[Tim Wilson]

[Craig Seeman] “3D growth is only going to be a subset of that 20% of a given year and the size of subset may depend on a combination of price and the USA economy.”

Don’t forget: there are approx. 200 million 3D-capable sets in people’s homes right now. Compare to the 1 million+ HD sets available at the launch of that format!

(Or thereabouts, with rounding.)

So there doesn’t need to be one single person buying one single new set for 3D programming to have a clear path to massive adoption. The displays are already in place.

Sorry to be repetitive about this, but the number of 3d-ready displays already in place *has* to be the starting place for any discussion about the format’s deployment and viability.

I guarantee it was a huge part of the starting place that led the suits to believe that they could make more money than they spend to launch all-3D networks this summer.

There are issues related to 3D adoption. TV sets ain’t one of ’em.

[Tim Wilson]

General rule of thumb: match medium and message.

If you make or consume via a screen, best to advertise on a screen. Online is a better bang for the buck of course, but look at how much better movie listings work online. You can even buy tickets online. Screen, screen, screen.

If the service has nothing to do with a screen, the Yellow Pages still works best. Just for grins, compare your local restaurant listings online to Yellow Pages. It’s amazing how little is available online. And as Bob points out, any kinds of trades are best found in the Yellow Pages.

The one one one exception is if you need somebody in your immediate vicinity and can’t figure it out from the Yellow Pages. But even Google gives junk returns, and misses some of the options that may work best for you.

For us, though, online is best for *advertising.* Plenty of ways to do local *marketing* that are more effective than YP.

tw

[Tim Wilson]

Coupla notes responding to various posts:

1) While DRW saw a state of the art presentation with an expensive monitor, there are already nearly 200 million 3D-capable sets out there, and have been purchased for perfectly reasonable prices.

How’s this: 63″ Mitsubishi, 1080p, 120 Hz, for $1399 at Best Buy. Hurry, you can still get yours delivered by Sunday, although these things are LIGHT – two people can easily get one in the back of a pickup or van.

The 2D picture on these things is staggering, and among scores of models that are 3D-ready. All of Mitsu’s sets have been 3D ready for years…and again, there are already 200 million from many mfrs already in homes.

2) 3D home viewing has been around for quite some time for gamers. NVIDIA has a wonderful system with their own glasses. Far less expensive than Real-D, completely compelling (super-high refresh rates, as gamers demand), their games come with FOUR pairs of glasses (multi-person gaming has been huge for years), and those glasses come with multiple configurations, including a couple specially designed for people who already wear prescription glasses.

News flash: NVIDIA’s market research indicated that gamers wear glasses at a much higher rate than the general public!

3) There will be people complaining about glasses for as long as there are glasses….but the audience is voting with every dollar: more and more of them are willing to spend more and more money on repeat viewings of higher-priced 3D offerings, glasses and all. This is absolutely NOT going to be an impediment to any meaningful part of the potentially paying audience.

To put it another way, producers can’t hear your complaints about glasses because of all the noise from people banging on the door for more 3D screens, and all the noise from those bags of money falling from the sky, as so many people are watching so many movies…with glasses.

3a) Yes, plenty and plenty of research being done to get rid of glasses, but absolutely NO incentive to do it soon.

Don’t forget that the one company to invest heavily in auto-stereoscopy was Philips, and had to drop it when they couldn’t get anyone, including their own stockholders, excited about the current state of the art. It simply wasn’t looking good enough. People would rather pay for better 3D with glasses than less persuasive 3D without glasses.

This is a business forum. Never forget: money talks.

3b) Which is why Armani is one of many design houses that has already announced designer 3D glasses – superior comfort, superior optics AND fashionable.

4) The first televised 3D experiences will not look good enough. They don’t need to. It was decades before color TV looked better than nightmarish. Depending on your reception method and display, it took 3-5 years before HD looked genuinely higher D. And yet, sets sold on the PROMISE that it would look better. And it did.

