[Ryan Mast]

Do you have unrendered video in your timeline? When you export a sequence that has sections of unrendered video, it has to render those sections while writing to the QuickTime file. That’s likely why it slows down occasionally.

Not really a fix for that, besides rendering before you export, but the overall time required is equivalent.

Is that the case? If not, then it might be media that’s on a slow hard drive.

[Ryan Mast]

Thank you all very much for your input — it’s been valuable. Randall, thanks for the harsh criticism. Seriously, I don’t get it much, and it’s oddly refreshing when I do. Our goal is to work at a professional level; we’re not there yet, but we need to know what we’re doing wrong, so we can improve… Nick, you’re really encouraging; there’s actually a couple business people that I’m in touch with who might go for an idea like that.

Based on your input and some other ideas I’ve had percolating, here’s my plan:

Do the paperwork and make TIP an LLC. Get insurance, because often I’m renting/borrowing gear from other people, not rental shops; I’m guessing they don’t have insurance. I’ll take wedding videography off that site and market that strictly as corporate videography & design, and event services.

Handle all the ministry video through Youth Ministry Innovations. It’s better set up for connections there, anyway.

Set up another entity that operates under the auspices of TIP to handle music videos, theater, and other more artistic work. I don’t know if that would actually be profitable, but I’d enjoy it. It would keep the marketing focus separate, so it’s less confusing for prospective clients. Even though it’s the same people doing the work… would that help alleviate the confusion, or make it worse?

Redo the website. Make a new, single demo reel with editing, animation, image correction, directing, etc. Most of what’s on there is a bit old; we’ve done much cooler projects since then.

Already I’m taking your advice to get involved in the local art & music community — I’m making some contacts and trying to get some projects started. I’m going to talk with some of my profs who have business connections in the community and try to get some tours/shadowing/internships/interviews and localish production companies. I’ll also take the rates off of the site and drop them a bit.

Again, thank you all so much for your advice and criticism. What do you think of the plan?

[Ryan Mast]

Also, and not to be overly blunt, are these your real prices or where you start out before you cut a deal? I’m not in your market but these prices seem a bit on the high side for students.

That’s the rates I’d like to be at, Nick, but I don’t think I’ve booked a job yet for anything more than $75/hr. Is it better to start at $90 and offer $75, or just set it at $75 (or lower)? What do you think is a fair wage?

I run my display at 1280×800 and have to scroll side-to-side to see your whole pages (I personally don

[Ryan Mast]

Can’t reduce your message down to a ‘perfect page’ then you don’t know your message.

That IS part of the problem — I don’t know what exactly we should focus on. In our position, what do you think we should promote the most?

[Ryan Mast]

Yes, I did encode for dialup and bad DSL… unfortunately, Lancaster DOES tend to lag behind the rest of the country in tech adoption. I’d love to post higher quality videos, but I don’t want to lose users’ attention to load times. What would you recommend?

And what should we put on the “perfect page?” Should we list what we do, post a demo reel and portfolio, and ask people to contact us? Should we post a rate sheet? Is there anything specifically that we should get rid of?

[Ryan Mast]

Another option is to use VLC (videolan.org) to run the video off of a computer, and configure it to show an RSS feed ticker in the display. It’ll also let you customize text style, size, etc.

Obviously, it would require a computer an internet connection, but it’s likely far more economical than getting a video mixer.

[Ryan Mast]

Turning on journaling may be a slight speed hit, but I’d recommend leaving it on — especially if you’re only going to use it for DV, AIC, or HDV. I had a similar model Maxtor OneTouch drive (with FireWire), and I screwed up the drive directory twice when I unplugged it improperly. The automatic fsck fixed it both times, but it took a while, and was very annoying. Turning on journaling protected it, so fsck didn’t have to run each time I unplugged it improperly.

Journaling can easily be turned on and off in Disk Utility. I’d recommend trying it.

[Ryan Mast]

Aha! Just discovered this same “problem” this evening.

The .caf (Core Audio Format) files are capable of storing 5.1 audio. And other amazing things, apparently, according to Apple’s specs:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/MusicAudio/Reference/CAFSpec/CAF_overview/chapter_2_section_2.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001862-CH209-BCGDADFA

At any rate, you’ll need to render this file for playback before it’ll play in Final Cut — converting it to an AIFF-ish format.

Drag the .caf file into your timeline. Go to the “Sequence” menu, “Render Only,” and select “For Playback.” It’ll render, and then it should play back fine.

If your final destination is stereo only, it would be best to get rid of the 4 extra audio clips — sub, center, and rear — and just keep the first two stereo tracks. To unlink the 6 clips, select the music clip, go to the “Modify” menu, and deselect “Link.” Then you can select the 4 bottom audio clips individually to delete them.

To get music off of a CD, open up the CD in Finder, select the track you want, and copy it to your hard drive (desktop, Music folder, scratch disk, whatever). That process converts it to an AIFF file. You should be able to drag that new AIFF file into FCP and directly into the timeline without rendering it. Or, you might have to, depending on the sequence settings. But it’ll work.

Hope that helps.