Hey everyone, I'm Bob. I've been reading here on the forum for several months but now I've registered. I need some insight from those who know what they're doing. I've been a serious amateur still photographer for 25+ years and have been pro for the last two. I've done some video work off and on over the last ten years but strictly low rent utilitarian stuff. A lot of the video was for after actions reviews when I was in the Army. Quality was not critical but I shot on miniDV and edited in Premiere Pro and authored in Encore. I've also shot vacation videos in the last couple years and edited them. So that's my experience.

I have agreed to do a job that I am struggling to sort out. I ride dressage horses and my trainer is bringing in a clinician from Spain for a four day clinic. Since I will not be riding in the clinic, I've been asked if I would like to do the video documentation of the clinic for the other riders. Each session will be about 45 minutes and each day will run from 6:00am to around 1:00pm. So, about nine rides per day. The video will be shot from a single location, on tripod. I need to be able to provide discs to each rider with their individual rides by the end of the last day. Daily distribution would be better.

I will be alone in this endeavor. My thinking is that I will set up a table at my recording location. The table will hold my external monitor for an HDMI feed from the camera; a Panasonic HDC-TM90. I will also have my laptop with an external hard drive and BD/DVD burner. Between rides, I can swap SD cards to the computer and save down the footage. Audio will be handled with a Sennheiser wireless lav into the camcorder.

Here's where things get dicey. I want to provide a decent quality product to the riders. My camera records in 1080p60, 1080i60 at four different bit rates, and iFrame which is 960x540p(not sure on the frame rate). The 1080 resolution is AVCHD and the iFrame is mp4. 45 minutes of iFrame encoded to 720x480 and burned to a DVD looks horrible and takes a little over an hour to process from inserting the SD card to popping out a DVD. Too long and too ugly!

So, I don't mind burning to Blu-Ray. I ran a test the other day and I was able to encode and burn a disc in about 35 minutes going from the Panasonic HG format to 1080i30. I think I would prefer to author the final footage in 60p since there is going to be some quick action. Obviously, to play on a Blu-Ray player, I am stuck with 1280x720 for 60p.

I should mention that I have Adobe Creative Cloud and Nero 12 Platnium. So far, Nero has been faster than Adobe Media Encoder.

So, what do you guys think? Any ideas on the best capture and output settings? I am not opposed to buying another camcorder for this since I've been looking to upgrade for a while now however, I don't want to buy something just to find out that it didn't improve my workflow. This could be a somewhat profitable venture and if I can get it right the first time, I may be in for more.

Bob

If you're happy with the image quality from the camera already, then:

Shoot 1920x1080i60, which is 29.97 fps, at the highest bit rate setting. Dump it into Premiere Pro and edit native. When you're done, export a master format. I prefer TIFF sequences, but the file sizes are large.

Use this master to burn your DVD or Blu-ray. Hope this helps.

P.S. Are you using Encore to do the burning?

Bob, delivery on the day is very tricky. I would never expect to film, encode & author at a live event unless it was only one disc at the end. You will also want to use a dedicated DVD burner that will burn on the fly from your camera signal. This way you are encoding while you film and all you have to do is finalize the disc.

You will want to offer DVD because Blu-ray is just not as widely used.

The old principle: You can have it quick, cheap or good, choose two.

I appreciate you guys chiming in. This is certainly a challenging situation for me. I've really had to wise-up on formats and coding. I've done a lot of testing and at this point I think I am going to stick with Blu-Ray discs. The clients are all upper income and will have Blu-ray players and computers that will support the format. The quality of the video will be significantly better and I will not have to transcode if I film the video in the correct format and import straight into Adobe Encore CS6. Not having to transcode will allow me to get the videos out quickly. I am planning to design all the menu items this week and have a template ready to go.

I have a LG 14x Blu-Ray burner and it has been very quick and dependable so I think getting a disc out every 45 minutes is doable. I will offer a DVD option with the caveat that they will have to wait up to a week to receive it.

I've also gone ahead and ordered a new Canon XA20. I didn't want to go into this without a backup camera and since I've been eyeing this for a while, I decided it was the right time to jump on it. I will use the XA20 as the primary so I will have about a week to get comfortable with it before the clinic.

I'm starting to feel a little more comfortable with this and will have a chance to do a full dry run next monday. That will give me a few days to tweak anything that isn't working. I also have to provide a feed for the live sound so will need to figure that out. I have a couple mixers so, that shouldn't be too hard.

I'm still open to feedback. I am by no means feeling like I've got this whooped so anything constructive is appreciated.

Bob

Bob,
Why wouldn't you shoot in 1920 x 1080p @35mb/s

I think you are smart to give up on dvd delivery for that day. If you had to do some editing that would kill it.

