Todd Terry
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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You might want to check out the very similar but often-overlooked kits from LTM Pepper.
I really like Peppers, if you are going for tungsten fresnels. They have several very complete kits in several combinations. I’m an Arri fan, but I definitely prefer Peppers to Arris. They are built like tanks, and are a great bang for the buck.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Joseph Puma] “You seem to lose the perspective….”
I didn’t get a chance to look at the video, but the problem you are describing comes from a discrepancy in focal lengths…. the talent was shot with a lens of a noticably different focal length than the background plate.
If the talent was shot with, say, a 50mm lens… then the appropriate background plate (or footage) would ideally be shot with a 50mm as well, or thereabouts. Of course a lot of times we are talking about background plates or enviroments that don’t really exist… but if they are 3D modeled or graphically generated, then they would need to be created with an “imaginary focal length” that best approximates whatever was used to shoot the talent.
In practical terms… if you shoot talent with a wide 18mm lens, for example, but composite them into, say, a big room in the interior of a house that was shot with an 80mm, then the composite will likely never be perfect. There will always be something that just “doesn’t look quite right” about it, and that will be due to the different perspectives of the two lenses.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Sadly, this is a little bit akin to what most clients what… they want everything 1) Good, 2) Fast, and 3) Cheap. As we usually tell them, you get to pick two out of the three… but can’t have them all.
That’s going to be the same with this request, where you want something that is 1) reliable, 2) reasonably priced, and 3) compact.
You’re probably thinking that the stock H1 finder is no good for critical focusing, and you’re right. Unfortunately that is just about par for the course with most any finder on most any HDV or HD camera.
I don’t have any specific suggestions for small external monitoring, just note a couple of things to look out for. The problem with most small monitors is that their resolution is only marginally better, if any, than your viewfinder (with is definitely poor, like virtally all the viewfinders on HDV or HD cameras). There are tons of little LCD TTF monitors out there in the 7″ neighborhood that SAY they are HD (Panasonic, Marshall, Varizoom, etc.)… but if you look at the specs, they are not… not even close. They will take IN an HD signal, and by that they get to call it an HD monitor, I suppose… but check the specs and you will see that most of them only display about 480 lines or so. So, they aren’t nearly good enough if you wish to use a monitor for super-critical focusing.
Hopefully someone will chime in with a more cost effective solution… but the “industry standard” monitors are the little Astros… pretty darn nice picture but probably not what you would call “reasonably priced”… as they start in the $5-6K range and go up. Quite a while back Sanyo was making noise about a 7” TTF screen that displayed a true 1080 lines, and considering that it was destined for things like car-headrest displays I was hoping it would be more affordable… but I haven’t seen anything on its release yet.
You might consider the B/W finder that is available for the H1… I’ve never used it, but heard that it was significantly sharper than the stock color finder. For a while I was trying to figure out how (if at all) to mate an AccuScene viewfinder with the H1. I believe we finally got most of the technical bugs worked out, but in the end you would have a viewfinder that cost twice as much as the camera body and that was hard to justify.
At any rate a good rule of thumb is to never rely soley on the finder for focus when shooting with any flavor of HD camera (especially true if you use a DoF adapter). The tried-n-true way is the old “Hollywood” method… a tape measure. We keep a Stanley “Fat Max” laser tape handy (about $100 at Lowes or Home Depot) and use it for almost all focusing.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Well Mike… you indicate that you are a software guy, not a video or production guy…
Then it might behoove you to hit up a buddy in the production world to help (or make a friend in that realm, if you don’t already have one).
I think the usability insight that you get from having a real-world beta tester from someone who does that for a living could be invaluable… and maybe they could help you produce a really polished video that really shows off your product in its best light as well.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Ok, I will admit that I have reused tape a few times in my career… but only when I absolutely positively had to.
Tape is dirt cheap. For those of us who shoot (or used to shoot) film, the cost of tape stock seems positively laughable. And for the rest, it is fairly negligible, too. It’s definitely going to be the cheapest element of most any production. It just makes sense to always shoot raw virgin stock, the price is miniscule compared to the cost of a re-shoot. Even if you are shooting something quickie down-n-dirty and can immediately check the tape and reshoot right then if necessary… your own time that you waste doing it again is worth more than the tape.
Reusing tape is penny wise but pound foolish.
Personally, I think if part of the reasoning for re-use is that you don’t want to have to label and archive loads of tapes… then don’t. If you’re never going to need that footage again, just throw them away (but then again, do you absolutely know you’ll never need it again?).
And don’t use that head cleaner any more than you have to.
