[Mark Suszko]

I can’t give a similar list because my situation is a little different from most of you.

My situation is all about the service, we have a base of essentially captive customers that can’t afford to take their business outside all that often. We are set up as a centralizied pool AV service for all the agencies, and our “thing” is to make effective, broadcast-quality com solutions that the clients could otherwise never afford to do using private industry suppliers.

My customer problems chiefly revolve about coordinating projects, managing expectations, communicating clearly with people who sometimes have little industry background, and acting as their translator and go-between.

I am the mediator that gives people what they need and want with the technology and budget we have. Personal relationships with these clients are very important, building their trust and helping them make the best decisions along the way when they are not familiar with the process. For those customers that are already up to speed, it is about the most efficient execution of their clear instructions, and being flexible and adaptable to their changing needs.

I’d like to list some blurbs related to service that I’ve had posted on my desk for many years. Got this on a greeting card made by those “motivational poster” guys, back when that stuff was new and not fodder for internet memes:-)

Anyway, I think these principles still ring true, I act as if they are true:

-It costs six times more to attract a new customer than it does to keep an old one. (A corollary to this is, we never have to advertise our services due to word-of mouth and reputation)

-A typical dissatisfied customer will tell 8-10 people about their problem. (I know that I do this as a consumer)

-Seven of ten complaining customers will do business with you AGAIN, if you resolve the complaint in their favor.

-If you resolve a complaint on the spot, 95% will do business again. (This to me suggest that, unless the customer is a known “grinder”, smoothing over some situations by applying generous, calculated “discounts” or added-value “comps” is an investment, not an expense.)

-Of those customers who quit, 68% do so because of an attitude of indifference by the company or a specific individual.

How I use those last principles is, if somebody has messed up a project, I will just out and out fess up that mistakes were made, then I tell the client they will not have to face any more run-around: that from here on until this problem is solved to their satisfaction, I am PERSONALLY going to handle this matter for them, I will report to them precisely at such-and-such time… and it is amazing how that little statement of accountability so often deflates a potential explosion.

I know that the thing I hate most as a consumer is being volleyed back and forth between many people, playing phone tage and email tag, none of whom will accept “ownership” of the problem. I don’t care who should get blamed, I just want somebody to step up and fix it. I think owning the problem and committing to handling it personally really defuses many bad situations after the initial awkwardness. Customers then judge you by how well you handle the issue, how well you advocate for them.

Sometimes, you can’t do much, some situations are beyond a repair. But even then, being timely, clear and up-front with the information, offering options and alternatives or make-goods, or at the very least admitting what went wrong and showing what steps you’re taking to never have that happen again… these things offer closure to the problem. They show the customer you are not lying or hiding from them, that you respect their time and trouble. That you are human, people sometimes make mistakes, but that we’re committed to doing the best we can. They make a statement about your commitment to excellence and your personal honor, and the honor of your organization.

People can respect that. And I think they respond to it with return business. That’s been my experience.

[Mark Suszko]

Is there a checkbox somewhere for “premultiplied alpha” to uncheck?

[Mark Suszko]

Mine Grosse Gott in Himmel, but that was some spazzy transition choice in that little promo! And way over-used. Should come with a warning not to be watched by epileptics!

That said, the music was nothing special at all; you can make that stuff up yourself for free with Sonicfire or Garageband, Soundtrack, Acid Pro or any of the music looping tools. If that’s too much work, Digital Juice has a lot of cheap tracks that can be re-edited and remixed in similar fashion.

[Mark Suszko]

What I have done for this is export>using quicktime conversion to save as a folder full of sequential targas. But I like this other method better. Though I thought PNG was a lesser quality in terms of compression and quality?

[Mark Suszko]

Read the recent COW article on how the gaming video guy organizes his file naming and data structure, to keep the project organized.

You don’t give a lot of detail as to what the project is, but my first question would be does it really require that many hours? I bring this up because people tend to forget themselves and get complacent when it comes to the structure of a training video, and they limit themselves to just taping somebody’s stand-up live presentation. This is like early film making, where they put one camera in the front row of a theater locked down on a wide shot, and let the stage actors do their normal show. It wasn’t until film makers started moving the camera to different angles and using the power of cutting that the medium found it’s own “art”.

So it might be with a “big” training project. I’m just saying that it couldn’t hurt to ask questions that may lead to making the project smaller, shorter, more effective and more managable by re-writing it specifically for the video platform and audience.

[Mark Suszko]

Can’t wait to see the reactions of the admin people when they hear/see they’ve been referred to as “the suits”.

I LOL’d. Your target audience will, too. The “suits” might not. Be careful with campus politics.

Where I see room for improvement is, your exposures look poor, like you shot everything on auto-iris and the auto-iris was making bad decisions. These shots scream out for better lighting than just existing lighting.

