[Mark Suszko]

I said it was compatible, not beautiful:-)

[Mark Suszko]

I bought a Digital Heaven plug-in last week for ten bucks, the one that lets put up a custom countdown clock or up/down stopwatch effect on the screen instead of a time code window. Awesome product, works perfectly, very simple, excellent price. I like those guys!

[Mark Suszko]

MPEG-1 works for any version of Powerpoint, you would have to put up with the lower quality but compatibility is 100 percent certain. You want to make sure the movie is kept in the same folder with all other elements of the presentation: if you merely create a link to the movie in some other section of the drive, it may not (usually doesn’t) carry over to the target machine and you get a blank screen when you hit the movie section. Keep the movie and the presentation and all the embedded fonts together in the same folder, always.

I just did a project where I used Compressor and Quicktime to render out some video into like five different formats for use in a powerpoint. I did Mpeg 1, Mpeg2/DVD, I did .AVI and something else. Trying them all out, the mpeg 1 and DVD mpeg 2 looked by far the best, the difference being the mpeg-1 had to stay it’s tiney 324-by-200-whatever original window size. Blowing it up to full-screen lookde way too blocky and pixellated. Keeping it small, it looked acceptible for what it was. If they want it nicer than that, they should author it in flash, is my opinion.

BTW, Powerpoint is an evil tool of the devil. That’s a boilerplate thing I have to say any time I discuss powerpoint, sorry:-)

[Mark Suszko]

Let me see if I get what you’re asking:

1. Real car on a stage.

2. You want to project a wireframe *onto* the car, with little animated goings-on that look like cut-aways into it’s inner structure, like the suspension, the engine, or an internal I-beam in the door or something.

3. They would love it if the whole thing could rotate.

Video projectors and/or lasers can project lines onto a car body. Heck, you can use DMX-controlled motorized spotlights to project a grid line gobo pattern onto a car for your “wireframe”.

Projecting video onto the live car’s body means you have to pre-warp the image so as to counter-act distortion by the non-flat surfaces of the car. That would require a powerful multichannel DVE or a rendering from a 3-d program using a virtual camera. Alternately, you use a larger number of projectors each shooting onto just one small section, then the warping load is reduced, but overall complexity increases. Video projectors that are working alongside of spotlights will get washed-out to an extent. Lasers would be better, for several reasons:

A motorized scanning laser, of the type used for those pink floyd type astronomy dome productions, is a vector image painted in realtime by a beam dancing along the projection surface. Persistence of vision in the human eye makes you think you are staring at a line image and not a point. The shape of that surface will do little to warp the image the laser beam would “paint”. So no matter the body shape, your grid would look pretty clean. Laser brightness is also up to sharing the space with spotlights and video projections. I am imagining one laser “painting” the car with the wireframe grid pattern. A second one, or multiple second units, would then be aimed to specific target areas on the body to draw other shapes and etc. to illustrate the points. You could do it in two colors, green and red.

As to spinning everything, if the lasers or projectors were all part of the same turntable, their reference remains fixed, you have no problem. That means either an affair that resembles a merry-go-round with a roof on top, or you have to put the light rigs on their own rotating mount overhead, synched to revolve in time with the ground display. Or maybe you have the lighting on a fixed grid, but it only comes on for each element for the short time the car is facing that projector with the appropriate target area. Any way you slice it, that’s a lot of custom programming. Not cheap or fast to do.

Now, are you talking about putting up a car image on a big screen that looks like a 3-d model that can have wireframes thrown on it and cutaways reveal things… that is pretty garden-variety stuff to do in many animation programs. You can easily animate the car to rotate in space ont he screen as well during the demo. If you can;t get actual 3-d scans of the car (because it’s too new), you can use a program like Canon’s Software Object Modeler (SOM) to create a photorealistic digital model from simple flat photographs of the real object. Once you have the model, you can apply a fake wireframe texture map to it and alternate that texture wherever you want to, with the original texture, or a “see-thru” texture showing off specific internals in a “cut-away” style. That stuff can be done in photoshop or a compoting program like AE or Combustion.

Canon SOM uses photogrammetry to calculate a 3-d shape based on multiple 2-d views you give it. A Typical example would be a small object like a sculpture. You put it on a spacial mat the program prints out for you. The mat is full of alignment targets that automate much of the scanning process. So, mat on a turntable, sculpture on the mat, camera on tripod, shoot an 8 megapixel pic of the thing, turn it 20 degrees, shoot again, repeat until you’ve shot 360 degrees. Import the shots into SOM, it has a simple masking tool you use to delete anything in the backgrund that’s not the sculpture. Hit the button, you get a 3-d model that uses the photos to create it’s own perfect texture map. You can scale up the special target mat to any size with a little effort, and do a full-sized car the same way.

There are several competitor programs to Canon SOM, they all work about the same.

[Mark Suszko]

Voice recognition isn’t really up to it yet for using the way you describe. The stopgaps to date have been:

Hire a live transcriptionist. They can even work over a phone line.

Use Dragon Systems Naturally Speaking for P.C., or IListen for mac, put on a really good headset mic. Train the system to your voice, then you repeat out loud every word said off the original tapes into the computer, which transcribe’s your re-stating of the words.
Cost-effective but not much fun.

[Mark Suszko]

I bought one from Stewart Instruments, the “ridiculously inexpensive” (TM) prompter folks. It’s not glitzy, but it’s solid and works as advertised. Mine is a CRT based model, they now also offer an LCD version that’s easier to transport if you prompt in the field a lot. If it’s only ever for studio use, you might stay with a CRT design to save money, they are also easier to loop-thru to extra monitors. I shopped all the brands before I bought mine, and I use Q-TV ptompters at work, my opinion is ALL the brands are horrifically overpriced.

