The Rationale of an SDE

[Daniel Boswell]

Originally Posted by Travis Cossel

For those of you regularly doing SDE's, how do you handle the additional risk/liability associated with them? In other words, a number of things can go wrong the day of the wedding and prevent you from being able to produce an SDE; how do you prepare yourself and your client for that possibility?

I have never not shown one i was supposed to show but I cover myself . I have it explicitly stated in my contract that if anything should go wrong and we are not able to do one, we are not liable but that they get another creative option for equal or lesser value.

[Daniel Boswell]

Originally Posted by Travis Cossel

Thanks for the info, Mark.

What size screen do you use with your projectors (and do you use 2 projectors?)? I have like a 5x5 portable screen for use with my projector.

I know your question was directed at Mark But I thought i would chime in and tell you what I use because I just bought a new projector and I am very happy with it thus far.


I use both a Draper 16:9 (7 x 12) fast fold for SDE only presentation (if the venue is big enough). Because I shoot in 16:9, I prefer to use this one because it looks much more cinematic. I also have a Da Lite 8' Tripod for everything else.

The projector I just bought is the Optoma HD70. Sweet projector for the price. http://www.projectorcentral.com/optoma_hd70.htm

[Travis Cossel]

No, Dan, feel free to chime in. I'm here for information from everyone. Give it to me!! d:-)

[Vincent Oliver]

I am the Vincent who Jason quotes in the first post. This thread is an interesting insight into SDE, thank you all for your input and shedding light on a service that is new to me.

I shot a wedding last Sunday, I used four 60 minute tapes, which you can guess took me 4 hours to download, I am not sure how I could offer a SDE service, finding the right clips and music etc. would probably take me several hours.

I have seen Jason's clips and they are indeed impressive, and as he says they are all SDE which is more impressive.

For me, well I am just starting on my 4 hours of footage - I have 14 days to complete the show, the Bride and Groom will have something to look forward to when they get back from their honeymoon.

Good luck to all you guys who offer the SDE service, but for me life is too short to rush about getting a 15, 30, 60 minute show ready on the same day. I guess my clients have enough excitement on the actual day and don't need to have a flashback hours after their big moment.

[Jason Robinson]

Originally Posted by Mark Von Lanken

I don't know anything about a ethernet connection and transferring files that way. Is it faster? If so, I'm all for faster.

Between workstations I get about 12% used for my gigabit network connection (only two computers through a switch). For 100Mbit network about 15% used. There is enough overhead and Windows slowdows that unless the network transfer is via gigabit, then the copy to USB2 / firewire might be faster. the downside is the wait for copy to external drive, then the wait for the copy from external drive.

Those percentages are just max throughput, ignoring an TCP/IP packet overhead. So as far as actual MB of data transfered.... I'd have to test it out again. My two systems are RAID0 (stripe) so it also might be faster than a normal system to system copy over gigabit.

jason

[Mark Von Lanken]

Originally Posted by Travis Cossel

Thanks for the info, Mark.

What size screen do you use with your projectors (and do you use 2 projectors?)? I have like a 5x5 portable screen for use with my projector.

Hi Jason,

I'm sorry for the delay in responding to you. I spent too much time posting yesterday, so I had to get some work done today.

We have a screen that is 8 feet wide. I'm not sure how high it goes. It's a monster. We just have one good projector.

The SDE we did last weekend was for another videographer. I would guess the screens were about 6 feet wide. The ballroom was very wide, so he had one on each side of the room.

[Dana Salsbury]

Hey Mark,

I was just thinking, since you have two laptops, have you considered mounting them to your tripods for DTE? To my understanding, all you need is a firewire port on your laptop, or a firewire card (very inexpensive). This would save you the need to capture via tape, and there is some good info on the forums about tripod mounts for laptops.

When editing later, I think an ethernet connection would be the quickest. Although since Trish saves to her hard drive, I would just unplug the WD and plug it into her laptop.

[Mark Von Lanken]

Hi Dana,

I have a DTE, the nNovia. Trisha has captured to her laptop when the conditions allow, but if she was able to mount the laptop to her tripod, she could capture to the laptop all of the time. That is a great idea. I'll check out the tripod forum.