[Bob Cole]

do a search in the Lighting Pro’s forum on the COW. There have been some valuable posts by people who do very high-profile interview lighting for the big networks.

Also, Amazon.com has some decent books on portrait lighting, oriented to still photographers but applicable to video.

— BC

[Bob Cole]

Thanks Jerry! I shut down the PB and restarted with the S-video cable connected. Now I can see full-screen on my NTSC monitor, but not the movie from iMovie. We’re exporting a QT file right now.

For the future: I’m planning to put FCP on this PB and take it on location, edit a video on-site, then export the video to a Betacam tape deck for distribution. (That’s the way they want to do it.)

So I need to be able to use S-Video out for the video itself. Possible?

— BC

[Bob Cole]

It depends on who you are. If you are an established professional, you should charge for the time, perhaps at a reduced rate. If you are a student, you should not.

If you’re a pro, and if the room is so idiosyncratic that it takes a full day to learn it, why should you pay the price? Are they simply auditioning you?

I agree with some of the comments. At least, if you train for free, you should ask whether this will lead to regular gigs. If you act as if your time is totally without value, then how can you expect other people to pay for it?

— BC

[Bob Cole]

Thank you both. What I have to start from is a .psd map with an existing path drawn on it as a separate layer. I was intending to simply draw a mask to reveal the path as it proceeded. I can see that the auto-orient needs data from which to work.

Thanks for the kind assistance. You’ve given me something to work on.

— BC

[Bob Cole]

My hat’s off to you for insisting on the big deposit/final payment before releasing tapes. I don’t do that, and have gotten burned, though only twice. When clients have either failed to pay, or paid late, it has not been the loss of money that has been damaging, but rather the distraction and hassle of going after the money. I sympathize, but I wonder if in part the client was getting back at you for insisting on COD. It doesn’t sound as if they were angry at you; I would suspect internal corporate politics has more to do with it. (“Why’d we spend so much money shooting all that video??” “I’ll show ’em! I won’t pay the last invoice!”)

But I’d like to confess something that seems extremely wimpy, compared to your method: Usually I just bill the client when the job is done. No advances, except for out-of-town travel and lodging.

For bigger projects, I usually obtain a 30-30-30-10% schedule of payments (to start treatment/script, start shooting, start editing, and when the job is done). But for bread-and-butter jobs, I work on the faith that I’ll get paid. In 30-some years, it’s worked out pretty well. Almost all of my clients are either long-term customers, or come to me by way of word-of-mouth. There’s no way I could convert them. But for brand-new clients, I’ll try your way.

— BC

[Bob Cole]

Thanks Dave. Great questions.

1. I was just picking up on Trai Forrester’s remarks in a forum on his website, that VTS Sector Errors are common. I am particularly interested in whether my workflow (create DVD Image in Encore) is partly to blame. Is there a benefit to creating a DVD Folder first? Or, to burning from the DVD Folder rather than a DVD Image?

2. I only have one DVD player here. That is clearly not smart. But how many should I have, and which ones, for my QC?

3. My client’s DVD player may well be lame. When I mentioned the brand (Apex) to a true expert who works for Eclipse (verification software), he indicated that it presented particular challenges (which their software mimicks, apparently, as part of its verification procedure).

[Bob Cole]

This isn’t very helpful but since nobody else has responded, there is a thread over on discrete editors about some new Dell monitor. David Curle is excited about it; others are less it seems.

— BC

[Bob Cole]

For once, not “something I did.” Appreciate the response.

— BC

[Bob Cole]

[Larry Sherwood] “edit all HD formats including HDV and DVCPRO HD,”

Larry — I understand that if all I’m editing in “HD” is HDV/DVCProHD, the Axio SD flavor will suffice. Wearing both your tech-expert and your independent-producer hats, what do you think of that strategy?

— BC

[Bob Cole]

Thanks for telling me about Sager. Looking at their website brings up another question: processor type/speed/HEAT. Sager, for example, offers AMD, P4, & Centrino.

Video editing on location may differ from most laptop use, in that the computer will be plugged into an outlet and left on for 8-12 hours at a stretch. I’ve seen a lot of comments about heat, and noisy fans to deal with heat. I assume the source of the heat is the processor, and I’ve heard some stories about melted components.

Adobe specifies “Intel Pentium III 800 MHz processor (Pentium 4 3GHz recommended)” which doesn’t necessarily address the laptop field.

Any recommendations/experience/unhappiness with the various choices would be welcome – especially from those who, like me, will be working on the machine all day or night long.

Thanks for all the tips.

— BC