Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Does anybody deliver HD copies of wedding videos on media other than DVDs? Im getting sick of the low quality DVD's have to offer and don't want to switch to expensive blu-ray. Does anyone here use USB drives. The problem I have is that my weddings are much larger than the 4GB FAT32 file size limit. If I want to put a 30 gb hd wedding video on a usb drive, How do I do it? Thanks.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

BR drives have come down - well under $100 advertised at Fry's (west coast geek toy store)... and disks are also down to around/under $1 (I picked up 25 printable ones for $30 not to long ago)...

Might be time to re-evaluate, since BR players are ALSO well sub $100, meaning they WILL be adopted by a buyer far more readily. Not sure DVD players will be market viable too much longer as BR comes down into the "reasonable" price range most consumers will consider when upgrading/replacing/purchasing.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Funny you mention it, because a few weeks ago, I modified all my packages to come with USB drives with the final video on there.

It's a whole lot easier than having to deal with on-disc printing and printing DVD case inserts. Plus with the advent of all the new TV technologies, I think most clients will love having it solid state.

They can literally take it with them where ever they go. On their phone, tablet, etc.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Hi Kyle

That's my 2012 Resolution...give the bride her wedding on USB!! However their is one nagging question on my side!! Do you compile the files into a menu based structure or just supply one huge wedding clip??

All my weddings are broken up into one clip per event so I usually have 16 odd clips for a wedding which makes it less stressful to watch and is easily organised with DVD Lab so they can watch what they want.

I don't really want to just supply them a bunch of MP4 files on the USB drive although they would be easy to handle if they were intelligently named!!! Is there any software out there that can "organise" a batch of MP4 clips and autorun them so they come up the same as I do on my DVD's with a menu????

Chris

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

You could try the latest version of Toast. From the feature list "Combines multiple videos into a single DVD or Blu-ray disc."

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

You could embed VLC onto the thumb drive as a portable app. An autorun script should be able to load VLC and play a playlist.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Chris,

As far as handling a bunch of individual clips, I'm not sure how that would work really. ..

In the past, I've always done my wedding edits as essentially one long project.

My initial idea is to deliver that single exported file, which is usually about an hour or less (depending).

The reason I decided to offer USB was because, over Black Friday, I picked up two of the Wal Mart special $49 LG Blu Ray players. They have a USB port and can play movies off a thumb drive. Additionally, I'm looking at new TVs and they all seem to come with USB ports too. Additionally, when I look at all the people I know with tablet devices, they all can watch movies on them and pretty much take them wherever they go. Same thing with the 4"+ cell phones.

I'm thinking that now is really the time to start the move away from discs and into solid state.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

I would like nothing more than for this to happen, but I think it's going to be a long process, and may never fully get to the point where we just deliver tiny thumb drives and nothing else more substantial.

In my experience, couples (and their families) put a lot of value on the physical aspect (packaging and design, disc, etc.), as another piece of wedding memorabilia.

And to me, it just cheapens the end product. "We paid a couple grand and all we get is THIS?"

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

BluRay isn't as expensive as it was used to be. Burner is less than $100. Player is less than $70. Blank disk is just a few dollars each.

To me I would still prefer deliver in DVD and BluRay. Customers love to have something tangible to hold in their hands. With DVD and Bluray cover design and disk label, it certainly makes it look like a hollywood movie disk. I always give my clients more copies so they can distribute to their friends and family, at the same time, help promote my business.

what if the B&G wants to give a copy of their DVD to their grandparents. USB delivery will not be possible.

IMO I would say USB delivery or Online stream would be an add-on option.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Thanks Kyle

Yeah I must admit solid state will eventually be the media of the future ... sure Granpa will not be able to play a USB drive BUT also bear in mind Taky, that he won't be able to play a BD either!! I have grandparents who still have a VHS player and a CRT TV...what will you do about that situation where even an SD DVD is no use to them??? At least you can take a drive easier around with you and pop it into your tablet/laptop etc etc. I really think brides would love the idea of being able to pop their wedding video into a tiny purse to watch at their girlfriend's house.

