Chris Blair
Forum Replies Created
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3D TV might look amazing, but who’s going to be producing all these fantastic 3D programs? I doubt very many of the people that contribute on these forums will be doing it. Here in the midwest, we’ve had a grand total of ONE client come to us with a project and ASK for HD.
We’ve suggested it to a few clients on certain projects, but 99% of the projects we do are STILL in SD. In fact, out of half-dozen HD projects we’ve done, exactly ONE ended up being played back in HD. That’s right, the others all ended up being played on good ole standard definition DVD.
I don’t doubt 3D TV will make inroads…but for facilities producing local/regional television commercials, corporate video, web video etc….it will be a LONG time before the production technology becomes affordable for us, and it will be even longer before our clients ask for it.
Let’s not forget that up until about a year or two ago, according to most accounts, something like 75% of ALL network programming (including cable networks) was STILL produced in SD. Ultra successful programs like Survivor only recently went to HD production.
My point isn’t whether 3D TV will be successful, I’m sure it will be. My point is that it will only affect a small number of producers and production entities due to the cost of entry (both technical and in “know-how”) and the HUGE lag that exists for small markets and corporate communications to adopt new technology. Small TV stations just finished spending a small fortune upgrading to HD. How eager do you think they’ll be to spend ANOTHER small fortune to implement 3D TV?? When I worked at local affiliates, they’d keep a piece of equipment for DECADES! Yes…you read that right. If it could be repaired, it got fixed and was put back in service. I worked at a TV station from 1992-1994 that was STILL using typewriters to type news scripts. It had ONE computer in the entire building. They were STILL using 2″ video decks up until 1995 and 1″ video decks until 2005!
I wouldn’t say I’m a pessimist when it comes to 3D TV. I’m a pragmatist. I just don’t believe it will be a technology that will come near the type of work we do anytime in the next decade.
Let’s also not forget the point made in this thread about the quality of it’s use. Let Hollywood produce a dozen or so poorly executed, poorly written 3D bombs and let’s see how enthusiastic the public is about it.
Remember when a Space Shuttle launch was a big deal? Now it only gets people interested when something goes terribly wrong! Yet it’s still an inspiring event, especially in-person. The public tires quickly of technology driven events. If 3D TV programs don’t have great stories and the 3D elements don’t serve the story, people eventually won’t watch. 3D in sports? Yeah..that could be cool…but again…how many people will that affect on these forums? Not many.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Can’t Episode load the original mp4 files without having to first go through Final Cut?
If you don’t have the original media, the only way to do it is to re-compress to the other codec, although you won’t get improved quality in this case since you’re compressing an already heavily compressed file.
In my opinion, unless the file size is significantly smaller, I wouldn’t bother with the conversion. About the only reason in this case to do it is if end users are having a hard time playing back the original file (either on a website, on their computers etc.)
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
If your footage was shot 1080i and the timeline is 1080i, then regardless of what you edit in or export from your MPG2 output should use the same field dominance as the footage and timeline, which from what I’ve read is upper field first.
Properly shot 24P footage with pull-down should not look overly “stroby” as you describe it. The only time you get unacceptable judder is if you pan too quickly at certain focal lengths. There’s a guide used with shooting film (16mm and 35mm) that give you acceptable panning speeds (meaning how fast you could pan) to avoid unacceptable judder (or strobing). The same holds for shooting 24P video, especially considering pulldown is being added electronically inside the camera.
If you have a lot of panning, especially if things in the shot are moving the opposite direction, you’re hosed on the strobing thing. It’s gonna strobe no matter what you do in the encode. If not, then it’s probably a field order mismatch. Try outputting a short segment of the project with the opposite of the field order you did before.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Yes you’re right in how you understand their “theory.”
My cohorts are arguing that because of that “bottleneck” on the card’s PCI bus (the card is a 64 bit, 66Mhz card) you cannot use shared storage and get the same performance as you can with the SCSI card/drive array configuration.
My argument is if the shared storage is coming from a SAN via fiber channel HBA or 10GB ethernet, as long as the data throughput is as fast as what the SCSI is delivering, and there’s no latency, in theory a SAN or 10GB NAS could deliver the same performance.
