[Tom Strodel]

Aaron,

My quick two cents…

Back in 2006-2007, we created two DVD titles… one on underwater videography, and one on a specialty still photography niche.

Both were on Amazon as regular DVD sales (digital downloads weren’t available then). Both broke even. But after that point, sales simply stopped. I’m sure there’s a book or article that explains this sales arc and how to counter the downward trend, but at the time, I was more interested in making more more programs, then sales. So now, I have about 800 copies of each DVD in my studio in NYC, taking up valuable space. Oh well.

Content creation and sales is a very tricky business these days.

But no matter what distribution platform you use, you can’t forget one of the most important things you need to concentrate on – promotion. Are you going to photo expos, are you posting on social media, have you put low-rez snipppets of the videos on YouTube to help create an audience, do you have a landing page for the title itself? Those would be a few things I suggest you concentrate on once you settle on a distribution platform.

Hope that helps!

Tom

24fps Productions
New York City

[Tom Strodel]

Thanks for all the great responses.

A couple of replies…

Specific to Todd’s point on not being being the most expensive, that’s a tricky one here in NYC. My brother who works for a custom house builder in the Thousand Islands utilizes that strategy – “we’re not the cheapest, but we’re the best.” That works for them because they have very little competition on their scale. In our situation, and similar to my friend Richard’s production company, there way too much competition here in NYC to be able to do that at our size. There’s always someone willing to do it cheaper. Simple supply and demand. .

To Mark’s point on my friend not bidding accurately in the first place, I would disagree. There’s many ways to “skin the cat” on the details of a project to affect the pricing before, and sometimes during – without necessarily jeopardizing the aesthetic. You can make the same commercial for a range of prices. Sure, a $10,000 spot isn’t going to compare to a $100,000 spot, but its still possible to do both. Whenever we are presented an RFP or creative boards for a bid, we always think of a “Good, Better and Best” approach to accomplishing the creative. Our next step (which is sometimes wrought with it’s own issues) is to ask the agency or client what their budget is – which then helps us to dial in which approach we’ll take in our bid. And yes, we always try to up-sell where we think the spot would benefit. but again, this is just our approach.

Specific to my friend Richard’s situation, I will be very curious to hear how the project progresses with this other production company.

Tom

24fps Productions
New York City

[Tom Strodel]

Thanks so much for the replies. It’s definitely enlightening to see what others are doing, and the types of practices out there.

Our budgeting approach usually varies based on the agency, client, and specific situation. There’s never any one solid rule for every situation.

But generally speaking, we typically try to avoid showing itemization in budgets. It almost always leads to problems with micromanagement of the budget, and other issues. We’ve been around for a while and have done a lot of award-winning work, so we’re don’t need to show the agency or client that we know how to line-item budgets. Everything is covered in the price, and what’s not we clearly list. And from our perspective, if we’re bidding on lower-budget commercials, and coming in at less then most production houses (since we typically do television series), we should be allowed the opportunity of less disclosure.

But that’s just how we work.

Here’s a situation that recently happened to a colleague (whom I’ll call Richard) who has a similar approach to us. I think it’s important to share as a note to others, and as a general statement on the industry. With his permission, here’s his story as told to me over lunch…

—————————-

Richard’s friend (I’ll call him Al) who works as a creative director at an ad agency (AgencyS) that they’ve successfully worked with in the past, asked him to submit a proposal for a series of four commercial spots for their client in Manhattan. My colleague has done projects through the agency for this client before, and they’ve always been happy with them. The difference this time was that the creative developed by the agency was much more extensive, which resulted in a higher then typical budget.

Though Richard maintains a good relationship with his friend Al at AgencyS, he has had disagreements with his friend’s boss before – the founder of the company, who he has heard holds grudges. Okay – the plot thickens.

My friend Richard presented an estimated budget in his proposal to AgencyS, as a range for each of the four, and as a total range, and also included his thoughts on the creative, and how it could be added-to. After he submitted the proposal, his friend Al at the agency told him that they would be looking at other bids. Nothing wrong with that – that’s normal. Afterwards, Al let my friend know that one of the other bids was just 2K less then his. Hmmmm – that’s odd, my friend felt. Why do close to his bid? When pressed, Al at the agency acknowledged that the copywriter there had given his high range number to the other production company with the instructions: “you need to beat this.” Apparently, she knew someone at this company, and wanted very much to work with them. Adding insult to injury, Al then said, “That’s what everybody does. They needed some number to go by” (ignoring that he never provided my friend with such a benchmark, and that this number typically comes from an approximation of the clients budget, not necessarily a competitor’s bid.). The absurdity of this was lost on the Al and AgencyS.

My friend then countered with a bid that was a little lower – but not by much.

His budgets were not itemized – which has always been an issue for AgencyS, and its founder – but which he said he feels justified not to include based on past experience with them.

His agency friend then calls Richard later that day saying that they’re going to recommend the other production company to their client instead of him, and that: “There’s a lot of battles to fight, and this wasn’t one that made sense fighting right now” (apparently that he wasn’t going to overrule his copywriter’s desires to work with this other company, or challenge his boss).

