Delivery format

[Steven Digges]

+1 Chris!

No one has actually come out and flat stated "I won't give them a DVD even if that's what getting the job depends on", but I think some of you are getting close.

The lure of the easy road is calling. Make your edits, push a few buttons, and BAM, the job is delivered and over! No authoring, no extra encoding to .mpg, no burning glass. No processing your final product into multiple formats to make everyone happy. No physical delivery of a hard good to deal with. As technicians we know it is coming, but we are not there yet. We are a long way away from that.

Guys, some of you know I don't do weddings, I do mostly corporate work of one type or another these days. But I read many more posts than I comment on and contribute when I can. For the sake of this thread my business is not much different than yours. I have wider parameters to deal with. I must be prepared to deliver video in any format and exact specification my clients require. It goes way beyond contemplating what player the average home owner has in their living room or if they are so tech cool they go into seizures if they lose sight of their I pad for five minutes.

For me, I do what ever it is they need me to do. And I do it gladly, it is all about basic customer service. I deliver what my clients want to receive. During the process I may need to be an educator and adviser, but it is never "my way or no way because I know better than the client".

It is how I earn my living and I like to buy groceries and pay my bills. I would deliver video on horseback if they asked me to.

Steve

[Gabe Strong]

Steven,

You pretty much stated my exact feelings. I'm not selling food or water or something
someone HAS to have to substain life here. I'm selling a commodity.....I better be
prepared to offer great service and give them whatever format they want. Like you,
I like to have a warm roof over my head and food in the fridge.

[Paul R Johnson]

Is it not up to the client what delivery format they want? If you offer a choice, you keep everyone happy. Many people are computer literate, and they of course are using them to view this forum. However, my mum (83) struggles with DVDs and CDs, despite the simplicity. It's not the DVD, it's simply the sequence of button presses to make them work. Any form of delivery medium that involves button prodding thwarts many people. USB sticks fit neatly into network CAT5 sockets. They don't make contact of course, but they fit quite nicely.

Options also increases the opportunity for extra profit. DVD Sir, or for an extra XXX, a Blu-Ray. We even have USB sticks available in a presentation box for an extra ZZZ. Just let us know your preference.

Just the same when delivery went from tape to DVD, for the crossover, it was extra income.

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Aindreas Lynch

I know nobody my age (30's) who has either a DVD or a BR player, I don't even have one myself!! I stream or download everything I watch at home.

You mean that you don't know anybody with a PS3 or an Xbox? The former has Blu-ray player & the latter DVD. The new models the Xbox One and PS4 only just started shipping and both have a Blu-ray player.

I really wish that there a good way of delivering wedding videos online but there & isn't until we can deliver them via iTunes, Netflix or similar then we need to deliver physical media & I think that a Blu-ray disk is superior to a USB thumb drive.

I export Blu-ray H.264 video files from Premiere Pro and use Adobe Encore to create a simple Blu-ray disc with one picture menu and no thumbnails just 5-10 menu selections. I then change the project setting to DVD & Encore creates the DVD without any more work on my part.

[Aindreas Lynch]

Originally Posted by Nigel Barker

You mean that you don't know anybody with a PS3 or an Xbox? The former has Blu-ray player & the latter DVD. The new models the Xbox One and PS4 only just started shipping and both have a Blu-ray player.

Genuinely, I do not know of any friend of mine who has either a PS3 or an Xbox. I'm pretty sure some of them may have them as they have kids in early teens so it's highly likely they might have one. But you know what my point was anyway so I won't elaborate :)

I accept that everyone delivers differently and thats ok, nobody is right or wrong I was just telling you that this is how I do it.

Someone mentioned above that you should give what the client asks for, however I disagree with this. Our clients generally have never booked a videographer before so have no real idea of what they are getting or of what they actually want. This imo is where client education kicks in. I educate them into understanding that digital delivery of a HD mp4 file is not only what they need but what they actually want. I show them a clip running on an IPad and explain that this is an mp4 and it will run on your phone, tv, DVD player (when copied to a USB stick) etc etc and so far all have been 100% happy with this. If however they specifically ask for a DVD then of course I will burn one for them but only if they ask and so far nobody has asked.

[Tim Bakland]

Originally Posted by Nigel Barker

I export Blu-ray H.264 video files from Premiere Pro and use Adobe Encore to create a simple Blu-ray disc with one picture menu and no thumbnails just 5-10 menu selections. I then change the project setting to DVD & Encore creates the DVD without any more work on my part.

The Encore workflow is great. I encode blu-ray and dvd for every wedding client and delivery in a double album from WHCC. For extra copies, it is often that the couple ONLY asks for blu-ray these days. (family copies).

