Chris Blair
Forum Replies Created
-
What format are the HD files?
Does your client use any video capture/processing card with Premiere, like a Blackmagic or Canopus card? The reason I ask is this would impact what codec to use when you convert them.
Is your client working on a PC or a MAC? This would impact the format you convert to.
I don’t use Final Cut but you should be able to convert them in compressor from my limited knowledge of it.
If your client’s Premiere Pro is on a PC, you should convert them to SD 720×480 widescreen or 720×486 widescreen AVI’s… using the codec that is native to any video capture hardware they may have installed. If they have no hardware, then likely 720×480 DV would be your least objectionable option…although not a very good one from a quality standpoint, it will be very responsive when editing even on a modest computer or laptop.
If Premiere is on a Mac, then quicktime .mov files would be best using the codec that’s native to any capture hardware (like AJA) they may have installed…or again, DV at the same resolutions above. Remember that DV is ALWAYS 720×480. You’d use 720×486 for other D1 based codecs like the Blackmagic or AJA ones mentioned above, and widescreen is usually an option. All it does is use a different pixel size at the same pixel resolution to achieve a widescreen look.
You’ll also need to be aware of color space conversion since HD video uses a different color space than SD. I believe Broadcast HD video uses ITU-R BT 709-5 where as broadcast SD video follows ITU-R BT 601. Most conversion filters just say 709 to 601 or something like that.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
[Ron Lindeboom]We had one guy who worked for us for years…… no matter how many seminars and conferences we paid to send him to — he came back and did the same thing he was doing before
Man..I’m glad to see I’m not the only business owner on here that struggles with this! We’ve experienced the EXACT same thing on several occasions! My partner and I had gotten to the point of being convinced it was us!
But then we’ll get an employee that positively shines and blossoms working for us…and lets us know how appreciative he is of the training and mentoring he is getting!
And I agree that we’re not saying the “sheep” analogy suggests these people are losers. There are times when you need these types, like when you have to do 300 DVD emergency DVD copies for a client and don’t have time to send it out to a duplication house!
But overall, I’d rather have employees who realize what a fun, cool job this is, and bring that attitude to every project.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Doesn’t QT player have quite a few options for video processing upon playback? Like deinterlace and some others? Couldn’t that be what’s going on?
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Todd Terry
Sadly, I don’t think there’s much you can do to turn a sheep into a star… best you can do is ditch the sheep and find a batch of stars to start with.In addition to not being able to turn a sheep into a star, from our experience, you cannot even get them to significantly improve their skills, despite being given every opportunity to do so. I’m constantly giving employees tips on how to improve both on shoots and in the edit suite, and the “sheep” as they’ve been dubbed, don’t even follow that advice. So I’m not sure we’ve had sheep working for us over the years! At least sheep can follow!!
And most were definitely NOT team players. What I mean is they all wanted to work in a bubble, with no help or suggestions from others. They never asked for feedback on their work (until it was completely done), and when we did review the work at various stages (which we eventually demanded on projects)they ALWAYS viewed these sessions as personal attacks on either the work itself or their skills. As a result, their enthusiasm for the project waned, and from then on they’d just “follow the recipe” so to speak… doing whatever everyone else wanted, with no creative interpretation of their own.
I should point out that our review sessions typically involve people pointing out things they like and dislike….then everyone giving ideas on how to improve the work along with reasons why it might improve it. They’re very positive sessions and are not negative in any way.
These sessions actually inspire me to work even harder to come up with new ideas, while still incorporating the group’s advice. The work ALWAYS improves as a result.
We also provide a very comfortable, laid back work environment in a great facility, pay reasonably well, give lots of time off, and give employees every tool you could ever want to do good work. Plus, we’re extremely fair and even-tempered. As one very good employee says, we’re “nice guys” to work for.
The thing we can’t figure out is that many of the “sheep” we’ve hired over the years had fabulous portfolios and sample reels. They seemed eager and positive. But once on staff the bulk of the work they produce is decidely sub-par…not only compared to their reels, but compared to minimal professional standards.
All we can figure is that a LOT of people in this business oversell their skills and show samples on their reels that either are not their own, or that they had little to do with in terms of creating them.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Sounds like a plan to me…a lot of work…but a plan. And we’ve had very good results with .wmv too. But I think a properly compressed H264 file is quite a bit smaller in file size overall.
The “rub” of video compression for the web is that it’s always a balance between making the files look as good as possible and having them play back on as wide a target base as possible, and that usually means going the route you’ve mapped out (multiple versions), or offering a codec/container combination that offers good quality but high playability.
The thing I tell clients is, “hey, nobody complains about the quality of YouTube videos, and they suck.”
