[Mark Suszko]

That shouldn’t necessarily preclude you from getting something in writing from the client that says you have the right to show what you did in your portfolio. If you pitch it in the right words, I think most clients will not have too big a problem giving you some kind of deal memo for that kind of limited use. That could perhaps get you off the hook while still protecting their copyrights, when you explain you would never sell or distribute the entire thing, just a specific snippett to show your technique in action. it might also specify this is not for You Tube but only for your personal web site and portfolio demo disk.

What would it hurt to ask?

[Mark Suszko]

“Why have hamburger, when you can have steak?”-Homer Simpson
“I’m taking my name off the credits.”-Lisa Simpson

[Mark Suszko]

Bob, if the borrowed scan converter didn’t have any proc-amp controls on it to lower the chroma level and such, you would have needed to run the output thru a TBC/proc amp box first to control the chroma and white and black levels. Powerpoint often allows FCC illegal levels.

As fas as DVDA’s settings, and Camtasia settings, I don’t play with them so have nothing to suggest but to experiment. Though it bugs me that you are scaling up anything in Vegas first. Maybe what Vegas is showing you as pretty is actually not? However, if the 2-pass VBR encodes you make play well on some other computer or player, we’ve narrowed it down to something you’re doing at the last step in the chain, in DVD Architect.

Just a guess, not an expert compressionist by any means ( I’m more of a “professional generalist”) but I *think* DVDA is re-compressing your already-compressed encodes, or transcoding them to something else, first. Can you ask a friend to try compressing a sample of your encodes in another DVD authoring program? That should narrow it down even further.

As far as modifying the powerpoint file colors, we know that computer colors and gamma are not the same as TV colors and gamma. So we have to cheat or tweak the source material input to make the expected output. Or you can “fix it in post”: do you have in Vegas a “safe colors” filter that clamps the output to stay FCC legal? We do in FCP, so I’m guessing you do as well. Should solve some of the chroma crawl and bleed problems before you encode them.

[Mark Suszko]

I did this for a farm-related show open some years back, and all I really needed was the photoshop emboss filters. I took the logo/title as a separate white layer and used that to cut my pattern into the crops,to shich I added a transparent fill of the original green color, slightly lightened, then I layered some embossed selections back over the stack. My field was soybeans so I didn’t need as much height, for beans just an emboss with the correct shadow direction is enough, but you can select the section of the cuts facing towards the camera and use the wind filter to sort of automatically re-draw some cornstalks in one pass.

Then I did a slow DVE move on the whole thing to make it look like a helicopter shot, worked very well for what I needed.

To make a field from scratch, you could try using the “hair” feature in a 3D CGI program or a particle system as the basis of the cornstalks, these have the virtue of being able to move in a “breeze”.

[Mark Suszko]

I forgot to add, the first time I saw PIP used a lot in something was footage of “Woodstock”, but I recall Abel Gance’s “Napoleon” used a triple screen to make it very wide for those silent movie days, and I *think* (didn’t check, going from memory) that parts of that movie switch from one triple-width screen to split scenes on the screens.

“Oh, you wanted to RECORD that?”

[Mark Suszko]

My good friend Chris Skrundz always says:

“The most powerful transition is a cut in the right place and time”.

[Mark Suszko]

My sympathies to you and the family, Ron, for a sorrow I cannot begin to fathom. We’ve talked before of fathers and sons, and it sounds like (and I hope) you parted on the best of terms; spoken or unspoken, that is something to be deeply cherished. I know he’ll still be with you in all you think and do in this world, until you mee again in the next. My prayers to you and the family today.

[Mark Suszko]

just to be clear, lots of people say Time Base Corrector (TBC) when they REALLY mean a proc-amp. This mixup happens because a lot of the devices combined tthe two functions in one box, but I don’t think I ever messed with time base more than one percent of the time while using our Microtime, but I played the proc amp controls like they were an xbox.:-)

[Mark Suszko]

I think what you’re seeing is the fact that editors of a certain youthful age have been highly influenced by Japanese manga, anime, and American graphic novels in their design sense. The multi-angle shots in anime’ themselves I believe devolve from Kabuki theatre techniques, where, to heighten a dramatic moment, the scene is frozen in tableau, so you can take your time and let your eyes wander all over the scene.

The multi-angle, multi-window is the Tv frame imitating a comic book frame, though comic book frame formats derived themselves from graphic artists’ interpretations of the fast cutting style of TV. So the whole thing is an Orubouros in a sense. It imitates something that is imitating the original imitation.

Also, modern NLE gear makes these techniques childishly simple to play with and use, whereas us olde fartes would have had to do quite a bit of work-roll building and other layering to get the same effect. And film cutters before that, well, they had to justify some high expenses for optical printer work to get that effect, so it wasn’t popular before, because it was hard and expensive, not because it wasn’t a good idea sometimes.

[Mark Suszko]

Don’t be so quick to diss, Dave; the COW is among the most well-groomed and hospitible sites anywhere. Not to mention having a lot of real expertise to share.

These guys were not busting your chops, they are just being frank and direct in their language and professional opinions. If you look up their credentials, you’d probably be glad to give them another chance at helping.

But not everybody on the COW has seen and done everything there is to do and know. Usually they bat a thousand, sometimes all we can do with a question is bunt. Your situation is right on that inflection point where the next jump in scale brings disproportionate cost increases. Grinner’s perspective is that DIY fulfillment for him had a lot of extra hidden costs and was not the best use of his productive time, so he thinks the usurious rates Amazon charges are the cost of doing business. Lyn has been his own business since I was a zygote, so if he says something is or isn’t a good business idea, I listen to that opinion.

If you’re asking for a sounding board, I would say you suggested your own best option within your own post. Take on an assistant, even just part-time, to handle the fulfillment while you concentrate on new production. That is, if you have enough equipment to do both at once. Bring them on as an independent contractor, some kid fresh out of school looking over Craig’s for crumbs might jump at the chance.

I noticed the guys at Digital Juice have hit a similar wall: they have gone all summer without producing or releasing any new online videos and had to scale back other production not directly related to filling paying orders. Part of that is the cr@ppy economy right now. Part is a choice to take a hit on secondary functions while developing new product line on limited resources.

Personally, I think they have lost a lot of their sales audience by not keeping up the online tutorial videos. They are pefect marketing tools for what Juice sells. And when time are tough, the smart manager knows that is the time to INCREASE your marketing and release more such promotional product, not less.