[Todd Terry]

[Bob Zelin] “Apple looking to “price gouge” “

Of course they are. What more would you expect?

That’s simply the way big business operates, and I would expect nothing less of Apple nor do I really find any fault with it, from a business standpoint. From a humanity standpoint, yes, but not from a business standpoint.

Look, I’m not an Apple fan, by any stretch. I own zero Apple products. That last time I even touched an Apple product was years ago helping a friend load a Mac when moving. I don’t really have anything against them, they are just not what I choose to use (probably somewhat out of spite, because for so many years in our business the Apple fanboys were so militantly condescending about it). I silently shook my head eight years ago when Steve Jobs died, when people were falling all over themselves (including some folks in this forum, as I recall) slathering on the platitudes to him for his hand in creating the world as we know it like some Biblical-era prophet there for our worship. I kept quiet, even though I wanted to say “Yes the man was an incredible incredible visionary and has helped change the world. And he was also a raging narcissist with an insatiable ego who from virtually all accounts was one of the more horrible horrid human beings that you’d ever run across.” But I digress.

You can’t really fault Apple for selling their products for the most that people are willing to pay for them, or for setting a price point that maximizes company sales/profits. They are not a charity and never claimed to exist to help the world be a better place (fortunately Bill and Melinda do have a bit of that feeling). Tim Cook could get up at the next meeting and announce that all future Apple products will be half price, that Apple would still make money although not nearly as much as before, but they will be helping so many people get access to their products and live better lives and all that jazz….

The shareholder revolt would start before Cook even finished his sentence.

That’s just the way business is… and goes back to my “people are selfish” rant from before. Which, sadly, they are.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

That’s probably a great instrument (at $2K+ it ought to be).

And if you have money to burn, go for it.

If it were me though (and I’m cheap) for this particular application I’d just hit eBay and buy a little tungsten fresnel for probably less than a hundred bucks.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

It’s all about money, and that’s pretty much it.

Sad as it is to admit, people are horribly selfish… me included.

We deal with this all the time with advertisers (especially automotive), who want to make sure their advertising includes the fact that they’ve been around for 50 years, that they are family owned, that they treat their employees right, and all that jazz… because they think that’s what will win customers. It doesn’t (at least not to 99 people out of 100). It’s about price. The fact is that a person who claims to really want to patronize good ‘ol family owned Wilson Family Luxury Motors will still go across the street it if saves them $300 on that $60K BMW. That’s just the way people are, we see it time and again.

People are quick to say “Apple should make products here.” But imagine this… lets say Apple made iPhones in China AND in the US. And you go into the store and you are offered two identical iPhones to choose from. One is $800. Made in China. Its twin was made in the US. Oh, and it’s $5000. Which one would you choose?

Would you really buy the one that costs six times as much, because it’s putting Americans to work?

Be honest.

Even if the American iPhone was only a hundred bucks more, it’s nice to think there are those people out there who would make that choice… but you’d be hard pressed to find someone who really would cough up the dough if the cheaper identical option is just as readily available.

You’ll hear people say all the time “I’d gladly pay a little more to if….” but when the rubber meets the road, it’s all lip service. I started my company doing price/product grocery store ads (those horrible “Scott Towels, now two for $1.29” spots). Me, being both a guy and not a savvy shopper always wondered why those were so effective (I personally never ever look at even one price in a grocery store… if I need it I buy it, if I don’t then I don’t). But learning the ins and outs of that business I was surprised to find there are plenty of shoppers who actually will drive all the way across town to save a nickle on a jar of pickles. And that’s not an exaggeration.

It’s a terribly jaded thing to say, but it’s true. People are selfish and it’s all about money. Period.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Temi puts a timecode stamp every paragraph or so… or every couple of sentences…whenever there seems to be a good clean break in the audio.

It does start from 00:00:00 though, so if you want it synced with the actual media’s timecode it will require some math, IF you are uploading a clip that has timecode starting at something other than zero. I don’t, the way I’m using it, so that’s a non-issue for me.

It will also differentiate and name different speakers (I haven’t used or needed that feature yet). You can turn off or on the speaker names as well as the timecodes if you want before exporting.

I don’t think it has a way to turn off the umms and ahhs… those were all accurately in my transcripts, but fortunately I wanted them there.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Yes Mark…

You can either do your edits and such live via a dashboard, or export files.

You can export text as .docx, .pdf, or .txt files.

Caption files can be exported as .srt or .vtt files.