I use TMPGEnc Authoring Works 5 for burning blurays.

I have agreed to do a job that I am struggling to sort out. I ride dressage horses and my trainer is bringing in a clinician from Spain for a four day clinic. Since I will not be riding in the clinic, I've been asked if I would like to do the video documentation of the clinic for the other riders. Each session will be about 45 minutes and each day will run from 6:00am to around 1:00pm. So, about nine rides per day. The video will be shot from a single location, on tripod. I need to be able to provide discs to each rider with their individual rides by the end of the last day. Daily distribution would be better.

I will be alone in this endeavor.


Bob

Hi Bob.

Sometimes I work as a shooter for other video producers. Sometimes I'm a "data wrangler."

What Tim said earlier is true. If you need to get disks to all those riders before they leave for home, the only practical way I know is to connect the composite out from your camera to a DVD burner. You don't want to be up all night each night at the event editing and trying to burn disks.

What you are attempting to do is EXCEEDINGLY DIFFICULT. You said nine separate video productions by 1:00 pm each day. I've worked at something similar.

You can put an intro on each DVD before hand, but don't finalize, then add the video from the ride, and finalize. You can also pre-print the face of the white label DVDs before saving to them, with a blank box to write the individual ride with a sharpie. I worked a cheerleading competition for another producer and that's the method that was used to deliver more than 3,000 DVDs the SAME DAY to the participants. (My main job was wrangling the 4 burners LIVE to make the 67 masters for each team). It required a separate camera operator and wrangler for the 4 burners, plus the extra gear.

You can offer to ship edited blue rays later from the HD material on the cards. But if you really do need to get the disks out quick before the riders all leave for home, you really need to burn direct from the camera. The only way I've seen this work was the cheerleading competition. Plus, you said you are working by yourself. You'll need to concentrate on your shooting. You won't be able to concentrate on running extra equipment too. You'll need a SIMPLE WORKFLOW to pull it off. You probably won't have time to deal with the laptop. Insert disk before shoot. Press record on burner when you start shooting. Finalize the disk. Eject disk. Get ready for next rider.

As an aside, I've shot dressage once. There was very little time between riders the time I did it. And I was just working as a shooter for someone else. It wasn't as fast paced as the cheerleading competition, but you will not have much time to troubleshoot any problems that come up. And you will be outdoors.

Roger, the method you advise is almost exactly the way the videographer at the horse shows does it. She runs the component out to a Panasonic Diga HDD/DVD burner designed for recording TV and VHS tapes to DVD. She saves the rides in the hard disc and burns them all to DVD when each competitor has completed all their rides. There is a very primitive menu that displays a keyframe from each ride. It is quick, appears to be fairly easy and the quality is abysmal but, most will look at that video once or twice to compare against the judges comments and then never view it again.

The clinics such as I am doing are obviously far more demanding. Instead of a six minute ride, we're looking at 45-55 minutes. Because these are instructional clinics, the riders may view these discs many, many times to review their training. I have to provide sound which is usually only done on freestyle tests at shows and from what I've seen, just recorded from the PA with the internal mic.

The only reason I took this job was because I was too dumb to know better. Now that I am commited, I refuse to turn in a crappy product. I will be shooting mostly friends whom I've been riding with for several years. I see them several times a week and if they have to wait a few days to get a disc, it will not be a big deal. That said, I have set certain standards for myself and I will exhaust every effort in order to achieve them. In the end, as long as I get quality data, I can make everyone happy.

Roger, since you have shot dressage before, what are your thoughts on framerate? Will it matter what I shoot at?

Thanks guys, Bob

Bob, I'm afraid there's no way around it. The higher the quality of the finished product, the more time and effort will be required. You will need to ship disks or upload files later.

You will need to shoot at the highest quality your camera allows.
You will need to get the footage into your NLE software of choice.
You will need to tweak the video, audio, add text.
You will need to encode the final videos into a format the clients can view.
You will need to get the final videos to the client.

Each step takes time. Just the encoding step can take hours.

Sorry. There's always an inverse relationship between speed and quality. Clients often don't want to pay for all the work required to deliver a quality product.

One thing you can do, maybe you can find a burner that takes an HDMI input. But I don't know if anyone even makes one. If someone does make it, it might be expensive. The DVD burners that were used at the cheerleading gig were very expensive back when Sony still made them. Nobody seems to make commercial grade burners anymore. That's probably because disks are on the way out. Now clients are asking for "live streaming"-- again, without a clue of what's involved, and what it costs.