[Mark Suszko]

Well, it certainly is a delicate matter. If you dearly want the post house’s business, you probably can’t afford to press too far, but you will have to diplomatically set a boundary about last-minute or unannounced cancellations. You are in a corner if you never stated your terms before. In that case, you can only go by what others in similar circumstances get from this client.

You might want to sneak a question into your casual conversation along the line sof: “so, what do your other editors do when this happens, I expect they still invoice a partial fee or something?”

Their response should tell you everything you need to know. If they are good, honest folks, they’ll outright tell you. If they hem and haw or deny ever paying a partial fee for blow-off appointments, then they are not being completely honest with you.

Heck, even my dentist charges a fee for missed appointments without an advance cancellation. The issue shouldn’t have to be is there a policy, but what the specific percentage or flat fee amounts to.

If they flat-out dismiss the possibility, and you still want to work with them in the future, I think I would want to ask for a small fee up-front to book the date, which you pocket if there’s a cancellation, or deduct off the finished billing.

[Mark Suszko]

I agree with George and the rest, DvD off a cheap player is effective and efficient and avoids risking your laptop… but you should be able to author in idvd without any problems since you already have it, it’s drag and drop.

Another way you can go is, many (if not all) DVD’s let you set up a loop playback at any point of the program. my little Apex at home does thyat: you set an in point and an out point, hi the loop icon, done, it will loop until you kill the power or otherwise interrupt it, and while in the loop, you can use the zoom and pan controls to, I dunno, analyze a golf swing, repeat a gruesome car crash or something similar. Setting that kind of thing up sort of violates the “idiot proofing” rule, because it requires using a remote and pushing more than one button… but it’s an option.

In the simplest DVD programs, they sometimes insist on some kind of opening menu screen before playing the loop. This looks inelegant. If settign “first play” doesn’t work well enough by itself, you can often use a custom splash screen that’s nothing but black. A few seconds of black between playbacks is better than a menu pop-up.

One other thing I’ve done is loop the actual 5-minute program onto a one or two-hour DVD recording as many times as it will fit, like we used to do on VHS tapes. Then if everything else goes wrong, the thing would only need someone to hit the play button on the DVD unit’s front face once every two hours. We use the stand-alone panasonics for this, but no reason it can’t be done in any modern authoring program you want.

[Mark Suszko]

I think I would hold out for day rates as long as possible. The percentage of shows that really make it is very small. Startup costs are always a concern, and it’s possible they are going to try and get you to some of the work essentially for free by going to a per-job basis.

There are, as I’m sure you know, a LOT of things to figure out, lots of pathfinding done when making a pilot for a new show. The costs and timetable of the pilot are NOT an accurate basis for calculating the costs and timetable for series production. You have first-time use of sets, locations, effects, to set up. You’re really making amovie in and of itself, is the way to look at it. if you win the lottery andget a greenlight for series, then you have some assets fromt he pilot you can re-use. Maybe. Unless they re-tool the show.

Typically the producers blow their entire wad on making the best pilot possible, so they get the show apoprved. There is no money left for the actual series, that has to come from a new deal. If they get a limited number of follow-on episodes approved, the rest of those episodes play a game of catch-up and looking for extra change under the sofa cushions to keep up with the look and production pace goals and standards that were set in the pilot.

So, with that in mind, you see that it’s kind of early to lock yourself into a per-show billing situation. Too early to tell just how much help you’ll need, what the flow will be, what kind and how many assets you have to handle weekly, what additional capital expenses you have to incur. Should you rent the extra gear for the first eight episodes, in case it doesn’t make it? Or will you be able to pay it off before then, and turn it around to other money-making work if this show tanks? Or will you be holding the bag on a big bank note, waiting to get paid by guys who’ve stopped answering your calls?;-) You need the flexibility and responsiveness of an hourly. open billing situation, until a routine develops and they get a good idea of the per episode costs. Otherwise, you could winf up working like a dog and getting paid less than minimum wage, after you factor in the time and expenses. You can make that more palatable to them by using strong time management and reporting/accountability standards, so they know they are getting actual work done for the money.

That’s my 2 cents on it.

[Mark Suszko]

The simple answer (to me) is, if it’s paid for itself, there’s no reason not to keep it. Even small business generated by it is profit, right? You slack off on ordering fresh blank stock until you get an order.

My question would then be: at what point do I stop maintaining it and let the decks die off without getting replaced?
I think I might replace one or two of the bad decks with stand-alone Panasonic DVD recorders for making simple, short-run dubs that don’t tie up an authoring system. Is the rack at all portable? Maybe you have a market for “instant-turnaround” at some local business or other events? Shoot the conference/event in the morning, sell them dubs as they check out of the hotel the next morning, or late the same day? Perhaps you can repurpose your gear in a creative way, is what I’m saying.

VHS isn’t dead, it just smells funny.:-) The legacy installed base of users is huge. What we want to look at is how their usage of those VHS decks is changing, what the market segment is becoming.

Take an example from audiocassettes. I think very few people buy their music albums on cassettes any more, but the blank cassette tape makers are still doing good business. Surprisingly good. Who’s buying the tape? People mixing down their CD’s to car tapes because the car lacks a CD player. Those guys who advertise on the TV and radio for you to buy their 27-lesson realestate mogul training lecture programs are BIG users. Preachers with sermons. Books on tape for long-distance driving. Yes, podcasts ARE making inroads, but a market definitely remains, if you care to serve it.