Again, there are already 200 million 3D sets out there, but that’s a fraction of overall TVs installed. There’s a massive upside…

4a)…and sports will drive it, just as sports have driven TV sales for a long, long time. It used to be Milton Berle. Now, between games and football, John Madden may well be the new Mr. Television.

5) Poke around the Cow. People here ARE doing 3D, NOW. Many of them are in sports, many of them are in movies, many of them in DVD. This is part of our world NOW. 3D DVDs have been out for a while, made by some people who post here, and all that sports stuff – those people are at work NOW. There are crazy numbers of people here, many many thousands in fact, from ESPN, the NFL, NFL Films, the NFL Network, Discovery, Sony — I mention these because they’re coming online with 3D in less than six months.

Make no mistake. This is NOT a future story.

5a) Perhaps not so much in this forum, which is disproportionally owner/indie and video driven, but seriously, this stuff is in bunches of forums – AE, FCP, camera forums, the Stereoscopic forum, Nuke, etc etc. Some of it just curiosity, but some of it is from people who are doing it already.

If it’s happening in this industry, it’s happening in the Cow. Although, as I said, not necessarily in this forum.

No disrespect intended – that’s just the nature of the conversation here, a focus more on MY business than THE business. A critical service that we are proud to provide better than anyone else in the industry, but it can skew some discussions about the industry as a whole.

6) What does “HERE” mean? Is 3D “here”? Yes, beyond doubt or debate. Unless YOU are someplace that it is not, in which case it is not here for YOU…but it’s “here,” even if it’s far from ubiquitous. And when it was launched, there were just over 1 million HD sets already in homes.

1 million HD at launch vs. 200 million 3D at launch. Which adoption rate will be faster? Please. This isn’t even an interesting race.

It will of course be “here” far earlier than it is “universal,” just as was true for color, HD and indeed TV itself. But it all started somewhere, and work on the 3D for the home has been underway for years. It’s only the wide-ish-scale deployment that begins in June.

Which is why thousands of Cows are already working on, and in, 3D.

Peace. Out.
Timmy

[Tim Wilson]

Which software are you using for rendering? You might try asking this question in that forum….

[Tim Wilson]

I second the recommendation for YouSendIt. Muuuuch faster than ftp (you can read the technical details of how they accomplish this at YouSendIt.com — but I can testify that it’s absolutely true.)

It’s free up to 100 MB, and you can do up to 2 GB for $8.95. Lotso security controls, easy tracking, including a return receipt when they pick it up for an extra $3.99. Pretty short money for faster-than-ftp, with features that most ftp clients don’t offer.

That aside, seconding others, I treated it like dub time. Seems annoying at first, but a real service that takes real time to perform….

tw

[Tim Wilson]

[Mark Alexander] “(It’s probably right in front of me here somewhere!)”

Not quite yet, Mark! We’re still getting a few of the last pieces in place, so stay tuned.

We’re really looking forward to it!

Thanks,
Tim

[Tim Wilson]

[Timothy J. Allen] “, there are times when the outside company retains rights to a segment of the intellectual property. It depends on the partnership agreement.”

I mostly focused on things that we do in our end of the business, but yeah, stuff like software remains almost entirely in the hands of the contractor.

[Timothy J. Allen] “When using NASA footage, you aren’t allowed to use NASA imagery in ways that implies that NASA (or for that matter, the U.S. Government) endorses your product or cause. The NASA logo also has very specific guidelines”

I started to go there, but I figured you’d be better to deal with the NASA part. 🙂

Funny story about logos – when I asked for them, most of the agencies I dealt with gave me scans of their business cards!

tw

[Tim Wilson]

[Chris Blair] “Tim Wilson: The People paid for the footage, and they can do with it whatever they wish. It’s the law of the land.

This has been dissected and discussed a bunch of times and in the absence of a contract stating specifically that the paying party owns the footage, this just isn’t true.”

Agreed re: everyday clients.

Agreed re: state and local governments, which are exempted from Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code…although Florida and Minnesota have enacted similar statutes of their own under state law. California may have, but this is – not shockingly – ambiguous.

Re: federal agencies, read the aforementioned Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code, which covers contractors.