ADDENDUM: Some Blue Ray Players (I have one) play a variety of AVCHD and MP4 videos on either disk (blue ray or standard dvd), memory card, or external hard drive. If the 45 minute files from your XA-20 that is coming will fit on the disks you will be using (blue rays or double layer dvd) then MAYBE you can figure out a way to do a straight file copy from the camera's memory card to your blank disk. MAYBE. That's something I'd be interested in trying if I get another camera.

Audio will probably be pretty good on the XA-20. I get really good results from my xh-a1s from proper microphones, when everything goes just right. Most of the time though, to get really great results requires some audio tweaking in post. Will an instructor be giving (audio) critiques of the rides as they occur through a PA system? You may want to mic him separately. There are quite a few variables for audio to consider out in the field.

Bob,

I have done countless brutal turnaround jobs. Everything from the old days of staying up all night to put together muti projector slide shows and photo prints to quick turn video projects. I had one client that judged my video work in a strange way. I had to make the audience cry! If they weren't crying after the video played then I had not done a good job, in his opinion.

First, there is a big problem you can fix. Don’t do it alone. Someone with some skills obviously would be best but I don’t care if you have to resort to someone with little skill, don’t underestimate an extra pair of hands. What you are doing is not rocket science but it is hard and fast. You need an assistant no matter what.

Second, is this a “must have it same day” job or not? At first it sounded like it but then you said if they have to wait it’s no big deal? That cushion would matter to me and how I did things.

Who is wearing the wireless lav? I hope it is the instructor who will be in a fixed position and not a rider? In any case, be sure to record back up audio.

I believe your assumption that “affluence” will mean your audience is blu ray capable is a mistake. We are video professionals, we think HD quality and technology is a big deal because it is TO US. I can guarantee you there are countless SD DVD players out there hooked up to some of the most expensive monitors on the market. And, when you ask those people if they have a blu ray player there answer will be “what’s that?”

Equipment fails. You’re only as strong as your weakest link. What pieces of gear can shut you down on the spot? Are they all backed up? Only one burner, one computer, etc. ect. Burners go down a lot. Especially outside in dirty environments, can you protect it from dirt and dust?

Bob, out of all of these type of jobs I have done I did have one of them crash. It was a celebrity golf tournament. I had multiple photographers and runners in golf carts collecting CF cards so we could have big prints of the donors with their celebrity ready by the awards luncheon after the golf round. I had TWO of my three printers go down on me. I only got half of the prints done on time. Let’s just say it was very, very ugly. It almost cost me an existing client and did cost me a new one I was making that day.

If you’re in this gig on kind of the good guy system with friends and acquaintances you will be OK. If this is a real job with money, your reputation, and a must have delivery on the line I would back up everything that could fail and I would not do it alone. Remember, how do you eat a buffalo? One bite at a time.

Good luck. I hope you come back and let us know how it works out. A lot of guys don't.

Steve

I had a dream.

In my dream, the OP was smiling and at ease.

He shot as normal, but to a card or direct to hard drive.

He calmly walked those cards to the production tent. There, he fed the card into one of three Mac laptops.

The cards were read by FCP-X. Some simple drag and drop title / chapter headers / credits were keystroked into the timeline and some typing for customization took place.

Then the producer - whilst sipping champagne - hit SHARE and each completed video was uploaded to the OP's on-line server account in glorious high-def!

A URL link was auto-typed into an email to the proper Client - who was able to click the included link and watch their performance on any computer, iPad or smart phone in the world - all before they got back to their palatial hotel suites and got their riding boots off!

The nice rich clients were able to forward their dressage performances (if they nailed it!) to their wives or husbands, their trainers and grooms and all their friends at the club - INSTANTLY!

So everyone got to share in the fun.

Or you can keep taking hours and hours and hours of hassle to burn stuff to plastic disks.

Your call.

Wow, that does sound like a nice dream. Was that right after the dream where everyone in the world has no problem streaming HD video to any device?

I had a interesting exchange with the barn owners wife yesterday. I was there giving my horses treats and shooting some b-roll stuff for the menus and she was asking what it was for. I explained to her that I was really intent on providing a much better product than the girl that had done the video in the past. She said "Yeah...Robin started out trying to provide a better product but, something happened and she couldn't." Didn't quite know what to make of that.

Bob

The thing that happenned to the other girl was reality setting in… It's rediculously tough to churn out stuff like this solo. seriously consider having someone help you just take content off of the cards into the machine and do basic datawrangling. That way at the end of each day you can just set up a bunch of automated batch jobs to dump content out. In this case it may actually be better if the disks don't get done by the last day and you make sure they're good. you just may need to cover the costs of shipping those disks out to the customers (which may be worth it in the longer run).

+1 Tim

If you can not get enough profit out of a job to properly staff it you shouldn't take the job.

