Vortex Sony EX3 DVDs

Daniel Szajdek · January 6th, 2009, 11:07 PM

I've bought Vortex EX1 DVDs and it's really 3 hours of know-how about this camera.

Unfortuantely, author spend too much time on workflow issues and doesn't bring out any of major EX series cons.

It's worth money.

Simon Wyndham · January 7th, 2009, 04:53 AM

Quote:

Its a shame Vortex don't have a reseller in the UK, like creativevideo or Amazon etc.

I'm sure you used to be able to buy the 350 DVD's from Prestons. Not sure if they have the EX ones though.

Doug Jensen · January 7th, 2009, 12:56 PM

Hi, my registration has finally been approved and I’ve been given the green light to start posting. Hopefully I’ll be able to exercise some self-control and avoid the urge to chime in on every topic.

One thing I have always liked about reading through the forums at DVi is that the posts are generally very informative and rarely get side tracked into fringe areas. I think this thread has not typical of what DVi is all about. Nevertheless, at the risk of getting started off on the wrong foot, I feel I must respond to a few things that have been said about my company, Vortex Media.

Simon has already posted my explanation of our shipping charges, so I won’t bother rehashing that stuff. However, I think anyone would be offended if they were accused of “ripping off” customers. Especially when the shipping charges are clearly displayed at the very top of the order form. You can either accept it or you not, but nobody is being ripped off.

How much should a niche product like these DVDs sell for? As any entrepreneur will tell you, that’s always a difficult to thing to determine. If anyone has a crystal ball, I’d love to borrow it. There are several DVDs we’ve done over the years that will never be in the black. That’s just part of the game.

But apparently some people feel that the creator of such a product should charge just a couple of bucks more than what it cost them to create it because “Too much profit looks like greed.” I disagree wholeheartedly with that attitude. The amount of profit (or loss) is of no concern to the customer. The question is, did each individual customer get value for their money? Was the DVD, book, movie, software, music, or whatever you’re buying, worth more than what you spent to buy it?

It’s easy to sit back and say someone else is charging too much, especially when they haven’t even seen the product. I wish everything cost less, but personally, I don’t ever give any thought to how much profit a company is making when I buy something. What difference does it make to me if the company is going to sell 10 copies or 10 million. Whether the company will make $10,000 or lose $100,000 from the venture? Who cares? The value to me, as the customer, is based on what I get out of it of buying the item.

Last month I invested $1400 in new Adobe software. I didn’t look at the three discs that came in the little box (without manuals) and wonder why Adobe wasn’t selling it for only $20. I know why it cost $1400, and I know what I am going to be able to create with that software once I master it. At the same time, I also invested $225 in books to learn the software faster and teach me things I would have never known without them. In my opinion, it was money well spent for the time it has already saved me.

I like to think that Vortex Media’s DVDs have the same value to our customers. For $125 someone gets to learn what it took us several weeks to find out about the cameras. Customers get a very efficient training program in just three hours that would normally take a day or two if you sat in a classroom. They can pause, rewind, and review it anytime. How much is that worth? Surely more than $125. If the situation were reversed, I’d gladly pay $125 (and I have) to get up to speed learning something new. Time is money.

Yeah, instead of buying the Adobe books I could have bought some shoes or a video game, but I’ll earn much more money in the long run by investing in new software and the necessary training to master it faster. How much or how little the writers of those books earn from their labor is no concern of mine because I got my money’s worth out of the books – although I hope they make millions!! I really do.

It’s ridiculous to think that the customer can even judge how much profit is too much profit. The customer can’t know how much profit there is. Does the customer see the 6-8 weeks of time, expenses, and effort that went into producing each video? Do they know how many copies will be sold? Do they know how much of a discount resellers expect? Do they know how much advertising costs? Without all those pieces of information the customer can’t determine how much profit is “too much profit”. Believe me, you could sell thousands of copies of a DVD and still not have the venture be worth the hassle. I’ve been there.

