Randall Raymond
Forum Replies Created
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[David Roth Weiss] “Advertising, such a noble business, and always with the consumer’s best interest in mind.”
It is noble and needed. The communication of truth is advertising. Look at what lasts against those who lie. Has the paradigm shifted all that much from the ads on the Pompeii walls?
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[Ron Shook] “I’m not sure that it’s reasonable to expect YouTube to accept the same bit rate for a free video upload as Google accepts for a paid ad even with YouTube being owned by Google. If you get away with it, great, but if you send YouTube a 400 kbps Flash8 flv video and they re-encode it to 200 kbps it’s gonna look like crap.”
As usual, Ron, you raise a good point. YouTube is for video dummies – they may re-encode automatically considering the myriad of formats they recieve. My point, which I didn’t express all that clearly, is to start high and tweak down in uploading Flash 8 complaint files to YouTube.
24p creates even smaller file sizes in Flash 8 than 30fps files – but YouTube specs 30fps – does that mean a re-encode is automatic? I haven’t done the testing because my market is not there and I don’t have the time. My gut tells me that if they got specific about their video specs, they would be, effectively, salespeople for their licenser.
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[Bob Cole] “A major provider of editing equipment was planning to show their new, voice-actuated editing console at NAB. Problem was, it wasn’t ready. So the “editor” on the stage would give a verbal command, which the EDITOR behind the curtain would punch into the machine manually, and the edit would magically perform. Very impressive, until someone tripped on a curtain and revealed the Wizard of Oz and the trick.
That can’t be a true story. Or… is it?”
Oh, come on! Trade Shows, by definition, assume a knowledgeable crowd. Exhibitors are not there to deceive you…as your myth implies. I really detest that attitude. I’m in advertising – if you think I’m trying to trick you – fine. And, yes, we do take that attitude in consideration.
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[John Magee] “I tried a demo of the $40 On2 encoder, and yes, it’s not good quality.
I went back to WMV and messed with it some more and am uploading to Youtube now.I’ll hang on to my money for now,not ready to spring for a good Flash encoder.”
Out of Vegas, you must encode to QuickTime (mov) before encoding to Flash 8 (VP6) – On2 does its best encoding from QT files. Never encode to Flash video from another ‘web video codec’ – which is exactly what you are asking YouTube to do.
The $40 On2 encoder will produce great results if you follow those rules. If you want pristine results on YouTube upload flv files that’s what you must do. View the results and tweak. My advice: YouTube is very vague about video specs – other than frame size – So start high in your flv file’s bit rate – YouTube’s owner, Google, accepts my rightly sized flv video ads as is – 400 bit rate – they don’t appear to me to be re-encoded – neither sound nor picture – my clients love it – we have the best Google video ads out there and the click-throughs to prove it.
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[MindYourVideoBusiness] “It’s now my policy to collect 50% before the job begins. It’s harder to get agencies (or web/brochure/wannabe video companies) to agree to this because they don’t want to pay us before they get paid.”
Even then, I had an ad agency promise a deposit ($30,000) and then string me along – turns out they had collected it from the client and spent it! When the client found out what had happened – we both learned to go directly to each other and use agency ‘assets’ (artwork, etc.) as needed.
I tell agencies now that we can work as team, but I must bill direct and have direct contact with the client – my ‘read’ of a client’s wishes is better first-hand – than getting a second hand ‘read’ from someone who hasn’t a clue about video production.
This is not advice for Fortune 1000 clients or their larger, more professional agencies. You can, generally, trust them to do the right thing in a real world.
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[Terry Esslinger] “OK, so you are saying that even though I can get Sorenson Squeeze for half price through Digital Juice that it would be better to get On2 – for the same price? Sorenson is old tech and On2 is new tech?”
Exactly. I think On2 has comparisons on their site. Flash 8 is simply superior – and one of the reasons MSNBC switched from Windows Media to Flash 8.
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‘Conspicuous absence’ keeps a lot of big players from dropping out of trade shows. They don’t want to provide grist for the rumor mill, so they hang on. I would not doubt that the decision to do NAB has been argued each of the last few years in Avid’s conference rooms. This year the axe fell – next year it may not – if they come back, they will come back with an improved product.
There must be some soul-searching going on there and where a 141 million dollar budget for ‘research’ went to last year…
Wouldn’t the first dollar spent on ‘research’ have told them that they need to listen to their customers, when the perception found everywhere is that they don’t? That left $140,999,999.00 to fix it.
Now they say they are listening – why did it take the brick wall (they have run into) to make that happen?
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[Terry Esslinger] “Since the stand alone FlixOn2 runs $250 and I can get a full fledged Sorenson Squeeze for 250, which one would be the best?
I am using PC not Mac and am using Vegas.”Sorenson (Flash 7) greats larger files (about 30% larger!) and inferior video compared to Flash 8 (On2). Really, a no brainer.
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[Aanarav Sareen] “And, to those that say that Avid is losing money, you are correct as well. Take a look at their income statement:
https://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=AVID&annual
Their net income has been reducing over the past couple of years. However, their revenues are UP. A majority of their cost is coming from “cost-of-revenue,” and not going to trade shows will certainly reduce this cost.”
380 Million on ‘Research Development’ in the last three years. That’s a lot of money. Assuming some of that went to market research – Avid is right where it planned to be…apparently.
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[Scott Bush] “I read somewhere that YouTube uses the Flash 7 codec..”
I didn’t know that. That’s unfortunate – Flash 7 is very inferior to Flash 8 with larger file sizes. What is YouTube thinking???