Chris Blair
Forum Replies Created
-
When we have clients question charges or line-items they think are high, we typically just roll them into a different, less scrutinized line item on the estimate.
Example: when everyone started moving away from doing VHS and DVD’s and began sending digital files for project review and approval, we had clients complain when we charged them for encoding a file and emailing it. We were charging the exact same price we charged for VHS or DVD copies, but in their mind, we were doing less work. In reality, it took us about the same amount of time to encode, check the digital file, type up an email and send it…or upload to FTP.
Rather than try to explain this or fight with them, we just charge a 1/4 hour extra editing per encode. We make the same amount of money and nobody complains.
Same with rush projects. We just add hours to the shooting or editing time (unless it’s a weekend shoot, where we charge time and a half). The client doesn’t see anything called “rush charges,” but we still bill for it.
Problem solved.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
On the quality issue. I’m not trying to say that MPG2 compressed spots are pristine. They’re not. But in the big scheme of things, they’re not horrible either and likely are on par with any analogue master you’re currently getting, and close to most digital dubs as well.
If you come out of a NLE system via SDI to a DVCPro50 or DigiBeta deck, the signal remains digital but it does get transcoded and recompressed when recorded to the specs of that particular format.
So if you went back and forth between a Digibeta master and your NLE system via SDI (even if you’re capturing uncompressed in the NLE), the signal will evenutally (25-30 passes?) start to degrade noticeably. Compression gurus also say there’s a transcoding “hit” that takes place, where the codec going into the NLE has to re-code the data…so when you go back out to the deck, it has to re-code back into it’s algorythym of choice (Note: some people argue this doesn’t introduce loss; while others insist it does).
I’m probably not getting all the technical terms and processes correct, but as long as a compressed format is being used somewhere in the “chain” there will be some loss. Heck, engineeers argue there’s even some slight loss when tanscoding between one uncompressed format to another due to the re-coding of the file. I’m not too sure about that one, but that argument can be found if you look hard enough online.
But bottom line is that it’s being used everyday for spot delivery and transmission for networks and local affiliates alike.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Bob Zelin wrote:
As a business owner, every day is “looking for another job
Bob (as always) hit the nail on the proverbial head. There’s a huge myth in small business that rarely gets talked about.
It goes: “If you start your own company you’ll be working for yourself.”
The fact is, when you start your own company and become an employer, you are NOT the boss. Your clients become your boss. So you don’t have just one demanding boss, you have as many demanding bosses as you have clients. Some are a joy to work for. Many are not. In many ways it’s worse than being an employee, especially if you’re the type that questions authority. And to be clear, I’m not talking about Aaron when I use the pronoun “you.”
I’m talking in general. You have to learn to let what clients say roll off your back. You have to realize there are clients that will pay for good work and quality, and there are those that will question every single thing you charge them for and assume you’re trying to screw them. You have to realize several clients will choose your unskilled, hack competitor because they can save $100 on a $4000 project by using them. Never mind the project ends up looking like crap….they’ve put 100 more dollars in their pocket!
I think what everybody is saying on here is: nothing will change even if you get a new job or start your own company. If you work hard and have a good attitude, good things WILL happen. It might take 2 years, it might take 20. But it will happen.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
That’s what I thought…but turns out, updating Quicktime fixed the issue. We were running 7.5.something or other. Updated to current version 7.6(472) and everybody’s happy again.
Very odd though.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Chuck,
I only read and heard good things about your products. So I wasn’t trying to sway anyone away from them. Far from it! For our shop, moving to a Fibre SAN was out of the question due to infrastructure cost (fibre switch, cabling, installation, configuration, etc.)
We looked at ISCSI and AoE, but I quite frankly could not wrap my head around the whole volume sharing model, with all it’s permissions and mounting and unmounting and read/write issues when dealing with NLE and editing and capturing etc.
It was just far easier for us to go with a NAS based solution with its familiar file-level sharing model… and frankly, it was all we could afford. We HAD to move to shared storage or we were going to lose our biggest client due to an inability to keep up with their demand. Turns out, they’ve become a casualty of the economic times, but moving to shared storage was the best investment we’ve ever made.
