Chris Blair
Forum Replies Created
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Interesting stuff! Thanks Bob
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Bob Zelin: REPLY – there are two cable types – TwinAx which can run 10 meters (30 feet) and Fibre cable
So does the fibre cable give you longer runs than the TwinAx?
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
If a 7 minute video looked good at that pixel size and at that final file size…then you’re definitely on the right track. We usually shoot for file sizes in the 3-4MB/minute range, so a 7 minute video for us (even for iPhone streaming) is usually about 21-30MB in final size.
You don’t want to use interlaced if the final output is on a computer screen…so just do it progressive. If AME has a deinterlace filter, you might try it on the source file and see how it looks in the final render. Do a short test…say 30 seconds before you render the whole thing. It might help get rid of interlace artifacts when there’s fast movement in the frame. From out experience, deinterlace filters are hit or miss. Sometimes they help, sometimes they just make the resulting file look slightly blurry depending on the source file. You want to place the filter on the source because you want to deinterlace before the file is sized to the final 640×360.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
A lot of web video journalists have written that Google/YouTube is also considering choosing Theora as their video standard, which started life as On2’s VP3 codec back in the late 90s. On2 released it into the public domain in 2001 and a group has been working on it ever since.
In some recent quality comparisons, most people think it looks as good as YouTube’s current H264 at comparable bit-rates. It’s also already natively supported on Firefox, SeaMonkey, Chrome and Konqueror (Linux). I don’t think it’s any accident that Google bought On2, and with YouTube, they probably have as much clout as Apple when it comes to influencing video standards for both desktop and mobile video.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
1. As a CONTRACTOR/FREELANCER, what information or materials would you like to have from your CLIENT when accepting a job? For example, Is there a script? Budget amount? Provided art work, and so on.
Like Mark said, the more information we have the better. Script, storyboards, design elements, other marketing materials that run concurrently with the campaign, really ANYTHING that’s relevant to the project and anything that can help us make it mesh with the company’s other marketing and advertising.
I do design as well as shoot and edit, and I LOVE getting layouts from other graphic artists. I know a LOT of graphic artists who despise this because they believe it puts them into a design strait jacket. I actually think it does the opposite. It gives me colors and fonts and general design rules which frees me to find creative ways to animate or integrate those into the particular project.
2. As a CLIENT, what do you expect from your CONTRACTOR? Like daily communication? Do you prefer phone calls or emails? What if the contractor needs more time or money for stock footage? And so on.
We use freelancers for shooting, editing and design. I don’t need daily communication, but I need at least enough regular updates to know where the project is going. I actually prefer emails because it gives me something to track, and more importantly, it gives me physical proof of what people promise and say. More important than that though is I want freelancers or contractors to DISCUSS what they’re doing and ask for regular feedback.
I don’t like when a contractor works in a little bubble and doesn’t share back and forth about layouts or rough edits, or discuss the footage they’ve shot. I find that many people in our business treat what they do in a very personal way, and they’re very sensitive about the decisions they make. So much so that they don’t like constructive criticism and see any criticism as an indictment of their skills. When in fact, discussion and review by pros almost always improves a project, whether it’s through better ideas, tighter editing, better lighting, or more compelling and communicative design.
So I expect a contractor to be a pro and make decisions and move a project forward, but also keep me informed and ask my opinon about what they’re doing.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Your snapshot says the video is 1440×1080. Also you need to provide more info, like what is the final delivery medium and what is the final size of the files (pixel size not file size).
Generally two-pass encoding is superior to one-pass, although a one-pass constant bit-rate can produce excellent results as well at high data rates.
But it’s impossible to give you answers without some more specifics.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
In response to Larry’s post, DG does charge the client or agency a fee. So if we (production company) upload to DG, we charge the client a fee, and when DG sends the spot to the stations, they charge the client a fee. Hence the reason a LOT of ad agencies DO NOT want to use DG. If they send a spot to 300 stations a month (nothing for a large advertiser), and DG charges them $25 per send, that’s $7,500 a month or $90,000/year. If an agency has their production company send directly to stations/cable systems, they can eliminate that expense!
We even know ad agencies that don’t tell their clients this and continue to charge the same fee for the traffic delivery as before. They now pocket that $90,000. A little shady in my opinion but it’s being done.
On the DG quality control. I agree they likely do a better job than stations, but when we were using DG, they’d take our file, then they’d re-encode it for satellite delivery. Then every station in our market would take the DG MPEG2 file and they would RE-ENCODE it into their system. So by us sending them an MPEG2 file we at least eliminate one encoding pass and one chance at it being screwed up.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
You can still find it as part of those “codec packs.” You can do an install and select only the Matrox DVCPro50 codec (it’s sometimes generically listed as Matrox DV) and you’ve got it. It’s a very nice codec and gives you file sizes at about 7-8MB/sec.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
On the DG FastChannel suggestion. We’ve used them many times over the years, along with Vyvx (they may be one company now). And like Todd said, they’re no better than the local stations.
Plus, local stations in our region rarely use FastChannel anymore. They want the spots uploaded directly to their server, which is setup as a “watch” folder. When it “sees” a spot get uploaded, the software control is set to wait a certain amount of time (usually 5-15 minutes after upload activity stops or a total amount of time for the upload once it has started, typically 45 minutes). Once it stops or gets to it’s time cutoff, the spot is automatically loaded into the encoding system, compressed, then automatically moved to the playout server.
Also…many station groups and cable systems have a remote encoding station, say at one station or in cable’s case at one of their larger systems like Chicago. ALL spots get FTP’d there first, then they’re distributed to the stations via FTP or in some cases they’re actually played from the remote location’s server. So you can see the need for some serious compression and small file sizes whether they’re sending via FTP or playing them over it. This is part of the reason the spots look like dog poop. I actually didn’t believe Insight here locally when they told me in some markets, spots are played from a server in Chicago…but it’s true.
If they get it via DG, a person usually has to do something with it. They don’t want people involved. They have to pay people.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Beyond what Daniel lists, the other choices are proprietary, meaning the client would need the codecs on their system to play the file. All the big NLE players make AVI codecs, Blackmagic, AVID, Matrox, and AJA, and they can all be freely found, downloaded and installed.
They’re also a better choice quality wise, since DV throws out half your color, then compresses your video 5:1.
Matrox has a DVCPro50 codec that’s excellent (4:2:2 color and 3:1 compression), and Avid has some excellent compressed codecs as well. But as Daniel points out, the only “sure things” are the three he lists. There are also other DV codecs that are better than the standard Microsoft DV codec, which is awful.
Sony, Canopus (Now Grass Valley) and Matrox all have much better quality DV codecs for AVI files and they too are freely available I believe. Not 100% sure about them but I know we have them on our systems and I don’t recall buying them.
Getting more info from the client and finding out specifically what they use/need would be the best solution.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog