[Ryan Mast]

What do you all think about display calibrators, like the Spyder or Huey? Does that adequately compensate for cheap displays?

I heard once that there really isn’t much difference between most LCD’s, just the calibration circuitry and the brand name on the case. Any truth to that?

[Ryan Mast]

Hi Brigette,

It’s possible, I’ve done it, it was a while ago with Final Cut Express, it was a hack, but it IS possible. It was a desperate solution to try to get a video off a computer when ethernet, hard drives, and burning DVD’s failed to work. It was a bad day, but it saved the show. Not something that’s been useful any other time, though.

If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re trying to get a faster, real-time export of your video sequence with the real-time video rendering over FireWire, rather than rendering and exporting a QuickTime file. Is that right? If that’s your goal, it’s not going to be a faster or more efficient use of resources — if you’re using TWO computers to do the job, is it actually better? Even if it’s faster or whatever, the export process is tying up TWO usable machines, not just one. And, rendering/exporting is usually much, much faster than “real-time”, anyway. (e.g., exporting and rendering a 7-minute sequence takes 5 minutes — whatever, depends on your effects.)

Do you have a special situation that requires this kind of setup? You trying to capture an edit into a different program, or into iDVD for a quick burn? Do you need to rescue a project off of a dying machine? Or do you think this’ll save time?

[Ryan Mast]

I have a stash of video noise that I use for that — I seriously just found a really old, bad, VHS tape at my college and recorded 10 minutes of glitches. Stopping, starting, fast forwarding, etc. Then take just a few frames of glitchiness and overlay over video, with the Hard Light, Add, Screen, or Overlay composite modes — whatever looks best.

One time, we had a beautiful accident that created the perfect dropout effect… We had striped our tapes with bars and tone before shooting; one scene when an actor ran into the camera, the tape head slipped for just a couple of frames, and the bars and tone gltiched through. It was perfect. If you’ve got a little Handicam you could use, it’s worth a try.

If the report is supposed to look like it’s from a satellite feed, use QuickTime to make some low-quality encodes — try some of the mobile phone settings. You could cut in a few frames of those right before the video goes out, to simulate the bitrate dropping and the satellite losing the connection. Throw in a few freeze-frames, too — that also seems to happen with unstable satellite cameras.

Hope that helps. I’d love to see what you come up with!

[Ryan Mast]

Thanks for taking the time to explain things. Personally, I really do want to honor copyright laws and make sure artists get paid — it’s what’s fair, it’s what’s ethical.

But in actual practice, it is very frustrating. If I do what’s right and follow the law, I cannot compete with some guy shooting dance recitals, band competitions, school productions, whatever, who never even gives copyright laws a second thought. One time, a client got mad at me and said I was just being lazy and a liar, when I refused to let him put a performance of a copyrighted song in a video. In the end, I caved, because I really needed the job.

It’s just that, at the level that I am (and I presume Tyler is) working, there is much less understanding among our clients of copyright laws and implications. And we are (or at least I am) competing with other students and home-grown videographers who don’t mind taking on the copyright risk.

I really do want to do what’s right and fair, but I’m tired of fighting with clients to convince them that it’s a good thing — because the client ends up spending more money, or I get paid less, or they take the job to someone that isn’t a stickler for this kind of stuff.

Also, in my experience, when we do go through the work to secure and pay for rights, often more money is spent on people-hours to contact people and companies, deal with paperwork, etc. It’s a lot of hassle, a lot of middleman. And it seems each artist and record label has different requirements, different limitations — there is almost nothing standardized about the procedure.

Sorry, I suppose I’m just venting now. I’m just trying to make the best of the situation while doing my best to do what’s right. And I’m tired of clients treating me like the bad guy when I tell them they have to get releases to use their favorite song. If there’d be some way to just shift all that responsibility and liability to the client and force them to make the moral call without me being a party to it, that’d be so much easier.

[Ryan Mast]

Ask to see the letters or emails they got from the rights holders (or administrators). They should say something about a mechanical license, synchronization license — something to that effect. Sometimes the papers will tell you what precisely to put in the credits for that song.

A tangential note and question… I understand that some licenses for stage productions state that they are allowed to make one recording of the performance for review and rehearsal purposes, without paying for and securing any extra rights. So, if the performers hire me to tape the performance only for “rehearsal purposes,” am I liable if they take that recording, duplicate it, and sell it? There’s a couple situations where I was very skittish about copyrights, but the client didn’t care about the risk and said they were happy to take all responsibility — is there any way to document that so that I’m not liable in that situation, and that the client is solely responsible and liable for securing permission from copyright holders?

[Ryan Mast]

Okay, well here’s where I start to get confused…

The A1 has the rolling shutter issue, been there, experienced it.

But now it seems that this article is saying that Sony has solved the rolling shutter issue in the EX-1 with a special system that “enables lightning-fast parallel read-out of columns (virtually eliminates rolling shutter effect). It’s the same technology featured in the EX1 and Sony’s new Alpha digital SLR line…”

Can anyone speak authoritatively on this? EX-1 owners? What’s your experience been?

[Ryan Mast]

Yes, a MiniDV cam is what you want. Some consumer hard drive cameras (Sony has a couple of decent ones) work okay with Final Cut, if you run it through MPEG Streamclip to convert it to a DV QuickTime file, but that’s annoying. Get miniDV. I recommend one of Panasonic’s 3CCD cams, their footage is fantastic for the price range (~$500).

Without spending the money for the QuickTime MPEG-2 component, you can use ffmpeg to convert to a DV stream (.dv file), and then use MPEG Streamclip to convert that to a QuickTime DV file (essentially, the DV stream in a different container — same quality, same size, just more palateable for Final Cut). It’s an annoying process if you’re converting a lot of files, but it works and it’s free. Use the ffmpegX gui, or the command line with this:
https://www.misterhowto.com/index.php?category=Computers&subcategory=Video&article=avi_to_dv_with_ffmpeg

That said, the MPEG-2 component is only $20, it’s probably worth it. All you need is one person that needs something converted from DVD to whatever — AVI, web, iMovie, etc — and you can charge them enough for your time to pay off the purchase. NBD.

[Ryan Mast]

Watching that movie — and watching the special features on the DVD — was one of the moments that I can point to and say, that’s why I want to do this.

They go into the creation of that sequence — and a lot of other effects shots that you might not notice — in the special features. It’s very, very dry and techy, but I thought it was fascinating. I don’t remember the specifics of how, though. Go rent the DVD. You might be surprised at how some of the other shots, like creating the crowd outside the congress building, and such.

[Ryan Mast]

Hi Matt,

I’m in the same boat here, 20ish and trying to run a business while doing the college thing…

Whenever you take a gig, make sure that it has value to you in some way. For me, it’s one or a combination of the following:

1) It’s good money. It could be the most boring job, but it pays well enough that I just don’t care.

2) It’s a new, exciting, and braggable opportunity. I’m doing something that I haven’t done before, and it’s going to turn out amazingly, even if I go without sleep for a little while.

3) The people are great to work with, or they’re people that I care about. These are people I love to hang out with anyway — and if we can do a project together in process, cool.

If you’ve got a lot in one of the three values and none in the other two (like, lots of money but the people suck, or it’s a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity but you’re losing money), that’s totally okay, but that can get old pretty fast unless you have a life outside of work. Generally try to make sure you’ve got 2 of the 3 values in a project (like, boring job but it’s good money and you like the people, or great opportunity and fun people but no money, or great opportunity and great money but the people drive you insane).

If you’re just doing boring, irritating, and low-paying gigs just to keep yourself busy, stop. Be a little pickier. If you’re going to do something, make sure it has value to you monetarily or personally.

One of the hardest things for me about working on my own is finding — or making — free time. Seriously, just plan for time that you WILL NOT be near your computer or video camera. Not gonna touch it, not gonna think about it. Go out for dinner with some friends, play Halo, whatever. Just because you CAN work all the time, doesn’t mean you should. Life can get pretty dismal and uninspiring if you sacrifice relationships for the sake of work. There’s a balance.

On the other hand… we’re young! We can work and learn more right now because we don’t have as many financial and relational responsibilities… Carpe diem! Try something new!

Good luck, man. Hope to see you around more on the COW!

[Ryan Mast]

I’ve been building and using my own timeclock program in PHP and MySQL for the past year. It can track hours worked, expenses, add tax, and generate invoices. It’s capable of handling multiple projects per client, and keeping track of hours for different individuals within the company. It’s got a couple different interfaces, so clients can see how many hours have been spent on a project, when, where, and by whom, and I can clock in and out and check on totals from my cell phone.

I am not by nature a particularly organized or detail-focused person, so it’s been a great tool to help me easily keep track of my time. In my spare time, I’ve been polishing it so someone else might be able to use it more easily — actually, there’s a lawyer in my area that’s interested in using it for his business, so I’m setting a deadline for myself for the end of the month to have something that’s user-friendly to someone other than myself.

Is there anyone that would be interested in helping me beta-test my system? It’s been useful for my needs, but I just don’t have enough business experience to know what other people would need in a system like this, but I think it’s something that could be useful to small outfits. Email me if you’re interested.