Steve

I am no pro videographer. The only thing I had to go on when taking this gig was my limited experience and watching what my predecessor did. I still feel pretty confident that I have staffed it properly with just myself. There will be breaks between riders and there will be short walk breaks for the horses during the sessions. A good amount of the training will be stationary as far as the camera goes. I believe I will have time to handle all aspects of this. If anything has to give, it will be on-site authoring of discs. Even that I think will go smoothly with the exception of riders who opt for DVD over Blu-Ray. The transcoding required for that cannot be done on site due to time constraints.

Seriously, I have learned so much in the last couple weeks that I have absolutely no regrets about taking this on. I may feel differently after the clinic though! Maybe I'll setup a GoPro behind me and shoot a timelapse so everyone can see me sink or swim.

Bob

I hope you swim Bob. Drowning sucks!

Steve

If it were me, I would offer a downloadable copy, a la Bill Davis, although I would probably DIY in lieu of hiring a tent full of gear and assistants.

Handing out disks would not be on my radar. At all.

If I somehow got forced into handing out disks at this event (an example of this is if there were a wormhole at this event, and I was magically teleported back to 1995 where people exclusively used disk based media), I would get myself a DVD recorder, feed my camera outputs to it, press "Record" when the event started, and "stop" when the event finished, and hand them the disk that came out of the machine.

I agree with you Mike. And delivering a number of downloadable videos the same day has a lot of the same problems. Wish I could help the OP more, but same day isn't easy to pull off. Rather, it's very difficult if you're aiming for really high quality.

There are quick ways to give uploads, (direct upload of a highly compressed format from camera, or capture directly to H264 with an encoder device--BMD makes one, other companies probably do too). However, really high quality usually means capture in a good codec, color grade, tweak audio, render and encode with high quality settings, and these all take quite a bit of time. That's something requiring a higher price if you want to stay in business.

For really quick, just use the phone's camera and post to FB. But people won't pay much, if anything, for that. (And I see the new ad on TV for the 41 mega pixel phone as if that's the answer to the quality problem consumers have noticed. What a joke!)

Hi Bob, and a belated Welcome Aboard!

This has been a really interesting thread you started and the responses have been awesome. I've got a lot in common with you - years of amateur photography going back to the Nikon FTN days (but also did 8mm film), and a couple years in the military (Viet Nam era). A lot has changed over the years, hasn't it? Punched cards, Commodore 64, PC 286 with Multimate, etc..... Video cameras with VHS tapes so large you needed huge battery packs strapped to your waist, black & white viewfinders,...

Today we have it easy, color and flash memory, or do we? The bar keeps getting raised higher.

Some oldtimers (my daughter doesn't call me that .... yet) have learned a few things over the years and here are a few things I've learned:

"If you want it bad, you get it bad." (construction & design and other fields)
"Trouble comes in bunches" (especially true in flying)
"Stuff happens" (umm... that's life) Others may use a different first word.

Unfortunately for me, my significant other has a very optimistic outlook and I'm the one always thinking about "things that COULD happen". "You always worry" she says.

Well, as we were ready to take off on a much needed and overdue vacation "stuff happened". The prospective renter for a business property was supposed to sign the contract and the next morning we would take off. Everything was settled. Or was it?

I told her not to cease advertising until "it is signed" - not to worry, she says.
Two irons in the fire are better than one. Not to worry, she says.
Well, guess what? Well, you don't have to guess, you probably know what happened. Yup, and we went on vacation anyway.

If you read this far you probably know what side of the fence I'm on. Call it redundancy, call it have a back-up plan, Plan B, whatever.

On the plus side, picking up a new camera seems good but there is a learning curve. The past week I've been changing my workflow, computers, delivery media, and I've been going through "learning hell". Heck, maybe spell that HELL !

Oh, and there is another saying: 1,000 ata-boys = one "Aw *shi*"

This gig sounds really scary and I hope everything goes well.

One thought: What about testing how the monitor looks in sunlight? Or shaded?

Oh, and I liked the "I had a dream" post. That was a good one.

Good luck!

Thanks to everyone who has offered their advice in this thread. I definitely feel like I jumped in way over my head with this but, it was just one of those situations where turning it down would probably mean not getting asked again. Saying yes could lead to more work. Actually, it already has led to more work. One thing about me is I am a fanatic about being prepared so, I've been putting in 5-8 hours a day for the last week or so just to make sure I don't let these people down. I've shot and edited all my b-roll stuff for the disc intros, made my menu in Photoshop and animated it in After Effects, and put it all together in Encore and pre-transcoded everything. Almost everything I've done so far, I had to learn as I went. Even the Photoshop work was completely different than what I normally us PS for.