Unlike training videos from other companies, we don’t pick up the camera one day, shoot the video the next day, and have it packaged and ready to go in one week. Vortex Media’s videos take a tremendous amount of time to research, plan, write, shoot, edit, author, replicate, distribute, etc. Unless someone has gone through the process (and knows that fellow professionals will be watching it and picking it apart) you can’t appreciate the pressure and huge number of hours involved to produce a 3 hour program. Fortunately, I love the challenge and enjoy this line of work. My videos aren’t perfect, nor can they fit the needs of everyone, but I stand behind them and will put them up against any competitors. I can’t wait for the next camera.

Sorry for this long-winded monologue. I promise to keep it shorter next time.
Thanks,
Doug

Bob Jackson · January 7th, 2009, 01:07 PM

Welcome Doug.
May i say that your EX1 dvd is a must have as far as I am concerned.
Particularly in advance of someone getting the camera, to get an idea how it works.
I keep a copy of the DVD in my camera bag.
Please respond as often as you can.
Additional knowledge base is important.
Bob

Greg Chisholm · January 7th, 2009, 01:08 PM

Just picked up you dvd today for the ex3 @ bhphoto... great product and worth the ducks!

peace

Keith Moreau · January 7th, 2009, 01:14 PM

Hi Doug

Thanks for your post and I hope you continue to contribute. I have purchased your DVDs for the Sony HC1 and the Sony EX1. To me they are invaluable and are basically like my user manual to get acquainted with these units in a fraction of the time it would take for me to fiddle and experiment on my own.

I think what you charge is reasonable considering the volume of your sales and the specialized nature of the products. You're producing DVDs for professionals, who are used to paying a premium for things associated with their profession, and the quality of what you produce is excellent compared to some of the other DVD guides I've purchased, which had spotty audio and organization.

I think that we just got off track with the perils of shipping overseas, I've done it and it's a pain. I once sold an item through eBay via US Postal Service airmail and after a month it showed up back on my doorstep, apparently having taken a trip around the world. It was a great deal of trouble to communicate with the customer, and both of us were cordial but anxious of where the item might be. I finally stopped offering to ship items sold on eBay to anywhere outside the US except for Canada because it just wasn't worth the hassle of waiting at the Post Office line, filling out customs forms, extra communication, etc. The fact that you offer this service at all using a reliable method should be appreciated.

Take Care

Vincent Oliver · January 7th, 2009, 01:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Jensen

Simon has already posted my explanation of our shipping charges, so I won’t bother rehashing that stuff. However, I think anyone would be offended if they were accused of “ripping off” customers. Especially when the shipping charges are clearly displayed at the very top of the order form. You can either accept it or you not, but nobody is being ripped off.

An apology was posted, I don't think we need to play this tune again.

I will be buying the EX3 DVD set from you as a token of my good will, I wish you the best of luck with all your future ventures.

ps.I hope the DVDs include a section on converting HD to SD, because this is a nightmare for me - I need to get my next DVD on the shelves in February.

Best wishes Vincent

Doug Jensen · January 7th, 2009, 02:13 PM

I want to say thank you to every everyone for your feedback and comments. Really, the best form of adversiting someone like me can get is the positive feedback and honest opinions of people like you all. Thanks.

Vincent, to be honest, 'm not sure an apology was even necessary, but I'll accept it and we can move one. Thanks. And there's no need to buy a DVD as token of good will!! Please only buy it if you really feel that you want it. You're under no olbigation to plunk down your money. Don't buy it if you don't think it will be worth the money.

One thing you aren't going to find on the DVD is much information about going from HD to SD. Why? Two reasons:

1) This is a camcorder training DVD, and as far as I’m concerned, that training ends once I have shown you how to import, archive, and organize your clips. Once you’ve reached that point, you’re entering the realm of NLE training not camcorder training. I can't cover FCP, Vegas, Premier, Avid, Canopus, etc. in an EX3 DVD -- especially when the HD options you'll face aren't even unique to XDCAM.

