Don Greening
Forum Replies Created
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[Mark Suszko] “A truly hungry and creative sales director for the station should be very anxious to try some of these for you, as they also raise the station’s own profile.”
Since our advertising experience using radio is pretty much zero your comments and suggestions are much appreciated. Whether or not we actually decide to take the station up on their offer remains to be seen but you’re helping to make it a more informed decision.
This Wednesday evening we’re attending what basically amounts to a wrap party for the recently completed project we helped the radio station with and I’ll be sure to bring up modified ad ideas and suggestions with the station marketing manager.
[Matte Blume] “You’d not want to place an “annual” on one station.
If you’re in a metro area, its likely that there are 20-30 (+) radio signals in the area.
Putting $16K on just one of those stations is not exactly “broad” marketing. “Agreed, but if we only have advertising dollars for one campaign this is the station to go with, as their demographic is very specific and targeted at females between 25 and 45. So now we have a big decision to make IF we decide to do any radio spots at all: do we target only for the wedding side of our biz or make the commercial more of a “we do this and this and this” kind of thing? I would suspect it would end up as a modified wedding spot because of the station’s demographic. However, if the truth be known, we’re actually trying to tone down our wedding biz while increasing the corporate stuff. It’s to the point now where we have to decide to go big or stay home.
Hey, but this is not my thread. It belongs to Adam and he was asking about TV ads for Pete’s sake.
– Don
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[Mark Suszko] “Now some brides may actually WANT that ostentatious “my wedding is Trump-level and we’re shooting it like it’s a real movie” look, but nobody I ever knew did. “
There’s a certain ethic community in our area that wants this. Their weddings are 3 day events and the more gear you show up with the better. This includes jibs, cranes etc. and they’ll willingly pay top dollar. I tend to avoid these like the plague, since our policy is to only react to events that happen and never CAUSE events to happen.
– Don
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[Mark Suszko] “This concentrates only pure sales prospects, the brides and their moms, herding them into one killzone, as it were.”
The station producer is going to love that one when I tell her.
My wife and I talked about this today actually, specifically about how we would cope with the generated business and how much of that extra business we would need before we made our money back from the ad cost. We both agree that it would be beneficial to our business. The radio station that approached us is an obvious choice, as their demographic is women between 25 and 45. They sit down with us and design a “call to action” commercial that they guarantee to be broadcast 20 times daily in prime time. I just noticed in my first post I said it was 20 times a month. That was incorrect. They also added that usually they exceed the 20 times a day thing but anything over 20 is not in prime time, but when they have “dead time”. They of course suggest doing it for a year to build brand identity and familiarity and that’s a logical approach. You can’t blitz the airwaves for 2 weeks and expect the listener to retain the info long term.
Given the fact that no one else around here in the video biz does radio or TV ads it would be a huge marketing advantage. It’s just the initial cost. Yikes. Anyway, the jury is still out on this one.
– Don
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[Beth Segal] “Might need some guidance on importing the SXS as DVCPRO HD as I had to drag the footage into my browser as all the options for Log and Transfer for the SXS were grayed out (i.e. not available). “
You don’t need to re-import the footage to change the EX files to DVCProHD. Just drop the EX stuff into a DVCProHD 720p sequence. If you create a new sequence with this codec FCP will ask if you want to change the sequence settings to match what you’re dropping into it. Just say no.
Or you can drop the EX footage into the same sequence with your existing DVCProHD footage. FCP will play both back in the same timeline, although the EX footage will have a green render bar because it hasn’t actually been changed to DVCProHD yet. But once you render everything out it will be changed/transcoded into DVCProHD.
– Don
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[Beth Segal] “7. I took my media hard drive and project to a friend’s house to see if it worked on his system. He has the exact same set up as I do except he has 2.5 Ram on his system HD. “
How did that work out?
