[Chris Blair]

With respect to everyone’s answers, we’ve asked this question more times than I can count over the years. We’ve asked accountants, bankers, other business owners in our industry, marketing and advertising consultants, etc. And they ALL give different answers. Even within the same discipline, they don’t agree…meaning ask 3 accountants this question and they’ll give you different answers.

That said, there are formulas you can find (if you search online) to assess the relative “value” of a company. But if it’s not a publicly traded company with a stock price tied to it, it’s very difficult to place a value on it that everyone agrees with.

The best answer I ever got for this question was from my older brother, who is a CFO at a large University hospital. His response was, “whatever someone will pay!”

We actually bought a car dealership group account (4 dealers in different cities) from a former client a few years back. They placed nearly $1 million a year in media and it was a 125,000/year account. We basically said we’d pay him a year’s worth of value for the account over a 36 month period. We argued (rightly it turned out), that there was the danger of one or all of the car dealerships in the group bolting after the sale. If one or all did, we weren’t on the hook for the payments.

Right after the sale, one of the car dealers got upset at the switch and “fired” us so to speak, then switched agencies. So we ended up paying $100,000 I think for the group. The reduction in price was based on the revenue percentage of the dealer that left. The other 3 stuck with us.

It was all written up by our attorneys, but in the end, it turned out to be a good deal for everyone. He made over $30,000 a year over 3 years (he has LOTS of other business interests), and we got a nice account.

On a side note. A year later, the dealership that left called and came back. Nothing was in the deal about that occurence, so we were off-the-hook for paying anything additional for that account.

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

[Chris Blair]

Daniel Low:
That’s interesting, can you check the box for square pixels if you render out to a DV codec – DV25 for example?

Daniel,

Yes…all the options are available regardless of the format, the codec etc. I think trueSpace is converting the image somewhere before it get’s compressed.

I believe it’s like how you can create an SD widescreen image in photoshop by creating it at 720×486 with a 1.2 to 1 pixel aspect, or you can create it using square pixels at 864×486, then when finished creating it, just resize it to 720×486 (but keeping square pixels). Bring either one into your NLE timeline and they look correct.

I know graphics guys that dislike having to switch back and forth between the pixel-aspect correction feature in Photoshop, so they create all their widescreen graphics using square pixels as noted above, then when it’s all approved, they resize it.

So I think trueSpace is doing something to the image to correct for whatever codec or pixel aspect it ends up being. I don’t know about other 3D animation software, but when I set a project up in trueSpace, I don’t have to tell it the size of the project. It gets adjusted when rendered to whatever format, pixel size, pixel aspect ratio etc. And that’s whether you’re doing any of the many flavors of HD. Everything (including circular elements) come out looking correct as long as you check the right boxes.

If I start thinking about it too much…it makes my head hurt!! So I just render short tests, checking the stuff I think is correct, until the test render looks correct. Then I write it down for that particular format, pixel size & aspect, codec etc.

As an aside, we have 3 VelocityQ editing systems, and if you take a frame grab from the timeline, then open it in photoshop, Photoshop thinks it’s pixel aspect is square, when in fact it isn’t. I don’t know if there’s some sort of metadata that VelocityQ leaves out when it saves the still file (can save as bmp or jpg), but it leads me to believe that some software just isn’t “pixel aspect aware.”

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

[Chris Blair]

Paul,

Yes…although this is the reverse of my example, the same thing would occur. Your fields would get reversed. So try swapping the field order (if that’s possible within Final Cut or Compressor) and see what just the 60i looks like. If it looks decent, THEN do your conversion to progressive.

Another workflow suggestion would be to transcode your file to your desired Final Cut codec and in doing so change the pixel size to 720×486, reverse fields and use an interlaced to progressive plug-in. This in theory would fix the jerky motion problem caused by reversed fields, and give you the progressive look you’re going for.

We get high-end SD animation done all the time by a guy that’s really good up near Chicago, and he sends us Quicktimes using the animation codec at 720×486, and they look just fine when imported into our editing system with no change to pixel aspect or resizing of the frame. I do some basic 3D stuff in trueSpace, and just to check I called up it’s quicktime output dialogue. There’s a check box to adjust the pixel aspect for square, rectangular and widescreen even if I select the animation codec.

So perhaps your animatator has already made this adjustment prior to rendering. I also know that Avid has the pixel aspect options using the animation codec with Quicktime export or output.

Hope you get if figured out.

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

[Chris Blair]

I’ll second Dan’s recommendation. We own a vStor and while we only use if for SD work, it does everything they say it will and their customer service and understanding of how video editing works is outstanding.

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

[Chris Blair]

I believe the MPEG2 50MBps spec refers to MegaBITS per second and not MebaBYTES per second. So if you add the audio into the data rate, that sounds right.

Uncompressed SD video averages about 21 MegaBYTES per second for 8 bit, and 27 or 28 for 10 bit regardless of the codec.

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

[Chris Blair]

Again…I’m not a final cut guy, but I think the key comments here are:

“the interlaced animation looks crappy in my progressive timeline…”

and…”the animation converted to progressive looks fantastic but has jerky motion”

Things that come to my mind immediately would be:

1. Are the fields reversed in the original animation from what they should be for the format, codec and editing platform?

2. If it’s standard def, was the animation produced at 720×480, and the timeline is at 720×486. If so, this results in a field shift of one scan line, which reverses the fields and can cause the video to look like crap in any timeline. Deinterlacing doesn’t fix it, it only blends or interpolates the reversed fields, resulting in a better looking image, with motion still out of whack.

If it’s none of those…a better method of deinterlacing sounds like the answer. The best solution is to re-render the animation progressive with motion blur. If that’s not possible, the next best is to use a better deinterlace process that reduces motion artifacting. But from my 25+ years of experience, animation is more difficult to convert cleanly than video that’s shot interlaced.

