i've just finished up editing and producing DVDs for some nativity plays I shot last week and this week.

They were shot on a combination of full HD (C100) and 4K (GH4) and the edited down to SD for DVD.

The level of detail at 4K is astounding but by the time it hits the DVD it's all mush and looks like it's had gaussian blur applied.

Why oh why do people still buy DVDs? Arrgghh!!!

I guess they will be happy with them, albeit it blown up on a 65" HD TV looking like crap.

Sorry, had to vent somewhere!

Ignore me, nothing to see here, pass on by. Thank you.

I agree, just sat here editing Nativity footage, I'm not convinced Blu-Ray is the future though, given that most people own a DVD player. Online delivery...?

Still its a step on from VHS!

I'm not convinced Blu-Ray is the future though

It's not..... but then how would we get paid for online delivery? Getting paid per disc delivered is much easier.

And that's the catch 22, people will pay to get a DVD, and its what is expected. Pay per view is the only other option, however not many people can get it on their telly, so you are back to the dvd!

Doesn't stop the quality frustrations though! I share your pain!

Today was the first one we've filmed this Christmas to feature John Lewis Ad Music... :-)

I had my first couple complain about quality. All I could say is 'sorry but thats just DVD'. I don't provide Bluray and the couple didn't have a Bluray player anyways.

Still get clients asking "Is it HD???" When they know the package id for DVDs. Everytime I explain that DVDs are not HD it feels like an admittance of inadequacy!

Can't wait to roll out my USB product. Ran a test and plugged the USB into my tv - It's so so so much better!

And ridiculously straight forward!

Can't help feeling that with 4K TV's coming out, the quality of the DVD will be even more picked up on. I plan to invest in one early next year and I'm very intrigued to play one of my Wedding DVD's to see how it looks. Having seen my videos on Smartphones, Tablets, HD Tv's, computers, I have a pretty good idea as to the quality on most formats. 4K TV's are another thing; just what will the up-scaling do with DVD's, given that these TV's advertise that it'll up-scale normal TV to look like 4K.
Thankfully I keep all my final videos as HD files just in case a former client decides to regret they chose the DVD option.

Can't wait to roll out my USB product. Ran a test and plugged the USB into my tv - It's so so so much better!

I agree, but the problem is only one of my five HD TVs will actually play a USB stick, so how many more are there out there like this, e.g. parents and grandparents?

Probably a lot, and then even more where they can play USB sticks on their TV, but will never figure out how.

I don't think you're going to have to worry about a lot of 4K set-top displays until people's televisions start going out. I simply don't see the reason why anyone would go out and purchase one if theirs is still working perfectly fine.

I just format my usbstick in exFAT so it can be opened on either mac or pc, that stick is only to get the HD files from my place to theirs, I never promise they will be able to play it directly on their tv when they plug that stick in because if their tv doesn't support playback they will come back to me complaining. I do tell them they can playback the HD files on any device IF that device supports MP4 playback.

I don't provide Bluray and the couple didn't have a Bluray player

Clive, you probably know this anyway but just in case: you don't have to go through DVD Architect Pro to make BluRays. If you stay in Vegas Pro and go to Tools > Burn Disc you can produce it straight from Vegas. You won't have a clever menu obviously but does that matter. Does anyone ever use menus? If you insert chapter markers at all the logical points and in the burn options select that these chapter markers are included then its easy to just skip back and forth using the BluRay players normal chapter buttons. No good for that particular couple but its an easy way to produce BluRays in the future. Your only overhead is the disc the packaging and the rendering time. No extra editing.

I'm very intrigued to play one of my Wedding DVD's to see how it looks

You could take a disc into a knowledgeable retailer such as Richer Sounds. I'm sure they would let you give it a whirl. After all you are thinking of buying one and they are a first choice of vendor. They may even let you change the settings from the usually garish showroom defaults.

I find that my various player boxes tend to make a better job of upscaling than the TVs. I would try both ways.

Pete

I had my first couple complain about quality. I don't provide Bluray

Really? You know that it's 2014, right?

I've been providing Bluray discs for two or three years, would be hugely embarrassed to not offer Bluray discs. I give USB stick also but they do not work for a lot of people, I really like giving all three formats to my clients. It's too easy to do so.

I find them simpler to do than DVDs, no resizing of images and my videos look awesome on a 60" tv.

