[Craig Seeman]

You’d find a few answers by searching the threads here.

Episode, Squeeze, On2 FlixPro. Flix should work as a plugin for FCP and Compressor but haven’t tried it myself.

Episode (which can do FLV as well as many other codecs) also works as a plugin to Compressor.

Both Squeeze and Flix have Mac and Windows versions but many sites you’ve hunted might only mention the Windows versions.

Episode is Mac only but a real power tool.

[Craig Seeman]

[novacaine] “I have a 864×486 quicktime file compressed using Sorenson Video 3, at 29.97.”

Get the source material if you can. You don’t mention the data rate so I have no idea what the quality is but the source is likely to look much better.

[novacaine] “What compression setting should I use to maintain its quality?”
Are you asking about FCP timeline codec to work in? You’re not going to make the source look any better. If you’re adding graphics you may want to work in a higher quality 4:2:2 codec but I have no idea how that’ll compare with the quality of your Sorenson .mov source which may or may not be heavily compromised already.

[novacaine] “Should I select interlaced or progressive for this file?”
Is your source interlaced or progressive? I’d guess, given that it was compressed with Sorenson codec that it might have been deinterlaced already.

[novacaine] “What settings produce the best quality exporting into Compressor3 to create a .m2v for a SD DVD in DSP4? “
You’re not going to improve the quality of your source. In most circumstance I’d cringe at the thought of taking a Sorenson encoded file into an NLE, changing to a timeline codec, taking through a round of MPEG2 compression.

Maybe 8 or 10 bit uncompressed or Apple’s new ProRes codec but no matter what you do I’d say do all you can to get the original source rather than a Sorenson encoded file.

[Craig Seeman]

It’s been a week and no one answered. Sorry, I’ve been a bit busy but here goes.

On the Mac both Squeeze and Episode are good. They’re very different to work with and have different advantages.

On Windows there’s Squeeze and ProCoder that come to mind but I generally don’t do my compression on Windows . . . I do use Windows Media Encoder though if it fits the project goal.

Many like using the Animation codec out of After Effects as a source for your compression app. There’s always workflow considerations too. You want the highest quality source your system can handle for compression.

AVI is a wrapper so the quality of that source depends on what’s on the “inside.”
WMV may/may not be heavily compressed already which mean another compression can be a significant quality loss. If someone has to hand you a WMV you can ask them to do a “Quality” encode of 1 Pass VBR, Quality set to 100. It’ll be a large file but that’s a good thing.

I hope this isn’t too difficult to read. It’s hard enough to learn compression without the language issues.

[Craig Seeman]

Without going done point by point, my own observations and experience of craigslist is clearly very different than yours.

I’ve gotten work from descent mid sized businesses on craigslist. I’ve been contacted and have seen ads from nationally known companies. Yes, generally these are smaller divisions within such companies and some are new to video.

There are MANY good reasons businesses advertise or respond to advertising on craigslist. Sometimes it’s somebody who isn’t surrounded by people who can recommand others. Sometimes they want to cover for their lack of knowledge. Sometimes the people the company uses are beyond the budget for a given project. Sometimes their job entails so much other work that craigslist is easier for them then spending time doing research.

. . . AND I did get my home/office from craigslist too!

[Craig Seeman]

[Flowmotion] “just this week I turned down two cable tv ads for $500 each”
Even those can be worth doing.

In my case I’m blunt up front about what they’re getting. The ad must be simple enough for the whole thing, shoot/edit, is done in an 8 hour day or less. In addition, I became an ad agency and I get 15% on the cable buy. The buy has to big enough to make it worthwhile though. That’s learning the Comcast way of thinking.

[Craig Seeman]

While I don’t see the kind of money from craigslist that Flowmotion shows in one month, I too make thousands of dollars from craigslist. That’s from both my own advertising and responding to others.

You show your demo and hold to your price line and you get jobs. People on craigslist are “shopping” of course but if they see the quality difference then some are willing to pay your price. Showing experience also helps. Keep in mind those shopping on craigslist may be very insecure and they’re getting lots of responses from obvious newbies. You show quality and experience and some will pay your price . . . and yes you can toss the rest away.

[Craig Seeman]

Building scale models. Isn’t that a fundemental skill for low budget Sci-Fi. Sci-Fi and News . . . they are almost the same thing aren’t they?

I like the idea but $69-$390 for someone’s 3D news set seems like such a simple “quick fix.”
Can you show us a still frame of what you did?

[Craig Seeman]

Actually a lot of the “real” sets I’m seeing look like virtual sets. Look at the Daily Show for example. Heck a good part of what I see at CNN looks almost “virtual” such as the Situation Room.

Of course if I had access to a studio to shoot real items I could consider doing it your way. One could actually move around all sorts of things and take photos as various perspectives that way.

Maybe a side “career” for you is to do just that and sell them. Of course I’m not sure how the actual equipment designers would feel about finding their monitors, racks, desks as “clip art” but then again maybe that’s a lucrative deal for someone.

[Craig Seeman]

So are you going to write a tutorial for Cow/Cow Magazine and include a link to the layered Photshop file (with watermark if you need)?

I’d love to see it (with layers of course) but even without might be ok.

I honestly thought this looked ok for low budget work
https://www.newsin3d.com/store/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=128
It looks very close to what News12 is using locally.

See these
Story 1
and this
Story 2

[Craig Seeman]

You mention “studio” and by use of “minimal” location that studio will be predominant. Do you know that the V1’s HDMI output can allow you to avoid the HDV (mpeg2) compression of the other cameras? That would give the V1 a BIG advantage IMHO. It can allow for much better graphics compositing/green/blue screen for example.

I’d also only consider a camera with XLR ins unless you plain on recording to an external sound device. Once you start adding devices (such as the Beachtek) you’re negating the already marginal cost advantage of the non XLR cameras which also have fewer features in other regards.

The Z1 gives you the advantage of shooting both PAL and NTSC if that’s important to you. It’s inerlace only though so if you’re target is predominately progressive, you’ll be deinterlacing everything. The Z1 handles low light a bit “better” (better is subjective since it involved such things as detail, noise, color as well as light sensitivity) than the V1 but that’s only critical if you shoot low light.

All you can find are press releases? Are you “Googling?” There are a PLETHORA of reviews on all the aforementioned cameras . . . probably an overwhelming number. The quality of the rewiew itself may vary but given the popularity of the cameras they were heavily reviewed camaras.