Tim Kolb
Forum Replies Created
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The problem is that you could also look for statistics on how spending more on safety helps the bottom line…
The issue is that implementation is where the rubber meets the road. A company with an awful sales force or ineffective messaging won’t gain sales by committing that messaging to video. A company with a poor training program won’t be able to train people any better with a video…just like all the investment in signage and equipment in the world won’t make a company safe unless the company has made a committment to be so.
You will see several sources who map out all kinds of equations on how you can take a “template” project out to businesses and they’ll all just buy it right there because you can show them the results they can achieve.
Bottom line…no two customers, sales forces, company cultures, management team mindsets…are the same. We’ve had companies in our area that could quite obviously benefit from more media tools in various areas of their business, and even though the company is large enough to easily do this, the culture of the company isn’t interested…so it doesn’t happen. We’ve turned down jobs that were offered to us when it was obvious the plan for a video project was ill-conceived and will simply never deliver the results the client was hoping for…
Corporate video is all about diagnosis. You have to get a foot into the door of a company in some manner and gain some trust first. Perhaps there is a small project which gets you acquainted with some of the people in the company and from there you can look at how things work. Maybe you’ll find that the company sells some large item like bulldozers and you happen into a conversation where the sales manager is lamenting how difficult and expensive it is to get prospective customers to the company proving grounds…(video based product demo…), or how their brochure costs are eating them alive and they seem to only line prospect’s garbage cans…(PDF brochures on a CD/DVD WITH the video based product demo…), etc, etc, etc, etc….
Opportunities tend to be somewhat singular and individual in this business and you have to see the need once you have a bit of a pulse on the company. You can’t help a company be more successful by selling it stuff…you help it be more successful by solving its problems. And you can’t do that until you know what they are.
TimK,
Kolb Productions,
Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net -
Ah-ha…the client who revises reality. Geez, I love those guys. At some point you actually start to question your own grasp of the facts…insanity can be contagious.
I think you understand what has to happen here. My only add to what’s been said is that in some of these situations, you may be better off to even leave the deal without getting fully paid. Collection under these circumstances is just more stress and if any bad-mouthing ever gets back to you, you can simply state that you gave them their money (or some portion of it) back because there was simply no way to please this client.
Our field is relatively tight so most of this stuff does come back around. The key is to be calm when you refer to it, be factual but don’t dwell on it, and show some confidence when you refer to it because you are comfortable with the way you handled the situation. This will help put any future clients who may have heard the story from the other side more at ease.
I’d give them their tapes with the DVD and tell them bye-bye at the earliest opportunity (but, yes-include a letter with a timeline and the chronology you related to us, but with no emotion attached. The events are absurd enough to simply read dry…).
Good Luck.
TimK,
Kolb Productions,
Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net -
Hi Jerry,
All the LH outputs are available with Prospect. You have an output dialogue very similar to the dialogue you would use with the card itself where you can specify what is coming out of where…analog component can be downconverted NTSC, NTSC-J, HD, etc…SDI can be SDI or HDSDI…
TimK,
Kolb Productions,
Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net -
Yes…I have my desktop.
I am running a four head system with a 24″ and two 17″ panels for interface and a 30″ for video overlay. With Prospect 2K I can get a pixel-for-pixel representation on the 30″ panel.
Overlay only goes to one place however, and from what I can see, when I have the Xena installed, Prospect ships the video in that direction and the 4500 feed to the 30″ is gone. I have a dual-DVI switch coming so I can switch the 30″ feed from the Quadro card to the SDI output.
TimK,
Kolb Productions,
Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net -
[Steve Wargo] “Make that a 1/4 black pro-mist and an 812. They also have a warm pro-mist that will probably take the place of both.”
I have a Tiffen Warm polarizer that I’m particularly fond of…
TimK,
Kolb Productions,
Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net -
I’ve not used a 560, but keep in mind that you can preview out the AJA card or use a desktop video overlay, but they don’t both work simultaneously.
I can’t use my FX4500 for overlay and the Xena card at the same time…
TimK,
Kolb Productions,
Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net -
Not sure how to answer this question…are you asking if there are drivers that are newer than what the manufacturer themselves state are the newest drivers?
TimK,
Kolb Productions,
Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net -
So…how is this working?
-You set keyframes at the extreme limits (in and out points) of the clip for your motion…then,
-You put in your transitions and the keyframes move?
I assume what is happening is that the keyframes are staying stationary and when the transitions are added and the trim is expanded to include enough overlap to greate the transitions, you see the ending/beginning keyframe.
In the top, right corner of the effect controls panel, there is a little arrow button that will open a menu. Inside that menu, there is an item called “pin to clip”…when that is checked, the effect controls window will only allow you to see the area included in between the in and out points of the clip you have selected. When you uncheck it, it allows you to place keyframes outside of the in/out points on the timeline.
In theory, if you knew how long your transitions were going to be, you could place the first and last keyframe far enough outside the trim where you would not have to rework it…
TimK,
Kolb Productions,
Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net -
Well…I’m not sure I’d phrase it that way…but feeding HDV or just HD to the Adobe Media Encoder to go straight to SD MPEG2 for DVD would be better.
What is it with the language on this board today?
TimK,
Kolb Productions,
Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net -
I’ve actually been editing in Aspect HD and exporting to SD MPEG2 for DVD. It works quite well.
Exporting SD DV, and then to DVD would not produce the same quality level as going direct from HD to DVD…
TimK,
Kolb Productions,
Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net