I have talked many customers into buying their first Bluray player to watch their wedding video. I tell them "$50 at Target and your DVDs will look better also." They usually run right out and snap one up immediately, they cost so little now.

I tell them DVDs look like crap and they really don't want to watch their wedding video on DVD and they will often wait to watch their video until they have their bluray player. They like their video more and I come out looking better for it. We all win.

Blu-ray players are here down to 50 euro while the cheapest dvd players cost 25 euro, you could almost include the player in your package. :) But even though they run very cheap now, I only had 1 request for blu-ray this year but I did supply them all with a usb stick with the HD files.

I think DVD's are at a stage exactly how Video Cassettes were in the late 90's; dominating the market but not for much longer. With Smart TV's, Streaming Services, lots of people watching video on Tablets, Computers and even phones, methods of delivery are already changing. I've given couples the option of what format they want their first copy in, DVD, Bluray or USB, with subsequent copies in DVD.
Mostly it's DVD, understandable, but this year I've had a significant number asking for Bluray in that I'm down to 2 Bluray cases remaining from a box of 25, plus a number asking for USB. Next year I'm going to describe the benefits of each as well as suggest that in my opinion, DVD's in 10 years time will likely hold the same place that Video Cassettes do now.

Really? You know that it's 2014, right?

I've been providing Bluray discs for two or three years, would be hugely embarrassed to not offer Bluray discs.

Seriously? Maybe it's geography. I don't actually know anybody who watches movies on Bluray. They may own Bluray players but if they do it probably was upselling by the electrics store rather than being sought out.

I've had NO clients in three years asking about Bluray.

Not to worry though - I'm only producing DVDs for my 2014 clients - USB from January onwards.

Pretty sure USB along with a single basic DVD disc will satisfy all my clients needs.

I'm certainly not going to invest in what is destined to become the next Betamax/Minidisc.

Clive, Blurays and HD tv might not be as popular there, but all you need is a burner and discs to offer it.

I do know that you have to be proactive and offer it and start the conversation. No, it's true that even here most customers do not ASK for bluray, but when selling my service I talk about HD and how great it is, it's a real selling point.

Dave, I feel your frustration. We have these wonderful cameras and lenses, and the client ask for SD. I almost always suggest bluray. For one, the video looks great. Secondly, most who watch it will appreciate it. There is nothing worse than sending out your work on SD format and having people say...that video did not look that good...when in actuality it did.

I have been looking at this situation of delivery methods in the modern age and am kind of stumped.

DVD seemingly will never go away and Blu-ray has not caught on. Streaming does not work as well for us micro businesses and memory card/USB delivery calls for tech savvy which might not fit every customer.

What to do? I am looking at SD cards for instant delivery as my PX270 will record a proxy file along side the P2 recording. But this only works for certain jobs, but do not know how many clients will like them.

The lack of DVD-Roms in computers and the advent of streaming TV makes the simple task of delivery a mystery. It is much easier to charge and get paid for something physical. When you just put something on line or deliver a file it seems like it cheapens the product value imho.

What is next in this industry for us to deal with? At least 3D went away!

I'm not convinced Blu-Ray is the future though

Blu-ray would be much more entrenched if it wasn't for the stupid format wars between it and HD-DVD. That set things back a few years.

All I know if that I love how a Blu-ray is truly showcasing what I shot that day. Beautiful detail and color. I wish they'd outlaw DVD's, just so clients would be forced to buy a Blu-ray player.

Personally I think the tech industry only has itself to blame. They always rely on hype and 'lust buying' to satisfy their greed by overpricing.

Time and time again with innovative technology, you only infiltrate the homes of tech nerds and people with money who want to impress.

If you want to dominate the market and put an end to the previous norm, you have to make sure your price is tempting.

Quality has never worked as an incentive to those determined to be frugal. NEVER.


Bluray missed it's chance. And I'm fairly certain 4k TVs will go the same way. If they dominate at all I reckon it will still be a decade away. People expect their £300/400 flat screens to last them a long time. 4K is not enough reason for most people to upgrade when they've maybe only owned their plasmas for less than ten years.

Digital data however - that's already a household concept that nearly everybody bar grannies are
a) confident with
b) have some way of accessing

They just need convinced so.