And yes, it’s almost always preferable to use a deck rather than using a camera for playback… but sometimes that is unavoidable. We shoot with the Canon XLH1, and for a couple of years after that camera’s introduction we had to use the camera (or sometimes a little HV20) as a playback deck. Until Sony released the M35 there simply was no deck that would read Canon’s fairly proprietay HDV 24f footage.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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My previous post was dashed off very quickly when running out the door… I’ve had a little more time to think about your needs with more of a marketing focus…
Firstly, congrats. I applaud anyone who can develop any kind of software that does any kind of anything. That is so beyond me.
I don’t really have a problem with the MYquicksets that much, for reasons I will spell out below.
Ok, marketing .. I think you need to do a couple of things:
1. DEFINE YOUR MARKET
Actually I think you are already on your way to doing this pretty well. You seem to know who your product is for, and who it isn’t. It’s never going to be used by high-end or even mid-range video professionals, and you are aware of that. People with even moderate skill levels don’t need it since it’s easy enough to just use other programs (Photoshop or whatever) to do pretty much the same thing with as good or better results and a fair bit more control. You lose the functionality of the single drag-n-drop window but those with a bit of experience don’t require that. However, there are millions of newbis and kids out there with video cameras that DON’T know how to do that, and personally I think that is your target market — newbis and students. There are tons of them.This is why I personally don’t mind “myquicksets.com”. The word “my” does a fairly good and simple job of designating it as an entry-level user product. There are still loads of copies of MyDVD authoring software floating around. Those entry-level users probably won’t analyze the domain name enough to realize that you took that one because the preferred one was already taken. “My” is a good word.
2. IMPROVE YOUR PRODUCT
The product can do some cool things for a newbi, but it does have some limitations… mainly with the selection of background plates and elements. They are very illustrative and artificial. Even the kids are not going to want all of their talk-show videos to look phony like Space Ghost. I would suggest developing some plates and elements that look a lot more photorealistic, not as cartoony. That may be beyond your personal abilities (it is beyond mine) but if so I think it would be worth it to find a talented young freelance graphic artist who can not only do realistic renderings but who has a good understanding of light, shadow, and focus who can build you some more realistic plates and pieces.3. REVISIT YOUR PRICING
I think your pricing is too high for the target market. There probably aren’t a lot of highschool kids that would be willing or able to throw $150 at it, and adult hobbyists might feel it is a little steep as well. I know you put a lot of work and probably countless hours into the development and lowering the price might make you cringe… but if you can sell one at $150 but sell twenty at $49 it’s an easy decision. We live in the world of freeware and shareware where you can find some pretty darn amazingly good stuff for absolutely nothing… so you have to cater that that mindset a bit.4. REVISIT YOUR WEBSTIE
Don’t get me wrong, your website looks very good, very professional. That’s part of the problem, it could easily be a website selling After Effects or Final Cut Pro or any other high-end user product… and that’s not what your product is. I think you could benefit from “funning it up” a bit or making it more appealing to the young guy or girl with a video camera and an LE copy of Premiere or Final Cut on their home computer, as that’s who’s likely to buy it. I don’t purport to know what kids today find appealing in a website (I’m 30 years too old for that), but it bears some research.Just my thoughts, good start…
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Well, I’ve personally never been a fan of .net, unless you are doing something that actially is networky… like creativecow.net. When used for a business my first reaction is always “What? They couldnt get the .com?”
I think people’s first reaction is usually to remember the root of your domain name and automatically type .com… until that doesn’t work and they try something else.
Who knows, maybe the .com domain owner doesn’t really want it or need it? It’d be worth tracking them down and asking. My company’s domain (fantasticplastic.com) was originally owned by a record store in Seattle, but we bought it from them. Now, that one cost us an arm and a leg, but if the quicksets.com owner isn’t doing anything with it (or planning to) they might let it go for a song.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Richard Herd] “How quickly will 80fps burn through a 50′ load?”
45 seconds.
S8mm is 72 frames/foot.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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The Beaulieus were great cameras…. but notorious battery hogs, especially at high speed (and most took proprietary batteries) so be sure you have plenty of juice.
And yes, they will run up to 80fps, but resist the urge to ever run the camera without film (even as a short “Is thing thing working?” test) at anything above 24fps. Many a Beaulieu has been seriously damaged by doing that. And while they were very expensive-to-buy cameras in their day, they are even more costly to repair.
Good luck!
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Rick beat me to the punch with much the same advice…
Interesting idea in theory, but in practicality you might run into some challenges pulling it off.
I’ve never heard of any 8mm cameras that will run at 100fps, either. In the bigger-format worlds (16mm and 35mm), most cameras will overcrank some, but usually up to about 50fps. Above that falls into the realm of more specialized cameras (usually “high-speed” versions of the same cameras that will go up to 100fps, or for higher than that very specific specialty cameras specifically designed just for extra high speed) that invariably have registration pins. You just don’t see that in the 8mm world…
But then again, if that does exist, I’d sure like to know about it…
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com