[Joseph Owens]

How can one compete? Gee, Kim… You of all people 😉

Easy! Offer a cheap crappy, free audio mix with the grade.

Too obvious?

It’s a good question, though, with commodity software and hardware having become the norm. I have an in-house rate that can be either hourly for a short run, or flat with a time cap that is mutually agreed, but it does include a discount for volume, and a flexible approach to house calls depending on whose software is in use, whether it needs a dongle or not, or if I am bringing along hardware that is either to my, or the client’s benefit. Then it is a combination of operator freelance rate and equipment rental.

We work in a feature-centric, or at least feature-distracted, arena. What is important to remember, and it’s a time-proven axiom, is that customers, whether they are buying polyester blouses or color correction, always choose ‘benefits’ over what ‘feature’ (button, when pressed does some gee-whiz thing or not), might be on offer. When you set your price, is it justifiable from a benefit standpoint to your customer? Would you hire you? When you say $75 an hour, what does that get you? A ‘done’ project at the end of the day, or some free newbie screaming on the Cow that they’re on a tight deadline and the timeline is mysteriously corrupt? Who would be benefiting in that case?

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

Thanks. I’ve ordered a number of components — including a Cubix Desktop4.

A client said the magic words “3D”…

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Dwaine Maggart] “Maybe a browser thing?”

Maybe. I’m using Safari.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Ricky Barrow] “why you would not at least do SD WS 16×9 menu’s for WS video’s and flag video’s as well as menu’s as WS, thus the menu should at least be 864×480?”

You’re pretty much on the right track there. From the DVDStudioPro manual, the advice, at least for that application, is to make SD NTSC menus 853×480. Flag it for widescreen 16×9, and all should be well.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

The preset DVD outputs in Compressor produce an m2v and an ac3 for use in DVDStudioPro, and the same will work in Encore.

My personal preference is to export the timeline directly from FCP to Compressor, as the edit points are interpreted as compression markers, which helps with both quality and speed.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Günther Bussmann] “MBP Late 2011 15″”

Two issues. nVidia CUDA GPU processing and the screen resolution necessary for the GUI.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Emil Eriksson] “Sound starts on the exact same frame even if a put different timecode in Audio option.”

Have you attempted to adjust the synchronization value? Is the timecode frame rate set correctly?

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

Windows.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

Thanks for the link, Robert. For some reason, though, even though I have been registered there, when I click on nVidia, the only card that shows up is the GTX285 and nothing else. I have to wonder if its a website problem or ???? It just *doesn’t* work as a shopping experience.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Jason Livingston] “ensures at least 6 empty frames between any two subtitles. Not sure why Encore needs it but it seems to help get past this error.”

Great tip. The gap is necessary for processing time apparently. However, the subtitle gap issue has already been addressed on the Encore subtitle stream, and passes the project analysis.

My own guess is that there’s a possibility that even though its a text file, and font size needs to be re-assigned on import, there may be a screen resolution attribute that is somehow passed through… obviously still working on it.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?