This gig starts this Thursday morning and runs through Sunday. I'm going to go out tomorrow and setup for a couple hours just to test everything. I am pretty excited about it and more than a little nervous! I feel pretty confident that I can provide everyone with something that they will be quite happy with. How quickly I can produce it, remains to be seen.

So, one more thing I've been contemplating is audio. I've got the Spanish riding instructor mic'ed with the Sennheiser EW100 G3 lav. It is run through a small yamaha mixer to provide a little compression and eq and to split the signal off to the PA and the camera. I am thinking I would like to try to capture a little ambient such as the horses hooves and breathing and maybe get some of the dialog from the riders. The only mic I have that might be remotely useful for the task is a pair of Samson C02 pencil mics (tight super-cardoid condenser). I'm thinking I can set the levels on them at the mixer and just monitor the mix at the camera. What do you guys think? Worth a shot or just asking for trouble?

Bob

That new XA-20 of yours will probably let you use the onboard microphone that's built into the camera on just channel 2 when you plug the Sennheiser receiver into channel 1 similar to the way my XH-A1S does.

If Canon wrote the manual as well as they did for the XH-A1S, there will be a section called RECORDING AUDIO. There you should find the MENU >AUDIO SETUP>CHANNEL 1...INT/EXT MIC.

Set Channel 1 to EXT. Your Sennheiser Receiver plugs into the Channel1 XLR Port.
Set Channel 2 to INT. That should use the camera's internal microphone as channel 2.
This would be the simpler approach. The internal microphone should be good enough for ambient of the horse's hooves. The really important audio is the instructor.

Another, more involved approach, is to plug the Sennheiser receiver into one XLR port on the mixer and one of your Condenser mics into another port of the mixer, then run a line out signal from the mixer. I read the XA-20 can accept line in signals. In theory line in gives a better signal. In practice, sometimes you run into trouble doing it with certain cameras. My older XH-A1 won't do this as well as my newer XH-A1S, even though it should.

You'd need to use LINE IN setting for at least one channel in the menu. Don't know how used to the mixer you are. Plus using a new camera too. So my first suggestion would probably be easier and safer until you are really used to using the camera and mixer together. It took me a while to get used to using my mixer and camera when I first got them.

Thursday is coming up quick so my advice would be to stick to the first approach I mentioned. Be sure and monitor through headphones. Good luck. You've got a hard job there.

Thanks Roger. Of course, I'm not going to go with the easiest option; at least not initially. I am pretty good at running audio. I've been a drummer most of my life and played in and recorded bands. Still have my own small studio though, it's been pretty much packed away for the last five years. Running a mixer is no big deal for me.

The challenge is that I have to lay it all into two channels mixed live to the final product while providing a live feed to the PA. I don't want the ambient going to the PA and I don't want the clinician's audio all sitting in one channel. Two solutions occur to me at the moment; neither a possibility. Canon should add the ability to pan the mic1 and mic2 signals across the mix in camera or I could bring a significantly larger studio mixing board with multiple assigns and busses. Of course there is the third option of mixing the sound at a later date but, I'm still not ready to concede on the same day turn-around.

I'll be testing on site today so we'll see what will work.

Bob

Well the shoot is over and the dust has cleared (most of it is in my equipment now), and I'm back to report on how it went.

Setup- I mounted the XA20 to a Manfrotto 701 head on a 555 50mm bowl leveling column in my old 3221 sticks. On a folding table I had a Samsung 21" HDMI monitor, my laptop with a external backup drive and a 10 channel Yamaha mixer. I connected the XA20 to the monitor via HDMI cable so I didn't have to look at the tiny display for eight hours straight each day. I ran the Sennheiser receiver into the mixer, added signifigant compression, low frequency cut, some modest eq, and panned equally to left and right channels. I then sent the signal to the XA20 XLR inputs as a line level signal and monitored via cans from the camera. I gave up on the additional mic for ambient sound due to wind and people talking. The feed to the PA ended up being a moot point because the clinician refused to wear the mic if the signal was being pumped out through speakers.

Workflow- the clinician was brutal! He took no breaks which made it tricky to swap SD cards between rides. I just decided that the first thirty seconds of each ride wasn't that critical and went ahead with swapping cards after each rider finished. I setup my laptop to open bridge upon inserting an SD card and the data was saved to the laptops internal disc as well as the external. I rotated four class 10 cards which gave me enough time to verify all data before a card went back to the camera and got erased prior to hitting the record button. I used the handheld IR remote that came with the XA20 for all zooming and it actually did a decent job.

Settings- I tried various white balance and exposure settings during the first two days. In the end, full auto was the best option for recording 45 minutes of continuous footage of a horse moving around a covered but not enclosed 100'x200' arena. Conditions changed too frequently and quickly.