We’ve already proven this works on the SD version of this hardware/software (VelocityQ) because we have 3 of them in our facility editing happily with an Apace vStor via GB ethernet. We were consistently told it wouldn’t work. 2 years in, I can say it works GREAT. We get 8-12 channels of DVCPro50 compressed SD video across 3 edit systems and can get about 4 channels of ucompressed (which we virtually never use).
The VelocityHD uses a card built on the exact same architecture as the VelocityQ, but uses a new compression scheme and different software drivers for the card. Harris has literature that says you HAVE to use their SCSI card to get 2 uncompressed HD streams. But the card was developed in 2002-2004, long before people were achieving the speeds we’re now commonly seeing in affordable SAN and NAS systems.
My point to the other forum was that if you could feed data fast enough (500MB/sec and up), there’s no reason why a SAN or 10GB NAS couldn’t do 2 uncompressed HD streams same as the direct attached SCSI. The computer is agnostic about how that data is getting to it, and as long as that data doesn’t compete on the same bus as the VelocityHD card, it should work.
I don’t know for sure that it would work, but whether the data’s coming from dedicated SCSI or fibre channel or 10GB ethernet, as long as the sustained speed is there without latency, it should.
That’s sort of what I was wanting someone to confirm or tell me I’m wrong about. I trust the folks in here in regard to this stuff.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
We have a couple of different ways we charge.
For previews that are just quick exports from a timeline, one encoding pass, then uploaded to our FTP for a client to view or emailed to them directly, we have a charge we call “digital file ouput.” We charge a flat $25 fee for this as long as the project is a reasonable length…meaning under 30 minutes. On most projects, we can end up outputting and uploading/emailing half a dozen to even a dozen of these for client review.
If this sounds high..consider how much a client would spend of their time, traveling to our place, sitting in on edits etc., watching previews etc. if we didn’t send them these? It would certainly cost more than the $150-$300 they pay to get a 512×384 video file delivered to them at their desk, to be able to watch at their convenience.
When we do final exports/encodes for the client’s use in their website, at presentations, trade shows etc., we charge differently because we spend more time processing and outputting the file. For that we charge:
$50 setup fee for up to 10 videos.
$35 encoding for each video to a specific format (30 minute maximum length)
$5 for each additional pixel size, bit-rate of the SAME format.
$2 for every additional minute over 30So if we had 15 vignettes of client tesimonials (under 30 minutes each), and they wanted an H264 file of each and a windows media file of each, we’d charge two $50 fees for setup, and 30 fees of $35 for encoding to 2 separate formats.
If they wanted 15 videos encoded to 2 different sizes/bit rates of H264, we’d charge the same setup fees ($100), but charge 15 x $35 for the first H264, and 15 x $5 for the second set to the same format but different pixel size/bit rate.
Videos over 30 minutes get an extra $2 per minute over 15 added on. So a one-hour video would be a $50 setup, $35 encode, $60 for the additional 30 minutes. Total would be $145. Pretty reasonable in my book to get a one hour video encoded for the web or other use. If we have to capture video prior to encoding, we charge standard rates to capture it.
It might sound complicated, but doing good quality compression, (producing high-quality files at small sizes) is time consuming and almost always involves lots of testing prior to doing the final encode. We typically upload tests to our FTP and embed them in flash players to see how they’ll perform from a standard website for playback. We’ll test them on lots of different computer platforms of varying speed using various operating systems and browsers. If they look good and play back reliably in those tests, then we encode the batch.
It ends up working out to about $125-$175/hour for the work, which is what we need to generate most of the time to make money. When we get down to below $125 while using an edit suite or one of the stations that is fast enough to do encoding, then we have a hard time making a profit.
We’ve never had a client complain about these charges either…primarily because they’re about the same or less than what other video hosting companies charge for compression.
Could they get their compression done for less? Probably, but I can guarantee you people doing it for less wouldn’t be as thorough as we are, plus we often help their IT or web people get the videos up onto their sites. This is an important step because you’d die if you knew how often web designers and IT people take your “ready to use” web videos and recompress the crap out of them (often making them LARGER in size), because they think they have to to get them work in Flash or whatever other player they’re using.