So hopefully people looking at SANs and ISCI will consider your products because I read post after post on AVID forums from people using it daily.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
On the idea of asking clients to give you uncompressed files: It ain’t gonna happen. An 8 bit uncompressed :30 spot, with bars/tone, slate and a few seconds of black before and after is going to be around 900MB. Even on a T1 line that’s going to take 75 minutes to upload minimum. Multiply that by several versions of a spot; uploading to several different stations at the same time; uploading different client spots etc….and it just becomes unwieldy. Nobody I know has that kind of time and bandwidth to dedicate to that.
An MPG2 4:2:2 file at between 15-20MB sec will end up being less than a tenth that size, which is more manageable. Remember, that’s way higher quality than a DVD, (double the chrominance, 4 times less compression on average). If you recompress for air, it should look fine. It’s certainly no worse than dubbing from a NLE via component to analog BetaSP.
Even a 4:2:0 MPG2 at the same compression is very similar to BetaSP according to some non-scientific engineering tests I’ve seen guys post online. This discussion came up in the 2002 or so when DG and Fast Channel starting getting popular and taking away all the TV commercial dubbing and satellite uploading business from large post houses. Their argument was “quality was suffering.” When some engineers tested it, to their surprise, the encoded files actually were better quality than BetaSP, by far the most popular format at the time for tape delivery, and DG’s satellite delivered file was equal to what the big post houses were sending via satellite to TV stations as well. End of arugment.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Oh I’ve wanted one since it came out (2002 was it?). I’ve actually seen some used Pro35s for around $10,000.
We’re probably going to have to get an HD camera next year and I’ll probably go for a 1/3″ with the Pro35mini. You can get entire packages at Zacuto for around $31,000.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Todd,
We’ve booked a P+S Technik adaptor with a set of Zeiss superspeed primes, clip-on sunshade and follow-focus for our shoot. Got it from a rental place in Cincy and we’re going to drive up to get a tutorial on the install and use prior to shoot.
I got 4 quotes and all were within $300 of each other, so at least rental places agree on the pricing for it..and they all do 3 day weeks….so it’s not really that bad price wise.
I’m very excited about using it. I’m assuming you have to shoot 16:9 with the SDX-900 due to the lenses? Is that correct? The SDX-900’s chips are 16:9 native and stuff looks better using that anyway.
Thanks
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
No disrepect meant here…but in doing research on SANs last year, I about crapped my pants when I saw the price of FibreJet software. Licenses for 4 seats were nearly as much as the entire NAS based solution we ended up buying (which works great by the way).
I don’t doubt FibreJet does exactly what you say it does and that it’s fabulous software that’s worth every penny you charge. But the original post was asking about Bob’s DIY SAN solutions. I doubt he’s going to have the coin to pay for 2 FibreJet seats.
Fibrejet is just not an option for even medium sized post facilities. We have 8 employees and do well over a $1 million a year in revenue and it was simply not a viable choice for us because of the cost.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
We encode videos and upload to FastChannel and Vyvx all the time. Like Craig said, they both prefer an MPG2 program stream. Prior to getting into it (3 years ago) we just did a few test files and when we got one that met FastChannel and Vyvx’s specs, (and ours for quality), we saved it as a preset and were off and running. We’ve encoded and uploaded as many as 50 spots in one day without issue.
The great thing about MPG2 is it’s a fairly tight spec (not a lot of choices to screw up), is well-known and fairly well understood, and is widely compatible with every NLE system out there. So your clients should be able to handle getting you files that look right and play correctly. There could be some field reversal issues here and there but they’re very easy to spot.
On the specs…the settings we use have very slight compression, something like 18-20MB/sec, so it’s much better than DVD quality. I know Vyvx preferred 4:2:2, although the only way we could do that was to output the file from our NLE systems (VelocityQ) as a native uncompressed file, then go into Procoder or Carbon Coder to compress to 4:2:2 MPG2. It took too much time and there were color conversion issues to deal with as well. So we just settled on the 4:2:0 MPG2 at the high data rate.
Some people output Quicktimes using low compression with H264 (which looks great), but from the tests we did, it took longer, the file sizes were larger than the MPG2, and you still have colorspace conversion issues to figure out.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com