[Craig Seeman]

I understand what you’re saying about quote vs estimate. Yes one should use estimate by and large.

I’ve run into circumstances where the client wants a FIRM number at what, IMHO is way to early a stage. If they want a lock an the dollards then you have to also give them a lock on the time. This forces them to make elimnations or pay for overages/overtime.

It’s also important to talk about deadlines and changes in them even if it doesn’t affect total hours. I’ve had clients who’ve had deadlines move to an earlier date so the 40 hours that was stretched over 2 weeks became 1 week and you’ve already booked some hours for other projects during the week they want.

[Craig Seeman]

Clients need to both budget time and money on a project.

Another way of handling is give a base amount of time in your contract. At your rate you could quote
$2600 for a week (40 hour week) of editing including revisions (if you think the job will take a week of post based on the preliminary description. Then they have a budget and time constraint to guide them. If after seeing script and other post production requests, you can then respond that they may need alter complexity of graphics and change script to meet the budget or they need to fill out a change order for more time.

You make clear your initial quote is based on a skeletal concept description. NEVER stick yourself in a “flat rate” situation with so many unknowns. If you’ve overestimated you can always reward the client with a 10% discount on early payment/completion.

[Craig Seeman]

Thanks, Steve. I’ll digest this. It certainly gives me more of the info I’m looking for.

I was a big fan/user of Dr.T’s KCS (Keyboard Controlled Sequencer) Amiga version. Nothiing like it for doing “experimental” avant garde music stuff. So when is Boris going to come up with a new version? 😉 Well, at least you should market, “Dr.T’s FX plug-ins.” I actually saw Emile perform in NYC.

[Craig Seeman]

On a corporate DV shoot on an hourly rate they’re paying alacart. I only include when they’re paying for a package. I’m finding many of my corporate clients want to pay day rates rather than for a package. Corporate conferences are good example, We’ll end up with 3-6 hours of video for a day shoot (multiple cameras).

I’m concerned about DVD compatibility with set top recorders. Having to redo dubs can be a real time killer for a small shop.

[Craig Seeman]

Using Safari 2.0.2 on OSX 10.4.3 they look VERY NICE.
Using Internet Explorer 5.2 (which is old) on the same Mac also looks just as nice.
Using Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP Pro also looks just as nice.

Does he have his monitor set to Thousands of colors instead of Millions?

[Craig Seeman]

Thanks!

Craig Seeman
Third Planet Video

[Steve Bayes] “This calls for an engineering response! I am afraid the marketing guys can only fake it so much 😉

I will track down who worked on this UI to give you a better answer.

Steve B.
Boris/M100”

[Craig Seeman]

Steve,

Thanks for your response. I understand the occlusion issue. As a sometime compressionist (I believe I spoke to you at NAB Post NYC about WMV output on Media100 using Flip4Mac at the very end of the show – they sent Boris the 1.0.6 update) I was thinking in terms of IBP type GOPs in which an algorithm can be told where to look for an I frame. In this case B/P type frames would be the newly created frames. This could helped by a 2 pass encode, wouldn’t it?

I’m having some confusion about some of the settings like for example Bi Directional Mix and Nearest Mix as sort of look both ahead and behind vs look at the nearest (either/or) I frame from a current B/P type frame, in predicting motion. The preconceived notions I had might be leading to my misinterpretation of these functions in Optical Flow.

I also thought that maybe Low Velocity Correction (“If the Optical Flow moves an area that should not move”) and Velocity Limit (“percentage of the size and resolution of the Source Layer”) as sort of “sensitivity” adjustments as to both where it looks ahead/behind in the in the nearest frame (sort of like the region used in Image stabilization). My thinking was that a faster moving object might need to look at a wider region in the frame to find where it came from/should go to.

I’m also confused about Min. Edge Contrast which “sets the threshold for the minimum amount of detail in a region.” Just not sure how edge detail or contrast on those edges are affected by Optical Flow given one is avoiding the softening of Frame Blending.

I thought displaying the Vectors would help in my tweaking but I find the vectors aren’t visible in Draft Only. They are when set to Render, which I can then turn off before the render. The problem is when doing Option-p (FCP – Play all Frames) and try to park on a frame at issue, it jumps to another frame.

I know other editors are grappling with these concepts. Any help on the above would be greatly appreciated.

[Craig Seeman]

Hmm. Could make for some interesting scenerios in the boardroom presentations to HDTV.

“Harry’s been in the conference room for over three hours . . . . ‘kaboom, screach, argh’ . . . . but the widge-o-matic presentation was only seven minutes long. . . ”

Something to play with if no one walks over to the booth at the trade show too.

[Craig Seeman]

Yup, I’ve heard that. My conern is portablility too. 20 years from now, I’m guessing I’d still be able to find a Disc player that can read an old format. Not sure if that’ll be the case with some of the data tape drives. I can imagine what some folks are going through who backed things up on the oldest Syquest drives.

[Craig Seeman]

Hi Noah,
JVC has an a DVD player called the ioData which will play a WMVHD file from a DVD as well as standard DVDs. It’s $350 and it has DVI out in addition to the standard outs you find on a DVD player.