Client footage delivery

[Tim Lucas]

Hey there.

I guess I am am just recycling what is a pretty much common theme on this forum, but its the old... "How do I best deliver my footage to my client" debate.

I shoot on a PMW350 with a Nanoflash bolted to the back end. So in theory, there's probably half a dozen or so formats I could shoot in for my clients.

It seems that the best answer to date is to dump footage to a hard drive and send to the client with the hope that they might actually send it back to you. (But don't hold your breath) This seems to me to be a pretty cumbersome process. I have a Nexto Video Storage Pro NVS-2500 drive to drop my footage to. If every client had one of these the world would be a better place but sadly most of them don't seem to understand or care about them.

I propose that we need an "Industry standard footage delivery device" which everyone can relate to and understand so there is no confusion. Something in between a large memory stick and and a hard drive. Probably solid state, fast transfer rate and affordable as a delivery format.

I'm talking about an industry standard, video footage delivery device that can become the definitive and widely recognized way to deliver tape-less media solutions to clients without having to confuse the client about video formats and delivery methods. Leave that to the editor, we all know that most producers don't understand our confusing world of video codecs, so keep them out of the loop.

So there is the challenge to any data management companies browsing these forums. Help make this new transition to tape-less media easier by solving this almost daily problem that I have to deal with.

Lets set the standard once and for all. One device. No confusion. Affordable.

Cheers guys, Tim.

[Luc De Wandel]

Blu-ray disk?

[John DuMontelle]

There's no reason the price of a hard drive to deliver the material should come out of your pocket. It's an add on the client pays for or they send you a drive to use.

I do this all the time and have never had issues with a client upset because they didn't think they should cover that cost themselves.

If they want you to get a drive for them, buy the cheapest drive wherever you can find it. Format it to FAT32 which can be read by either PC or MAC. Copy your material on the drive and add the price of the drive on top of your rate. It's not a drive they should be editing off of. It's just to send material.

[Vincent Oliver]

I use a 320gb La-Cie Passport removable drive for submitting files to my stock library, they do return it when asked. Otherwise use a cheap 500 gb Hard drive which should only cost a few pounds and can easily be lost in the overall fee. I also use Blu-Ray disks for smaller jobs (25gb capacity). Maybe just ask the client how they would like to take delivery off the material.

[Dave Sperling]

Tim,
I wait until the local electronics places have their 'big sales' - times like "Black Friday" - and stock up on low-cost, smaller capacity portable drives. (I personally tend to go with the small Hitachi or WD Passport drives, usually in the $50 price range. I've had a number of issues with the Lacie drives requiring too much power or breaking down, so I stay away from them.)
One big advantage of the NEXTO2500 is that you can slave a portable USB drive to it and simultaneously transfer both to the NEXTO and to the drive -- though your transfer speed is slower because it's limited by the USB2 connection.
For good, repeat clients I'll provide the first data hard drive at no cost. If they return it, they keep the same low price. If they don't return it and I have to go to another drive for their next shoot, the drive cost, with markup, goes on the bill.
For many shoots, the cost of a hard drive is less than the cost of HDcam tape, or of XDcam discs.
For a really quick shoot, a thumb drive may also be sufficient for the client data -- keep a few on hand!
Above all, I never go out on a shoot without bringing some sort of drive I can use for client data. Too often I've had clients who bring 'their drive' -- which either doesn't have enough room on it, or on more than one occasion has been DOA. If you don't have an extra drive for them, their drive problem becomes 'your problem.'

[Tim Lucas]

Cheers guys.

I guess your are right. Hard drive delivery seems to be the way to go, though I am sure there is better answer ahead of us somewhere.

We just delivered some footage to a client and the drive actually came back to us. Seemed pretty seamless and the they were happy.

I suppose if we build the cost of the drive into the delivery cost then we are no worse off whether the drive comes back or not. It just breaks my heart to deliver 60 or 80 Gigabytes of data onto a 1TB drive that may never come back.

Anyway I still leave the challenge out there for a standardised (NZ spelling) media delivery format.

Tim.