Mike Smith
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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Well done ! ☺
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ed
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Pretty penny – I love it ! I had thought of that as a British English only idiom.
Of course if your kit is working well there’s no need to change, though my reading is that MC 5.5 dates back a long way – 2011 – and there have been big advances in software and hardware in that time. I’m guessing from your posts that you invested in a hardware accelerator at that time – maybe Adrenaline? Nitris? I’m guessing that usage of the system involves ingest or transcoding of footage before editing can begin? And no playback of mixed HD formats natively in the timeline? And that the hardware accelerator is needed for any kind of realtime edit playback? I’m guessing you are tied to keeping an older host computer running, for driver compatibility?
Lightworks and Resolve are both capable editors with free versions, and full-price versions at a few hundred dollars. I don’t know if they will run on your hardware. Lightworks has been used by one veteran editor I know (more than 20 years of MC experience, as well as lots of time on various versions of FCP and latterly Premiuere Pro) for the last couple of years, and reports on the most recent version of Resolve are largely favourable. HItfilm is another contender with a free version, though I know less about it. And Avid of course is reportedly launching another free version I think, though I couldn’t find it on their site just now.
On the Apple side, FCPX has lots of devotees and is low cost. On Windows, Edius Pro from Grass Valley is solid and slick, if a little more costly (still probably under $500 – cheap to an old-time Avid buyer?!) , and Vegas has a quirky approach but a decent toolset and some fans.
Bob Zelin’s recent NAB review does a good job of sketching out a little of where video editing is now and is heading, at https://library.creativecow.net/zelin_bob/NAB_Show_2017/1
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That is quite old software: probably running on old hardware too …? Are you contemplating a refresh for other reasons? There is cheap or free software to run on stock hardware now that will do the job.
For this pitch, if you quote in a traditional “view and understand all of the footage before cutting” way, you are likely to end up with a very big number. The client has signalled to you that s/he is price sensitive, or at least price aware. A lot of footage from a pro outfit is one thing: sadly I’ve faced hours and hours of self-shot, amateur footage with nearly nothing usable … it would be helpful for you to have a sense of what kind of footage is available.
I might be inclined to consider using the meeting you have to try to assess the footage for overall quality, and for you to lead the client into showing you his or her idea of “the best bits”! A second strand for the meeting might be to try to nail down a story idea or script for the short version – s/he want that first – and get the client to use their logging notes to take you to appropriate footage.
If that works, you may have established that you can work together to the client’s brief, that the project is viable, and that you could cut a short to client desires without having to wade through all of the hours of footage, which might allow you to quote accordingly. Or it might show you and the client both that the footage is variable quality and a lot of editing time will be needed – paving the way for a higher figure (or a cancelled project) .
If you were a demolition company, what message might you want to be able to put over with your video – what would you need to show and say? And can you find the tools to do that with the footage you have, a short voice-over (maybe) and soubdbites from interviews (maybe) ..? And what commercial value to your company might a video represent …? A cleint is not likely to pay more than their perception of that added value in their sales process, however well justified your method might seem to you, me or anyone else ????
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If you want it badly enough, something like SpectralLayers Pro might help. It has excellent tools for selecting and manipulating elements in a sound file. Take a look at the first demo video on the product page, or search for its “harmonics selection” funtions, perhaps.
https://www.magix-audio.com/gb/spectralayers-pro/ -
It seems likely that your bottlenecks for rendering might be better addressed through faster CPU and GPU and more RAM – it’s not likely that disc performance is your current limiting factor, unless you are seeing failures in realtime playback in your editing application. Rendering multiple effects on video can be time consuming, and some effects are more processor-intensive than others. If you are rendering out to H.264 then that in itself can be a slow render on some machines.
For storage, RAID can offer you speed in writing to and reading from disc, and also some data security if you opt for a RAID5 configuration. If you are experiencing difficulties in copying files to disc or in realtime editing playback (without heavy effects) then disc perfomance might be a key factor for you. Are you considering the use of SSDs, either as RAID drives or in direct usage?
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3757231?tstart=0
https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/22/2016-macbook-pro-speed-versus-retina-macbook-pro/
https://dslrvideoshooter.com/final-cut-pro-x-slow-here-are-7-ways-to-speed-up-fcpx/ -
Yes, UK based Todd. ???? Though not so much the Colonies, I’d say, as the much-love offspring, now far surpassing the parents.
I think you may be right, though, to hint that a good approach to Wade’s issue may be very much about care in contracting. -
This one comes up quite often, and there’s a list of back posts at
https://forums.creativecow.net/search.php?q=who+owns+footage&f%5B%5D=17 -
I take the contrary view. If you were hired to produce a finished programme and you have done so and delivered that, then you have completed your contract and been paid. You owe no further obligation to the client, and any materials you created towards making what was paid for remain yours. Having said that, you would probably cause a bad odour with your client were they to find you using footage from their production for other purposes. But many producers organise and group material so that one crew might shoot a mass of footage at a (public) location, with a view to spreading the cost of that over a number of productions, happy in the knowledge that the footage is theirs.
If, on the other hand, you were a shooter hired to shoot coverage, then what you shot would be owned by whoever hired you to do so.