[Mark Suszko]

For the next person in this situation, try to do what we did and garnish the bank accounts instead. Once you have the paper from the judge, it’s like a warrant and the bank has to tell you if the guy has any money in their bank. Since the deadbeat in our case paid us (once) by check, he gave away where he did most of his banking so we attacked thru that window and got most of what we had coming.

In our case going thru small claims was relatively simple, but it helped that we were between 9-5 jobs and technically unemployed and could basically devote entire days pursing these things… Other folks knee-deep in various projects and commitments may do the math and decide their time based on hourly rate is worth more than the time spent chasing the payback thru the courts.

The most clever of the grinders have already done this math problem for you and it is part of their strategy, gambling that you will not go the extra distance just on principle to get your money, becasue it’s not worth the extra work and disruption. Everything revolves around relative cost/benefit with them.

[Mark Suszko]

There are different options, from the cheap side, making a looping DVD with first play enabled and using some cheap players on a simple AC outlet timer, to the hard-disk-based MPEG players used in lots of retail signage and POP displays and such. Maybe the guys in the Live/stage forum could point you to soem platforms, I know of one by DOREMI, there are others.

Basically it’s just a DVR that plays back clips on a timer schedule instead of recording them. IF the video files you made are larger than can be seen on just one monitor, which is kind of what I think I understand from your description, you’re going to need some more sophisticated and expensive playback synching technology like WINGS or similar systems. Again, the live-stage forum guys know this stuff pretty well, its their stock in trade, so ask over there after giving them a detailed description of the video files you want to show. They’ll likely point you to an effective solution.

[Mark Suszko]

Compared to what we pay for decks, these will seem cheap even at that price.

[Mark Suszko]

I hear you there, man. Saw a good review of the Sony Anycast today By Bruce Johnson, it happens to do HD as well… so now I have more things to consider.

[Mark Suszko]

This is a canned effect for it in Apple Motion, if you bought the studio bundle you have this. There are also many plug-ins available online at minimal cost.

[Mark Suszko]

I want to find out more about these stand-alone live BluRay recorders out of Japan, where I understand they’ve been in use for a couple years. I could play my HD timeline off thru the IO into one of these and be a happy guy for the specific situation I have. Anybody got aline on when/if the Japanese stand-alone recorders will make it over here?

[Mark Suszko]

That’s what my biz partner and I had to do; we got some papers from the court and the Marshal’s office and walked them over to the deadbeat’s bank right after we won the case, we garnished his bank accounts and got about three quarters of the judgement out of the bank, cleaned the guy out. Felt great, after all his nonsense. We decided the hell he went thru for the next month with no money was worth as much as the trouble it would have taken to get the remaining outstanding judgement, and called it even.

He probably should have attended the court hearing. Which is what I told him when he called about 2 hours after our bank visit screaming that he had groceries and rent to pay.

DGMW, we had bent over backwards to accomodate the guy, even after we found he’d been ripping us off. I offered a payment plan at zero interest, just 20 bucks a month. He didn’t take it. I told him we still were within our rights to have the Sheriff’s office come sieze his Advent giant screen cofee-table projector TV and auction it off to pay off the rest of the outstanding judgement, if he wanted to press his luck.

I always wanted an Advent TV:-) Anyway, that’s the end of that story.

[Mark Suszko]

Nobody will regret learning AE, but like I said, the software you know best and are most comfortable with is usually the best for you, even if there are better tools out there. If you have over a decade of AE experience you’re likely to be mad speedy with it. Someone with just a modicum of experience, not so much.

[Mark Suszko]

It turned out that the sound effect he put in was not doves crying at all!

🙂

[Mark Suszko]

Drifting OT but since you brought it up Bob, I’m facing much the same situation now as you did. We have a main control room/linear edit suite that was great all thru the 80’s and passable into the 90’s, but now the big push is on for HD and I’m trying to feel my way thru an evolution of the room that makes the most practical sense economically and operationally. The problem is so much of the plant is old analog, getting it all to “play nice” with digital HD gear may be a case of “stepping over dollars to pick up dimes”, but to just tear everything out to the bare walls and replace from scratch is not within the budget.

For now, my idea is to “not put new wine in old wineskins”, and leave the analog parts of the shop in place to do the SD work they are still good at and that clients still call for, and to build up a “layer” of HD topology on top of and separate from the analog plant, as and when the pieces become affordable, starting with one camera and a deck, then a Panny 400 SD/HD switcher, then a CG system, and more cameras as the budget fits. The HD layer will be portable, so it can go out on remotes, but also be used in our studio eventually. The hard copy of the shows and spots we produce would be archived and distributed by FTP and BluRay.

Meanwhile I got a 3+ camera studio with Grass 200 that works well in SD, mastering to DVCPro25 and beta SP. With a one-inch RTR sitting gate guard duty for the occasional archival tape that needs resurrecting. We’ll see how the clients and the economy drive the addition of the HD layer.