Presentation is the key to making this a "value for money" item ..maybe a nice silk lined presentation box with the drives also in their own fancy case. I do see the point about a tiny item costing thousands so probably packing is the key to that (plus once you add your DVD Set and BD Set to the end presentation it will look quite smart.... I have yet to see some really nice looking "wedding USB drives" Sure there are metal finish ones there and also the novelty ones too but has anyone see "classy" drives that LOOK expensive??

Chris

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Victor, the quality of DVD output highly depends on which encoder and the type of encoding involved. I am using Procoder, running 2-pass VBR. Even at 3mbps, I got very high quality output. Procoder isn't cheap tho.

Not many people have a computer hook up to a TV set.. There're more people have set top DVD hooked up to TV. I would agree solid state or online delivery will be popular in the future. Right now, it would be an attractive add on to what you are already offering.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

I offer a DVD and thumb drive with the HD finals on it. Its broken down into highlight, feature, ceremony, speeches. It helps future proof the videos while also giving them the DVD's that most of them watch anyways.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Hi David

That sounds sensible..I currently give a DVD as the first line of defence as all brides will have a DVD player, unlikely to have a BluRay player and all seem to own their own laptop or Tablet so the idea of having the DVD for "the family to watch" and then show off the HD USB version to her girlfriends is not only good for the bride but the girlfriends (with a high rate of being eligible as future brides) will watch the video in HD and be suitably impressed. We all need future business and referal business is good cos the new client has already watched her best friend's wedding and knows what to expect !!

Chris

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

I really need an answer to this question please: all USB drives are fat32. That has a file size limit of 4gb. How do you deliver a wedding well over the 4gb limit on a USB? Or is there a way to convert to ntsc that I am unaware of?

I will look into procoder. I need something that will take a 3-4 hour video and convert into a 'pro' or watchable wedding video on a dual layer dvd. Premiere does a horrible job.
thanks.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

As I just posted in another thread we have taken our lead from the Hollywood studios:-) & now supply a Triple-pack of Blu-ray, DVD & a digital copy. The latter used to be on a USB stick but now we burn to a disc so we can use 3-disk cases for presentation. We haven't found any nice cases for 2xdisc & 1xUSB plus you can print a nice picture onto discs whereas it's more difficult to personalise a USB stick. You can get them printed with your address for runs of 50 but there is no way of getting one or two just for a particular couple. We post online for download too. Anyone who is tech-savvy enough to play the HD copy off a USB stick can also copy the file from the disc or download it.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Where are the brides playing the USB content though? I dont know many people who are savvy enough to play it anywhere but on their computer which seems redundant to me? Unless they have a media center/tv setup.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Good points. Why not go one step further and offer a tablet with the video already on it? Just work it into the price. Just a thought. Cheers.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

I like the idea of a tablet included in the package, or at least in the higher end packages - it will encourage the bride to take it with her to show her friends & famliy, rather than just lending them a disk that may or may not ever get watched.

It's also possible to get custom designed protective cases for ipads, though I don't know about any of the other tablets.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Hi John
If they already have an iPad or Tablet that would be a bit of a waste!! I tried (a few years back) offering Digital Frames to brides with the wedding ceremony preloaded on an SD card and not even a nibble!!

I think the answer here would be an autorun file on the drive and a player so when they plug it into a USB port it plays the clips for them?? Most brides and friends seem to still have laptops and the idea of lugging around a tablet specially configured to play the video would probably be too much effort for them.

However a tiny USB stick can be simply dropped into a handbag or even clipped onto your car keys and will even fit into a tiny evening bag so that might have more appeal... I was going to offer brides a media player with the video on a USB but that also is a pain to carry around...the player, the power supply, the HDMI cable (they also need to know where to plug everything in!!!)

The idea of a tiny USB that you plug into your laptop and away it goes is probably a better angle and you can keep the $700 (Tablets cost that much in Perth) to spend on yourself!!

I still think the USB stick is a good, convenient and easy to carry around device as a "brag album" and that creates more work for us in the future as most of the bride's friends are potential clients!!

Chris

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

100% agree!!

It is no different than formatting an internal/external drive. You need to use Device Manager.

There are ways to get great DVD output with Premiere/Encore! Takes time to get a workflow that works for you. It took me 2+ years of trial, error and research to get anything that I was even comfortable showing.