In other words: I still delivery via discs. Most discs are blu-ray, some DVD (for weddings).

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Tim Bakland

The Encore workflow is great. I encode blu-ray and dvd for every wedding client and delivery in a double album from WHCC. For extra copies, it is often that the couple ONLY asks for blu-ray these days. (family copies).

In other words: I still delivery via discs. Most discs are blu-ray, some DVD (for weddings).

This again demonstrates how different we are around the world. In your case the family only want extras as Blu-ray, but here I've found extras have been exclusively DVD. Go figure…

The whole Blu-ray thing just hasn't taken off for me, maybe because I charge extra for it. In the past 12 months I don't recall shipping a single Blu-ray disc, it's been all DVDs, downloads and USB sticks. The previous year I did a couple of Blu-ray, the year before that I did a couple as well but it no longer seems to be a priority.

Over the last couple of years the price has become more of a driving factor for a lot of people and I've actively turned away some weddings because of it. I'm not going to heavily discount just because video was an "afterthought" and there is "no budget" left.

However, downloads instead of physical media have been one way people see they can save money but also actually get full HD instead of spending more money and getting only SD on DVD. This has actually made a real difference on a couple of bookings.

There is no right or wrong way and different people want different things. I'll supply what ever they want, including VHS tapes as long as they are willing to pay for the time it takes to do it.

[Randy Johnson]

ok a couple things:
1. I just wanted to see if anyone was considering what we as event shooters would do if DVD/BR goes away personally I think it will but hopefully not for a few years.
2. Lets be honest the 2 main things that consumers use DVD for is movies and porn both are now delivered through the net. they may need to record TV show too for that we use DVRs. So as a consumer why would you even need a DVD/BR with the exception of YOUR WEDDING VIDEO?
3. Xbox went BR but not for movies they are still selling games, in fact for movies the Xbox is a video streaming beast.
hey if BR stays around great I just think we as wedding jocks should start looking at alternatives.

Randy

[Arthur Gannis]

A hard copy is more permanent to archive and store a once only event as a wedding. You may give them a thumb drive, on the "cloud", even You Tube it, but a hard copy preferably on BluRay is it as far as archival and full HD resolution is concerned. We as videographers spend a lot of money on the sharpest lenses, the best low light cameras, and nitpick on the finest details as far as image quality and yet there are those that want to degrade all that and relegate it onto a low res upload on the net. Whoa ! Some are even talking about a wedding in 4K resolution in these parts and many here already purchased their 4 K panel displays. Imagine how a regular DVD would be on those. If I were to even suggest a client's wedding be delivered on a media card I would be laughed at, not because of image quality but the fact that they want a permanent copy or copies that will last a lifetime and for generations. Sure I can easily make multiple copies of memory sticks but that is not what they want to hear. Eventually even BluRay disks will go out of style but may be replaced by the green laser that writes 8K or 16K video to a 2 inch diameter optical disc of extreme fine pitch with 12 vertical layers of digital info. When the time comes that the discs will be obsolete, the newer generation will always welcome the data from the previous one to be stored onto. Just like 8mm home movies went to VHS and to DVD and to BluRay and to the green laser and to the Turbo990Violet Laser that records 32K content on the molecular level to a saphire crystal. Just kidding. A hard copy is always a hard copy.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Randy Johnson

ok a couple things:
1. I just wanted to see if anyone was considering what we as event shooters would do if DVD/BR goes away personally I think it will but hopefully not for a few years.

Now I think about it, for weddings I wouldn't mind but I do a few dance events as well every year and I get paid per dvd I sell, so if I deliver +200 dvd's it's quite profitable but if I only had to deliver one HD master I had to set one price in advance and I couldn't ask as much since there is no time involved burning and printing the dvd's, often after I deliver they ask extra copies and with each copy it's extra income, that would be gone with a digital delivery.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Noa

Unless of course you created a web page with a "subscription" so that only people who have paid can watch the event. Sort of "Pay per View" ... that again would have it's problems!

My fears with cloud based delivery is still the "value for money" that a nicely packaged set of disks gives the client compared to just a link.

When I did photography in the old days the client got a big white box with a wedding album full of prints and enlargements and sitting in delicate tissue paper. The client viewed that as good value for money for what they have paid.. but of course nowdays photogs just maybe hand over a DVD with all the images on it which appears to less value for money than the album.

When you were a kid didn't you like Christmas gifts in huge boxes rather than those in tiny ones? I think packaging and presentation has a lot to do with client satisfaction and cloud or even USB delivery cannot do that!!

Chris

[Noa Put]

Unless of course you created a web page with a "subscription" so that only people who have paid can watch the event. Sort of "Pay per View" ... that again would have it's problems!