2) I honestly didn’t know if would be an issue to even consider talking about. I’ve had no workflow issues with HD and I didn’t anticipate that other people would even care about HD to SD conversions. That is a total surprise to me.

To be honest, I'm not an FCP expert . I recommend Larry Jordan's FCP books or any of his online training. I highly recommend anything produced by Larry.

Like I said, you won’t find my editing methods discussed on the DVD, so I’ll post them here for anyone to glean whatever they want from them.

First of all, I believe it is very important to edit with Sequence settings that are as close as you can come to matching your final output. In other words, if you aren't going to author a Blu-ray disk or some other HD final product -- then DO NOT edit in HD. Edit in SD. Choose sequence settings that match your output -- not the source footage. Here's how I edited all of my DVDs.

1) I shoot most footage 1080 30P HQ, but I don't think that makes much difference in the final output.

2) I open a new Sequence in FCP and use the "DV NTSC 48Khz Anamorphic" preset.

3) I change the Field Dominance to "NONE"

4) I edit the entire program within that Sequence.

3) When I'm done editing, I then Export a QuickTime movie of the Sequence. I choose "Current Settings" and I do NOT choose to "Make Movie Self-Contained".

4) I then take that QuickTime movie and bring it into Compressor.

5) I then choose the Compressor preset for DVD Best Quality and modify a few of the settings (such as bitrate), but nothing major.

6) After that file is finished rendering, I bring it into DVD Studio Pro and author the DVD normally.

This is the workflow I've been using with XDCAM HD and HDV for over three years. I think most people who have seen the DVDs will agree that they look great. That's it. No big secret. There's no need to overcomplicate things with extra steps, conversions, additional software, etc. It's easy.

I hope that helps.
Doug

Jay Gladwell · January 7th, 2009, 02:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vincent Oliver

I hope the DVDs include a section on converting HD to SD, because this is a nightmare for me...

Sorry, Vincent, it doesn't. It deals with the EX3.

You still having problems with that?

Edit: Vincent, Doug replied while I was. Dude, you lucked out, big time!

Vincent Oliver · January 7th, 2009, 02:25 PM

Thanks Doug, I will buy the DVDs because I looked at them in the first place with the intention of purchasing. Thanks also for your HD > SD workflow, I will give this a go.

Jay, I too thought I had this cracked, but I have just looked at the footage I shot over the last two days which have been rendered to DVD (just for quality testing) and they look horrid. I think the subject matter for my first testing covered up a lot of the artifacts.

A saving grace is that the HD footage looks superb, so I have a good base on which to build.

Evan Meades · January 7th, 2009, 04:37 PM

Welcome Doug! Here's another thumbs up for the EX3 DVD bought in Australia through a reseller as it was cheaper than shipping. Coming from SP Beta it helped me to get up to speed a lot quicker...time is money!

Doug could I also suggest you look at download options, maybe not for say the complete EX3 DVD but for any new appendices to that or other DVD's. i.e. new workflows, tips etc and have a nominal fee for each new "small" download.

The Luminous Landscape has this system and I think it works very well and customers can get whole programs or smaller segments where available. This would bypass the shipping thing altogether!

Cheers, Evan

Bruce Rawlings · January 7th, 2009, 06:05 PM

Ripple Training have a good system using i Tunes. Took a bit of getting used to but now can buy a DVD and download the content straight away.

Doug Jensen · January 8th, 2009, 11:05 AM

Thank you for the download suggestions. It will be worth considering for our next project.

Doug

Craig Seeman · January 8th, 2009, 11:20 AM

You'd also be able to additional sections when you don't have enough to justify another DVD.
For example you can add an "advanced" EX chapter on Picture Profiles. You can even tier the pricing structure. One for people who haven't purchased the DVD on a lower price for those who have.