USB benefits:
- HD quality
- Backupon PC
- Backup on cloud
- Play on PC/Laptop and probably on TVs and other set top boxes with USB port
- Files can be transferred to relatives/friends via Dropbox or similar
- Files can be put on to your phone or ipad/tablet
- and probably more I can't think of.

Bluray on the other hand whilst providing HD quality also requires a player that a heck of a lot of people don't own.

People want stable and unfuzzy pictures - this is what they hated about VHS and Betamax - the shakes and fuzzy images. DVD in SD is fine for the masses, and only the enthusiasts want ultimate quality. My wife watches TV in the bedroom, and on the satellite box she can watch BBC in SD or HD. The one she chooses is the closest number of button pushes to where she was previously - she doesn't even notice the image quality because SD is enough.

When I put in a Bluray burner I bought some discs - and they are unopened in the packaging. No client yet has asked for them. Damn annoying Adobe has abandoned DVD totally.

One thing i'm pleased about is USB delivery will be future proof.

Every single television now tends to have a USB port that plays .mp4's and an array of files.

In 5 more years most people should have a flat screen TV with a USB port so you can completely scrap Bluray delivery and just give a DVD and a USB stick for crisp picture clarity.

And another thing ... the past 2-3 weeks I witnessed flat screen 42" - 50" TV's going for under £250 brand new in the UK. Now if you deliver high end films and charge thousands you could even fit a new TV, USB and Media player (total cost of less than £300 to you) in to your package ! ! !

What settings are you guys using when you supply the video on a USB stick?

After all there's high def and there's high def.

I've been supplying an MP4 files in addition to a regular DVD for the past 3 years.

I render the MP4 in Sony Vegas Pro using Main Concept and using a two-pass variable bit rate routine. I've found that two-pass does give a smaller file size plus some detail can appear clearer e.g. brick walls. This is set to a maximum bps of 14,000,000 and an average bps of 10,000,000. The frame is 1920x1080 and progressive - which conveniently matches the files my various cams output. The frame rate is set to 25fps PAL - being the UK though my video cams output 50fps. Its 4:2:0 - any higher would probably be wasted in the scenarios in which I normally shoot even if my cams could do 4:2:2. 8 bit.

Audio is 384 kbps 48,000 Hz 16 bit stereo AAC. I don't attempt to do surround sound.

Just rendered a two hour video in two parts onto two dual layer DVDs - just as a delivery system as I tell the clients to copy the files to a hard drive for smooth playback.

The total file size is 12.5GB.

I could dial in higher variable bit rates but then I'd be into the territory of the bit rate being too high for some devices. Not to mention much higher total file sizes. The results with the setting I've described look very nice indeed on my 50" Panasonic plasma and 42" Sony LCD. they play back as is on my Ipad 3 and my Galaxy S3 smartphone, no need to downsample in Itunes etc.

If I were to burn BluRays direct from Vegas Pro - which is ever so easy - Main Concept gives a maximum user-selectable rate of 25 mbps. The alternative Sony AVC has a max of 16 mbps.

Interestingly when I selected one of my MP4 files - that I put on dual layer DVDs but could put on suitably formatted USB sticks - in the free MediaInfo program it shows a bit rate of 15.1 mbps.

Whats your take on whats high def and what are the upper limits over which you might get playback issues?

Pete

It is not one size fits all. If you are delivering a wedding you might be able to easily help your customer out with any tech issues. If you are selling larger quantities this can be a problem.

In my experience, even though everybody has a nifty phone these days many, many people are not tech savvy. You give them a media file and they might not know what to do with it or not trust that it will work. So it funnels back to "DVD will be fine" is the phrase I hear a lot.

The other problem with memory delivery is cost. For larger deliveries $2-$5 per item is a lot compared to under 50 cents for a DVD or $1.40 for Blu-ray.

USB televisions are relatively new and you can not rely upon the same "DVD" folks to have the latest tech in their televisions. My 1080p Panasonic plasma does not have USB and I have zero plans to replace it anytime soon.

Then there is compatibility. I sent an mp4 file created in Adobe Media Encoder CS6 to a web designer a few weeks ago and it would not play on his Windows system yet it played fine on my Windows system. Re-sent him a Windows Media file and it played fine. Imagine sending that file out to multiple customers and dealing with the situation...

It boils down to more work for you the business owner to offer all of these format options. Which very often leads back to - DVD... Just because it works.

