[Hamish Boyd]

I’ll have my two cents…..

For 80% of the time I’m a freelance video editor/motiongraphics/dvd guy. I work in many diferent companies, seeing many different businesses and their clients.

1. What sort of film and video production trends are you seeing in your market (be geographically specific)?

I’m based in Australia. Also alot of my work is corporate stuff. (event, communication, dvd etc)
As for trends, mmm…well for me its all been DVD for the last 2 years. Before then it was VHS still. I now haven’t even handled a VHS for 2 years. Everything ends on DVD. (And not necessarily for the better mind you)
Not sure thats a trend cause its a bit old.

The other is high def. That would definately be a ‘trend’

2. Are project budgets remaining steady, or are they going up or down?
fairly consistant I suppose. ALOT of variables here but more or less consistant. But we have had a pretty steady economy for the last decade here in Oz, I think that has played its part.

3. What is the one thing you have to educate your clients about the most when they come to you requesting a video project?
Unbelievably its still ASPECT RATIO! what widescree, 4×3, anamorphic etc all means. Alot of people still just don’t get it.
The latest issues are HD related. You can imagine the grief trying to teach them about HD and all its variables when they don’t get aspect ratio.
Specifically HDV. thats just a whole format designed to piss off post people with clueless clients!

4. What are your clients looking for when they come to you with a potential project? How has that changed over the years?

Being able to deliver across multiple platforms. The video will be a presentation projected of a DVD one day, hard drive the next, on the net the following day. Each time looking beautiful and taking no time at all to deliver….eesh.

5. How has your company evolved with the changes in technology and client demands?
Being able to do all this on a simple cheap system. Our edit systems now can do everything from DVD authoring, HD post, web compression, all at a pretty cheap outlay. I mean 10 years ago your looking at 6 figure price tags on systems that could do half as much.

The good thing is that it is now all about delivering what the client wants, not about the tools you have. Thats brilliant in my books.

[Hamish Boyd]

Thanks so much for your reply guys. Really interesting stuff there.

Interestingly I have recently got involved with a business network through our local council. So good to hear people have got some interesting leads out of those. I’ve now just got to be a bit more ‘out there’ with meeting people at these events.
Yeah, I’m interested in these ‘other’ little ways of getting in front of people. Seems to make much more sense to me than a random showreel sent out to all.

good stuff.

[Hamish Boyd]

Many a thread on this already but…

I edited on M100 for years until 2 years ago. Never looked back. I’ve not missed it for a minute. Its not what the edit package can’t do, its how you know to do it in FCP. All the times I’ve though…mmm…thats weird, its more to do with me not knowing. Its no great leap though. Truly.

I was well and truly over M100 by the time I left it. I knew the program backwards but really, its never really changed from its early versions. It became so damn limiting.

With FCP, you can scale it to what ever fits your need and budget. Its intergration with the other studio apps is pretty good and its cheap. No contest in opinion.
I thought m100 were on a winner with 844x, but how wrong was I! That was a much better system from M100. I liked using that. oh well.

A few things I like in FCP (you may be able to do this in M100 now, I’m not sure, haven’t touched it in 2 years)

– live multicam editing. (I’ve never cut a live gig so quickly!)
– scalable (from laptop DV-HDV editing to full HD post)
– FCP systems are now everywhere. Projects can then go anywhere
– Not a rigid in its methodology as say something live avid. A M100 drag and drop person will love it
– Its got a company like apple behind it. You won’t be caught out with a shrinking company. (talk to the 844x crowd..ouch! I went to a video production conference the other week in my area. Small one but every company was there for post systems…except M100. No where to be seen)
– Its getting better quickly. Although media managing could be a bit better.

Things I don’t like
– colour grading..aweful in my books. I only do it in AE. (but from memory m100 sucked at that too.)
– media managing (as a said could be better)

Thats all I can think of right now.
Good luck.

[Hamish Boyd]

Thanks for your replies. Yeah, using QT export seems a good work around. But seriously, I’m running all the latest versions of Studio, it really is a problem if I can’t rely on one of my major apps to be the tool its designed for.

I have noted many threads talking about gamma shift out of compressor, but this is a slightly different problem. So begs the question, if you can’t rely on compressor, what else should I consider?

cheers

[Hamish Boyd]

ok, so this would mean any varicam footage needs to come in via HDSDI? Rather than firewire?

cheers

[Hamish Boyd]

Thanks for your detailed responses. Good to know I was heading down the right path.
Would it be fair to say that the offline / online process is a bit clunky in FCP? I’m only going from my m100 days here. And I know that was far from a perfect system. But it did seem to have a fairly simple offline / online process. Particularly with mixing hi and lo res clips in a timeline.

I suppose its because FCP is a program that is used in a wider range of situations with different hardware setups etc.

[Hamish Boyd]

Ok, so should I drag them all into the one timeline, or online them in their own timelines? Or does that not matter?

So basically if I have created an ‘offline copy’ from media manager with the new uncompressed media settings, when I start to recapture, subsequent clips that are the same will find that new uncompressed media? Have I got that right?

Thanks for your reply.

cheers

[Hamish Boyd]

Thanks for your response Luke. Much appreciated.
Mmm. Maybe I wont take that chance. Although I did take in my rushes via firewire at DV quality. So hopefully my problems are not already in the system, so to speak.
That said the deck is right beside the the box. Its only a metre long firewire cable. So all should be well.

But good to know.

Thanks again.

cheers

[Hamish Boyd]

Well this is interesting. I’m definately going to be exploring that route. I have alot of commercials to get through in the next few weeks, I’m getting a macpro with blackmagic to do it with. But if this saves a few pennies and gets the same results then I’m all for giving it a go. For such short form work, even if I did come accross some speed issues its not going to be the end of me or a job stopper. So its worth a go. I’ve got a lacie big disk myself, so will do some testing.
I’ll keep you posted!

Cheers

[Hamish Boyd]

Thanks for your reply Luke.
Thats pretty impressive! Makes me rethink on how I go about build my new edit suite. I do a lot of TVC’s at home 15sec to 30sec. Basically I leave it all in aftereffects and render out to animation, burn disc and off to the stations, but I have a job coming in with footage on digibeta. I need a blackmagic card obviously, but if I can get away with using just a firewire, then DAMN! thats AWESOME! I mean for such short form work it must be a go.

So you haven’t run into any troubles digitising 10bit standard def to a firewire 800? I would imagine thats where some problems would come if any, rather than just the reading of the files while editing.

cheers