Mike Cohen
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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I was at a medical convention this week. There were numerous 3D laparoscopy systems on display. The one I tried uses the RealD glasses with a 3D HD monitor. It is pretty spectacular.
In the short term and long term, the practical application is intraoperative monitoring – if the surgeon can see in 3D what he or she is doing, there may be a greater chance of accuracy.
however it took my brain about 10 seconds to get acclimated to the 3D view, and in surgery, it is common to look down or away from the screen in a darkened room, increasing the workload of eyes and brains. Eye and brain strain is one possible side effect.
As far as recording the 3D image to video, there are some proprietary systems on the market.
Editing 3D is even further downstream, and there of course would need to be an installed user base of 3D televisions and a standard for 3D media playback.
As with HD – broadcast comes first, followed by industrial use and finally the consumer. We sell our videos to individuals and to the corporate world so once they all have the desire for 3D video, I’m sure we’ll be there.
Mike Cohen
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try making your premiere sequence an after effects comp and export through there
Mike Cohen
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If I get a quote for professional video services, one of three things happens:
Too low
Too high
Just rightSound familiar kiddies?
Too high is an easy one to figure out.
Just right is of course what i am looking for – sometimes it is just right out of the gate, sometimes there is negotiation.But what about too low? Wouldn’t I automatically go with the lowest price?
Not always. If I have an idea of the fair market value of a professional service – say $800 for a full day XDCAM camera op, lights and sound operator – and I get a quote for $200 – I can think one of the following must be true:
1 – The guy doesn’t know what his work is worth
2 – The gal has the skills but not the business sense to price accordingly
3 – The person wants the experience, but does not consider the cost of doing business
In any of these situations, the vendor is depriving himself or herself of a fair wage.
$200 may seem like good money, but factor in the cost of paying for and maintaining your gear, your own salary, taxes (you may not have been keeping track of your self employment tax liability, but I cannot pay for freelance services without a signed W9 from the vendor), overhead, cost of materials, etc. You could be left with nothing or in the red.
If I feel you have the skills, based upon talking to you and looking at your work, and perhaps talking to another customer, I may hire you, but at a price I deem worthy of professional work. I will not pay $200 for a day of shooting because in my mind, I am paying a kid with a camera. If the kid screws up, he only loses $200 – no biggie. but if I raise my price to $500, the kid has more to lose and likely will do a better job, and more likely to stand by his work.
Even $500 for a full day shoot is a steal.
As for editing services, same thing applies. Think of the big picture, not just the quick cash.
Good luck. And can I get a refill on my iced tea?
Mike Cohen
Funny story. I was having lunch with fellow COW Steve Wargo. We waited and waited for our server to refill our drinks. Finally Steve walked over to the wait station, grabbed a pitcher of iced tea, and did it himself. Now that’s thinking on your feet.
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You want experience – great. But don’t compromise principles of good business, and don’t contribute to the undervaluing of professional skills.
$50 barely covers your costs, and does not count as a living wage given the multiple hours of work you will be asked for.
Walk away and get a job at Olive Garden. You’ll make more money and enjoy those lovely breadsticks and all you can eat salad!
Mike Cohen
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Mark, you are in the plains of Illinois. Ever see anything weird in the night sky?
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This is also why all footage of UFO sightings is of such poor quality.
Because until recently, your average person, if they walked around with a camera at all, used something small and easy to carry around in a pocket, glovebox, purse. This used to mean a 110 camera, point and shoot 35mm or APS camera with a short zoom, a Disc camera (anyone remember those?), a Polaroid (no zoom) or perhaps an SLR with a stock 28mm lens. As for video, pocket-sized video cameras have only recently become affordable, but that does not mean people will carry one around.
Nowadays, most cell phones still have poor quality cameras. As mroe people get smart phones with HD resolution, and pocket sized still cams with long zooms and high pixel count, we may finally get some decent UFO images.
However they know about our recent advances in technology, and will likely continue their landings in remote cornfields away from large populations of people operating advanced technology. They are pretty smart after all.
If Flip wants to really get on the map, they will send a free camera to every farmer in the world, or at least do a viral campaign to this effect.
Mike
PS – I am sure UFO cloaking devices interfere with HD video imaging circuitry.
That was fun!
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Greg,
We too, not surprisingly, get a lot of odd formats recorded with laparoscopic video systems. Recently we were sent a hard drive with a 300 gigabyte HD video file. It took about a week to find the right conversion method so we could edit in Premiere.Is the file you received 25fps? If it is PAL, or PAL-ish, that probably means the dimensions are off kilter too. The laparoscopes that claim to be high def are usually some odd dimensions, like 1915×1071 or 1150×729 – just to be difficult. HD yes – standard no.
So far it seems HD scopes are designed for good imaging in the OR, not really for editing the recorded video.
Anyway, are you editing in PAL in Final Cut, or did you transcode the video first to NTSC?
A lot of variables here.
Mike Cohen
PS – Always good to talk to another surgical video practitioner.
Medical Education / Multimedia Producer
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To the original author Kevin – sorry I did not register your name when I initially replied. Good to see you here on the COW.
Mike Cohen
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We have done this a few times using Flash. However we author a Flash video player, which functions as a self-running application (exe file on PCs, and some trickery to make it work on a Mac). An autorun.ini file in the root of the flash drive should make it autoplay on a PC. Mac users are smart enough to find a file called “start” on the drive and run it.
you could do something similar as an html file with embedded f4v video, but you run into people not having the right plugins.
Too many variables exist with media players to just put the media files on a disk or thumb drive, unless you have a big customer service department waiting for the phone to ring!
Mike Cohen
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seems you need to be on retainer, or have a contract that estimates hours of work, with a clause agreed to by all parties that final invoice will reflect actual work performed.
Mike Cohen