Brendan Coots
Forum Replies Created
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I concur on the Panasonic HVX200 recommendation. Here’s just a few reasons:
– Shoots in a variety of formats, including DVCPRO 50 and multiple HD formats via DVCPRO HD. Avoid DV like the plague.
– The above shooting formats (not found on most affordable cameras) offer 4:2:2 chroma subsampling. In a nutshell, 4:2:2 means better detail in the individual color channels, which is crucial for good keys. The DV format uses 4:1:1 subsampling, which means half the color subsampling, and much more difficult keying.
– Recording to P2 solid state cards means no more tapes, fast file transfers to edit, and easy backup/archive. The cards are somewhat expensive but worth it.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Jose,
As these comments illustrate, there are a lot of variables that go into pricing, and if someone answered your question with hard numbers they’d be lying. The formula that Mick posted is a very sensible way to figure up what you need to charge to stay solvent, but you’ll have to take it a few steps further for your business to survive.
The next step is to evaluate whether or not your desired rate is in line with your local economy. New York, LA or San Francisco artists/businesses can get a much higher rate than someone in a small town in the middle of nowhere. The ideal approach is to research your competition to see what they are charging. If that is not an option to you, it might be helpful to research what the average income is in your area and compare it to your desired rate. While it varies considerably, it is not uncommon for video production artists to make 1.5 – 2X the average local hourly rate for medium-skilled labor. If your desired rate is too high for your local economy you will have a tough time landing ANY work so this is a crucial step in figuring your rate.
You will also need to honestly evaluate your skill set, as compared to local competition, to determine if you can actually command the rates you want. Skill level is key here, because someone with a rock-solid portfolio of stunning work is going to earn more, plain and simple. If your work isn’t as good and you are charging the same or more, they will get all the work.
Doing this type of self-evaluation will let you know if your expected hourly rate is reasonable and will actually land you work. If you find that your needs far outweigh local earning potential, maybe it’s better to go work for someone else. This is the reality-based workup that all smart business owners do before launching any business to determine if it has a chance of being successful long term.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
This happens when there isn’t enough physical distance between the two positions of a camera move. The problem gets worse when the keyframes cover a short period of time, and when the transition is dramatic (such as a very fast camera pullback that suddenly becomes a slow drift like you are creating). With bezier keyframes After Effects will do whatever it takes to create smooth transitions between the keyframes, even if that means extending the motion path into a “loop” which is the overshooting you are seeing. Technically it’s correct bezier motion, visually not so hot.
The posts above are good ways to tackle the issue, and you can also correct it manually. Set the comp viewer to “side view” and zoom in to your camera at the time of the movement that is buggy. You will see the loop I described above, along with bezier handles for the camera path. By grabbing the bezier handles and adjusting their length and direction, you can get rid of the motion “loop” and engineer a smooth transition. This might not make much sense unless you are sitting in front of the app and follow along.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Just wanted to add a quick note to this thread. For NTSC, the DVD spec calls for 720×480 video, not 720×486 D1. If you output to 720×486 DVDSP will scale the video down (and not very well) so you will lose some quality unnecessarily. The proper dimensions would be 853×480 (square pixel widescreen) or 720×480 with the correct PAR applied.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
OmniGraffle is a pretty popular program that I use exclusively for this sort of thing. Very short learning curve, lots of options and templates etc.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Primatte and Ultimatte are the two packages that come to mind for me. Ultimatte is a little more complicated to use, but you get precision control in return.
If you just need to crank out shots that all use the same environment (like your studio has a green screen stage that you use, etc.) then Keylight may be your best bet. This is simply because it tends to render faster, and it can be quicker to pull keys with.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Please don’t take any of this as criticism if it seems a tad harsh:
– Per-minute rates – TOTAL SUICIDE. I would never run a video business this way, it’s guaranteed failure. There is no way for you to put constraints or parameters on the project if the cost is purely based on TRT, so you will always butt heads with clients, and are far more likely to see meager (possibly negative) profit margins.
But what should be even more worrisome to you is that any higher-end, video-savvy client will (rightfully) interpret a per-minute rate to mean you are only going to be able to put so much work and dazzle into each “finished minute.” What if that minute calls for complex 3d animation, motion graphics, and John Mcenroe hosting? Are you still going to do all of that for $700? If your response is “we don’t offer any of those things” my response is, well, the shop down the street does.– Client tapes – When you do a work for hire GENERALLY it is assumed that the hiring individual owns the copyright to the material, including tapes. Project files (such as edits, After Effects files etc.) are different because they are considered proprietary in nature. It is solely for you to decide how you want to run your business, but this is an unnecessary wedge between you and clients. If you are worried they will take it somewhere else to edit it, then you need to evaluate your editing services and WHY a client would elect to go through all that hassle.
– Questions about rates – You wouldn’t need to wonder on any of these issues if you were charging per service, per hour from beginning to end. Now you are going to confuse your client by telling them that, while the original project was billed per finished minute, you’re now going to charge them per hour of labor. That is pretty inconsistent service and clients hate that almost more than they hate a shoddy final product.
It’s only natural, in this business, that there will be issues you find yourself butting heads with clients on. That said, some of your policy choices seem to be creating needless problems, and this is something everyone on this board has surely experienced. Over time you’ll resolve them but only by looking at the big picture and asking what is best for the client and the experience you are offering them.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
“- Graphic card? Between NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT 512Mo and ATI Radeon HD 3870 512Mo, which one is the best? Do you think that 512Mo will be enough?”
Doesn’t matter at all. Unless you have a true workstation card like a Quadro, your graphics card won’t play any real role in AE. OpenGL support in AE sucks without a true workstation card.
“- For monitoring, can you suggest a card?”
Blackmagic Decklink is my favorite, but the level of card you need depends on what type of broadcast monitor you’ll be using, and what type of work you’ll be doing with it (color correction, etc.). Other people like the Aja cards, I’m sure they’re fantastic but I’ve always used Blackmagic cards.
“- Later on, I’ll work on a 2K film. Do you think this configuration will also be good for compositing work in 2K?”
Should be fine provided that your workflow is down tight. That is almost always the most limiting factor once you get into higher end, bandwidth-intensive situations. Use of proxies and good project/comp/layer management practices will be the difference between slow, grueling work and rapid delivery.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
The Q6600 is a great chip. It’s a stock 2.4Ghz chip, but you can easily overclock it to 3.0Ghz without skipping a beat so for the money it’s a great deal. Just make sure you get a good CPU Fan like the Zerotherm if you plan to overclock it.
As for motherboards, most these days will offer the same basic set of options, just make sure it has multiple SATA ports so that you can add additional internal drives when needed, gets decent reviews with regards to stability, etc. Anything in the $120-$250 range will work fine.
Corsair brand RAM is known for its reliability. I used to pay through the nose for it, but these days RAM is dirt cheap, even Corsair. I wouldn’t get generic or lesser known RAM, especially when using a RAM-hungry app like After Effects.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Have you rendered it back out of AE to see if the jaggies are still there? When you import footage with 1:33 aspect ratio, like 1280×720 DVCPRO HD footage has, AE uses aspect ratio correction in the viewer window so that you can see the footage properly. Without this correction, everything would look squished. The trade off is that it tends to make your footage look jagged within the app, but the output will look just fine.
You can toggle aspect ratio correction on and off using one of the buttons along the bottom of the comp viewer window.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com