It’s not free like YouTube, but at 10¢ a minute it’s about as close as you’ll get. The first one is free so give it a try.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

I can’t speak to the other flavors, but with Temi you can share with clients and they can mark up the text, etc… you can keep it all “live” on the cloud or download various file types… docx, PDF, etc.

My interviews were about 15-20 minutes long each. I’d say on average the processing took about 2-3 minutes if I did them one at a time. Once I uploaded a batch of about 10 of them all at once, the transcribing took about 5 minutes for those.

The transcriptions were very VERY accurate… I’d say on average I had to make between six and a dozen corrections on each one. Even this one guy who had a pretty heavy (actually extremely heavy) German accent and in several instances said the names of fairly obscure companies, and the translation was still correct.

Just an example… let’s say I had an instance where the interviewee said the company name “MagiCorp” several times. Temi would spell it “Magicorp,” (only getting the capitalization wrong) which is pretty amazing considering most of the company names were either acronyms or just plain made-up words.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Hmm, well that’s going to be a little bit of a tough one.

Since your viewfinder is basically lying to you (well, maybe not lying, but is so forgiving that the image looks good when it really isn’t), I’m not sure there is any way around that other than doing at least your initial setup with a larger production monitor on location. Is that just physically impossible?

While a clearscan camera can fix the problem easily, the problem is of course knowing exactly what the shutter speed (in Hz) should be. Since you’ve been told this system is 50 Hz, and considering you are in the US, that leads me to believe it is battery powered or DC-converted using some independent system… separate from “mains” power. Ergo, we don’t know what the heck the actual precise Hz shutter speed should be. They may tell you it’s 50 Hz, but as I’m sure you know it is highly unlikely to be exactly 50… it’s probably something like 50.023 or 49.985 or some other seemingly random number… but one that you must hit on exactly to completely eliminate the strobing.

I just can’t think of a single way to set this up with known accuracy without having a truthful monitor, at least for the initial setup.

Also, not to stir the pot further, but there might be multiple frequencies going on there. I was shooting a location once that had several hundred decorated Christmas trees… all with LED lighting. Because multiple generators were being used to power these, not all of the trees could be shutter-synced at once. I could dial in a precise shutter speed for one section of trees, and another section would strobe… and vice versa. Maybe not, but you might run across this same phenomenon with your aircraft lighting. In that case you’d need a truthful monitor not only for the initial setup, but for all shots.

Anyone else have a better (or smarter) solution?

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Yes, those reflective systems have been around for quite a while. I’ve never personally used them, but I’ve heard some decent things about them.

And yes, they are appropriate for fairly close stuff, talking heads and such. For big wide shots, not so much.

The biggest downside is the reflective material… which is extremely expensive.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

I think it’s a valid idea.

I did something like that a zillion years ago when I was in broadcast TV, a zero-budget version of the same idea.

I was directing a station promo, and I wanted these big freestanding “monitor-wall-like” set pieces that would be greenscreened, but because I had dark/dramatic/moody lighting in this spot and with the blocking putting the talent close to them, I couldn’t use front-lighting.

We happend to have these two carpeted risers that lived in the studio, they were about 10″ high by 6’x6’… portable and used various places on stage as set pieces, for seating risers during talk shows, etc.

So I turned these risers up on end, where they were basically empty plywood boxes. I put a bunch of lights inside, covered the faces with green, used gaffer tape to dress the edges and divide them up into nine squares each (“Brady Bunch” style)… and voilà, cheap-n-easy glowing greenscreens that served as my fake monitor banks.

The end results worked really well, but it could be done much better today. Remembering that this was almost 30 years ago, I just had incandescent bulbs in there. Also, because I had zero budget, the face was just cheap green “bulletin board” paper from the school supply shop. I had some hot spots with the lights shining through, but fortunately was still able to pull a clean key.

If I was going to do this today, yep I would probably use LED lights… maybe bunches of rows of those cheap “ribbon” LEDs, I think that would work well. For the face I would probably use green vinyl, a sign shop would be a good source of that and one of the more cost-effective ways to do that, and would look much more even than my green paper.

And yeah, while a floor would be do-able it would be much much more complicated and probably extremely expensive. You’d basically need to build a below-lit “disco floor,” but with no seams. Tall order.

But as for a wall… give it a shot!

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

There’s nothing cringe-worthy bout that, it’s a valid idea.

I will note that barn doors on those kinds of heads are pretty much useless for any actual cutting.

I thought most of those had fans though, Mark… or don’t they?

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com