[Craig Seeman]

I believe some (many) HDTVs component inputs are only 1080i. I found this out when researching an HDTV to buy.

What I do at the moment is go from my CPU (MacPro) which has two DVI outputs, is to send one to a DVI to HDMI cable into my Samsung 46″ 1080p HDTV.

[Craig Seeman]

[David Roth Weiss] “a professional bringing home the bacon at eight bucks an hour. “

At $8/hr one brings home Bac~Os®

[Craig Seeman]

[Adam Erickson] “They were offering $8/hr for shooting and editing. Apparently “that’s the going rate in this town…” “

You’ll find higher paying work on craigslist. Please tell me this is a joke. There isn’t a town in the western hemisphere that that could be a “going rate.” Probably not in most other hemisphere’s either.

[Craig Seeman]

New version of XDCAM Transfer Software is 2.5.1. 2.1 is old.

I guess some are learning the lesson the hard way. Transfer the ENTIRE BPAV FOLDER. I believe, not only does is say it in one of them “thar” manuals, it says to ONLY USE the Clip Browser or Transfer software and NOT to do it by hand.

VLC does a lousy job as a conversion app. I believe Adobe PremierePro can now handle the MP4 directly as can Vegas.

[Craig Seeman]

If you want to equate market size with additional income and you’re doing spots, become an agency. I’ve done this with the local cable companies in my area.

In short, I do the spot and buy the time. The cable company “gives me” 15%. The bigger the buy, the more expensive the market, the more money we get.

[Craig Seeman]

Just a wild stab but try running Apple Disk Utility/Repair Disk (not to be confused with Repair Disk Permissions) on the disk.

BTW, this new disk, did you format it when you installed it? It wouldn’t be an issue where you intalled a FAT32 or NTFS disk without formating it for Mac?

[Craig Seeman]

Mike,
Your approach seems reasonable. I do have a couple of thoughts on that though.

I wonder if making the “No” answer to the travel expense so easy is a good thing. One doesn’t want to be coercive though. How about an email saying “We’ve calculated that added travel expense is $1000.” It gives them the option to respond with either “We thought that was included” or “Sure that’s a reasonable line item addition.” It gives both the client and Jeff room to wiggle on this based on the sense of the response.

The other thing is that from the client perspective is that the budget went from $25K to $26K and they may begin to have concerns about other “not as of yet” included expenses. They may begin to wonder about overnight shipment of approvals or FTP service or . . .

Jeffery, If your overall cost relative to expertise is good there’s no reason why they wouldn’t be repeat clients. The one thing you may have a problem providing is for last minute or small job work. That would be the only reason they’d go local.

[Craig Seeman]

[Richard Cardonna] “Actually I plan to have a Mac with both OS and XP I will have fcb plus premiere or avid. “

[Richard Cardonna] “I could include the whole adobe or fcp package with a top G5 plus a couple of 30 inch screens an IO/HD or a adobe matrox. But what else can i offer “

You’re not gonna do this on a discontinued G5. I assume you mean an Intel Mac Pro.

Here’s some things in a nutshell:

If people are bringing in their own editors the bulk will either be FCP or Avid and I suspect there are more FCP freelancers these days.

If some part of your “package” doesn’t include something they can buy on their own, they’ll probably buy their own.

If you offer a “finishing” package (stuff they can’t buy on their own) you might get finishing work. You might want to provide on staff finishing service. For example, many FCP editors can’t color grade, make project to broadcast spec, output to broadcast format, prepare files for film, Blu-ray, etc.

You may want to include on staff work flow consulting as an additional service.

In any case you’re going to need a loaded room to attract outside projects with their own editors . . . OR some very low budget producers who can’t afford to buy a Mac Pro (or even an iMac) with FCP.

[Craig Seeman]

Don’t forget there’s the cost of travel plus the time the travel takes plus the time in there that you’re not shooting but away from your business.

That said, if your profit margin is high enough that you can consider the travel cost included, then you can do that.

Whether you should add to the quote depends on what you’re charging and what you’ve decided as your formula for running the business and making a profit. No one can answer that because you didn’t provide that info.

As to the risk of losing the job . . . it depends on how much the job is worth to your business. If eating the travel cost makes it unprofitable then losing it is probably a good thing. If they’re going to be a repeat customer you have to take in to account the overall potential value over time. Again no one can answer that because you haven’t provided that info.

[Craig Seeman]

The SMI file should be located as follows
BPAV/CLPR/”CLIPNAME”/”CLIPNAME.SMI”

Here’s content from one of my SMI flies. You can look at the content of a good SMI file and possibly recreate the info you need.