Just rendered a two hour video in two parts onto two dual layer DVDs - just as a delivery system as I tell the clients to copy the files to a hard drive for smooth playback.

The total file size is 12.5GB.


Pete

I'm just experimenting with USB delivery for next year and it would seem that FAT32 is the way to go regarding format to ensure maximum compatibility - but that is limited to 4GB files no? I'm assuming then Peter that you are using DVDs simply as storage medium for your MP4 files?

I've just completed a Hindu wedding where the ceremony alone is over 2 hours and I'm struggling to get it under 25GB - that's setting a target bitrate of 15Mbps which is pretty low. My frame size is 1920X1080 @ 25fps progressive. Looks like the whole wedding is going to be on 2 Blu-Ray discs!

Pete

It's not..... but then how would we get paid for online delivery? Getting paid per disc delivered is much easier.

There are several services, including Vimeo, who will allow you to sell or rent your video/film through them.

https://vimeo.com/ondemand

I'm assuming then Peter that you are using DVDs simply as storage medium for your MP4 files?

Thats right. Purely for delivery. No way will these discs play in a DVD drive smoothly - they have to be transferred to a hard drive. I think people are using Ex-Fat as a formatting method for the USBs rather than Fat32.

I don't trust USB sticks yet anyway. And there could be a further issue with them if the playback device cannot read them at a fast enough rate. I would be surprised if USB sockets on most TVs are fast, after all they are really there for the convenience of playing back photos and music not for high-def film consumption.

Pete

Blu-ray has not caught on.

I'd guess that 1/2 or more of my customers have Blurays already, if not more. People are not replacing DVD players with DVD players, they are buying Bluray players because the price is SO low.

Also when people buy a new 55" or 60" tv I'm sure many (not all, but many) of them are buying a bluray player to go with it.

Bluray has not taken the world by storm, that is true. However they are very common and the slowness of their catching on is not a good excuse (in my opinion) for avoiding offering Bluray discs to wedding customers.

There are several services, including Vimeo, who will allow you to sell or rent your video/film through them.
https://vimeo.com/ondemand

Though of course that assumes your customers have fast internet access. There are quite a few people I know that are still on 56K dial-up and even 512MB broadband simply because they can't get any better. That makes online delivery totally useless.

Though of course that assumes your customers have fast internet access. There are quite a few people I know that are still on 56K dial-up and even 512MB broadband simply because they can't get any better. That makes online delivery totally useless.

Based on info available, the worst area for the U.K. is northeast England, with "only" 77% of households have a high speed connection. Most areas were closer to 90%.

I'd presume its similar to here: the more rural the area, the less likely they are to have access.

However, that is still a vast majority who do have access.

Based on info available, the worst area for the U.K. is northeast England, with "only" 77% of households have a high speed connection. Most areas were closer to 90%.

I'd presume its similar to here: the more rural the area, the less likely they are to have access.

However, that is still a vast majority who do have access.

Well, I'm in the north east of England ;)

I'm lucky, I have 100mbit internet (100 down, 10 up :( ) but I know lots of people struggling with speed and I just made lots of DVDs for nativities, many of which are going to rural households.

I do not shoot weddings anymore, but if I did I would include a Blu-ray in the price of the service. The impression of your work compared to DVD is worth the $30-$50 for the player.

I am finding about 10% - 25% adoption for Blu-ray at our events. I really do think Blu-ray is the best delivery experience but folks just are not going crazy to replace their DVD players. Then some folks are going all streaming and do not even have an optical player anymore. It is safe to say many of us have built our businesses around optical media. It is a shame they are going out of style.

Sending up something we shoot that is over an hour to "I-Tunes" etc... just does not work for small business. It might sound convenient but people use these services for downloading songs, programs and short little clips. They are not in the habit of downloading a 2 hour event. Same goes for YouTube.

On top of that, filesize has to enter into this equation. Heck, even a DVD gets up to 4GB+ You are not going to send a file of this size to very many people. So you are faced with degrading the quality of your product just to deliver it.

I'd guess that 1/2 or more of my customers have Blurays already, if not more. People are not replacing DVD players with DVD players, they are buying Bluray players because the price is SO low. Bluray has not taken the world by storm, that is true. However they are very common and the slowness of their catching on is not a good excuse (in my opinion) for avoiding offering Bluray discs to wedding customers.