—————————-

Did my friend’s production company do the right thing? I think they did. Providing an itemized budget would have only made things worse for the process.

But I wouldn’t have lowered the bid. That just undervalues them, and makes them seem a little desperate. Who knows If this was even an apples-to-apples comparison. Was the director of the same caliber? Who knows.

I’m a big believer in the notion that “Customer is Always Right.” But sometimes, in some situations, a little more caution is in order, especially when things that border on unprofessional are presented as “normal practice.”

The bottom line is that there’s not a whole lot of loyalty in the biz, and a “Who Moved my Cheese” perspective is in order.

Tom

[Tom Strodel]

Bob,

Okay Bob – take a deep breath – hold it – okay, let it out… Feels better, right?

Firstly, I don’t own the highpoint. My editor does. The card he buys is his decision not mine (he works for me on his own system in a freelance capacity). So he never gave me any advice on the matter – period. I was only asking advice here, hence my original post.

Secondly, I understand I do not HAVE to edit in uncompressed HD. As I clearly said in my original post, we’re currently editing in Apple Pro Rez (HQ). What I also said was that I want to BE ABLE TO STILL EDIT IN UNCOMPRESSED 10 BIT (again, this was the reason for my post in the first place). Why? Because believe it or not, there are still some situations which I will need/want an uncompressed 10 bit capacity (like material for Discovery HD, HGTV-HD, material we shoot on the F23 and F35, etc.). If an eSata solution does not afford me this capability, then I’ll just keep using my Xserve (with it’s limited capacity).

However, based on what Arnie mentioned, it seems like I can still do UNCOMPRESSED 10 bit should I purchase a higher-speed eSata card. This is great news, to me, as it means I could conceivably get rid of my xServe.

My question for the group, is anyone doing 10 Bit uncompressed HD with eSata, or is this just theoretical?

Tom

24fps Productions
New York City

[Tom Strodel]

My bad:

Read is: 136.9 MB/s

24fps Productions
New York City

[Tom Strodel]

I did a wack test…

Write: 134.9 MB/s
Read: 1436.9 MB/s

Hmmm – doesn’t look good, huh (unless there is a faster esata card to be had).

Tom

24fps Productions
New York City

[Tom Strodel]

The card my editor is currently using is the
Highpoint external Mini-SAS PCIe SATA II RAID Controller:

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Highpoint%20Technologies/RR2322/

I looked it up, and I do not see a speed rating anywhere. Am I missing something?

Tom

24fps Productions
New York City

[Tom Strodel]

I’ve been compressing video for several years now, including all versions of Compressor. My last two DVD releases were sourced on HD (HDV), edited in the HDV codec, then compressed for SD. Going directly from an HDV timeline to MPEG-2 always yielded terrible results (since you’re basically re-compressing an already very compressed file). So for both prior videos, in FCP, we moved them to either 8-bit uncompressed, or DVCPRO HD (Apple Pro res hadn’t been released yet).

The point is, I understand that I can do this in Compressor. My original post was to see if anyone had heard of this other (supposedly superior) way of outputting elementary streams, using the SONY XDCAM Export function.

The success I had with my simple test doesn’t mean I think it is a better workflow (and besides, converting to a lossless codec, saving as a self-contained file, and then running through Compressor is as many steps as the test I did).

I know aiff sucks more bits, though that could be solved by exporting out the audio only via Compressor. Not a big deal.

So, let me ask once more – has anyone experimented successfully with the SONY XDCAM Export as a workflow towards creating DVD’s?

Thank you,

Tom

24fps Productions
New York City

[Tom Strodel]

Okay, so I suppose I’m confused (not a big surprise).

However, I just did a test:

1. I exported a small clip from FCP using SONY XDCAM Export, and the “IMX NTSC 50mb/sec” setting.

2. I took the resulting MXF file, and opened it up in the XDCAM transfer utility, and “imported it,” thereby creating a .mov file

3. I moved this .mov file into DVD studio pro, set it to autoplay my small clip, and built the DVD. Happened very quickly. (coincidentally, after I did this, I noticed that my source .mov file turned into TWO files: an m2v file, and an aiff file.

So, this appears to be working – however, perhaps the DVD that I could make with this process would be too high a bit rate? Not sure.

I certainly don’t want to experiment with this client, so I was hoping someone may have tried this with success.

Tom

24fps Productions
New York City

[Tom Strodel]

No, actually I wanted to know if anyone has specific experience using the SONY XDCAM Export INSTEAD of using the QuickTime export, (or variations, i.e., compressor, bit vice, etc. ).

Take a look at the end of this thread:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1826283&tstart=0

This person says he used this technique, but never fully explains how the workflow is done.

My idea for trying this has only to do with trying to get the best quality SD DVD from my source XDCAM timeline. I know all the other routines (like converting timeline to Apple Pro Res, or exporting a self-contained QuickTime movie, etc.). My thought was that perhaps this SONY Export function could somehow do a better job (as it’s a tool made for the manipulation of XDCAM footage).

Wouldn’t it stand to reason that SONY might just maybe have a solution that allows the MPEG compressed XDCAM files better transcoding to the MPEG-2 needed fr a DVD?

Tom

24fps Productions
New York City