Walter Biscardi
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We use Studio Suite 9 which is a customized Filemaker Pro database. VERY very deep and we’re only using a small portion of it quite honestly as we figure it all out, but it is handy.
The only kind of a pain is the part where the employees actually enter in their hours is a bit clunky and we’re hoping they improve that. Also rather pricey per seat so we only have two seats right now.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
[Jonathan Ziegler] ” don’t think there are standard numbers for what show A or B gets and I’m pretty sure broadcast networks (ABC, NBC) pay more than cable/satellite (USA, TBS) or pay cable (Showtime, HBO).”
Blanket statements like that might have been accurate 10 or 15 years ago. Wholly inaccurate today.
The deal one gets is wholly dependent on the production company, the cast involved and a number of other factors. There is no “scale.” There is what you get and what everyone else gets.
The better questions is “how much does X Program on Y Network get?” For instance, the last number I heard for Dirty Jobs on Discovery Network was $750,000 per episode in production costs.
We know from all the press coverage that Charlie Sheen used to make $1.3 million per episode for “2 1/2 Men” on CBS.
Subscribing to Television Week is a great way to find out who is selling shows and sometimes you can get good budget information from there too. That and RealScreen are my two primary sources for distribution information.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
According to that all knowing source, Wikipedia, the last of the I Love Lucy DVDs were released in 2010 by CBS and distributed by Paramount.
Here in Georgia we have a Film and Video Sourcebook that includes leads for folks who deal with rights. That’s probably where I would start in your state. Let them run down the leads.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
I have a three part series right here on the Cow on Starting and Running your own Business.
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/biscardi_walter/ready.php
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/biscardi_walter/shop.php
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/biscardi_walter/running.php
And then a follow-up article on Small Steps to Success
https://magazine.creativecow.net/article/small-steps-to-big-success
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
[John Pale] “It’s the same with Blackmagic Decklink, based on my tests. Maybe a bit worse.
Sorry I wasn’t clearer.”Best as I can understand the explanations it’s something to do with the 32bit QT files having to be converted to play in the 64bit app and the four core machines just can’t do this fast enough.
If you open up the Activity Monitor on the system, you’ll probably see that all four of your cores are completely maxed out the moment you start to play video through your video card. Use a non video card timeline and the video will play fine.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
[Tom Daigon] “Sounds good. Now if you can get Autodesk to drop the $14,999 price for professionals you might have someone check out your tutorials. Its not even close to competitive pricing offers that are available from Avid or Adobe these days ;-)”
Smoke is not a product for every editor / every situation. I believe for what the product offers, it’s actually priced quite fair.
Heck the demonstration they gave a few nights ago at the Atlanta Cutters meeting with a laptop driving a Thunderbolt Promise RAID and everything happening in realtime. Sweetness.
I never would have considered Smoke for my facility before I saw that demo. Yes it is pricey and I’ll have to really consider the cost vs. benefit to owning the software. The fact that you can move FCP / Avid / Adobe projects into the system certainly is a big plus.
But just asking Autodesk to drop the price to be more in line with Media Composer and Premiere Pro is not reasonable. Those products are certainly excellent choices for the Final Cut Pro editor who wants to stay more in line with the price point of the original Studio and those will be our primary workhorses moving forward. But now Smoke is very much on my radar and is something to seriously consider for a finishing room.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
For a counterpoint I could steer you to scathing reviews of FCP X but what’s the point? Use what you want to use for your shop.
We had an outstanding presentation at our first Atlanta Cutters meeting of the four A’s on the same stage. Adobe, Apple, Avid and Autodesk. You know what we learned? You can edit on all four of them. Shocking I know, but it’s true.
FCP X doesn’t work for me today and I’m not going to learn it right now because there’s no point. We’re going to move away from FCP 7 because it’s EOL and no sense working with dead software.
Adobe Premiere Pro is currently holding a 4000 clip, 250 hour documentary at my place playing off an AJA Kona 3 system. Is it perfect? Nope, but it’s so much more efficient than FCP 7, if for no other reason than the ability to work native, so I’ll take a few of the bugs at the moment for a much faster workflow that actually works in our environment.
Avid MC6 also looks very sweet and what more can you say about Smoke that hasn’t already been said. It was very difficult to give away that copy of Smoke the other night instead of just running out of the building with it yelling “Mine! Mine! Mine!”
So if FCP X is your future, great. If you’d like to get into a “Well My NLE is Better Than Yours!” discussion, I’ll leave that to you. But I, for one, am so glad there are at least three other options out there for me to use besides X.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
[Andree Franks] “WOW so you jump right from FCP7 straight Premiere?
I would have imagined you would have stay on course with FCP7 for a bit…”why? It’s EOL. Time to move on. FCP Projects move into Premiere Pro easily. Keyboard shortcuts work the same if you want them to. It works with our entire infrastructure. If X works for you, then stay with it, but I see no need to stay with a product that’s dead.
It was the same when Avid purchased the Pinnacle CineWave board years ago. There was no way Avid was going to allow one of their hardware boards to work with Apple Final Cut Pro, even though Pinnacle was trying to make it sound like it would stay around. So I immediately switched to the AJA Kona boards and it was one of the best decisions I made. In fact, AJA has made the transition into Adobe that much better because they support the product and they are giving me a lot of great useful information in setting up our shop.
As folks are saying on a lot of these forums, “stop looking backwards, Apple isn’t.” So I’m moving forward with Adobe while keeping an eye on the new Avid MC6. Also playing with an evaluation copy of Smoke which is a lot less scary than I thought. 🙂
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
[John Pale] ”
Make sure you pay attention to Walters comments on hardware with PPro. On less an an 8 core machine, it’s performance drops considerably (to “not really usable” in my case)”I don’t know about all hardware, but you should not use the AJA Kona boards on less than an 8 Core MacPro machine, particularly if you plan to use ProRes.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
[Chris Jacek] “Though I’m not that close to Atlanta, I’m not super far away either. When/where does your new group meet, for those who might be interested in making the trip?”
August 24th will be back at Turner Studios. 1000 Techwood Drive, Atlanta. They’re right next to Georgia Tech downtown Atlanta. It’s an excellent space.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media