Martin Curtis
Forum Replies Created
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[Dan Danner] “I’m thinking it’s just a matter of creating a self contained “website” with the videos and menus – then burning a simple data disc”
I’ve done a couple of these. What you describe is pretty much it, but there are traps for the unwary.
Be very tight with your file organisation – people will have access to all the files so don’t leave a mess. Watch your links: always use relative links. Don’t use server-side code (unless the laptops are running a webserver). Test and re-test on the target laptops.
If you’re putting video in the pages, the computer playing the website must be able to decode them. I wouldn’t specify Quicktime unless it was guaranteed (and spelled out) that all the laptops had Quicktime on them.
In fact, why use a DVD at all? If these are laptops the sales people have, you could create the website, drop it on the intranet and get them to grab it themselves. That way you can update anytime without having to re-burn.
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[Thomas Leong] “As for the other suggestion to provide 1920×1080 file to your client, I would suggest not. Some PCs do not have the power to play 1920×1080 without hiccups. Moreover, some SVGA projectors may not accept a 1920×1080 resolution (error message: “beyond range” or thereabouts) and therefore refuse to project the file. Also, the scalers in these projectors are not the best, so I would not trust them to do a good job.”
These points were exactly what I was going to post. I have seen all of these things on some of our older projectors/PCs (esp. laptops). Full HD projectors aren’t that common in the corporate world. As long as it shows the boss’s PPT file OK, they’re happy with that.
Don’t forget that a lot of projectors are 4:3. Widescreen isn’t that common for many reasons.
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Are you importing the stills directly from the camera into FCP or from files on your HDD? What do they look like in, say, Preview?
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Sorry. Weekend.
DMR-EZ48V, a VCR/DVD recorder combo. Also has Firewire which is nifty. And it will finalise by ejecting the disc without having to go through a dozen button presses on the remote.
HTH
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It sounds like something that needs a Flash front end on it. If they want the movie in its entirety and the movie in segments (and additional interviews), unless you add a menuing system such as what Flash can provide, you’d be doubling up on the movies. This way you could construct something, well, like a DVD menu system that has a Play All button and links to specific items within that stream.
Why do they think people in developing countries don’t have DVD players?
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I have a Panasonic DVD recorder at work. In the menu that has the FINALISE function, there is an option to “Autoplay”. The cheesy menu is still there in the background (I think) but when they put the disc in, they never get to see it.
For some things, I use Toast to create an Autoplay DVD (sans menu) from a MOV exported from FCP.
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[Nathan Abbott] “But I can definitely see most of the projects happening in 2 days, like you said, if I have my act together.”
I said if they have their act together. Big difference 🙂
I am in a unique position where I can force (well, strongly recommend) people to actually have an idea of what they really want and make them do some work to achieve this (after all, they know their subject best). Many people think that all they have to do is make a phone call, I hit the big red “make a video” button and it happens magically without any further input from them. Kind of how like guys think babies happen 🙂
You may have to be more diplomatic – a template or even an explanatory video might help.
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[Nathan Abbott] “The main focus will be hospitals and private practices. I’ll be putting together “informational” videos on procedures patients are about to undergo.
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Have you done these before? They are quite different to anything else (note: I work for a state Health Department, in a public hospital. I make these sorts of videos. I have been in the health game for 20 years, as a videographer for the last 3.)Informational videos can be easy pieces (video a mocked-up procedure while off-camera person reads out what on-camera person should be doing, edit with consultation, dub voice in afterwards, put in circles and arrows) to quite complex (animations, voice-over artists). Being a poor government employee, we usually do the former. The other types include narrative which should mean actors and a script written by a pro, or working in theatre which is quite time consuming and you have to know in advance what to capture and have a good relationship with the surgeon, or grab everything and have a lot of stuff to edit.
This is a great game to get into, but it’s a fairly wide-ranging area.
From what I have heard – and remember I get paid just for turning up everyday and all my equipment (and coffee) is supplied – the hardest part to learn about running a business is the business things: quotes, invoices, tax, insurance.
To give you something to be going on with, if someone has their act together, I can shoot, edit (with their input) and deliver a 15 minute video of a mocked up procedure (as above) in around 2 days.
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[Kyle MacDonnell] “It takes me 1 to 2 hours to convert 1 minute of AVCHD to apple ProRes”
That’s odd and very slow. On my 2.8 GHz Core2Duo iMac I can convert 1080i AVCHD from a Canon HFS10 into Apple Intermediate Codec (at around 135 mbps) in real time.[Kyle MacDonnell] “I just rebooted & my finder windows have question marks on the menu bars?!?”
That means that apps have been moved from where the Finder expects to find them and the dock can’t update their location. If you haven’t been moving apps around, this could indicate an operating system fault. If this is a new Mac, I’d take it in to the Apple store to get them to take a look, or at least give their phone support a go.
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Shane, someone else here noted that NX5 files recorded using PCM audio was slowing down transcoding markedly and using AC3 audio instead resulted in transcode time of 3x realtime.