Forums | MacLife

Graphic Autist · 2009-05-01 1:05 am

Here's the breakdown:

A - I shot a one and a half hour modern-dance video on Monday night with my Canon XH G1. I was promised $100 for that alone, and need to surrender the tapes I provided. I told the college instructor that I wouldn't charge for capture time. This part is agreed upon.

B- He also gave me 3 tapes he shot of dress rehearsals as standard definition DV tape. He wanted me to capture this (about 2 hours total). I figured I'd just charge him $25 dollars for that alone. Reasonable, by far in my opinion.

Here's where it gets tricky...

C- He wants a DVD of each performance (the one I shot, and his dress rehearsals.) I had to downsample my footage (using Compressor, Best 120 minute). Not too big a deal, just loaded them into Compressor before going to bed, and hit "Submit." It took roughly an hour and a half to create the menus and tracks in DVD Studio Pro (no templates!) for the two DVDs he wants (one of the final performance I shot, and one of the rehearsals he gave me to capture.) I'll charge another $25 for the DVD authoring, again, very reasonable. So far we're at $150.

D- He wants 18 DVDs of the performance I shot, and 4 DVDs of the rehearsals. What should I charge? They're not screen printed...a Sharpie with good penmanship is what I offer, so I have no idea. I know I'm working very cheap, as it's my alma mater, but I don't want to be naive.

Suggestions will be GREATLY appreciated!

dv · 2009-05-01 8:59 am

I'd charge $3-4/each for burned DVDs. $5 if you add a label and/or jewel case. Materials cost on those is less than a buck, so it basically comes down to paying you to stand there and babysit the burner, which should cost dammit - most schools have the ability to dup their own DVDs now.

If I understand you right, you've spent about 6 hours at this already. $150 plus supply costs doesn't seem unreasonable at all. Downright cheap, in fact.

Graphic Autist · 2009-05-01 10:44 am

dv wrote:
I'd charge $3-4/each for burned DVDs. $5 if you add a label and/or jewel case. Materials cost on those is less than a buck, so it basically comes down to paying you to stand there and babysit the burner, which should cost dammit - most schools have the ability to dup their own DVDs now.

If I understand you right, you've spent about 6 hours at this already. $150 plus supply costs doesn't seem unreasonable at all. Downright cheap, in fact.

Yeah, I know it's cheap. I want to establish a good relationship with this person so he'll ask for me again and maybe recommend me to other colleagues. The DVDs are in jewel cases, but as I said earlier, no real label or cover. In the future I plan on having real labels. Little things like that matter to the customer.

And yeah, babysitting the DVD burner was relatively easy, but required attention, nonetheless.

Thanks for responding.

mrreet2001 · 2009-05-01 11:07 am

printable dvds please ... Don't use labels big_smile

Graphic Autist · 2009-05-01 11:32 am

mrreet2001 wrote:
printable dvds please ... Don't use labels

That's what I thought, too. I was concerned about jamming in slot-loading DVD players, but a few people assured me if the label is properly affixed, it won't happen. Who knows? I do agree printed looks better, and you don't need to worry about jamming.

Graphic Autist · 2009-05-01 11:20 pm

Well, I delivered everything to my client. However, I learned something new. He had requested I also give him the captured footage. "Not a problem, " I thought. So I bring my MacBook Pro with me, hook his external drive he had just bought, and discovered he's a PC user. Evidently, FAT 32 filesystems can't copy files over 4 GB in size. This was somewhat embarrassing, so over the weekend I'm breaking the capture into 10 minute increments.

sturner · 2009-05-02 1:39 am

Why isn't he using NTFS? He should be.

You can write to NTFS with a couple of different programs. One solution is free, but I haven't a clue on that, it's posted recently somewhere on these forums.

The other is NTFS for Mac. I use it, it's solid.

Graphic Autist · 2009-05-02 2:25 pm

sturner wrote:
Why isn't he using NTFS? He should be.

Damn it, Jim! He's a dance instructor, not a computer wizard! wink

pottymouth · 2009-05-03 1:59 pm

Graphic Autist wrote:
...This was somewhat embarrassing...

Well, you've got no need to be embarrassed. He's the one still using FAT.

Donkey Butter · 2009-05-03 5:38 pm

I hope you are charging him extra to chop the footy into 10min sections.

dv · 2009-05-03 5:45 pm

For future reference, there's a pretty good chance your video software has an option to chop into 2GB or 4GB sections as it's importing.

Graphic Autist · 2009-05-04 6:40 am

dv wrote:
For future reference, there's a pretty good chance your video software has an option to chop into 2GB or 4GB sections as it's importing.

I'm using FCP 6.05. I haven't run across that option. If its there I don't know how to access it.

Doesn't matter...if I do something in the future for this guy, I'll know what needs to be done. And it only took a few minutes to set my in and out points; export.

I appreciate the help and tips, people! smile

avkills · 2009-05-04 7:03 am

Under system settings select "limit capture to segments blah blah". There is a check mark and then you can enter whatever segment size you want. It defaults to roughly 2GBs.

And yes you are charging a way cheap price for all of this. (most post can run from $100/hr to $400/hr depending on the system used, how complicated it is, etc etc).

-mark

dv · 2009-05-04 1:52 pm

I haven't done any video editing since Final Cut HD 4.5, and before that I was using... umm... non-Apple solutions. Nonetheless, it was always there, so I assumed it was standard.

Graphic Autist · 2009-05-04 3:31 pm

avkills wrote:
Under system settings select "limit capture to segments blah blah". There is a check mark and then you can enter whatever segment size you want. It defaults to roughly 2GBs.

And yes you are charging a way cheap price for all of this. (most post can run from $100/hr to $400/hr depending on the system used, how complicated it is, etc etc).

-mark

Thank you.

Forums | MacLife

#1 2009-05-01 1:05 am

Decent price for burning shot footage?

#2 2009-05-01 8:59 am

Re: Decent price for burning shot footage?

#3 2009-05-01 10:44 am

Re: Decent price for burning shot footage?

dv wrote:

#4 2009-05-01 11:07 am

Re: Decent price for burning shot footage?

#5 2009-05-01 11:32 am

Re: Decent price for burning shot footage?

mrreet2001 wrote:

#6 2009-05-01 11:20 pm

Re: Decent price for burning shot footage?

#7 2009-05-02 1:39 am

Re: Decent price for burning shot footage?

#8 2009-05-02 2:25 pm

Re: Decent price for burning shot footage?

sturner wrote:

#9 2009-05-03 1:59 pm

Re: Decent price for burning shot footage?

Graphic Autist wrote:

#10 2009-05-03 5:38 pm

Re: Decent price for burning shot footage?

#11 2009-05-03 5:45 pm

Re: Decent price for burning shot footage?

#12 2009-05-04 6:40 am

Re: Decent price for burning shot footage?

dv wrote:

#13 2009-05-04 7:03 am

Re: Decent price for burning shot footage?

#14 2009-05-04 1:52 pm

Re: Decent price for burning shot footage?

#15 2009-05-04 3:31 pm

Re: Decent price for burning shot footage?

avkills wrote:

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