[Mike Smith]

Maybe you should ask for a future-plans review meeting; it sounds like it may be time to look for more new clients. It sounds as if your client plans to bypass you in future.

Of course you do not need to hand over any file that wasn’t part of your original contract, at any price, unless you choose to.

If your AE project file is straightforward, it should be easy if slightly timeconsuming for a competent AE user to recreate your work.

If your project containts the fruits of unusual skill, experience and learning in clever solutions, advanced use of effects, layers, expressions or other features that make it special to you, it would be understandable if you did not want to hand it – and with the file, speedy, short-cut access to your hard-won learning and skill – at all.

Having now looked at a little of the delightful work on your twins-are-weird site, I’m more inclined to the view that your AE project files are special to you, and contain a lot of original art. If you do decide to be nice and share them at all, they would be worth a decent price.

[Mike Smith]

Firefox isn’t so picky as all that, unless you really only want H264 and not on Win7.

Could you be thinking about WebM / VP8 support ..? Have a look at https://www.webmproject.org/
https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Media_formats_supported_by_the_audio_and_video_elements
https://www.winrumors.com/microsoft-enables-h-264-video-playback-in-firefox-with-windows-7-add-on/
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/12/new-features-for-html5-video-playback-in-firefox/

[Mike Smith]

What data rate do you think your customers / those you want to support can reasonably expect to achieve, on e.g. 3G connections …. ? Your 6.5 Mb/s seems highly optimistic. “an effective throughput of 1 to 4 Mbps on many networks on an iPad” is from https://www.macworld.com/article/1151168/250mb_ipad_plan_management.html

[Mike Smith]

Thanks Brian

What alternatives might offer similar performance to the H4N, might be worth a close look?

[Mike Smith]

So what effect(s) are you using on the clip where the slow render kicks in …. ?

[Mike Smith]

So does that not sound like circle wipe …?

[Mike Smith]

Isn’t this time to brief a writer, or a writer/art director creative team …?

From your description, it sounds like they don’t want to see too much reality … so why not do amy filming in a large studio, with gleaming vehicles and well-buffed “character” models/actors ..

You could acknowledges Woody Allen acknowledging earlier movies, with a riff on a character stuck in a grotty, scuzzy train (bus, family car – target market?) looking through a window at another vehicle / carriage slowly overtaking, where much more glossy and glamorous (so much so that it looks unreal, very attractive) people are enjoying an altogether more enviable life.

Comic details could stretch to overblowm brands, champagne and truffles, butlers … exotic service) all in a heightened colour-palette and presented in the client’s livery.

Of course a great music track: maybe a fresh instrumentation of a less-well-known but potent classical snatch of phrases.

Or you could just big up the jingly voice, spoken, chanted or sung …

OK maybe not!

[Mike Smith]

If you want it to play back as a DVD, you will have to convert it to standard definition DVD format video.

If you’re using the DVD purely as file transport, you’d want to divide the disc size (usually in Gigabytes) by the programme length to get a max data rate (usually in Megabits per second Mb/s or Mbs) for your encoding – probably wise to allow a little contingency.

This might help ..

“At a rough average rate of 5 Mbps (4 Mbps for video and 1 Mbps for two or three tracks or audio), a single-layer DVD can hold a little over two hours. A dual-layer disc can hold a two-hour movie at an average of 9.5 Mbps (close to the 10.08 Mbps limit). ”

is from https://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#3.3
So you could try that data rate on your preferrede

[Mike Smith]

It’s not happening on IE here.

[Mike Smith]

One approach might be to build a core presentation about your work – perhaps a few different ones for different areas or types of work – along with a pricing structure or price guidelines, including prices for developing creative ideas as script, storyboard or to be presented in other media.

That might form the bulk then of a spec invitation to tender, perhaps sweetened on more attractive invitations with an individual first para in which you try to display sensitivity to and awareness of the particular needs of the project, and to fly a single interesting or intriguing seed of an idea.