[Bill Davis]

I have two in my kit.

The “expensive” one is a SanDIsk Imagemate SDDR-92 CF reader. It was probably about $40 bucks.

The cheap one is a Digital Concepts “6-slots Hi speed 51 in 1 Card reader/writer. It probably cost $8

Both work just fine via USB.

I own both because in my experience, it’s pretty easy to bend the delicate pins on a CF card – and the SanDisk unit has a much better engineered card feed slot – so the chance of bending a pin on the CF downloads that I do all the time on my 5d footage rolloffs are easier.

The cheap one reads virtually ALL card formats. I use it mostly for smaller cards like SD, memory stick, etc – devices that don’t have those hair fine pins.

I have used the cheap one to read CF data – I’m just VERY careful about seating the cards since I don’t want to screw up the pins.

My 2 cents.

“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 was not taking any of you guys to task.

My second post merely addressed the post above it…

to wit: MortGoldman2 = Julian Assange

That, to me was insulting simplification. These things are FAR from equal in my thinking. So I though it worth a counter comment – which is what I did.

I’ve felt for a long time now that the discussions about FCP-X – while understandable, legitimate and largely fair – often veer into “crazy land.”

Stealing Steves work and posting it on the net, in my view, is morally repugnant. Exactly the same as it would be if someone did the same to any other content creator here. The fact that what they ripped off was HUGELY INTERESTING to me – does not excuse that it was wrong to do.

I should be grown up enough to wait the extra week. And whoever ripped this stuff should have been grown up enough to do that as well. By publicallly saying so, I’m hoping that the younger folks here who are listening and forming their “moral compass” about their video careers begin to understand that IP theft is not victimless – it’s a fundamentally dick move. And when we see it happen, we should say as much.

The Assange thing is a far different matter for the reasons I listed.

Disagree if you like. That’s fine. But this is my public position and I’m sticking with it.

“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]

Really?

You equate someone releasing emails specifically about on-going purely taxpayer funded government operations with someone hacking into a private business server in order to rip off and pre-release clearly copyrighted private business communications?

The sense of “entitlement” exhibited here is pretty breathtaking.

Essentially I hear many people saying:

“This company has NO RIGHT to be able to run their business as they see fit and protect their intellectual property in any fashion they choose – not if it’s going to make ME feel “left out of the loop.”

Most people here create content.

I bet if the shoe were on the other foot and someone was leaking YOUR copyright content into the big universal internet stream before YOU said it was ready – you’d be yelping like a cranky 2 year old.

And lots of people are – essentially arguing that since it’s important to YOU, therefore you have a right to know about it ASAP.

But you know what? You don’t.

Neither do I.

The OWNERS of the property have the right to release their IP as they see fit. The same way all of US do when we create something.

It might make you feel better to know more sooner. But the injured party here is Steve M.. EVEN if it does nothing but promote his product – that ENTIRELY misses the point. Someone who is NOT the author of this work co-opted a decision that rightfully belongs TO the author of the work. That’s the ONLY thing that matters here. At least if we all also want to protect our rights to control OUR content as authors in the future.

Simple as that.

“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]

Doesn’t matter WHO you are.

Your program is going into a market next to sixteen dozen others. Most of which have huge competitive advantages.

The ONLY question left in this astonishingly overcrowded field is to figure out what possible motivation anyone would have to select YOUR tape over one of the zillions from Denise Austin, Chuck Norris, or the dozens of other established names working the field.

Those competitors have brand recognition, marketing savvy, and MASSIVE budgets. You probably don’t.

Interestingly, on the “rich investors look at possible products to back” program Shark Tank, there was an ex marine drill instructor type guy last season that had some rubber band gizmo he wanted one of the “sharks” to partner on. One particular Shark is a major infomercial guy who’s sold a zillion dollars worth of direct TV stuff. Clearly doing a promo video for the thing would have been incidental to a guy like him with a rolodex direct to every shopping channel boss. He asked a couple of pointed questions about whether the inventor had footage of “multiple personal success” stories? And upon finding out that this critical component didn’t exist – he lost interest instantly.

In short order, he (and all the other potential investors) passed. Why? The clear implication is that the fitness product market is so saturated that it’s nearly impossible to break through in an environment so cluttered with competition.