Authoring- Didn't happen on site. Absolutely impossible for me to do while filming a ride. I got a couple burned in the evenings but after getting up at 4:00 each morning and sitting out in 100+ degrees for eight hours, I wasn't real motivated when I got home. I will get the discs out during the week.

Lessons learned- Overall things went pretty well. Exhaustion from the heat was the biggest problem. I will buy a LANC remote since I need a more reliable solution than the IR unit. I need to figure out a good file renaming protocol to use in Bridge. The XA20 seems to start a new numbering sequence for each card which made things confusing when rotating cards. Right now, I have Bridge renaming the files with date and a sequential number. That's fine but, Bridge doesn't rename the backup copy it sends to a second drive.

One thing I found strange with the XA20 was that it seemed to lose track of what proper exposure was after being on for several hours continuously. At one point, during a ride, I was in Av mode and had +1.5 stops of exposure comp dialed in and it was still underexposing though the light conditions has not really changed. It should have been overexposing with that much compensation. I turned the camera off at the end of the ride, left it off for about a minute and then turned it beck on in auto. Worked fine after that.

Bob

Glad to see nobody was hurt and you learned some valuable lessons.

Professional video is not a multi-tasking event. Any "extra" stuff to do just takes away from your filming performance, which in the end is the only reason you are there.

Hey Bob.

I'm glad things went well for you after all. You were very wise to concentrate on the audio from the teacher.

Having to work with tape and cards, I name cards just like tapes. For instance: 20130812A1, 20130812A2, 20130812A3 would all be shot today, from camera A.

20130812B1, 20130812B2... would all be shot today from the B camera, whether from tape or card.

It's often important to keep the media structure from the card intact for the NLE software, so I just drag the entire card into the proper folder, naming the folder the same as the card.

By consistently naming media the same way, it minimizes the hassles of media management, especially during busy spells.

I have done a lot of live events that needed instant DVDs. (Choir festivals and the like). I have a Philips DVD Recorder. They're not expensive. It is standard def, but at an event where I had less than 10 minutes between each group to get the DVD burned and finalized I didn't have any problems at all.

The only real drawback is there aren't many options on DVD menus, but being able to hand them a DVD almost instantly is nice.

In your case it sounded like you didn't even have 5 minutes between so maybe the DVD recorder wouldn't have worked.

Bob - thanks for reporting back and that was a good report.

Glad to see nobody was hurt ....

I second that.

After my post above, before the event, there is another quote I thought of: "If you want it done right, do it yourself."

Anyway, it was good that you found a way to alter your procedure based on the changed conditions and survive the event. The heat, at least for me, would really deteriorate my capability to think clearly and make adjustments.

The naming syntax is basically the same one I use. Lately I've been adding a space after the sequence and adding a few words (keeping within the file name size) about the video to make it easier to find because there can be a huge time lapse between when it was recorded and when I actually get around to editing or archiving it.

Quote from Roger: "By consistently naming media the same way, it minimizes the hassles of media management, especially during busy spells."
My reply: Ditto and Amen!

The 21" monitor was a great idea. I can certainly see how that would help.

Settings - It's all about compromise. When the workflow is as busy as you had it, going with Auto if it would handle it is a good way to go. The newer cameras tend to have really good Auto exposure control. Given more available time you could have done better but the incremental improvement probably wasn't time-effective.

Glad to hear you survived and hopefully the gig will bring some more business your way.

Sorry for armchair quarterbacking this, but a suggestion would be to talk to the dressage instructor prior to shooting so you can set their expectations to what you can accomplish accordingly.

Although most dressage queens are prima donnas the fact that they video taped previous clinics means that they do see the benefit of recording the event. It's really in everyone's best interest that you have enough time to do your job correctly.

Hey guys! I haven't been around here much lately. Been incredibly busy. Anyway, I wanted to take a minute to follow up on this thread because I just finished another one of these dressage clinics. It was a three-day clinic and I had an intern to help for one of the days. I made some changes to things that made my life much easier. First, I changed my recording format to MP4 1280x720p30 @ 4mbps. This allowed me to do tandem recording on the XA20 to two cards and not worry about changing them out after each ride. I purchased a Vari-Zoom controller which made zoom operation much more responsive and accurate. I also did not offer Blu-ray as an option. Instead, I offered DVD with the stipulation that they would not ship until three days after the clinic or daily download to a USB flash drive.

About half of the participants chose the USB transfer and I think going forward, it will be the only option. The MP4 files played without issue for all the participants on various devices. The quality was higher than anything they have received before and they could review the ride in the evening and apply those lessons the following day.