Now, this could also be a side-effect of encoding for youtube, so I might be wrong and the original shots may have been better exposed. But I’m guessing not. Go manual iris control and use the zebra bar display if you have that in your viewfinder menu. The exposure of people with blank walls behind them, in un-supplemented lighting (lecture halls and the like) looked weak because of a lack of contrast and low overall vid level. You might want to play with enhancing this footage using the 3-way color corrector in FCP, or playing with the use of Transfer or Blending modes in your timeline, to combine multiple identical tracks of video that push the bright highlights and darken the shadow details a bit… give a wider dynamic range overall. I think that will help “punch up” the shots.

Your shot composition has a lot of similar shots, a lot of wide shots in a row. If you alternate these with tight and medium shots to break it up a little, this will look better. The overall pace feels slow against the music you chose, so I’d really shorten the shots.

What you have going on with the extended, single sentence thing, interrupted by reference shots, is taking wayyyy long to get to the “punchline”, IMO. I got impatient waiting for the text to get to the final point. This needs to be tightened up considerably, because the pay-off tag is not worth that long of a wait.

I tend to fall in love with my footage too much and usually my first assembly cut of anything I care about is always way too long because I can’t bear to throw away good shots. But that’s the essence of American style editing: the raw footage is a block of stone and you keep removing things until the best is all that’s left. European style editing is more of an accrual or building-up process, like adding lumps of clay to a bust a piece at a time and shaping it as you add it on. Either method is valid in general principle. But you should decide which method you’re going to use, and apply some more discipline to the additions or subtractions.

You as the shooter/editor have seen all the raw footage and you have already put it into a personal context; one that a new viewer does not have. It is important to remember that the audience has no idea what significance you may have attached to the footage by your inside knowledge of it. They may not “see” it the way you already do. You CREATE the significance to a viewer by the application of your cuts and timing, and the juxtaposition of the images to create a new, more powerful meaning. That usually also means shortening along the way, removing distractions and things that don’t reinforce the basic message.

All your shots could have gotten their points across in 2-3 seconds. Doesn’t mean the should each BE 3 seconds, necessarily. That’s wrong and boring too.

Take a cue from your music and use the rythms there to pace some of the shots, and I think it will play better.

We’ve all seen and done worse in our early careers, so don’t feel embarassed, rather, look at this as useable raw material for the next version of a more refined cut. The key is not to waste time crying about what’s past, but to strive to always improve the next thing you do, add one new touch.

[Mark Suszko]

Forget it, there is likely no way based on your circumstances regarding Discovery Ccahannel. The other guy, well, locate a contact for him and flat-out ASK him. If he’s at all interested, he’ll tell you who the other rights holders are and then you’ll have to ask all of THEM.

But frankly, these things rarely work out, from my observations. Sorry for the bad news.

[Mark Suszko]

If you have never done this before, the best advice is to watch an experienced person do it first. The most critical part is cleaning the rotating drum and video heads inside it. That should be done with something besides a q-tip, because the loose fibers could snag the very delicate heads in those slots and yank them out and you are done for the week. Now that I threw the fear of the E1 into you, I think you’d be safe to clean the rest of the tape path and the pinch rollers. What I’d suggest is, yes, unscrew the captive bolts for the top of the unit. Look into those awesome guts and admire their clockwork perfection.

Load a spare or used tape, just in case this goes bad, and see how the mechanism grabs the tape, pulls it out of the cassette, and loops it around the tape path. Cycle the eject/load a time or two until you see where all the points are along that path, the guides and rollers.

Eject the tape again and power the unit down. Remove any loose jewelry on your wrist and any hanging necklaces, etc.

Use a dustless type of cloth or disposable paper; kimwipes are good, eyeglass cleaning paper or microfiber cloth is excellent. That big round silver thing that looks like an oversized can of Skoal? Treat it as if it was high voltage. Stay away from it. That’s the head assembly.

Use a bottle of the purest isopropyl alcohol you can get: the cheaper grades are watered down and may have other contaminants you don’t want. In the bad old days we used liquid Freon for this, but the alcohol will do. You don’t need it to be sopping wet, just barely moist. Hand-turn the rollers and guides that rotate while you lightly wipe them down with gentle hand pressure. If it has been a while since the last cleaning, figure 2-3 passes, until the wipe no longer shows any black or brown residue.

That’s it. If you were going to clean the head assembly, they have special pads and tools for that. A really experienced engineer or technician can cheat and clean that with a Kimwipe by being careful to not dig below the surface of the drum… but if you’ve never done this part before, wait until a pro can show you.

Power up the unit, load the sacrificial tape, try a test record and playback. If all looks good, button up the unit and GBTW.