That seems to be the reality out there.

And I don’t think it’s changing anytime soon.

So be very careful about investing too much in pursuing this particular dream.

It’s a very, very, very, very common dream. And has been for so long that most of the needs in the market have been LONG AGO fully met.

“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 don’t want anyone to think I’m denying that there are a LOT of stations still “requiring” tape.

I’m just saying that a LOT of them are doing that from INERTIA.

The sales folks pass along that “requirement” to the clients. The clients comply. And that tape gets delivered to someone in the shop who immediately transcodes it back from tape into the same kind of digital file where it started.

My overarching point is that NOBODY’s sharing accurate information up and down the line.

This is because the broadcast industry is still built on a SILO mentality. Once upon a time, Engineering set the standards, that got to Sales, and that was the accepted STATION chain, overseen by station management who kicked butt if something didn’t get done right. The Station Chain interfaced primarily through Media Buyers in the middle who coordinated what stations needed which formats controlled by the media buy. At the OTHER side of this transactional process – The media buyer coordinated with the Ad Agency, the Agency talked to the Production Team. And there was quality control and accountability built in along the whole chain of command.

Look out there today and what do you see?

The Station Chain is in RUINS. There is NO engineering staff. You’re lucky if you have a minimum wage overnight guy feeding your costly antiquated tape into a digitizer. Much more likely the station will want YOU to be responsible for the upload yourself!

On the other side, you may or may NOT have an agency, that agency may or may not have a media buyer. It’s just as likely that the “producer” responsible for EVERYTHING on the former Agency side is some youngster with FCP on a laptop.

There is NO chain. There is NO supervision.

And worse, virtually NO standards. I don’t know if I mentioned it or not, but on my last few distributions, both the agency and I were informed that it didn’t really matter whether we sent HD and SD formatted tapes because they were going to just take my HD file, upload it ONCE then electronically “pillar box” and auto feed it into the cable system to run as that station’s SD cable feed! So our carefully prepared HD format spots WOULD BE cropped on some stations and there wasn’t anything to be done about it because the whole split off the HD, SD cable signal was walled off from human intervention.

I’ve heard reports of systems showing the work in letterbox, pillarbox, and even SQUEEZED – all auto broadcast from the same 16×9 HD original.

And I shudder to imagine what my carefully created pictures looked like after getting bounced around the country on digital feeds and re-formatted, squished and codec’s into submission.

That’s the reality today.

So read the “instructions” and pay for those physical tapes if you like. But behind the scenes, I’m telling you that broadcast is devolving into a “least common denominator” industry. And it’s so screwed up that very often nobody in the stations is left to tell anyone that the page of “delivery standards” that specify the type of tape must be submitted — are left over from before the engineering staff was all let go 8 months to a year ago. AND that the kid feeding the station promos into the SAME stream where you’re work is going tomorrow is NOT using a tape stage anymore. So why should you?

That’s what I’ve seen out there over the past year.

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]

Geraldo,

Creating a super-bright – properly color balanced light pulse for a fraction of a second is not particularly complicated nor particularly energy hungry.

Creating that SAME quality of light that needs to burn continuously for an HOUR of more is a whole different proposition.

There are three major technologies for continuous lights for video – and a couple of minor ones.

The majors are tungsten, fluorescent, and LED. The minors are HMI and Ceramic Discharge. (These are “minor” only in that they are typically either more expensive or less common than the “big 3”)

Tungsten is the traditional video lighting gear. Well developed. Manufactured for a LONG time. Extremely flexible since manufactures have had decades to design and build many different kinds of fixtures and accessories to make it soft, hard, focused, pattern projecting and anything else you might need. But it’s typically very power inefficient since much of the power you use goes up in heat.
The color temp of tungsten is fixed and dependable.

Fluorescent is increasingly popular – but less flexible than tungsten. It’s more efficient and comes in a few useful form factors. In long tubes, it creates a broad soft source – much like a tungsten lamp in a soft box. In the more modern form factor of a spiral tube (kinda like a traditional bulb) it works “kinda” like tungsten, is more energy efficient – BUT has a limit as to the brightness and “throw” it can achieve.