[Beth Segal] “Using 400 Firewire cable as I don’t have 800 capability on my G5. “
This might be part of your problem but keep in mind that the highest EX picture quality is 35Mbits per second, which is only 10Mbits more than MiniDV, so I don’t know if using just FW400 is all that important if you’re only trying to play back one stream of video. Playing back 2 streams might, though. What might be more of an issue is if you’re editing in the EX native codec which is pretty processor intensive because it’s MPEG2 long GOP. If your EX footage is also a full 1920×1080 then your graphics card may also play a part in the dropped frames issue (that’s just a guess).
If you’re using DVCProHD for the P2 stuff then you can convert the EX files to that for editing, as that codec doesn’t use as much processing power as the EX long GOP stuff does. But then DVCProHD runs at 100Mbits per second as opposed to the EX at 35Mbits, so now you’re back to trying to play 2 streams of 100Mbit video from a FW400 hard drive. Not as processor intensive but FW400 transfer rate intensive.
As far as getting the most performance from your existing G5 try using a tune up application like Cocktail on a weekly basis to keep your cache and log files cleaned out. Bloated log and cache files have a direct influence on programs like Final Cut and will slow performance of the program, especially when you’re trying to make do with your existing setup. 1.5G of RAM is just barely enough these days, what with the Leopard OS probably taking up almost half of that. I can’t remember what the minimum RAM requirements of today’s FCP is but I’ll bet you’re riding right on the edge.
Can’t think of anything else at the moment.
– Don
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Probably the cost factor for a TV spot would be the biggest reason for not doing it. We recently finished up a gig with a major radio station in our area and their marketing dept. approached us with a reduced rate, whereby we would get our commercial on-air 20 times a month (sometimes more) for a year. The cost still worked out to $16000.00 total which is apparently a good deal but too rich for our blood right now. It’s a shame too, because there are no video companies in our area at all that do radio spots, so it would be a huge advantage to be the only game in a town with 1.5 million people.
[Adam Erickson] “Normal event videography has more of a niche market that I wouldn’t this as a valuable marketing method, but what about wedding videography?”
If I was going to spend mega-dollars on a TV spot I certainly wouldn’t limit myself to just one segment of the market but would ensure that all aspects of my video business would benefit from the advertising. Even wedding videography companies usually market themselves as “event videographers” and probably would advertise on TV/radio with that in mind.
– Don
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Not yet. I’m still waiting for my Century piece to show up. I already have the Sony WA so I’ll post a test result when I have both, unless someone else beats me to it. Others elsewhere have received their .75 Century adapter have have reported issues with not being able to get the sides of the frame in focus, but the middle portion is in focus. I’ll be taking a hard look at this when mine arrives.
– Don
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[Joe Crump] “Anyone have any ideas?”
Yep. The Sony Clip Browser only works with Intel Macs. Sorry. The Sony Transfer Tool, however, is a universal app that works on both Intel and PowerPC Macs. The Sony Transfer Tool is the app that FCP uses to transfer the XDCAM EX files, not the Clip Browser
– Don
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I glossed over a post on another forum somewhere where one of the lens controller companies is coming out with a cable extension for their zoom controller that’s specifically for use on jibs and cranes. I’ll have to get back to you on that. I know that the EX can be programmed to do a very slow zoom creep but I don’t know whether or not this would work with a variable speed controller. I’m assuming you want to be able to push the zoom rocker and have the camera do a slow zoom regardless of the pressure applied to the rocker switch.
There are motorized focus controllers out there for other cameras but you’d have to adapt one for the EX. These focus controllers would have cable extensions available.
– Don
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I’m using the Libec lens controller and find that it works well. It’s also less expensive than the others you mentioned. I don’t think anyone has released a motorized focus control specifically for the EX1 yet. Right now you would have to use a follow focus setup like this:
https://www.cavision.com/followfocus/singlewheelnew.htm
An electronic focus/zoom controller doesn’t exist because focus adjustment isn’t part of the EX1 lens output wiring.
– Don