This would encourage people to buy the DVD to get additional advanced sections for less.
It would allow you to add additional chapters without the cost of manufacture and shipping. You can post sections piecemeal rather than having to block off time to get an entire DVD done.

Mark David Williams · January 8th, 2009, 03:15 PM

I can't see why the DVD's cant be downloadable?

January 7th, 2009, 01:07 PM	#34
Bob Jackson Major Player Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Republic of Vancouver Island Posts: 200	Welcome Doug. May i say that your EX1 dvd is a must have as far as I am concerned. Particularly in advance of someone getting the camera, to get an idea how it works. I keep a copy of the DVD in my camera bag. Please respond as often as you can. Additional knowledge base is important. Bob __________________ Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. AC Clarke

January 7th, 2009, 01:08 PM	#35
Greg Chisholm Major Player Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Jersey City, NJ Posts: 244	No Sweat Doug Just picked up you dvd today for the ex3 @ bhphoto... great product and worth the ducks! peace

January 7th, 2009, 02:25 PM	#40
Vincent Oliver Trustee Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Chislehurst, London Posts: 1,724	Thanks Doug, I will buy the DVDs because I looked at them in the first place with the intention of purchasing. Thanks also for your HD > SD workflow, I will give this a go. Jay, I too thought I had this cracked, but I have just looked at the footage I shot over the last two days which have been rendered to DVD (just for quality testing) and they look horrid. I think the subject matter for my first testing covered up a lot of the artifacts. A saving grace is that the HD footage looks superb, so I have a good base on which to build. __________________ Eyes are a deaf man’s ears. Ears are a blind man’s eyes

January 6th, 2009, 11:07 PM	#31
Daniel Szajdek New Boot Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Krakow, Poland [Now: Mumbai, India] Posts: 6	I've bought Vortex EX1 DVDs and it's really 3 hours of know-how about this camera. Unfortuantely, author spend too much time on workflow issues and doesn't bring out any of major EX series cons. It's worth money.

