing that this is a GOOD thing… I’m arguing it’s what the STATIONS are starting to demand.

Since I happen to have them on my desktop, here are the current KNSD (NBC San Diego) spot upload standards…

Acceptable file format for KNSD:
ü Advertiser name, Isci codes, length and HD for High Def or SD for Standard def.
ü No slates
ü No bars
ü Video file must have the exact length of the commercial
ü Video files must be in .MOV

This is a cut and paste DIRECTLY from their current spot standards page.

No slates and No bars are SPECIFIED.

Yes, they accept Digital Betacam as well. And as soon as that physical tape hits the back room, they rack it up and encode it to these SAME file standards before uploading it to Atlanta. Again, no slates, no bars. Why pay for the sat bandwidth costs for stuff like bars and academy leaders that will never see air? Makes NO sense.

Again, I’m not arguing that it’s the right way to do things. In my opinion it’s totally screwed. I’m arguing that this is where the industry as a whole is moving.
It’s driven by MONEY. It saves a TON of money to shut down local master controls and simply serve all the content from a single shop in NYC, Atlanta, or the one a couple of miles from me here in Scottsdale that serves multi-station content to the Pacific Northwest 24/7/365.

Today, you’re DAMN LUCKY if anyone qualified beyond the level of an overnight teenage button pusher sees your spot before it gets broadcast in a whole lot of cases. I know that’s the reality because I’ve spent quite a bit of time on the phone with these back room kids on behalf of my clients trying to find out if there’s ANY way to avoid the rampant center-punching of HD feeds auto re-purposed for parallel SD channels. (There never is, btw – offer to send them a separate SD letterbox upload and they admit that nobody can even access the SD feed – it’s typically just an auto-pillerboxed incremental revenue enhancer in management’s eyes.)

Argue all you want about how crappy it is – heck I’ll join in – loudly.
But to argue it’s not a reality spreading like kudzu is, IMO, denial of the first order.

Broadcast TV is under SIEGE with the economics of the internet age. And cutting expensive engineering labor is one of the quickest and easiest ways for station management to stem red ink.

Yes, there still is a decent bit of high end professional infa-structure serving of the ad agency industry and network prime time needs. But behind the scenes, I’m telling you that I’m seeing the day to day ‘non-top 10 major market” plumbing being functionally torn out across the industry.

Driven by the same forces that cause big companies to gobble up smaller ones. Consolidation drives profits. Simple as that.

And in the future, that’s likely the environment your work WILL be delivered within – regardless of how you produce it or care about it.

Sucks. But it’s reality in my recent experience.

Feel absolutely free to dismiss this thinking. It would be better for all of us if you’re right and I’m wrong.

For what it’s worth.

“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’Conner

[Bill Davis]

Chris,

Sure they do. It’s just that what you used to think of as “Broadcast” is totally different today.

I cut in my studio. The file gets uploaded directly to a station server. It gets forwarded “as is” to the Atlanta head end, it gets served from there to the transmitter in San Diego.

No human ever sees it unless it’s some minimum wage intern typing at a laptop to slot it into the digital stream.

What’s the point of bars and tone that nobody will ever see?

Look at any current page of modern station delivery standards. They want a content clip only. No bars, no tone, no slate. Just the file please.

I don’t like it one bit either – but that’s the way it is.

“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’Conner

[Bill Davis]

Personally I’m not sure what traditional bars mean in a digital world where every color values are typically represented by unchanging numeric data.

It’s not like you’re chasing analog voltage drift that requires constant tuning to specify what a particular green displays as anymore.

Color bars are kinda an analog video world artifact.

I guess they could be useful for delivery to analog stations in the outlying markets – but every single spot I’ve delivered the past year has specs that want CONTENT ONLY – no bars, no tone, no slate, no academy leader – NOTHING BUT THE CONTENT delivered to the station. The ISCII code and the clip – that’s all the broadcast industry want.

Particularly since few stations even HAVE engineering staffs anymore – the only folks who really ever paid a bit of attention to the bars, tone and slates.

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’Conner

[Bill Davis]

Mark,

The Harbor Freight Chinese Router Dimmers are about $17, handle up to 15 amp loads and are RF silent in my experience.

ITEM 43060 on their web site.

I have half a dozen of these around and use them on shoots with Arri 650s all the time.

Doesn’t really pay to build your own any more when these are so cheap and effective.

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’Conner

[Bill Davis]

Perhaps NOW you can – but for most of personal computer history if you decided you wanted to buy a PC and erase the drive and install a different OS (which were pretty rare and hard to find untll relatively recently , you STILL paid for the OEM version of MS-DOS, or Windows that all manufacturers boxes came pre-loaded with.

Dell, HP, IBM, Gateway, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc – all bundled with MS OS software pre-installed. And you simply COULD NOT purchase the box without it. It was fundamental to the badge “IBM-PC compatible”

And yes, it was exactly the same with MAC. The box did NOT work without the OS.

However, unlike the Mac market – PC boxes touted the “open” nature of the consumers choice of manufacturers but in terms of OS, there was no choice offered or even possible. if you wanted an alternate OS – you STILL had to pay for the bundled OS that you were going to erase.

I remember my friends who were early LINUX junkies moaning loudly that they had to pay the SAME PRICE for their hardware with or without the MS-OS installed.

That’s a big part of why Microsoft became such a dominant force in computing. EVERY SINGLE compatible sale – regardless of manufacturer badge was an MS sale as well.

For much of that period it worked well and met the primary needs of the market – so I’m not dissing the software itself – just that it wasn’t a “choice” for most buyers. You could freely chose your hardware manufacturer – but they ALL came with MS software “baked in.”

Just the way it was.

“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’Conner

[Bill Davis]

Well, there it is in your own words.

“…Apple has abandoned us… (SNIP) … someone who has thrown you out… (SNIP).

Couldn’t be more clear from your own writing, you feel personally wounded by this change.

It must feel terrible to feel like that. You have my honest sympathy.

(And lest you mis-interpret that in any way, I’m ABSOLUTELY serious about this. Your words reveal that you see this business decision at Apple as a deep personal wound. And I take no delight whatsoever in someone else feeling bad.

Feel free to have the last word in response. I’ll leave it at this.

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’Conner

[Bill Davis]

=I’ll just say that from what I see, your “local news station” is seriously endangered. The last High Def spots I delivered to a major market broadcaster were bounced from my studio to the station, who forwarded the clips to Atlanta, who served them back to the market since that particular NBC affiliate had recently TORN OUT master control.

I further think that the “mid level production house” is an equally endangered species.

My reasoning is that as a talented person with a laptop can perform more and more of the functions of the on-line suite, the editing functions will move CLOSER to the data origination locations. In the past, when the producer or researcher or corporate client wanted to “make video” they needed to go to a fancy room in which to do that.

If ALL the same tasks can conceivably be done on a laptop – why wouldn’t the client want the editor to simply show up at the point where the project is being assembled when the team is ready to assemble it?

What FUNCTION does the production house serve if the tools don’t require fixed racks and serious HVAC requirements any longer?

We HAVE to think about what HAS happened and extrapolate that into the future.

A two room dedicated voicebooth/mixing board and half a mile of wiring was REQUIRED when I started doing professional voiceovers.

Now, a decent mic and a Zoom H4n in a small bag is EVERYTHING I need to do the same job – BETTER, FASTER, and CHEAPER.

Look around. It’s NOT the same out there. And if you keep thinking that it is, you’re doomed.

That’s what all I’m saying here.

“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’Conner