LED is the most energy efficient of the three – but it’s also the newest and the least developed technology. It doesn’t work like any of the others since each LED is essentially it’s own miniature spotlight. So it’s MUCH more difficult to control than tungsten. A good example of this is that barn doors on a tungsten fresnel cuts the light off of a surface or scene cleanly – but the same barn door on a LED unit just masks some of the “spotlight” rows and yeilds an ugly “window blind” effect.

Both Fluorescent and LED are spectrum limited and can put out light that can appear too “green” under certain conditions.

I say all this so that you’ll understand that there’s a LOT about lighting for video that’s different than flash photography. And you simply can’t think about them the same way. You’re asking for video lighting to work like flash photography – and it simply doesn’t. Bright, portable, and relatively affordable? – that’s flash photography. Video lighting is expensive, heavy, and generally a pain in the butt.

But it’s also critical to good results since all any camera does is record reflected light.

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]

Most major cities have an “Ad Club” or similar organization where all the media reps and production houses hang out. Just look it up. Go to a few events and mostly get to know the people in these organizatons. Sooner or later you’ll begin to understand who the top shops in your community are and who makes the purchasing decisions on ad production.

Just understand that it’s a long process of building trust. Not something where you walk in, tell someone that you can make great stuff – and walk out with a pocketfull of orders.

You’re a RISK right now. When they get to know you and your work, and begin to feel it’s NOT a risk to try a new vendor, you’ll begin to see results. That’s how business has ALWAYS worked.

“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]

Do NOT waste your time and effort going to tape unless a station SPECIFICALLY tells you they MUST have it.

Virtually NO serious operating stations require tape anymore. Even the smaller cable markets and local stations likely have inexpensive FCP or Avid stations in house producing content for air and NONE OF IT goes to tape before it gets served to the audience.

If you’re distributing widely, you should have a media buyer involved (or you’ll waste a LOT of money on ad rates that would be a lot lower if you have a knowledgable pro negotiate them) and that media buyer should know precisely what formats each station requires.

If you go through the stations directly, expect them to send you pages of cryptic “spot standards” that they’ll tell you you must conform to to make the spots airable. But in the back rooms of their own operations NONE OF THEM are producing to these standards. They’re almost always cutting their in-house stuff on the same FCP or Avid systems that we all use – and SOMEBODY on any station’s in-house promo creation team knows the encodings you need to use to make your stuff airworthy.

I haven’t delivered a physical tape to any broadcaster in at least nine months.

So be VERY cautious before you waste money going from digital to tape – only to force the broadcaster immediately transcode it from tape to digital in order to air it.

BIG waste of effort and time.

YMMV.

“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]

Your need to work around this issue is thanks to global economic trade policies – NOT technical issues in any way.

It’s “baked in” to the camera design in order to avoid IMPORT/EXPORT DUTY – by keeping the camera classified as a STILL camera rather than as a video camera which is in a separate tariff class.

There’s plenty of material on this subject on the web if you care to search it out.

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]

In my opinion, one can do both simultaneously ONLY if you’re content to do each in an extremely MEDIOCRE fashion.

The mediocre still shooter AND the mediocre videographer do the same thing. They start their machine and then start capturing images accepting that whatever is coming through the lens will be “good enough.”

A “professional” photographer has their brain dedicated to watching a stream of unfolding images looking for the PERFECT MOMENT to capture. They reject 1000 moments until they either discover or MANIPULATE the light, angle, composition and action to achieve something beyond just “acceptable.”

This require constant refinement and constant vigilance to achieve quality.

The “professional videographer” similarly is CONSTANTLY assessing an unfolding stream of imagery. They’re looking at how THIS scene begins, how it unfolds, and how it should end. To strip your brain away from “is this scene unfolding correctly” and wrench it over to “should I perfect this still image” puts both the stream AND the still at risk.

If you’re any good at EITHER shooting stills or shooting video – while you’re doing one, there should be no brain share left to do the other – precisely because you’re focusing ALL your attention on getting whichever is your current job done well.

I shoot both stills and shoot video. But I DEMAND that my clients tell me which is my primary task every time I focus my attention on the scene. I can do one well, then switch to the other, but every single time I’ve tried to do both simultaneously I’ve watched my results dumb down to a point where the results have embarrassed me.

My two cents, anyway.

“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