Of course one thing that is beginning to put a kink into being able to charge these kinds of fees is hosting companies that don’t charge anything to compress your files for you. Of course you have to upload a high-quality digital file FIRST for them to compress…so even if clients used these companies, they still need an exported/encoded file from you first! One such company that does this is Bits on the Run. They do a great job, but I personally think they’re hurting the industry by not charging a dime for really high-quality compression. Companies like YouTube and Vimeo are different in that they’re social sites, Bits on the Run is strictly a commercial video hosting site that makes money by charging a hosting fee.
Hope that helps.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Jason O’Hara:
I am wondering how easily this ProRes footage will mesh with all the HDV footage on the timelineWe’ve uprezzed SD footage to HD using Carbon Coder with decent results, but when that SD footage is mixed with HD originated footage, the difference is pretty apparent, especially if the SD footage is 4:3, since it will be pillar-boxed. Unless you blow it up further to fill the 16:9 frame.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Wow..that’s pretty minor in the .jpg…but I agree with Daniel we need to know the source, the size, the format, what size and format you’re encoding to, what are you using to encode etc.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
You should definitely charge for it. You’re providing a valuable service to that client plus the added convenience of them being able to just sit down at their computer and view the file after you’ve uploaded it.
As Todd points out, it takes time to encode it, it takes time to setup the upload, it takes time to send an email notifying someone that this has been done. Your time is worth something. Plus, you and your company have the knowledge and technology to provide all this. This is also worth something.
If you go through your business life giving valuable services away you’re destined to lose out financially. It’s hard enough in our business to make a profit when you DO charge for everything.
I also agree with Rich that you should also assess what is fair to charge, but it should at least be the same as you’d charge for a DVD for the client to view…especially considering the convenience factor for the client.
I learned a long time ago when waiting tables in college that if you charge people a fair price for every product or service they buy from you, virtually none of them will complain. But give them a couple things for free just once (like giving them a couple free cokes or not charging for that extra cup of alfredo sauce), and they’ll complain every time they come in from then on if they get charged, because you’ve set a precedent for what something costs.
Using the same waiter analogy…I used to think that if I didn’t charge for a few things, I’d get a bigger tip. WRONG. People tip based on the total of the bill and the quality of service…not on whether the waiter forgot to add something to the bill. Don’t give stuff away…and if you have to…hide the cost inside another part of the bill…like adding it as a 1/4 hour editing charge or something else.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Yup..same here. I was so confused about shared storage back when we were researching it that I had begun to think that the $20,000 we had budgeted for it was woefully low. Until I started asking questions on this forum.
And it’s funny, but I told people in the other user group the same thing about marketing and sales. I said the company tells them they have to have the SCSI daughter card because they want to sell another product to them!
It’s like when my wife tells me an insurance salesman or doctor or car salesman was really nice to them. I tell her..”yeah..because they want to sell you something!” Let’s see how nice they are when you decide not to buy!
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Bob..I wouldn’t do that to them! Just kidding.
The card in question is the VelocityHD. It can indeed do all the things I listed, 2 streams of uncompressed HD (using their optional SCSI daughtercard only), multiple streams of compressed HD, and up to 8 streams of compressed SD and 4 streams of uncompressed SD.
The argument on the other forum is that people are saying the card has this theoretical 175MB PCI bandwidth limitation. They say it’s because the card is a 64bit, 66Mhz card…which also doesn’t make sense since that PCI spec supports speeds to 533MB/sec and can in practice deliver well over 250MB/sec throughput.Anyway…the argument came up because people on the forum claim you can’t use a SAN or 10GB ethernet NAS with the VelocityHD..and I responded with, “why not?”
These same people told me we could not use shared storage of any type with our older VelocityQ systems, much less a Gig-E NAS based one like we’re doing. So…we proved them wrong on that one. I just don’t understand why a SAN or 10GB ethernet solution that’s properly configured would not work with these newer VelocityHD systems if a dual-channel SCSI card they provide will give 2 channels of uncompressed HD.
Now few people edit uncompressed with this system…so that’s kind of a moot point. The bigger issue is they still say you cannot use shared storage to edit compressed HD. I just don’t understand why.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com