[Mark Suszko]

You may have not been far off with the “flat tire” joke, actually; if an idler roller is deformed on one side, or has a patch of slickness or stickiness on it from not being cleaned in a while, you could see this kind of thing. Have you gone into the unit with some Q-tips and isopropyl alcohol (the more pure stuff) and cleaned the tape path?

[Mark Suszko]

You mean a full studio setup? In-House? In this economy???

This seems a horrible time to do what you’re suggesting. IMO, The smart model these days is to keep a minimal in-house operation with a low sunk capital outlay and small, perhaps even one-man staff, and outsource most everything else.

Everything.

In such a model, you take the role of Producer/Director/coordinator of services/cook and captain bold. Every video project goes thru you, you coordinate the budget and timeline, then arrange the services and deliverables.

And you’d typically shoot the more complex stuff in somebody else’s rented studio space, only as and when you need that, instead of disrupting the office by shooting “on location”. Only rent a (great) camera for the days you need it. Might even sub out the cameraman and his gear. What gear you do keep on-site would be minimal, and stuff that is cheaper to own than rent; stuff with good shelf life and good re-sale, like tripods, light kits, mics. The only part that makes sense to own for corporate these days, again, in my opinion, is an editing/encoding/authoring suite for the office, and not a whole lot else. “Everything else” is often cheaper to rent as needed.

I say this after seeing many a situation where somebody tries to create themselves a new in-house video job in an organization where video is not the core mission or core competency. Here’s a short version of the usual horror story.

They already work with a full-service shop but decide they want to do stuff in-house. This may be because they feel like they have more control over the product, or they want to be proprietary about something. Or (and this is very powerful, don’t discount it) having such an in-house unit is “cool”.

Without a very clear understanding of actual needs, they enjoy a run thu the web sites and magazine ads and overbuy or buy the wrong stuff and have to do it all twice. Or they buy exact copies of whatever the outside service company uses, regardless of the different reasons they own what they own. What a pro production house owns and what your company should own are not always the same things.

And they usually forget you can’t stop at just a camera. There’s a tripod and pan head, which can cost as much as the camera. There’s lighting, which is almost always ignored at first until the first dailies come back for viewing and they look dull and flat. There’s good sound, which is way more important than the new entrants figure on, but always given short shrift. And all the other bric-a-brac that goes along; grip gear, etc. They just don’t figure it all in very well, in my experience. And what about converting expensive office floor space to a useable studio, with proper power, cooling, sound-proofing, etc?

They don’t usually think about budgeting for training, thinking there is some magic “make this video not stink” checkbox buried somewhere in a drop-down menu. Man, I wish Apple had a plug-in for that one! The new video person either has to slog thru the manuals alone, or be sent off to (expensive) training.

Meanwhile, while all that is going on, no actual video is being shot or produced, you’ve taken that office person out of whatever it was they were hired to do originally, so either that old work is not getting done or has been shuffled off to co-workers or even a new temp… you’re sinking all these costs, and the depreciation clock on all your gear is running, as fast as on a brand new car off the dealer’s lot… the camera is sitting on a shelf probably four days out of five, not making money, just costing money. The “studio” is costing floor rental money, even when it’s not productive. Now if you have the kind of business where you have to have a studio ready on fifteen minutes notice on any day of the week, it makes sense to own one. But is that really your situation?

And what product do you have to show for it all? All that money and time is spent before the first useable frame is presented. When you could have picked up a phone and had a pro shoot it to your specs, a guy who’s already paid all that capital cost FOR YOU.

Is your company in the XYZ busines, or in the video business? Do your company salesmen all take flying lessons and hire out a Cessna for every sales trip, or do they fly commercial with tickets purchased by a travel agent? See, they know they are not in the TRAVELING business, they are in the SALES business.

Most of all, when the accountants show your boss what this adventure has and will cost, and you divide that money into minutes of finished product, is the quality AS GOOD OR BETTER? If not, you’ve wasted the company’s time and money. When the budget gets tight, this section will be the first thing to go, and possibly you along with it!

The best money I think a corporate setup can spend in-house today, in this economy, is on a Producer that knows how to do all these things, and on a Writer who can make decent scripts. Everything else is a commoditized detail.

Sorry to be such a downer, but I’ve already seen several baby ducks waddle into rush hour traffic this way over the years, and I’m just looking out for ya, best way I know how. If OTOH you’ve already done all the proper homework and have already considered all these issues I brought up, and the business case is sound, sorry for wasting your time and being presumptive. You are way ahead of many people I’ve met, is all I can say about that.

For an in-house editing/authoring setup suggestion, first please tell us what the company does and what they want to communicate. Give us a business case for it. Then I’ll have an idea of what to suggest for gear, if anything.