[Mark Raudonis]

Been waiting for this for a LONG time! Great news!

mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Chris,

All tech specs aside, are you willing to pay, or does your budget support HDCAMsr decks? If not, this discussion is moot. (There’s a HUGE difference in price between the two formats)

mark

[Mark Raudonis]

[Mark Suszko] “Automatic Duck perhaps?”

No. This is fundamental “under the hood” stuff that needs to be addressed.

I know how everyone loves “car analogies”… so here goes.

If you’re not happy with the engine in your Lexus, would you go to Mercedes and ask them to install
a new engine in your Lexus? Doesn’t make sense.

That’s the case here. Digitizing and batch capture are fundamental aspects of the program. You can’t look to an outside party for a fix.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Walter,

You’re only discovering this NOW?

We’ve been battling with the “redigitizing” process for years. Due to our massive amounts of original media, we work in the classic “off-line to online” workflow. That dooms us to having to recapture EVERYTHING! Over the years we’ve refined our process to avoid most of the common “gotchas”, but
there’s still plenty to go wrong.

If Steve Jobs thinks Blu Ray is a “bag of hurt”, he should try uprezzing an one hour show with speed ramps, still frames and multiclips. Now THAT’S a bag ‘o hurt.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Mike,

We use a simple name/date system. There is no “automatic” way to do this.

Example: The “base” project that you open has no date, just a name: “yourproject”.

When you save it, either home or at work, you add a date to the filename, “yourproject3-01-09”. Depending on how long you work on the show, you will have a whole column of project versions saved by date. If you wanted to add “H” or “W” to the end, you can tell where you saved it.

So, both at home and at work you would have a folder with a project a day for every day you worked.

Make sense?

We have plenty of editors who take a project home to work on. Haven’t lost anything to “version confustion” … yet.

Good Luck.

mark

[Mark Raudonis]

DRW,

This is a simple one. No check, no master tape.
If, as you’ve indicated, everything was spelled out in advance, then you’re
entirely within your rights to withhold delivery until payment is made.

Obviously, that didn’t happen. Your bad. My suggestion is to email your client
in “unemotional, factual language” that you expect them to uphold their end of the bargain.

That’s step one. Let us know what happens.

I hate to say it, but you let them off the hook on this. If “immediate payment” was important to you,
you should have demaned “COD”.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Ok. I went back and read your original post.

You are an idiot for having posted it! That’s not personal… it’s business!

Any employer reading this thread has now been warned about what kind of employee you’d be.
Good luck with the rest of your career.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

[david bogie] “Heck, you can’t learn everything about any aspect of television or film production in a year or two.”

I would add this:

Learning the “buttons” on any NLE suite is only the tip of the iceberg. Knowing “how” to do something only brings you to the starting line of “why” to do something.

Tell your students that if they choose to enter this field they are committing to a lifetime of learning.
They will never be “done”. There will always be innovations, improvements, upgrades, and paradigm shifting technology that will affect their careers. I’ve lived through three major changes in the technology: film to tape, linear tape to Non-linear, tape to “tape less”. Throughout this all, however,
the fundamental concept of storytelling has NOT changed. Story drives everything, and your students will have their whole career to practice great storytelling.

There is no “easy” button for someone pursuing a career. The software is complex to accommodate the almost infinite amount of possibilities that great story telling can require. The capabilities contained in the FCP software suite used to take up several dedicated rooms and millions of dollars of equipement (seriously!). Learning how to use it all can take an entire career.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

I think Dean wins!

But nobody even mentioned “vingettes”. We use them all the time to “focus” the eye on the important part of the frame (usually the face). On a shot like this where there was no specific lighting, a vignette
goes a long way to making the face “pop”.

Just my thoughts.

And, yes, color correction is totally subjective. One man’s “too red” is another’s “too blue”. If you want to move a session along, kick everyone out of the room.

Mark

Ps. Maybe there should be a forum: “Color this shot”.

[Mark Raudonis]

mark,

Did you say Chicago? … and, “Does this stuff still go on?” Ahem, read the papers lately? Seems like the
going rate for a senate seat is mid to high six figures.

Back to the original post. Boy, this is a sticky one. Seems like you’re adding a partner and not rewarding an employee. I appreciate your effort to be fair, but sharing in profits usually means sharing in risks. Is this person “on the hook” for your monthly nut? What’s their investment in your business?

You should be careful here. It sounds like you could be giving away your profit margin.

mark