Another nice thing about this clinic was that the clinician wanted the PA system. This meant that she wasn't yelling to a rider who was on the other side of the arena which allowed me to capture much cleaner audio. Unfortunately, I'll be shooting the yelling Spaniard again next month.

Bob

Good to hear you are making it work Bob. Constant refinement until you get to a comfort level is what it takes... And starting your gear collection!

Great thread.

I used to offer DVD's the few times I'd do private event work, but have completely switched over to flash drives instead.

No authoring. Less time. Fewer headaches.

The people have something they can take home and view...or share on facebook...or any other way they want.

More and more DVD's are becoming the LP's of technology.

It's easier for me to copy a finished video to a flashdrive and hand it off instead of messing around trying to quickly produce a DVD.

And, let's be honest, sometimes no matter what you do, a person will take a DVD home and for whatever reason it will not play in their DVD player.

I don't have that issue of an unhappy frustrated person coming back saying what I gave them didn't work when I give them small flashdrives.

Just my thoughts...and figure DVD's are like floppy disks. A technology soon coming to an end.

i apologize in advance if i ask an obvious question:

do the flashdrives containing mp4 files play cross platform-apple & windows-on all machines?

thanks in advance for any info you can share.

be well.

rob
smalltalk productions/nyc

So far, I've not found a device that will not play them. I've tested on a MacBook, PC, two Samsung TV's, a Sharp TV, a Sony A/V receiver, and a Samsung Bluray player. There is a USB port on my DirecTV receiver that I have not tried. Might be worth checking into.

Bob

Most USB flashdrives are formatted EXFat or FAT32 which can be read by both PC and Mac.

As long as the final project is less than 4 gigs in size, FAT32 is fine.

If it's bigger than 4gigs, EXFat is the one to use.

You can reformat a USB flashdrive just like any other drive. Changing a FAT32 to EXFat if needed
.
More and more computers do not have DVD drives in them and many modern flatscreen TVs have USB ports to play videos or see still photos.

The business world is getting away from disks. Many more are either linking to videos, saving delivery time and shipping costs. Much like the difference in news coverage where immediacy is what counts. No one wants to wait if they don't have to.

In fact, many business's are simply sending links to a secure file sharing site for clients to download a finished product to their own hard drive/computer..or view directly from the site with no downloading needed.

This advance in technology and customer desires is no different than everyone having a VHS player at home and shooting every birthday or wedding in VHS. Now...who still does that? This is the same path DVD's are on...and their end is coming very soon.

It's why I choose not to worry about keeping my DVD burn programs current. Nor do I worry about all those extra time and expense wasters like making labels and buying plastic boxes for the DVD disks.

Unnecessary work and expense which does nothing more than add cost to the final product.

Money I can save my clients, keeping my cost to them lower than those who still want to focus on DVD's and a dying format.

Please be clear...my comments are not meant to be insulting to any individual in any way. ;)

I have no issue with Flash drive delivery outside of the raw cost of the units. DVDs are under 50 cents and Flash drives are at least $2.50 For small delivery jobs this is fine but for larger sales jobs it is just too expensive along with little to no cover graphics.

We are in a jam right now with no clear winner. Some like computers for playback, some like their living rooms. Some like the web. Some like it all. But as a micro business I can not offer all as it will be a lot of work explaining, educating and executing all of the options. So it will DVDs for a long time until the Flash drives come down in price.

There is another thread someplace here on DVI where a whole bunch of us beat delivery formats and options to death, a good thread to hear the opinions.

For me, I believe it is not my job to dictate to clients how they should be viewing the video I create for them. I see my customer service model as one that provides whatever it is the customer wants.

DVDs will not be going away quickly, they are still ubiquitous. VHS tape took many years to fade away. Occasionally, I still have clients ask me to convert VHS tapes to a digital file for them. That is not a service I offer, but I do it for them when asked, for the sake of customer service. These are commercial clients, I do not want them going elsewhere over a tape conversion.

I never cease to be amazed by how many guys seem to "dictate to a client the way it should be".

Steve

Hi Steve

I agree totally. Clients will soon become dis-satisfied if we start telling them what they are going to get rather than what they want. You simply cannot tell your client what they have to accept. I have found a few wedding videographers who end up with irate clients simply cos they have decided what footage to film.

Yep, if my clients want DVD's then they get DVD's ..they of course have an option to have whatever suits them but I think some operators seem to forget that the client is paying for your service (and providing your income) so the last thing you need to do is dictate what and what they will or will not have.

Chris

To be clear...I do not "dictate" to my clients how I will deliver a product they've hired me to create for them.

However...I will show them how to save money and time...then they make their decision.

I still burn a few DVDs, but from where I sit, I see DVD's going away sooner rather than later.

