Doug Graham
Forum Replies Created
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You can shorten that production chain a lot by recording an HDV master of the original project on tape.
Regards,
Doug Graham -
Good advice. As to where to find a rental place, start with your Yellow Pages and look under “Video Equipment Rentals”. Most major cities have one or more professional rental companies. If Dayton is a bust, you might have to go down to Cincinnati.
Regards,
Doug Graham -
I must disagree with SteveG on one point: HDV ****IS*** “true HD”. It clearly falls within the HD specification. True, it is a lower bitrate and more highly compressed than some other flavors of HD, but it is NOT, repeat NOT a “bastardized format”.
Now, as to some of the other points.
Video formats are changing quickly, which is yet one more thing that is making equipment obsolete faster than ever. As more consumers upgrade to widescreen and HD TVs, standard definition equipment will get you fewer and fewer jobs. If you plan to keep your camera for three years or more, I would get an HDV model. Or, if you’re on a budget, you can pick up good used DV equipment at bargain prices, as others go the HDV upgrade route. I would not buy new standard def equipment today.
As for waiting for the “next big format”, that’s certainly an option, if your business can afford to do it. One should never purchase equipment just to have it sit on the shelf and depreciate; it should be purchased only if there is a real need for it. However, I’m not at all sure that AVCHD is going to be HDV’s replacement. There are currently no professional or prosumer camcorders in this format, and no NLEs can handle it; it’s where HDV was about two or three years ago, and even if it develops legs, it will take quite a while to do so.
Regards,
Doug Graham -
Me…aaand my caaaameraaaa…strolling down the ave-a-noo…
Regards,
Doug Graham -
The best place to put your money is in an investment account.
You shouldn’t upgrade your equipment to “feel” more professional. You should only upgrade because you NEED the equipment for a specific job or class of jobs. Not jobs you “hope to get” because of the new gear, but jobs in hand, with signed contracts. Even then, it often is more cost effective to rent equipment for a job than to buy it outright. Many corporate and broadcast producers don’t own ANY equipment; they rent everything on an as-needed basis.
Your current equipment is quite respectable for event video, and for quite a bit of corporate work. If you just HAVE to buy something, I’d get the professional monitor. Then keep an eye on the camera scene, and buy a new one when there isn’t any other choice.
Regards,
Doug Graham -
“if this is what you do for a living, total up all your costs for the year: utilities, expenses, insurance, gear, software, maintenance, expendables, etc. Add an amount you want to put away in savings towards more or better gear. Total that figure. Divide it into 350-some working days (leave out vacations). From this you get a daily amount you need to be bringing in just to BREAK EVEN. Next add a mark-up for your actual PROFIT.”
Mark, you left out an important expense: your own salary. Add in a figure that represents what you would want to be paid if you were doing this for someone else. Remember, out of this must come all of your personal living expenses (house, utilities, groceries, retirement account, etc.) Profit is not what you live on, it’s what’s left over after all the expenses and employees (including you) get paid, and it’s what’s used to build the business (and pay your stockholders dividends, if you’re a public corporation).
If you like, you can split your costs into “direct” and “indirect”. Direct costs are things that are associated with a specific client or job…for example, travel expenses, consumables like tape, and your own hours. Indirect costs are those things that you have to pay for whether or not you’ve got a job lined up…postage, website hosting, utilities, equipment depreciation and maintenance. Direct costs are estimated for each job. Indirect costs are generally tacked on as a percentage markup, based on your estimate of how many jobs you’re going to do for the year.
Regards,
Doug Graham -
One of my colleagues makes a very good living by using multiple camera live switching to make videos of recitals, plays, and other events. His biggest selling point is that DVDs are available right after the performance. He brings a duplication tower to the event, and is all set up to dub the master tape (which is recorded from the output of the switcher) to DVDs.
Regards,
Doug Graham -
Ask yourself some basic questions:
Does the charity org. NEED high definition? Does it NEED widescreen? What tangible benefits would they get from them? Increased donations? Increased credibility with sponsors? I’d be very hard-nosed about this. In my view, the job of a charity is to do good works with its income; the less spent on things like in-house video facilities, the better.Once you’ve answered those, if the answer is yes to one or both, I’d go for the HDV cameras. With either one, you can shoot in DV mode and get footage that looks as good, or better, than previous generation DV camcorders (eg., VX2000, etc), with the one exception that the DV cams are a little more light-sensitive.
Whenvever you like, you can shoot in HDV mode. Any late model computer, and most recent version NLE software, can ingest and edit HDV footage. Same throughput and disk storage requirements as DV. Editing may be a lot slower, and you may need to pre-render some effects to see what they’ll look like. Once edited, you can render and author an SD DVD that will look distinctly superior to a DVD based on DV footage.
Regards,
Doug Graham -
I agree with Mark about the versatility of a monopod.
At least one, the Varizoom FlowPod, can also be used as a handheld stabilizer. Like all such rigs, it takes careful balancing, practice, and strong arm muscles to use for more than a brief period.
Try the instructional DVD, “The Art of Moving Camera Techniques” from Mark and Trisha Von Lanken. It shows how you can do quite a few moving camera shots without an expensive stabilizer.
Regards,
Doug Graham -
I can’t help you on the standalone unit…but why not just use an internal DVD burner in your computer? They cost around $50 now, and a simple program like Nero can burn a no-menu, insert-disk-and-play movie.
Regards,
Doug Graham