[Seth Bloombaum]

a move to a busy part of town might raise our profile locally.

One thing it will do is raise your overhead, right?

Sounds like you’ll have to move, regardless, but it’s always a good idea to only sign on for overhead expenses that are absolutely essential.

If foot-traffic might bring in customers, a store front is the way to do it. Are you doing consumer/retail work?

If not, there are surer ways to raise your profile locally – ya’ll are marketing, it’s hard to do for most of us, but consider marketing your co. in the local market if you want more local work. Usually your address and facility are a small part of your profile.

I do a fair amount of local work (40%-ish) but let go of my office space four years ago when I realized that clients never visit me, I always visit them. YMMV, I’ve never been interested in consumer/retail.

[Seth Bloombaum]

$385 and “best video camera” don’t belong in the same post.

For new cameras, you’re looking at a JVC and a Samsung (sorry I don’t have model numbers). Hey, these are cameras small enough for a coat pocket, they are cheap, and they are mini-DV. That’s about all they have to recommend them. Oh, and they come with a 1-hour battery, which has to charge on the camera.

But, they do work, they do shoot video. I bought one for my son and I hope it inspires something in him.

Purchase on-sale at your local discount electronics, warehouse club, or department store. If $385 is your budget you should be able to get a cheap tripod and a spare battery too, these cams will be on sale for no more than $300.

[Seth Bloombaum]

(I’ve not had experience with this)

markertek.com has several choices for wireless SD video.

[Seth Bloombaum]

If you haven’t upgraded to the latest available drivers from Pioneer, you should.

Sorry I don’t have a direct answer – you may need to contact Pioneer on this one, but I’d have thought this to be more of a software function than hardware. DAO is so readily available on the least exensive burner…

[Seth Bloombaum]

Majnoo, I’m had plenty of problems with unicode text in lots of windows apps. Every time I’ve had to find some sort of workaround, because it’s not working right.

I know this is not as easy as typing it in to Vegas text if you have much text, but the only reliable way I’ve found is to render text as graphics in Photoshop.

Sorry if this adds too much time to your workflow…

[Seth Bloombaum]

Jeremy wrote:
You must also ensure that Windows sees the FX1 correctly

This is pretty important if it’s the first time you’ve connected your FX1 to the PC, because windows XP will typically choose the wrong driver by default. If you’re familiar with the process for manually choosing a driver, the one you want is Sony DVHS.

If you’re not familiar with it, do a search on this forum, perhaps on DVHS, there is a step-by-step process. Oh, here’s one.

And do use the internal capture app, like Jeremy mentioned. If you’re not presented with a dialog to choose which app, go into Vegas prefs, you’ll find it.

[Seth Bloombaum]

I’ve not been through your exact workflow, but yes. There are many ways to do this in Vegas, some of which interact with each other.

Track Motion
Media Pan/Crop
Media Properties | Pixel Aspect Ratio
Project Properties | Pixel Aspect Ratio

Note that there are really no quality differences in any of the above scaling methods – whatever seems to work the most straightforward is fine. I’d try track motion first.

You’ll find your solution with minimal testing, and also test “reduce interlace flicker” and “video render quality | best” when rendering as when rescaling these switches sometimes produce better results. Find a representative 5 seconds of video and benchmark with it, you’ll quickly figure out what the best settings are for your application. And don’t forget to save those settings for easy re-use.

[Seth Bloombaum]

I’d test Camtasia from techsmith.com (full trial version available) before I went through these headaches. It is a very capable screen capture program. Installing it will also expose their tscc codec to Vegas, or, the codec is available as a separate download (playback only?)

A lot will depend on how much screen updating is happening with the app and processor speed. Camtasia typically doesn’t do well when the whole screen is updating at 30fps. But it’s great for most software demos.

[Seth Bloombaum]

Kyle, I’ve been on both sides of that one. Perhaps I’ve not been burned as many times as Ron may have been. You should get what you need to get the job done, and you will, in a relationship with a vendor that is founded on trust. You’re not going to get it in a “low-ball, you’ve delivered me what I asked for now I want more” kind of relationship.

I work with one designer frequently – she always sends me her layered photoshop files because she knows I’ll be needing something slightly different than a single final composite and it’s difficult to predict what exactly I’ll need when I’m out for a client (lots of live event support). And she trusts, after knowing me 15 years that I’m not going to run down the street with her work and get it for a nickel or a dollar less.

On the other hand, if she or any other vendors perceived me as disloyal, it would only be their professionalism and good will that would get me through the current project, and I’d have a hard time finding good support on future projects because word gets around. They’ve (we’ve) all been screwed enough times, and the people who do it are definitely marked.

So, yes, you should get what you need. And the people working with you should get what they need too. And if you’ve got compositors and artists supporting your 3am stuff and willing to do it the next time too, good for you, they trust you.

This is all about avoiding an adversarial relationship. But (with some heavy reading between the lines) the original poster was asking “how do I exit this professionally, it’s not smelling right.” That client is gone. The client who is your best friend except when he’s screaming isn’t going to get much from me – I don’t have patience for passive-aggressive BS, life’s too short and I’ve already seen too much.

[Seth Bloombaum]

Todd (the original poster) stated:
It’s just an assumption of his that he own the rights to all my .aep, .max, and .fla files

We’re talking After Effects, 3D Studio Max, and Flash. What about Todd’s techniques and tools for AE, what about his primitives or textures for Max… Some of these might have been developed before this client showed up. Does the client have rights to those beyond this production? How about textures Todd bought and paid for – he’s licensed to use them in productions, but not to redistribute them.

We’ve talked about best practices for client relationships, but there is a lot of variety in what’s accepted in different disciplines and industries. Graphic design & 3D is usually different than videography.

Sounds like Todd is concerned that the client will take his work to another designer. He wrote:
the client also asked for “all source materials, in case we want to make our own changes later.”

IMO in graphics, in photography, in lots of disciplines this needs to be discussed up front. Standard practices from video don’t apply.