[Chris Blair]

Todd,

We recently looked at setting up our own server and hosting our website… as well as doing some specialized video hosting for a couple of clients. Bottom line, it’s way cheaper and much less of a headache to outsource. I don’t have recommendations on ISPs, but there are dozens or good ones out there.

I do know that the large players like Limelight, Brightcove and some others were WAY out of our league price-wise…so we just went with one of our local ISPs and have been satisfied. Their service isn’t all that good (I know more than most of their techs), but it’s relatively fast and it’s up pretty much 100% of the time.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Chris Blair]

It sounds like cabling issues rather than a specific Decklink issue. Although the Decklink series cards have a software utility to select both your input and output sources (SDI, component, S-video, HD, SD etc.) for both video and audio…or at least our Decklink Extreme has that utility. I think it’s just called Decklink in Windows Control panel…so not sure where you’d find it on a Mac.

So you need to find that and double check the settings on it.

Distorted audio and no video could only be one of three things, improper cabling, incorrect settings in software, or a faulty card. You need to definitively rule out the first two before exploring the third.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Chris Blair]

I can add some personal experience to the point Bob’s trying to make. When we moved to shared storage (via an Apace vStor) about 15 months ago, there was no shortage of people telling me what we were trying to do wouldn’t work.

They included: our IT vendor, some people on these lists, scores of people in the SAN/NAS shared video storage industry, and even an employee on-staff, who simply didn’t believe we could edit multiple channels of broadcast quality video in real-time across multiple edit workstations across Gig-E.

I did months of research and made dozens of phone calls and sent scores of emails. After I finally settled on a choice, I had 2 phone conferences with Apace and their engineering staff, along with their system reseller and our IT company to help coordinate all the pieces of the puzzle, from the correct managed switch to cabling configurations to software configuration, setup and backups.

But…until we got it in the door, got it all installed and were ablt to actually use it, I didn’t know if it would actually work. The only gurantee I had was that Apace agreed to take the NAS server and drives back and give me a full refund less shipping if it didn’t work. Nobody else would give me that guarantee. Not EditShare, not Studio Network Solutions, not Facilis Terrablock.

Most of the other companies wouldn’t even test their systems internally with out editing platform, the Harris VelocityQ, in order to give us an idea if their solution would be compatible with it. This was after I found VelocityQ owners right in the home city of the above companies (one literally down the street).

So while I had the money-back guarantee from Apace (in writing), I still spent another $6000 on hardware, backups, installation etc. that I could not get back if it didn’t work.

Luckily, I had done my homework and asked enough questions and gotten enough answers to feel pretty confident it would work. But I was extremely relieved when after hooking it all up…it DID indeed work. And I’ve been even more relieved that it’s worked flawlessly from day one. We haven’t had a second of downtime since….as opposed to almost weekly drive issues when using direct attached SCSI hooked to the VelocityQ’s on-board SCSI controller.

So what Bob is saying is that if you’re designing something that hasn’t been done EXACTLY the same way you’re doing it. There is literally no guarantee it will all work. The smallest conflict, the most innocuous configuration gaffe can cause a shared video editing storage system to grind to a halt. All you can do is the put in the research, understand what you need to make it work, and find somebody to either help you design it, or at the very least confirm that your design should work.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Chris Blair]

Shane Ross You’re kidding? Really? This, to me, is cut and dry. They hired you, you billed for your time and tape stock. You were compensated….they own the footage. This has been the case on every network, corporate and commercial project I have ever worked on. WEDDING too. Copies can be retained for demo reel purposes only, but all the masters belong to client.

You stated that on the projects you work it’s in the contract that the network or company hiring you owns the footage, which means you’re doing “work for hire” and the client does indeed own everything.

But in the absence of that contract or a specific request in writing, the videographer or main creative person behind the shoot legally owns the rights to the footage even if the client hired you and paid you for your time and tape stock.

As Walter points out, people have widely differing views on this and there’s nothing wrong with running your business by taking either of the two sides. You can be “right” doing either. There are dozens of threads about this and there’s a ton of misinformation about the issue on this and many other forums.

But the facts are easily found by doing a few searches online and by reading a couple of media law primers and books written specifically about this issue.

There are also scores of cases that consistently back the videographer, producer, director, production company or artist when clients claim copyright yet have nothing in writing stating as such.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Chris Blair]

Ron Lindeboom And to make it clear, I trump your 25 years in business by a decade and a half, so if we are going to get into experiential comparisons, I have been at it far longer and in far bigger markets with much more focused competition. So if you would like to turn this into a boy’s gym wanker contest, then let’s have at it.

Ron…I wasn’t trying to do that at all. I was just saying my perspective doesn’t come without experience. As I’ve said in both posts…I think we’re basically saying the same things. I just believe that talent is more integral to success than you and Franklin do. Undying hard work and the best marketing in the world can’t magically make everyone succeed.

You must possess(at the very least) solid skills and deliver what you promise. If not…at some point those lack of skills will expose the person or cause a blunder so colossal that the person’s reputation will never recover. I affectionately call it the “Milli Vanilli affect.”