I think it's the same here. Blu-ray being backwards compatible with DVD and selling for under 100 bucks, it's a no brainer. Not to mention that most come with Netflix and other streaming options. People want to see HD when thy buy those huge HD TV's.

In terms of USB delivery, do you guys find you need to use USB 3.0 sticks? I've found that USB 2.0 always freezes during playback. Wondering if it's something to do with my export settings, as the freeze occurs at the same point on DVD as well.

Any help is much appreciated!

I hate them too. They stink.

Making menus is annoying. The quality is garbage. I don't think it's solely an HD and SD thing either... part of it is that Mpg2 as a compression format is really old and things have advanced since then.

In hollywood, where they can spend thousands of dollars and weeks on compression, DVD for them can look okay. Out of most of our NLEs, the Mpg2 compression is junk.

Not to mention being able to make copies of the files, transfer them to family, etc.... USB is far superior. You don't even have to be that tech savvy.

I don't get it, but every wedding last summer with the exception of 1 was delivered on DVD.

Just a quick question here. I have been doing nativity plays for the past 5 or 7 years and produce DVDs for the parents etc. They all seem very happy with them. This year I have filmed 12 performances and will deliver all orders before the schools break up (on Thursday).

My question is, how much is everyone charging for their Nativity (or wedding) DVDs, generally they have a duration of about 30 minutes or 45 min max. I charge £15 per copy. Generally we get between 20 to 30 orders per show, sometimes more, sometimes less. We do not charge an attendance fee, does anybody charge to attend?

We do dancing school graduation concerts and weddings. The concerts are still DVDs as it is too hard to convince them all to go for blu-ray. USB MP4s would be a disaster as you would get so many returns and because they are so easy to copy you would get ripped off.

Weddings on the other hand I don't give them an option. They're paying for a premium product so it is on the best HD medium currently available. Blu-ray or the highway. Surely most of you wedding guys would require a meal at the reception? The couples just agree, yet the cost of a meal or two is easily more than the cost of a BD player & HDMI cable (at least over here).

If they say "Oh we don't have a Blu-ray player" I say, "Well you might get one as a wedding present" and leave it at that.

When I hire a movie at the local video shop, it is always on BD. Their DVD section is still way bigger of course but the BD section gets bigger all the time. Same price to hire too.

Another advantage is because you can use H264 you can fit more time onto a BD disk for those that do really long form stuff.

I've been called elitist on here before but I don't care. I'm happy, clients are happy. If I miss out on a booking for not delivering on DVD, I can live with that, but no-one has insisted on DVD and if they did, I'd probably shrug and say OK, fine.

Cheers

Delivering no dvd's is ruling out the parents and grandparents because right now most still will be using a dvdplayer for as long as they work. I don't like the idea of forcing a certain format upon a couple as in my case they still can choose. This is also the reason why you can't convince the dancing schools to switch to blu-ray, because most of these dvdcopies go to the parents and grandparents.

So if granny only had a VHS player would you run off a tape for her?

There comes a time when you just have to adapt to change. VHS is gone, DVDs should be too.

I don't refuse them DVDs. If they insisted on them that's what I'd give them, but no-one has.

Yes, I've actually had to make a few VHS tapes for some people. It turned out, that the best way to make a VHS tape nowadays is to burn a DVD first, then go to a local studio that still has a VHS recorder and record a copy from the DVD! Urgh.

I don't refuse them DVDs. If they insisted on them that's what I'd give them

Ah ok, you first said you don't give them the option ("Blu-ray or the highway") but now you say you do if they ask? :) if a couple would ask me for a vhs tape, I would make it if I would have the equipment and charge extra for it, as long as they are paying I don't care.

Just a quick question here. I have been doing nativity plays for the past 5 or 7 years and produce DVDs for the parents etc. They all seem very happy with them. This year I have filmed 12 performances and will deliver all orders before the schools break up (on Thursday).

My question is, how much is everyone charging for their Nativity (or wedding) DVDs, generally they have a duration of about 30 minutes or 45 min max. I charge £15 per copy. Generally we get between 20 to 30 orders per show, sometimes more, sometimes less. We do not charge an attendance fee, does anybody charge to attend?