January 7th, 2009, 12:56 PM	#33
Doug Jensen Vortex Media Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Florida Posts: 3,442	Hi, my registration has finally been approved and I’ve been given the green light to start posting. Hopefully I’ll be able to exercise some self-control and avoid the urge to chime in on every topic. One thing I have always liked about reading through the forums at DVi is that the posts are generally very informative and rarely get side tracked into fringe areas. I think this thread has not typical of what DVi is all about. Nevertheless, at the risk of getting started off on the wrong foot, I feel I must respond to a few things that have been said about my company, Vortex Media. Simon has already posted my explanation of our shipping charges, so I won’t bother rehashing that stuff. However, I think anyone would be offended if they were accused of “ripping off” customers. Especially when the shipping charges are clearly displayed at the very top of the order form. You can either accept it or you not, but nobody is being ripped off. How much should a niche product like these DVDs sell for? As any entrepreneur will tell you, that’s always a difficult to thing to determine. If anyone has a crystal ball, I’d love to borrow it. There are several DVDs we’ve done over the years that will never be in the black. That’s just part of the game. But apparently some people feel that the creator of such a product should charge just a couple of bucks more than what it cost them to create it because “Too much profit looks like greed.” I disagree wholeheartedly with that attitude. The amount of profit (or loss) is of no concern to the customer. The question is, did each individual customer get value for their money? Was the DVD, book, movie, software, music, or whatever you’re buying, worth more than what you spent to buy it? It’s easy to sit back and say someone else is charging too much, especially when they haven’t even seen the product. I wish everything cost less, but personally, I don’t ever give any thought to how much profit a company is making when I buy something. What difference does it make to me if the company is going to sell 10 copies or 10 million. Whether the company will make $10,000 or lose $100,000 from the venture? Who cares? The value to me, as the customer, is based on what I get out of it of buying the item. Last month I invested $1400 in new Adobe software. I didn’t look at the three discs that came in the little box (without manuals) and wonder why Adobe wasn’t selling it for only $20. I know why it cost $1400, and I know what I am going to be able to create with that software once I master it. At the same time, I also invested $225 in books to learn the software faster and teach me things I would have never known without them. In my opinion, it was money well spent for the time it has already saved me. I like to think that Vortex Media’s DVDs have the same value to our customers. For $125 someone gets to learn what it took us several weeks to find out about the cameras. Customers get a very efficient training program in just three hours that would normally take a day or two if you sat in a classroom. They can pause, rewind, and review it anytime. How much is that worth? Surely more than $125. If the situation were reversed, I’d gladly pay $125 (and I have) to get up to speed learning something new. Time is money. Yeah, instead of buying the Adobe books I could have bought some shoes or a video game, but I’ll earn much more money in the long run by investing in new software and the necessary training to master it faster. How much or how little the writers of those books earn from their labor is no concern of mine because I got my money’s worth out of the books – although I hope they make millions!! I really do. It’s ridiculous to think that the customer can even judge how much profit is too much profit. The customer can’t know how much profit there is. Does the customer see the 6-8 weeks of time, expenses, and effort that went into producing each video? Do they know how many copies will be sold? Do they know how much of a discount resellers expect? Do they know how much advertising costs? Without all those pieces of information the customer can’t determine how much profit is “too much profit”. Believe me, you could sell thousands of copies of a DVD and still not have the venture be worth the hassle. I’ve been there. Unlike training videos from other companies, we don’t pick up the camera one day, shoot the video the next day, and have it packaged and ready to go in one week. Vortex Media’s videos take a tremendous amount of time to research, plan, write, shoot, edit, author, replicate, distribute, etc. Unless someone has gone through the process (and knows that fellow professionals will be watching it and picking it apart) you can’t appreciate the pressure and huge number of hours involved to produce a 3 hour program. Fortunately, I love the challenge and enjoy this line of work. My videos aren’t perfect, nor can they fit the needs of everyone, but I stand behind them and will put them up against any competitors. I can’t wait for the next camera. Sorry for this long-winded monologue. I promise to keep it shorter next time. Thanks, Doug

January 7th, 2009, 01:14 PM	#36
Keith Moreau Major Player Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Brisbane, California Posts: 530	Hi Doug Thanks for your post and I hope you continue to contribute. I have purchased your DVDs for the Sony HC1 and the Sony EX1. To me they are invaluable and are basically like my user manual to get acquainted with these units in a fraction of the time it would take for me to fiddle and experiment on my own. I think what you charge is reasonable considering the volume of your sales and the specialized nature of the products. You're producing DVDs for professionals, who are used to paying a premium for things associated with their profession, and the quality of what you produce is excellent compared to some of the other DVD guides I've purchased, which had spotty audio and organization. I think that we just got off track with the perils of shipping overseas, I've done it and it's a pain. I once sold an item through eBay via US Postal Service airmail and after a month it showed up back on my doorstep, apparently having taken a trip around the world. It was a great deal of trouble to communicate with the customer, and both of us were cordial but anxious of where the item might be. I finally stopped offering to ship items sold on eBay to anywhere outside the US except for Canada because it just wasn't worth the hassle of waiting at the Post Office line, filling out customs forms, extra communication, etc. The fact that you offer this service at all using a reliable method should be appreciated. Take Care