So I wasn’t trying to trump anybody about anything…just provide another point of view.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Chris Blair]

Ron Lindeboom There’s a restaurant here in Paso Robles that is downright terrible. They are even truthful in their marketing and call it Big Bubba’s Bad B-B-Q.

Well that must be a California thing, because that would NEVER happen here in the midwest. Large chains come and go like the wind in our part of the country. Don Pablo’s has consistently been rated the best Mexican chain restaurant in the U.S. by the industry’s own trade mags. They came to Evansville and built a very cool restuarant. My family ate there many times and the food was outstanding…but the service was terrible. In fact anyone you talked to had the same experiences…great food, ungodly service.

They lasted about a year. That was with the backing of a national advertising campaign that was clever and highly produced.

Ron Lindeboom And success is ALMOST NEVER based solely on talent. Some of the most talented musicians and songwriters that I have ever heard are so obscure that few would know them if I named them.

Just to be clear…I pointed out that I agreed with the premise of Franklin’s post. And I didn’t say success was based SOLELY on talent. What I said was you couldn’t have one without the other.

I’ve met and worked with quite a few high profile artists (actors and musicians) in my 25 years in this business. And the things that stand out about almost all of them is:

1. They’re good people. Cordial, thoughtful, and unbelieveably professional in everything they do…even when asked to do arguably stupid things.

2. They’re incredibly talented…in fact, they make what they do look positively easy. But they also work incredibly hard and have unending energy, passion and determination.

Now certainly there are some oddballs and outright pricks out there in the entertainment world and other professions. And there are certainly people with MORE talent than some of these folks who’ve achieved next to nothing, but to suggest that people achieving at the highest level in this or any profession don’t possess an incredible amount of talent is unfair.

Hard work and enthusiasm and drive and tenacity pay off in knowledge and experience. These people achieve not only because they work hard, but that hard work makes them good at what they do.

It’s like saying Kobe Bryant or Lebron James are good only because they’re talented or only because they work hard. It’s both! But they also are gifted physically and mentally well beyond other athletes.

In the regular working man’s world, I think you’ve gotta have all three of those to achieve at a very high level.

We’ve used some freelancers over the years that I’ve considered sort of our “go to” guys. But as we’ve improved and the quality of our work has gotten better, I’ve become frustrated with them. They’re still incredibly hard-working and dependable to a fault. But they don’t bring that extra little “spark” to projects that I think is necessary to take us to the next level. So in getting back to the original post…if the freelancer wants to expand his client base while firing one of his “go to” clients…he better be prepared to wratchet up his skills and abilities. He can do that partly through hard work and tenacity and drive. But just like how I’ve become frustrated with out freelancers…if this guy doesn’t have that little something extra that a client is looking for…he won’t get hired.

So in the end…I agree with both you and Franklin…but I don’t think you achieve at a high-level without both hard work and talent. What’s the old saying, “the harder I work the smarter I get?” That’s probably true, but if you were a dope to start with, you’ll still lag behind the “smart guy.”

I’ve told people for years that I achieve because I work harder than almost anybody I know. But you know what…I think I have some innate skills that help tremendously…. things like having a good eye for framing, a good ear for music and dialogue, a good feel for the rhythym and timing of edits etc. Some of it you can learn, some you can’t.

But good discussion of what it takes to succeed! It’s what I like about the Cow!

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Chris Blair]

While I agree in principal with most of what Franklin says, you just cannot apply it all the time and in all parts of this counrty, and especially not globally. People in other countries and cultures just do not share the business mentality that most people have in the U.S.

Franklin McMahon The creative people who have this desire become very successful, it does not even depend on skills often, its tenacity and drive.

I just don’t believe this is true, even in this country. You cannot succeed ONLY on desire, tenacity and drive. You MUST have skills and abilities that match. You can possess those skills and abilities… or you can hire them out, but you cannot achieve high levels of success without them. That’s like a restaurant who has great marketing and advertising, a cool space, and funky and friendly waiters…but their food sucks. You won’t be eating there long based on their desire and tenacity at getting you in the door if that food continues to suck.

Donald Trump no longer focuses on 3 story condo buildings. He’s moved on. He has a unique thirst to take it to the next level, ready or not.

If you’ve ever read much about Donald Trump…I dare say he’s what anyone would consider a well-rounded role model for success. For most small-business owners I know, and likely the majority of people that contribute and read these forums, business success is rarely measured in how much money we make, or by the name recognition of our client roster. Many of us have families and other priorities that may even preclude us from taking on certain types of projects and clients. So I think when you say”pimp yourself anywhere and everywhere…” it should be clarified…because the very notion of pimping oneself is pretty much synonymous with taking money from anyone, anytime for ANY service. I think what you’re saying is we should seize every opportunity to promote ourselves…which to me is very different from pimping our company.