We've been filming nativity and end of term productions for about 8 years and always work the same way. We don't charge the schools anything for the production. but they have to order a minimum quantity based on the length of the production. we charge them £10 each for the first minimum order quantity, which would usually be 25-30 and each extra dvd costs them £5. That means that the school deals with the parents so we don't have to and they sell to the parents at £10. We typically have orders for 40-80 copies which guarantees us a return of £325-£525.

The nativity plays are quite short, we shoot with 4 cameras and can multi camera edit in an evening. I edit and my wife copies and does the sleeves. It's useful extra income for a hectic week of filming just before Christmas. We've also found that the schools love it as we have never supplied less than 40 copies, so the school ends up raising money from the sales. Parents love it as they get a 4 camera production with lots of closeups, for less than the cost of a school photo.

We actually had a parent's mass complaint at one school this year, because we had filmed every Christmas for the last 7 years apart from last year when they left it too late to book us for one show. They have two productions for different year groups and last year we filmed one, but as we were already booked for the other date, they got another company in. Apparently it was a disaster and the parents insisted that they booked us for this year or they would not buy any dvds that weren't filmed by us, so they booked 3 months in advance. Nice to know that our work is appreciated.

Roger

Way to go Roger. Looks like you are doing a great job.

Way to go Roger. Looks like you are doing a great job.

As long as the clients are happy and we can pay the bills then I'm happy:-)

Roger

Surely our job is to give the client what they want (as long as we can produce it on that media) ? If my brides want DVD then they get DVD's .. I certainly will not force them to accept a media type they cannot or are not happy using. That's almost getting back to the Henry Ford era where he said " You can have any colour as long as it's black"

It's not about what is convenient for us but what is convenient for the customer.

Chris

The good thing about DVDs is that they pretty much just work.

I've encoded mp4 video files for a playback device (a Beyonwiz P2 (http://www.beyonwiz.com.au/products.php?id=6) in this case) and found that the file abruptly stopped playing part way through a long programme. Never quite had the time to go back and sort out what had happened. I've also had times when it just didn't like the flavour of mp4/h264 video that the file was encoded to.

I mention this as the risk in supporting HD this way will be that: if your encoded file doesn't work on someone's media player then it will come back to you ... and you may find yourself spending unbudgeted hours of device support for dummies. This I would want to avoid like the plague.

Andrew

Hey Andrew

One thing that most producers don't also consider is that the bride doesn't pixel peep like we do. She more than likely has no preference to a specific format .. all she wants is to make sure she looks pretty as well as her bridesmaids. Give her SD reson a DVD and she is perfectly content.. however she has other priorities that we don't have ..if the pink bridesmaid's dresses look orange then she will pick that up very quickly. Seriously, I show brides demo footage and their only comment is "Wow it looks so clear" ... Give her nice colour saturation and clean in focus shots and she is happy ... most brides have no idea what HD is anyway (I did a survey a while back and some actually said "I cannot tell the difference, besides I'm watching what's going on at my wedding")

Good content and easy playability for me make a bride happy ..nothing else!

Chris

So true. Plus having the ability to speak 'woman' when communicating with them.

Andrew

I have tried something new, I was revising my prices and untill now I always included 3 dvd's and had blu-ray as a paying option. but for this year I only had one client asking for a blu-ray and I think last year no-one asked. This means I have a bunch of unused blu-ray discs sitting in my office and like it looks I can use them as coaster soon.

So I decided to turn things around and while doing so make some extra cash, I now have 3 Blu-ray's included standard in my package and have the dvd as a paying option, I find it important enough to continue to give my clients a choice but maybe it's better to give them the best quality from the start and only if they want them, provide them with extra dvd's.

I expect almost every client to ask for a dvd so that's some small extra income that I otherwise didn't have, since no-one took the blu-ray option.

See how that goes.

I think the problem with that is Noa you may find them thinking "well every other videographer offers DVDs as standard ..."

I could be wrong.

I try to make clear on my website that dvd is of a much lower quality and that I only want to deliver the best for them, and only for those that can't say goodbye to their dvd players that I will continue to deliver dvd's for them. I have seen the cheapest BR player for 50 euro and the cheapest dvd player for 25 euro so they are finally getting very close in cost. It actually costs more to fill up a gastank from your car then what a BR player costs so maybe it's time to convince people it's time to upgrade without forcing them into a certain format?