To be honest, I did. I have a couple of things to say about that. One, be glad I’m an insomniac. Two, aside from being a little dense after you find it, the language is pretty easy to read.

Three, I have some corrections and clarifications to what I said before.

It turns out that contractors DO have negotiation rights for *civilian* agencies and NASA, but in the absence of an agreement, the default is that they retain all rights for the public domain. To assert your rights, you have to do so in advance, attach a form to the footage, etc. etc. And you might be denied.

And if it’s not specified in advance, forget it. You missed the bus.

Even if you get to retain copyright, here’s the rub. Under the Federal Acquisition Regulations,

The Government is granted for itself and others acting on its behalf a paid-up, nonexclusive, irrevocable worldwide license in this work to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies to the public, and perform publicly and display publicly, by or on behalf of the Government. All other rights are reserved by the copyright owner.

So you own it IF you assert your rights in advance, and IF they are granted…but the government can still use it in most of the ways important to your copyright, including creating derivative works and distribution to the public. Your copyright only applies to non-government folks using the footage…unless they ask for it from the government! In which case, of course, as US citizens, they have full access to it.

And indeed, the FAR gives the government the right to come back later and require the rights be transferred to them.

Note that under the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement, clause 252.227-70209, you are required to assign all rights to the government. Period. It’s not clear to me what rights you retain once you’ve assigned “all” rights to government, but there you go: you have to assign them the rights. Nothing to negotiate.

Which was in fact part of Emre’s original question.

So, to answer directly:

[Emre Tufekci S.O.A.] “If you are hired as a freelance company to produce a project for a DOD agency (not classified, just informational) is there a clause that says the government owns the footage by default even if it was not stated in the contract?

Yes, there is a *default* that the government owns the footage, for every agency, both military and civilian. You have some, but not unlimited, room for negotiation, only with civilian agencies and NASA, and only in advance.

[Emre Tufekci S.O.A.] ….the [DoD] agency is asking for the raw footage without presenting any other legal justification.”

For the Department of Defense, they don’t need to justify anything beyond what is in the code: you shoot it for them, you have to assign them the rights.

Reading the manual – fun for the entire family!

[Tim Wilson]

[Richard Cooper] “. I am sure that there is some stipulation in the contract somewhere.”

There may not be. Whether or not it’s in the contract, it’s a stone cold fact that is beyond any negotiation. The People paid for the footage, and they can do with it whatever they wish. It’s the law of the land.

In fact, the folks at the agency might be jolly old souls and write up a contract waiving The People’s rights to ownership, but it doesn’t matter. They’re not the agency’s rights. That clause of the contract would have no legal force.

Three bits of good news with government. One, every job has a built-in referral. Once you work with one agency, all kinds of doors open. Two, even though it won’t be fast, you will ALWAYS get paid.

Three: you can get paid more than once for your work.

Because yes, among the people who gets to do with that footage whatever they want is YOU. The footage is in the public domain, but you still have the rights to any derivative work using it. You could make a commercial with it for one client, use a screen capture for another client, etc.

I wouldn’t worry about using footage that theoretically might be used by a lot of other people. I worked for quite a few agencies over the years, and never saw any of my stuff wind up anywhere else.

That said, you do indeed have access to footage shot by EVERYONE who was working on the public dime. You have to pay for the duplication, and the process here is really REALLY slow, but it’s egalitarian. For example, look into all the public domain footage available through the Library of Congress. Remarkable.

I found the experience of working with these agencies so rewarding, and the occasional opportunity to repurpose some of the footage so convenient, and the access to so much that I never considered for a second that it was a downside to lose the exclusive rights to raw footage.

tw

[Tim Wilson]

Amazing. Thanks for passing that along.

Be sure to tag the post, using the “Rate This Post” tools in the lower left of the post – by adding a 5 Cow rating to it (click on the number of Cows you think it deserves), and if you think it’s appropriate, marking it as a post that you think answers the question (the green check mark), or is plain and simple genius (the light bulb).

This one might deserve all three.