We’ve been in business for 13 years, with most of those being profitable. But we’re starting to see the effects of the economy here in the midwest. Huge companies are continuing to lay people off, usually in small groups so as to not draw media attention. They’re closing factories. They’re cutting budgets..and the projects they have left are being handled by people who are quite literally overwhelmed and cannot get to them all…which means they sit, being postponed and delayed. Clients are taking longer and longer to pay their bills. Some large companies have even sent letters stating they’ve changed their payment policy and it will now take longer, sometimes MUCH longer to get paid.

Now I ask…what do you do about that? These are NOT companies that could be considered grinders by any stretch of the imagination. These are several billion dollars a year companies, with brand rosters loaded with names you’d all recognize. Do we drop them because they’re taking 90 days to pay? Do we fire them because they’re no longer as organized as they once were and projects are pretty much a nightmare to work on?

There will be GREAT production companies in this economy that will go out of business. Several, like the Orphanage already have. The reasons will be many and varied. So while I generally agree with the premise of what you’re saying…I do not believe it applies for the majority of people working out there in this economy. You can have GREAT branding (and I agree it’s fun to do), and a great service and still fail in these times.

I think an even bigger key to surviving and thriving is finding what services people DO want and need and are willing to pay for…and becoming THE expert or provider of those services and solutions in your market. So I agree it means continuing to grow and learn…but it has to be growth that has a commensurate need. It won’t do you any good to learn to do something new that people don’t have a need for or that they’ve moved in-house.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Chris Blair]

I believe 9.8 Mbits/sec for both video/audio is the max, but older DVD players will likely have problems playing anything above about 8Mb/sec.

I know several authoring programs will complain and force you to re-encode in the authoring app if you exceed something like 8.5Mb/sec.

Here’a a wiki that helps explain it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Chris Blair]

That’s actually something we already do when coming out of the Blackmagic system. Velocity imports the quicktimes fine. But going the other way isn’t a good option because Quicktime is incredibly slow to render coming out of Velocity….especially when using high-quality output and codecs like uncompressed, component or H264. A 30 second TV spot will take over 20 minutes to export, which just isn’t a viable option in a fast paced broadcast environment.

Since all four of our editing workstations are connected via SDI and a Kramer switcher, what we end up doing is just playing our Velocity timeline and capturing via SDI into the Blackmagic using the Media Express tool.

Then when we come back out, we export it as Quicktime using the Blackmagic codecs…or we just play that resulting project or timeline and then capture back into Velocity via SDI. Quicktimes import relatively quickly into Velocity and can even be played in real-time on the newest version of their software, but we have a ton of projects that need the older software version (which is incompatible with the newer one).

We just aren’t fond of all the transcoding that has to take place as well as all the extra drive space required when we capture via SDI, since we do it all at 8 bit uncompressed data rates.

Using Quicktimes on Premiere CS3 timelines doesn’t work very well…as timelines are extremely sluggish on our Windows based system when using Blackmagic Quicktimes. Should they be faster??

It would just be nice to be able to render in the BM native windows codecs and other apps be able to use those files without issue. As an example, several of our encoding and compression apps won’t read the BM files even though the software codecs are installed. Windows media player won’t play them either…so it just ends up being incredibly frustrating to ever use the Windows based AVI codecs, which SHOULD be what drives the performance of our system on a Windows based Premiere CS3 system.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Chris Blair]

So am I the only person that sees these conflicts and issues with using Blackmagic software codecs on computers that don’t have Blackmagic hardware installed?

Not to mention the issue of Premiere CS3/Decklink HD extreme timelines using Blackmagic presets peforming poorly when other non-BM codecs are used on those timelines??

It’s hard to believe this is a specific issue to any hardware or installation configuration we have, since we’re using a recommended HP workstation (xw8200), which has has gone through two fresh WinXP installs (one by a certified HP tech using their XP disc image), and all hardware has been tested and passed (again by a certified HP tech).

I still contend that Blackmagic drivers and hardware simply are not optimized to work on the Windows platform in any configuration that approximates real-time performance, and in our case at least, in any configuration that’s even close to being stable.

It’s just extremely frustrating to follow all the hardware recommendations when building a system and it only be reliable as a capture and export station.

I’d be very interested to hear from other Decklink Extreme HD (version 1 I assume since we bought it 15 months agao)and Premiere CS3 users who are able to edit and composite and share projects with other non-Blackmagic systems without issue.

I should again point out that I’ve built probably a dozen NLE systems and high-end graphic workstations with hardware from Harris, Matrox and Canopus/Grass Valley and have never had an experience as frustrating or as seemingly un-solvable as this one.

It seems like the common response when I call tech support is to “try a different driver version.” That’s the only suggestion I’ve ever gotten when I’ve called or emailed (if I get a response at all). I get the same responses whenver I post on here.

If there are issues with software codecs and drivers, why can’t companies just admit it? I’ve said it before on this forum and others and I’ll say it again. It doesn’t do much good to make great hardware if the software and drivers that accompany it don’t do what they’re supposed to do and aren’t stable.

Any valid suggestions are appreciated, especially concerning sharing Blackmagic AVIs with other systems that don’t have BM hardware.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com