JS

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Encore can export the entire authoring output into a browser contained Flash movie. In that case, the menu navigation structure, subtitle... can be preserved. That goes online streaming as well.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

So many ideas but I'll just say that a couple that owns one tablet wants another. Also, people love free stuff and will stand in line for days to get it. Make the ad say "FREE iPad2 with your memories ready to show friends and family. Re-live the most precious moments of your life..." etc. That's a USP in a sea of video service ads. USB sticks are so cheap these days that it would be kinda silly not to include it maybe skinned with a bride appropriate color and message. Cheers

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Victor, just format it to ntsc.

Roku is coming out with a new media player that looks like a flash drive for $70. Don't know if you can load the movies onto it though. I thought most newer tv's come with media players and usb ports built in? I would just use a vimeo file format which is good quality and can fit on a 4gb drive.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

I'm dubious as to how practical it is to deliver in several different formats in the real world.

I say that because in my NLE of choice - which is Sony Vegas Pro 11 - I have to do a separate render for eaxh format and that can take a very long time. Maybe its different in other NLE's?

Most of my shows are 60-80 minutes long. The video content is from Canon 5DII's and Panasonic TM900's (at 1080p 50p PAL land). I also include what may be several dozen stills covering aspects of the day that were not video'd. I don't use any special effects or fancy transitions but there are transitions between each still. Many of the video clips are cropped a bit to improve composition, or rotated slightly to line up with prominent vertical or horizontal features in the shots. Very little if any stabilsation used as nearly everything is shot on legs.

I render separately for BluRay, for SD DVD, and for computer optimised. Each render can take 24 hours no sweat. And thats on Windows 7 64 machines with i7 processors and lots of RAM. One Pass not two pass. I tend to render on a laptop and just leave it running; reason is if there's power outage I won't loose the work in progress.

Much as I'd like to supply clients with 3 different formats as a matter of course, thats not a commitment I want to make. Too risky if a backlog builds up.

My main onsite playback is via a Sony Bluray player or Playstation 3, or Panasonic DVD player to a 50" Panasonic plasma. I have to say that the upscaling from SD from all three is terrific and in blind tastings "normal" people have to look hard to appreciate a difference between upscaled SD and Bluray.

Pete

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Pete, you could always export to some kind of high quality intermediate file, like Cineform, which becomes your digital master. Then you can render it to any other format you like using Vegas or any other program you choose and it'll be light years faster than re-rendering to another format from the timeline.

It's been a while since I used Vegas so I don't really recall much about the exporting options or know how much is different with newer versions, but with Premiere Pro & Adobe Media Encoder you can queue it up to export several different versions. You also can setup 'watch folders' where any media dropped into that folder gets exported to the pre-designated format assigned to that folder. So once you have your intermediate you can just put it in the different watch folders (eg one for DVD, one for h.264, etc) and they will be encoded automatically. Not sure if anything like this exists as a stand alone software product, but it might be something worth looking at, beause I feel the time is coming soon when brides will be expecting more than just a DVD copy.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Victor,

I offer the wedding on USB flash drive (as MP4 files), and because of the 4GB limit I break it up into chapters. Although you can convert the drive to NTFS, I like to tell them that they can play the HD video through their Playstation 3 or X Box system and these only work with FAT32.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Hi Jim

My weddings are already in event clips so I have no limit issues anyway. Nice to know that they play on gaming consoles like PS3 and XBox!!! They run perfectly on my media player too and it simply lists the files on screen and you can select what to play. My clips are all 'intelligently' named anyway so the clips will appear as "arrival.mp4" and "ceremony.mp4" so even a dumb blonde and figure out what to select.

Does anyone know if you plug the USB into, say, a laptop, if you can create a batch file that will automatically load the files into Windows Media Player and play them ... I know in Win7 if you load a DVD into the drive it acts as a DVD player and autoruns Media Player and displays the Menu, but those are VOB files.... anyone got a quick autorun example for a batch of MP4 files so they run immediately in Media player?????

