Chris Blair
Forum Replies Created
-
In addition to what everyone else has posted…also don’t assume that they’re going to the other production company because of price or being unhappy with your work etc. There could be a dozen reasons they’re doing what they’re doing with the other production company, with many if not all having nothing to do with you.
So be polite, be efficient, definitely charge them for the time to provide these as David states, but don’t automatically assume the client is a lost cause. We’ve had similar things happen on many occasions and in almost every one, the client eventually came back to us because they saw the grass wasn’t greener (or cheaper or better) on the other side.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Just to add to this…I’ve always hated the terms “viral video” and “email blast,” which are often used by marketing and advertising people when they talk about trying to generate PR through email or the internet.
As Mike points out, viral video is really a phenomenon and isn’t usually something that’s intricately planned. It’s like someone setting out to give everyone the flu.
I’m sure there are cases where somebody set out to produce a “viral” video and succeeded, but my guess is it’s rare. Same with calling e-newsletters “blasts.” Noboby wants to get bombarded with information they don’t want.
One thing we try to remember about every email newsletter we create and sent (for others or our own), is that the information needs to be relevant and useful to the recipients. We also try to avoid “selling” in an e-newsletter. And lastly, we don’t send them out to large lists, but usually to smaller lists of people who’ve agreed to or asked for more information from a company…or to current client lists….meaning people who are using the company already and might benefit from the information.
I don’t mind getting sales based e-newsletters as long as they’re short, to the point and include relevant info I might use. I have a folder in my email client where I drag e-newsletters I may later use and I occasionally go through those to read when I have a spare half-hour.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
If it happens rarely and then works after a reboot…I’d just make sure to reboot my computer anytime before starting a long encode. In fact, we often make it a practice to reboot before starting a long batch of encodes with ProCoder or Carbon Coder or any application that is going to be running an encode or render for a long time.
So if we’re starting an After Effects render that takes a couple hours…we reboot the computer to make sure it’s running with full memory allocation and other stuff isn’t loaded etc.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
I’ll second what Richard said. We do some email newsletters and it’s like working in the dark ages of the internet. Most email client software (there are approximately 20 that are commonly used by business people) has limited graphical support, which is typically limited to HTML. That means no java scripting, no flash and often no video support.
I read a report from one of the email newsletter companies (I believe it was Campaign Monitor) where they tested a video file in an otherwise very simply designed email newsletter and it only worked in about 3 of the 20…and in the 3 it worked in, the video didn’t play smoothly or correctly in any of them. So in essence, it didn’t work at all.
Email newsletters also have to be VERY simply designed to display properly across email clients. No flash, no CSS, no scripting, no rollovers etc. etc.
A better route is to design your e-newsletter around the video’s subject and just put a link to a nicely designed web page with the video embedded. This also works for the text version of your e-newsletter since users can copy and paste the URL to view the video.
If people want to view it, they’ll click and you’ll also a better feel for “click-thru” results this way.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
I’m not aware of any encoding programs that can pick up an encode after it has failed. That doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist, but I’ve used or demo’d just about every encoding application out there, from the very expensive to the freebies and I’ve never seen that feature. We have a paid version of TMPGEnc 2.5 on one of our edit systems and (the freebie version on the others) and I believe that’s the one they call “plus.” I’ve never seen any option to use that log file.
I’d be more concerned with fixing the crashing though. Is there any pattern to it? Is the machine you’re using powerful? Are the source files of good quality? Have you checked on the Pegasys forums to see if it’s a common problem? Have you upgraded to the latest version? I could go on but an encoding app crashing in the middle of an encode shouldn’t happen…or if it does…it should happen rarely.
So giving us more info would really be necessary to help. Like what’s your source file? Format, pixel size, codec etc. What are you computer specs. What exact version of the software are you using (is it the latest version from their website?) etc.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
I’m not certain but I believe log files are nothing more than a text listing of what the program did during the encode. I could be wrong but I’ve never seen a log file from any program that could be used for anything more than recording information.
Also…which version of TMPGENC are you using? While Pegasys makes very good products, they’re not widely used…at least in the US.
We use the freebie version of their encoder and it comes in handy to mux and demux files, but it’s MPEG2 encoder is waaay too slow for us. IT’s output is gorgeous, but not at the expense of taking 5-10x to encode the file.
But I doubt you could use a log file to pick up where encoding stopped on a failed file. Have you checked your computer’s drive space? I believe TMPGENC caches files as it encodes so if your encode is a 3GB file, you’d need at least 8-10GB free for as it caches and writes the file and for any sort of cached virtual memory your computer might be using at the time. That’s just a wild guess as to why an encode would fail.
But without a LOT more information, it’s hard to give you much more help.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
I believe your server would need a quad-port ethernet card or, 3 separate cards teamed together as one. But the short answer is yes, you can direct connect and some NAS based editing facilities connect this way.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
But if MPEG Streamclip can output an AVI file, I’m not sure I understand the problem. If you’re outputting a Divx AVI, I believe your client would need to download and install the freebie Divx player to play the AVI file. If you’re outputting an H264 file in an AVI wrapper, your client would need to have Quicktime installed I believe.
But on the Windows version you can also select “output to other formats” and select AVI and output in either Cinepak or DV formats as well. The problem with AVI is that those codecs are really old, which means your client would also need to have them installed on their system to play the file. Most Windows users would have them, but not all, and the DV formats are limited to 720×480 pixel sizes.
The other solution is to invest in a dedicated encoding program like Telestream Episode. It’s only $499 or so and worth it.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Windows Media files would be more compatible for Windows PC users than AVIs. However, I thought Quicktime Pro exported to AVI files? Or is that just the Quicktime for Windows version??
Worth looking at on your Mac though. Also, doesn’t Final Cut come with an encoding app that can export to AVI? Just wondering.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Sometimes corporate clients are all PC based and their IT department won’t allow Quicktime to be installed. Sounds crazy I know, but we’ve seen it on numerous occasions. They may also have an application they’re using (like digital signage systems) that require AVIs. We have a client that has digital signage at all their locations and the software requires a certain size AVI. That’s all that will work with it.
There could be many other reasons. Of course, they could also just have the acronym “avi” stuck in their head when any type of digital file that’s playable on their computer could work.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com