[Craig Seeman]

[tony salgado] “Of course some low ball independent will hack his rates well below a reasonable amount but in the end those operators will end up going out of business as their cost of operation will exceed what they charge one day.”

But they’re constantly being replaced by an expanding number of people willing to do that who believe charging low will grow their skills and their business . . . only to find they get lowballed when they raise their rates. When they go under they try to make side money by rendting way to cheap or selling on Ebay to the next lowballer.

While rental houses may charge $200 a day for a DVX100, some failed owners will rent it for $50 and others will work for $150 a day with gear.

Just to be clear I’m not talking about broke indy film producer wana bees. BUSINESS clients and those inquiring about local Cable Spots are balking at $50/hr with gear! I see MANY businesses thinly vailed as indy “doc” producers asking people to shoot for nothing or close to it.

[Craig Seeman]

The sad thing about craigslist low ball prices is that businesses (and yes there are businesses not just indy films . . . and some businesses posing as indy filmmakers) are getting people to work for next to free and some of those people are talented. That’s foder for another thread though.

The “standard” rate is what you need to survive and grow with your business model.

Gather your total monthly expenses
Rent, food, utilities, insurance (health and gear), web page hosting, email service, cost of equipment, cost of maintenance, cost of software, cost of upgrading all that over 2 years or so (especially for computers, maybe 1 year for software, cameras it depends but 2 or 3 years is reasonable these days), car costs (and there are many), cost of consumables like video tape, office supplies, office furnature, living furnature, anything else you can think of.

Figure out what your yearly expenses are using the above (everything in your life!)

Assume about 20-25 paid hours of work a week.
You’ll be spending the rest of the time maintaining gear, talking to prospective clients, maintaining web page, putting together demos, bookkeeping, billing, learning new gear and software, buying supplies and some time buying new software/gear. You may still find you’re working 60 plus hours a week even with 20-25 billable hours.

You now can figure out what you need to charge to cover all your life expenses and maintain your business and replace software/gear when the time comes. At $50/hr working 20 paid hours a weeks (and probably 20-40 unpaid hours!) you’d be grossing about $1000 a week. Will that keep you going in Las Vegas?

Profit and life’s enjoyment
Do you want 2-4weeks off during the year to enjoy life and prevent burnout or work on personal projects? Do you want to dine out, go to movies or sporting events? What about sick days or other life contigencies that will cut into your billable hours? There’s money you’l want to go on vacation maybe. Buy some toys for yourself. Things that are fun but “non functional/live survival” purchases. Money to grow your business further rather than just maintain it. Cost of training classes for example? Gong to trade shows? Savings so you’re not living from job to job. What about family expenses if/when you have kids? Factor all this in too.

Factor all the above in to what you should be charging for the 20-25 billable hours. To me, the difference between a “newbie” rate and an “experienced” rate is how one factors in the “profit” area. Newbies that charge below the base survival rate for their businesses hurt all of us . . . including themselves. They’ll become hobbyists as they need to look for a “real job” to survive or they’ll be “renting” their gear an craigslist or selling it on Ebay.

Keep the above in mind and you should be able to figure out what your rate should be.

In simplified form
Iit’s all your expenses both personal and business, desired profit for fun stuff, 20-25 billable hours a week for about 48 weeks or so a year (include sick days and other time off).

[Craig Seeman]

I believe iTunes songs DO work in iMovie though . . . for personal non professional projects.

[Craig Seeman]

Also works in Cleaner and soon Squeeze again.

[Craig Seeman]

If your target is in the corporate/business market WM9 dominates. Many company IT departments won’t allow Quicktime Player on their systems. WMP 7.1 and up can get a free component update to play WM9. I have bumped into a client or two who still only have WMP6.4 on their systems. That’s a bad business decision on their part IMHO. Windows NT has hung on for a long time and some of those systems may be using WMP7.1 though.

In the entertainment market (movie trailers, music videos, etc) you’ll find much deeper Quicktime penetration. You can use either or both WM and Quicktime compatible formats. Good encoding front ends like Squeeze and Compression Master can make good MPEG-4. I don’t like Apple’s Compressor or QTPro’s MPEG-4 at all. Squeeze can also do very good Sorenson Pro files as can Cleaner if you BUY the Sorenson Pro codec. What I like about Quicktime compatible codecs such as MPEG-4 and Sorenson Pro mov files is that you can jog them one frame at a time in Quicktime Player. WM can’t be jogged like that in WMP on either platform ALTHOUGH a Mac with Flip4Mac, which can play WMV in Quicktime, takes advantage of the Quicktime jog feature (but Windows users will still be “stuck” with their WMP). If your target is entertainment I’d use a GOOD MPEG-4 encode or Sorenson Pro.

H.264. I love the quality and file size efficiency. It can’t be beat at the moment (IMHO). The problem is some Mac users and many PC users haven’t updated to it though. If quality is critical I’d do H.264 and provide a link to QT7 free download with an explanation. Motivated viewers will make the download. You have to know/expect that your viewer is motivated and demanding high quality though.

Flash. In my very subjective opinion I’m not crazy about Flash for video on Player 7 and earlier. On2 is very good but requires people to have updated to Player 8. Given the ubiquitous nature of Flash (many Windows users who don’t have Quicktime DO have Flash) some feel Player 8 penetration will happen quickly.

The above is just the opinion of this compressionst (and shared by some and other may disagree) but I’d thought I’d give you my reasoning.
In most cases I’d go with WMV9 and a good MPEG4 or Sorenson Pro encode.

[Craig Seeman]

What he might do is include a statement that Flash8 or Quicktime 7 is needed and have a download link. One has to hope the targeted viewer is motivated.

You might want to break the movie up into 10 or 15 minute segments just in case the viewer must disengage and get back to it later. They won’t have to wait for a potentially long buffer time.

[Craig Seeman]

Can we sticky this on Craigslist and Mandy’s.

[Craig Seeman]

To open .m4v you need Quicktime. Apple did that by design. When one downloads iTunes on the PC one also downloads Quicktime. I know of no hack nor hook that would allow Window Media Player to open .m4v. You can convert WMV file to .m4v files on the Mac with Flip4Mac though and I’ve heard of people finding ways to do that on the PC.

[Craig Seeman]

Are you using Cleaner 6.0.x or 6.5? I know Cleaner 6.5 can’t create MPEG4. It’s an issue between Cleaner and Quicktime7.0.4. Autodesk recommends going back to Quicktime 7.0.1.

Given Autodesk’s history with fixes/update either we’ll get lucky with Quicktime 7.0.5 or they’ll be $150 update around NAB 2008 that’ll fix the issue.

[Craig Seeman]

Flip4Mac works in Compressor 2 also. You can use 2 Pass VBR constrained to control peaks in the data rate.