[Mark Suszko]

I like Fedor’s approach, but wanted to add, you can also treat this problem in Apple Motion.

[Mark Suszko]

Never add your prodco credits to a client’s work without their express permission and insistence. My experience has been that most of the time, the client wants the prodco info kept secret.

[Mark Suszko]

They’re trays. The cutouts let power cords go down to the floor, you just screw this tot he bottom of the desk and lay your cables into it. If you already had these, might as well use ’em.

[Mark Suszko]

Allan Smithee is the standard name you put in the credits for people who don’t want their real names used. And… credit rolls? For something like this? They need to get over themselves:-) Base your estimate on hours, and because this is a relatively simple kind of job, go with fifty an hour. Though low, it still will multiply out to a “scary” number. Be careful what rate you attach to these jobs, because management is likely to seize upon it as some kind of standard and weld you to it for eternity.

The point of the scary number though, whatever it is, should be to show how, with just a little more cooperation and advance work, you can knock the time and money spent WAYYYY down.

[Mark Suszko]

I thought XML would make this easy?

[Mark Suszko]

To manage the wall warts and the little connector boxes, chain stores like Wall of China Mart and Target have a lot of neat little shelves of metal sheet and mesh, geared towards organizing kid’s school lockers or desk organizers in the Office supplies stores/sections. Really inexpensive. I use one as a holder for my electric razor at home, looks very tidy:-) You can find some little lightweight holders in many sizes that will nicely adapt to the task, and also screw right into the bottom of the desk. If using plastic, either pre-drill or melt the screw holes in the plastic before mounting, to prevent cracking the plastic.

You can also go Ikea, to really set off the FCPX suite:-)

[Mark Suszko]

Yes, the split loom is what I meant. Also, you need not in every case have to run the loom all the way point to point, to keep everything tidy. You could use shorter sections with gaps in between of a foot or two, and it still works. The full end to end run simply looks a little “cleaner”, but works functionally the same.

[Mark Suszko]

The power strips already have mounting holes for screws: you can screw them into the underside of the desk, or high on the wall just below the underside of the desk. Split tube wire and cable tubing will gather and hide the rest pretty well, you can also shoot mounting screws right thru the split tubing into the underside of the desk to hold the tubing.

[Mark Suszko]

What about uploading each drive to rented cloud storage?

[Mark Suszko]

Didn’t see your sample: I don’t make a habit of going to strangers’ Drop Boxes. But.

If this was not a DSLR, I would advise adjusting the variable frame speed, what Sony calls: “Clear Scan”. I need to sometimes do this when the lighting is LED-based. I don’t know that DSLR’s have a similar function.

This might be somewhat repairable in post, using color correction tools to select a narrow range and then adjusting just that band to “blow-out” in a steady color/light level. Not perfect, but sometimes saves the shot. There is also some DSLR software that can treat the issue in-camera with a corresponding variance in shutter, but I don