All I have to do is count the number of Blockbuster video stores in my neighborhood to see that transition is well under way.

The square footage of a Blockbuster retail store has been reduced to a red box about 5' x 5' that can be found at every corner store here in my city. And SD DVDs are still a more common rental than BR.

Steve

I never cease to be amazed by how many guys seem to "dictate to a client the way it should be".

Steve

Steven, was this directed towards me? No worries, just wondering as it is tough to know sometimes in a multi-post environment.

Tim,

Not at all. I have no idea how you do business. It is a generalization because there are some guys on this board that are hard core about it. I love a good debate and I am VERY opinionated. However, I do try not to be offensive about it most of the time. I am aware I use strong language and sometimes people have gotten bent. If I do take a shot at an individual they know it. But Chris H. reminds me we are not supposed to do that here so I play nice with most of the kids on the block ;)

In our business many people fail because they do not conduct the business side of videography properly. Their one shot clients move on. I just laugh at them and pick up the pieces they leave behind. And I probably charge more than most of them.

Here is another one of my generalized opinions. I have seen the pendulum swing to both extremes now. When I started as a still guy in the late eighties I saw a lot of photographers fail because of their ego. Once they started getting paid well for shooting pictures the ego kicked in and all of a sudden they became an uppity artist. Their ego was so big they would try to push their artistic vision on the client and become very difficult to deal with. The clients would move on. In the end they really did not have enough talent to save them from their ego.

Today, with some videographers it is a different issue. A good videographer MUST be part technician and part creative. Instead of being drawn into the business to shoot video they get here to feed their technological addiction. They are more into the tools and tech than the product. So I think some videographers need to pull their head out of a dark place and realize not everyone in the world is as fascinated as they are by cameras and technology. My clients are all corporate. Their tech skill set ranges from being able to check their e-mail and that is it all the way to some who are on the leading edge of tech.

I do my best to make all of them happy. Customer service is a big deal to me. It is far bigger than my ego. I find myself coaching many clients through the technology to get the result THEY want and that is OK!

Some guys here think clients are impressed by the model numbers on their camera. The way I see it my clients have taught me they don't give a crap what camera I shoot with (obviously I am not in broadcast or high end advertising). What they do LOOK at and care about is the video! As elementary as that sounds there is video guys who don't get it.

It is a business to me. It is how I feed my kids. I am successful because of HOW I do business not just because I shoot good video. I will deliver my product in any format that works for the client. It is that simple. That is why I have very loyal clients.

Steve

Thanks for your reply Steven. What I think is tough today is that many folks think they are tech savvy because they use an I-phone but that is where their tech ends. If you happen to be selling to the general public, the idea of a digital download or Flash drive can be a bit complicated to many.

When I work with companies, it is easy to delivery in any format and medium. When I shoot live events, it is all optical discs. They are the common denominator. If you go too far towards new media I think you will alienate as many or more as you help out.

I am all for customer service and being on the forefront, but new and complicated just makes things worse imho.

I agree with the thoughts about "general public".

If you're producing a product for a wedding video or some other type of family event...DVD's are probably best...for now.

I rarely do weddings or events like that. Most of my clients are business people and they are the ones I was referring to, who prefer non-DVD end products...for the most part.

They are also repeat customers. Which is why I go after them.

Most wedding clients are a single hit...at best. They might refer you but bottom line the volume of work from that kind of client is going to be very low compared to business/corporate clients.

Nothing wrong with shooting weddings. It's a tough gig.

Even though I'm based in Miami, Florida, I have two regular medical device clients in California who have been steady customers over the last couple of years. They go overseas for trade shows and have booths which play the final edited product I produce. They also like being able to give away those videos showing their product to doctors and hospital executives on flash-drives with their company logo and contact info engraved on it.. Business clients like this will always lead the way to change. I have the same type of clients who deal in real estate. Deals move to fast to wait for DVD's sent by snail-mail. Whoever closes the deal first, wins. Again, they love the idea of a digital file they can put up on a secure server for a client to see or hand off a thumb drive which can play on any computer and there's no search for a handy DVD players to see what they want to see.

Best of success to all as we all try and stay ahead of the curve...and make a buck doing what we like to do for a living.

John,

Agreed. Every word of what you just said is my work flow. Just because I defended DVDs does not mean it is currently a common format for my corporate clients. It is not. And yes, there is a big difference between what the business environment wants and an individual consumer client.

My point has always been about not understanding guys that say "i will only do it this way, take it or leave it". That sounds crazy to me.

Steve

Thanks Steve,

I always worry the tone of a post I make will sound arrogant or just plain stubborn...which is why I probably over-respond too much, to make sure people understand why I'm posting a certain point of view without, hopefully, coming off like a jerk! ;)