January 7th, 2009, 02:13 PM	#38
Doug Jensen Vortex Media Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Florida Posts: 3,442	I want to say thank you to every everyone for your feedback and comments. Really, the best form of adversiting someone like me can get is the positive feedback and honest opinions of people like you all. Thanks. Vincent, to be honest, 'm not sure an apology was even necessary, but I'll accept it and we can move one. Thanks. And there's no need to buy a DVD as token of good will!! Please only buy it if you really feel that you want it. You're under no olbigation to plunk down your money. Don't buy it if you don't think it will be worth the money. One thing you aren't going to find on the DVD is much information about going from HD to SD. Why? Two reasons: 1) This is a camcorder training DVD, and as far as I’m concerned, that training ends once I have shown you how to import, archive, and organize your clips. Once you’ve reached that point, you’re entering the realm of NLE training not camcorder training. I can't cover FCP, Vegas, Premier, Avid, Canopus, etc. in an EX3 DVD -- especially when the HD options you'll face aren't even unique to XDCAM. 2) I honestly didn’t know if would be an issue to even consider talking about. I’ve had no workflow issues with HD and I didn’t anticipate that other people would even care about HD to SD conversions. That is a total surprise to me. To be honest, I'm not an FCP expert . I recommend Larry Jordan's FCP books or any of his online training. I highly recommend anything produced by Larry. Like I said, you won’t find my editing methods discussed on the DVD, so I’ll post them here for anyone to glean whatever they want from them. First of all, I believe it is very important to edit with Sequence settings that are as close as you can come to matching your final output. In other words, if you aren't going to author a Blu-ray disk or some other HD final product -- then DO NOT edit in HD. Edit in SD. Choose sequence settings that match your output -- not the source footage. Here's how I edited all of my DVDs. 1) I shoot most footage 1080 30P HQ, but I don't think that makes much difference in the final output. 2) I open a new Sequence in FCP and use the "DV NTSC 48Khz Anamorphic" preset. 3) I change the Field Dominance to "NONE" 4) I edit the entire program within that Sequence. 3) When I'm done editing, I then Export a QuickTime movie of the Sequence. I choose "Current Settings" and I do NOT choose to "Make Movie Self-Contained". 4) I then take that QuickTime movie and bring it into Compressor. 5) I then choose the Compressor preset for DVD Best Quality and modify a few of the settings (such as bitrate), but nothing major. 6) After that file is finished rendering, I bring it into DVD Studio Pro and author the DVD normally. This is the workflow I've been using with XDCAM HD and HDV for over three years. I think most people who have seen the DVDs will agree that they look great. That's it. No big secret. There's no need to overcomplicate things with extra steps, conversions, additional software, etc. It's easy. I hope that helps. Doug

January 7th, 2009, 04:37 PM	#41
Evan Meades Regular Crew Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Melbourne Posts: 68	Welcome Doug! Here's another thumbs up for the EX3 DVD bought in Australia through a reseller as it was cheaper than shipping. Coming from SP Beta it helped me to get up to speed a lot quicker...time is money! Doug could I also suggest you look at download options, maybe not for say the complete EX3 DVD but for any new appendices to that or other DVD's. i.e. new workflows, tips etc and have a nominal fee for each new "small" download. The Luminous Landscape has this system and I think it works very well and customers can get whole programs or smaller segments where available. This would bypass the shipping thing altogether! Cheers, Evan

January 7th, 2009, 06:05 PM	#42
Bruce Rawlings Major Player Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Cardiff, Wales, UK Posts: 410	Ripple Training have a good system using i Tunes. Took a bit of getting used to but now can buy a DVD and download the content straight away.

January 8th, 2009, 11:05 AM	#43
Doug Jensen Vortex Media Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Florida Posts: 3,442	Thank you for the download suggestions. It will be worth considering for our next project. Doug

January 8th, 2009, 11:20 AM	#44
Craig Seeman Inner Circle Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Brooklyn, NY, USA Posts: 3,841	You'd also be able to additional sections when you don't have enough to justify another DVD. For example you can add an "advanced" EX chapter on Picture Profiles. You can even tier the pricing structure. One for people who haven't purchased the DVD on a lower price for those who have. This would encourage people to buy the DVD to get additional advanced sections for less. It would allow you to add additional chapters without the cost of manufacture and shipping. You can post sections piecemeal rather than having to block off time to get an entire DVD done.

January 8th, 2009, 03:15 PM	#45
Mark David Williams Major Player Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Hertfordshire UK Posts: 414	I can't see why the DVD's cant be downloadable?