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Mick Haensler
why in the world would ANYONE have the same passion for your business as you doMick,
I meant passion for the work…not the business. Believe me, none of the partners in our company are getting rich. So we don’t do this for the “business” or financial aspect of it. We do it because it’s fun, it’s challenging, and it’s gratifying to help companies tell their story in a clear, persuasive way, then see tangible results come from it (in the form of increased traffic, phone calls, media exposure etc.).
And I mentioned employees because I think the quality of a company’s employees is going to make a big difference in determining who survives and who doesn’t. If you have good people that take ownership of their work and are passionate about the quality of what they’re doing, you have a much better chance of weathering bad economic times because you’re bound to get more business than your competitors with those people on staff.
But I guess by my reasoning…considering my earlier post…we’ll be out of business by next Tuesday! Yikes!
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
25 years in the business and 8 doing web video stuff and I’ve never heard that term. All I can guess is that he wants to know if you can embed the video in the page the way they have it and get it to play when you click on the icons the way they do it now.
That’s very easy to do from a web authoring standpoint, but I you said you’re doing an “editing.” Web authoring is usually not part of any editing job I’ve ever done.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
On the issue of “having a passion for the craft.” That’s the one issue we find most difficult to solve running a business from a city the size of Evansville, Indiana.
It’s nearly impossible to find employees that “love” what they do and get excited about it. I don’t expect people to work 60 hours a week and we almost never ask employees to work weekends or nights, long shifts or holidays. But in 13 years we’ve found exactly 1 employee who has the same “passion” as the owners do. Some employees spend more time on their fantasy football league picks or planning workouts during lunch than they do learning new skills or improving existing ones.
And don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with either of those endeavors, but if you’re doing them at the expense of the quality of the work you’re being paid to do, then it IS a problem.
Most of the people we’ve hired over the years are what I call “list-checkers.” Their goal is to go down their “to do” list and check stuff off. The faster they do it, the better job they think they’re doing. They approach editing and design and lighting and shooting as if it were making cole slaw. They want a recipe for what they do because they don’t want to think…they just want to “do” and get paid for it. I want people that “think” and ask “why,” or better yet, ask “why not?”
If we could find several employees that get stoked like that…we’d blow the competition out of the water. But they are very hard to find and lure to a sleepy midwestern town!
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
We’re both essentially saying the same thing…and I indicated that ON2 is a good solution, as are Flash 8 and even Sorensen Spark. Your first couple of posts made it sound like you had to have Quicktime installed just to play back an H264 file regardless of the wrapper or player used.
Virtually all of the video we encode for the web is corporate work and we have one client that insist on using H264 because they want high quality. We haven’t had a single report or complaint of someone not being able to play back the Flash wrapped files on those corporate websites, and their clients run the gamut of age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class. I also know quite a few IT folks, and many large companies have no problem allowing trusted content to be downloaded and installed, especially something as ubiquitous and stable as Flash Player. I’ve never heard from these folks even one instance of Flash Player installation causing problems on a corporate computer, or any computer for that matter. Usually the problems they encounter are Microsoft vulnerabilities that Flash Player exposes. Vulnerabilities that the IT guys are supposed to fix anyway.
For the original poster’s purposes, he could put the H264/Flash wrapped files up, and put up a more common option for those that might not be able to play the H264. He did say his goal was high quality to showcase what he does.
So he has plenty of info to “chew on” now!
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Bob Zelin
There is no built in “sharing” in any fibre channel array (or any array of any type). You have to build a system, and this includes anything from a cheapie ethernet based solution, to an expensive Fibre Channel solution
Just to be clear…Bob is talking about somebody buying a RAID only and thinking they can just hook up to it and start editing.
You cannot. That’s one of the big differences in the solutions he mentioned, like the vStor system we use. With it…you do not have to have an ethernet switch for it to work. Our system has 4 GigE ports and one of the connection options is to route your 4 edit systems directly into the vStor’s onboard ports. No switch necessary. You can configure a vStor with as many as 14 GigE ports. It can do this because it also acts as the server since it’s a PC and uses an embedded Linux OS and a custom (and very user-friendly) web based GUI for administration and configuration.
One of the two things that made us stop looking at SAN solutions was the cost of the Fibre Switches. They’re crazy expensive. The other stumbling block for us was the whole volume level sharing of SANs versus file level sharing model that NAS solutions use. The NAS way of working just works better for how our workflow is setup.
Now Apace actually recommends a switch be used in your chain because it opens up a lot more possiblities for sharing data with the rest of your facility, but some of the facilities we talked to before buying just connected them direct. I’ll also add that while Apace’s entry level system is very affordable, as you move up in the quality (SD to HD) and number of real-time streams you need across workstations, their solutions can get plenty expensive as well.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com