So finding out if the fields are reversed or finding a better method of converting the animation to progressive should be the goal, not figuring out why Final Cut still shows the clip as lower field or upper field or whatever it’s showing.

Hope that gives some additional things to look at.

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

[Chris Blair]

Wow…that’s a broad question that I don’t think can be answered. We’ve produced TV spots for $1000, and we’ve produced spots for $25,000. And there are probably people on these lists that have spent $25,000 on craft services for a very high-end, international TV spot! (I’m only half-kidding)

I don’t believe there’s any way of giving you set prices for any of what you list. For instance, a broadcast television program could conceivably be produced from anywhere from $30,000 up to millions depending on the type of program.

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

[Chris Blair]

I don’t use Final Cut, but converting an animation from fields to frames could be dicey depending on the amount of motion. We take 60i video and convert it to progressive all the time using a variety of plug-ins in either After Effects or Digital Fusion, but there are times when even that produces some odd motion artifacting, especially if there is a fast pan or tilt… or a fairly quick diagonal camera move.

I’d say you’d have to go outside Final Cut to achieve this, but Final Cut users might know better on that.

We use re:Vision fields kit, Film FX, a fields module within Digital Fusion, as well as a slow-motion feature in Fusion that allows you to blend fields (we set the speed at 100% but blend the fields). One of the plug-ins will work great on one set of footage, but suck on the next. So that’s why we have a multitude of tools we use. There are half-a-dozen other fields/frames plug-ins out there as well. But there’s no magic solution to this other than having the animator render the thing progressive with motion blur.

Another popular technique is to convert 60i to 30p using upper fields, and 60i to 30p using lower fields and then blend the results together at 50% (in a compositing program like AE or Fusion you can do this in one pass). Heck, you can probably even do it in one pass in Final Cut. By using both fields you can often improve the results of the conversion to progressive frames by capturing information of fast-moving objects that can be lost when using only 1 field.

RE:Vision also sells a motion blur plug-in that adds the slight frame blurring you’d get if you shot or rendered something progressive. We’ve demoed it but I don’t have experience with it and can’t really comment on it’s value.

Here’s a link a to a plug-in a lot of Final Cut users mention that also claims to do what you want:

https://www.nattress.com/Products/filmeffects/G_Fast_Deinterlace_Blend.htm

Again…I can’t comment on it’s quality, but it looks to be very inexpensive and works within Final Cut.

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

[Chris Blair]

May Bolton:
I’m really wanting to know if there is a general rule of thumb for determining the best codecs and compression settings for web streaming (not download).

Some of the big CDN (content distribution network or content delivery network) companies have compression and data rate tables you can download. But some are reluctant to provide this information because a big part of their business is doing the encoding for clients. I know at one time we downloaded a table from Playstream, but I looked on their site and couldn’t find it. You might go to their site and just search for something like “compression table” or something like that.

I did find a “bitrate calculator” on their site:

https://www.playstream.com/support/tools/calculator.aspx

You basically plug in the length of the clip, then check the connection speed and it spits out two lists. One listing the mutliple bit-rates to encode a file to if you want to provide users with varying bit-rates so it will stream reliably on virtually any connection, and the second a single bitrate that will play on the target connection speed.

But generally, for streaming you simply look at the average download speeds of the various internet services available. For instance, DSL typically delivers between 512kb and 1MB/sec download speeds. So your videos should not exceed 512kb in order to stream. If you want them to stream reliably over those connections, you should actually shoot for a little lower overal data rate (combined video and audio data rate). That said, we typically encode with the 512kb/sec combined data rate as the target for streaming video.

That ensures that it will probably stream on just about any connection out there (except for an antiquated modem of course). You also have to think about things like streaming over 3G if your clients want cell phone users to access content.

I know the aim of compression is to compress as much as possible (to reduce file and date size) without losing quality and ease of playback but I wouldn’t know how to select from the endless list of bit rates and data rates for video and audio compression of a video file to make it playable for web streaming.

On this point you’ll just have to educate yourself. You’ll learn quickly that Flash Video doesn’t give the best quality, but will play on just about any computer running any operating system, using just about any browser. H264 (a codec) in either Quicktime, Windows, and now even Flash, gives better quality, but because it’s a newer codec, reduces playback compatibility, because many end users won’t have the correct codec and either don’t have their computer configured to automatically download it, or their corporate firewall won’t allow it.

Generally, the older the codec, the better chance it will play on a wide range of computers. But…the older the codec, the worse the quality. Your job is to figure out what’s important to your client and select the appropriate format and codec for them. We use Flash Video for 90% of what we do for the web simply because the quality is decent, and the compatibility is very high. Not to mention it’s very easy to implement on web pages.

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

[Chris Blair]

I can’t answer your first question about “is this a good solution.” But I can answer the second one. It will be outdated probably 6 months after you buy it. Anything you buy will be.

That’s not the issue. The issue is: will it solve my current problems (whatever they are), and will it do it for the term of my investment. Just about any computer based product has little or no value on the open market after 5 years. A non-linear edit system bought 5 years ago for $20,000 might be worth $1000 if you’re lucky today.

If you’re an established company, I see NO advantage to leasing. Leasing typically means higher interest and some sort of deposit up-front, plus the fees the leasing company charges to broker the deal.

With a loan, you’ll have a lower interest rate and require little or no money down, and have little or no fees to pay for setting up the deal. Either way, you’re borrowing money to buy the thing, so there’s not much difference beyond the issues above.

And if you can get into a SAN solution that does HD for under $20k…I’d say that’s doing pretty darn well.

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