Or you could have a download button and pay per copy they download but then you can have people copying the file and sharing it further, they can also duplicate dvd's themselves but copying a digital file is much easier. Untill that would happen I"m happy just supplying many dvd's and printed dvdcases for danceperformances. :)

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Arthur Gannis

….and yet there are those that want to degrade all that and relegate it onto a low res upload on the net. Whoa !

Don't confuse download with YouTube quality. That would be a big mistake. YouTube crushes things to meet the really low bandwidth requirements. There's no reason you couldn't make large full HD files available, subject to server space and allowed bandwidth. Full HD H264 in 15mbit is perfectly acceptable for most uses.

Don't confuse 'hard copy' with 'will last forever'. Unless you are using 100 year archive media (a lot more expensive), your standard discs could easily fail in just a few years, depending on the client keeps it. Neither DVD +/- R or BD-R media is guaranteed to still be playable when they get to their 25th anniversary. OTOH, what is the point of using 100 year archive media if in a few years no one has a player?

Unless the client is tech savy and knows how to rip DVDs and Blu-ray discs (the vast majority don't), what are they going to do with their Blu-ray disc when Blu-ray players are no longer around? Exactly how are they going to play them?

DVD & Blu-ray could easily be gone from the majority of homes in the next 10 - 15 years. It's not like a photograph where a hard copy requires no technology, what ever you give them needs some 3rd party technology to play it.

You could argue the same thing for USB sticks, but I suggest that it's far easier for them to transfer a playable movie from a USB stick to other formats than it is from Blu-ray or even DVD.

I'm not trying to stir up an argument. I'm just stating an opinion and/or asking questions. This is a subject we all need to understand.

Originally Posted by Noa Put

Now I think about it, for weddings I wouldn't mind but I do a few dance events as well every year and I get paid per dvd I sell, so if I deliver +200 dvd's it's quite profitable but if I only had to deliver one HD master I had to set one price in advance and I couldn't ask as much since there is no time involved burning and printing the dvd's, often after I deliver they ask extra copies and with each copy it's extra income, that would be gone with a digital delivery.

I agree Noa. I also do some 'per DVD' sales of events and a digital download of those would be much harder to generate revenue from, especially if they don't need to order 'now' to get it. Being able to put ordering off until next week, next month, next year means most people will lose interest and not actually end up buying the download.

It's extremely unlikely that the organisers would pay you a reasonable sum to film and hand over a master, and then what would they even do with it? They are giving you the job because they don't want to do it themselves. How would they generate their revenue from a master with unknown advance sales?

In these cases, having a physical DVD is what generates the revenue and being able to watch it online has almost not value to most of the people who otherwise buy the DVD. For this reason alone I hope DVDs continue for some time.

BTW not one of these events has anyone ever asked me for a Blu-ray!

[Noa Put]

Unless the client is tech savy and knows how to rip DVDs and Blu-ray discs (the vast majority don't), what are they going to do with their Blu-ray disc when Blu-ray players are no longer around? Exactly how are they going to play them?

The same applies for all those super 8, vhs or whatever ancient technologies where people have to go to a professional to have them transferred to a current medium, like dvd, that's why I prefer delivering HD files on a usbstick, those should be accessible for many years to come no matter what new delivery format they invent, but it will only be safe IF the client makes a backup of their precious files and that unfortunately doesn't always happen. I tell my clients 5 times before they leave my place they need to make backup copies and yet I still get mails like "my harddrive has crashed, do you still have a copy?" Especially these small portable hardrives that take power through the usb cable seem to be very sensitive to crashes.

[Arthur Gannis]

I still have a few client's regular VHS tapes and U-Matic Sony tapes that weddings were shot back in 1976 and have transfered them to DVD wedding videos recently without any issues. Obviously the original quality was crap the like 720/480 SD but they still played fine. That's almost 40 years ago. Those original tapes could also have been put or remastered on S-VHS, Betacam, Betacam SP and DigiBetacam as technology changed. Always an avenue for the transfer to produce income to the videographers. I know a chap who does just transfers of all sorts and is busier than ever, he paid off his house doing just that. I am sure that when Blu-Ray changes to another format all the Blu-Ray writers will not all instantly dissappear in a puff of smoke. It takes many years to go into oblivion.My first DVD'd to customers from 2001 still play fine today.I never had a client call me to say his wedding DVD is lost due to age. As a matter of fact, I had many clients who I convinced to have their 2 part DVD's put into one part Blu-Ray and with much better video quality as all my weddings since 2000 have been retained on HD's as original from camera DV digital footage. Sure brings in extra cash during the slow season.