Chris

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

They drag it from the USB stick & drop it into iTunes then synch their iDevice & watch HD video on their iPad/iPhone/iPod.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

It's preferable to label them with chapter numbers too then they wont just appear in alphabetic order so that "01-bridal_preparations" will appear before "02-arrival.mp4".
I wouldn't create a Windows-only solution as the wealthier more desirable clients will have Macs:-)

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Thanks Nigel

Very good point indeed...it would be desirable to have the files in the order that the events happened so I'll definately take your advice on that!!!

Macs are few and far between on this side of the pond BUT Ipads and the like are very popular so as you say, dump the files onto a USB and let the client play them however she desires. We often put brides in the 'dumb blonde' classification but more often that not they are pretty clued up when it comes to their own tech devices.

Thanks for the extra hints and tips...I'm however still struggling to find USB sticks that don't have the manufacturer's logo all over them...just a nice silver one would do me fine! I would really like a generic one that says "Our Wedding" so the bride doesn't mix it up with any other USB's she might have lying around.

Chris

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Chris, within Australia I believe Officeworks makes custom USB sticks. I don't know if you can include a logo/graphic or just text though. You have to order in bulk but if you're delivering that way for every single wedding then that shouldn't be a problem.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

There is something seriously amiss with your setup or workflow if it takes 24 hours to render a 60 minute DVD on an i7 PC.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

We've been providing all our couples with USB sticks for a year now. We split the completed video into 3 or 4 separate videos (so each one is less than 4GB, so they will each fit onto the drive).

:)

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

I'll agree with Nigel Peter. It takes me about 30 minutes to render a 90 minute project to SD from 1080p or 720 60p, with color correction and color/appearance FX in use.

For Bluray render it will take a lot longer, I forget how long, but it's real time or less, like about 60-90 minutes.

I would kill myself if I had 24 hour render and had a mistake and had to redo it.

Once I'm done editing, it takes me between 2 and 4 hours to get my DVDs rendered and burned; then a couple of hours more for the bluray discs, they take forever.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

On my i7 with a 1920x1080 source and pretty much standard titles and some cutins and cutaway clips on a second track takes around 1/3rd real-time. That is with Sony Vegas so it's much the same as Jeff.

However if you have added plugins or complicated FX then the render times will take much longer. NeatVideo is one plugin that will increase render times drastically!!! It still shouldn't take 24 hours.

I don't ever have clips that long..my weddings are split into events so I never render any clip more than 20 minutes! That way the DVD is simple to chapter and if there is an error I don't have to re-render a 100 minutes of video...at the most 20 minutes.

Chris

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

After all these talk, I decided to try it out to export the entire wedding to Flash using Encore. It works!!! It can be delivered online or playback locally preserving the DVD navigation and viewing experience. Yay!

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/wedding-...ml#post1709566

Since it is all Flash, it won't work on ipad.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Ah but what would it be!

I am giving Vegas an aweful lot to chew through. It is using the native files from 5DII's and Panny TM900's (which are 1920x1080 50p in my case), none transcoded. The TM900 clips are often cropped and levelled with horizontal etc as they are often from locked down minimally monitored B cams. I make good use of MultiCam editing mode in Vegas so there may be several dozen live clips in the final 60 min project. Fortunately there is seldom much colour editing to do as the cams are all a good match with each other, and no noise reduction as they all perform well in low light n.b. I would only use the 5DII's and fast lenses in very low light.

The still images are PNG's converted from JPEGs in Photoshop, and were originally max size RAWs from the 5DII's converted in Capture One Pro; in landscape format these are 3840 x 2560 and in portrait format 3840 x 2160 (but with each of the two sides transparent - if you see what I mean). I find this PNG suits me best for compositing. I make a lot of use of stills and the size is a good compromise where panning and zooming is required (not much). I add a track level Curve in Vegas to the still image tracks to reduce the contrast slightly.

I usually create 5 or 6 projects then bring these together as one Nested project.

My main desktop has an i7 950 and 12gb RAM. My main latop is an i7 of a slightly lesser status and 8gb RAM. The render times on both are similar.

The desktop runs hot and I need to replace the thermal compound. I'll probably do a clean reinstall of Windows when I get the chance as currently its an upgrade of 7 64 bit over Vista 64 bit.

I'm at a loss as to how to reduce the render times. I'm somewhat reassured that its similar on both machines and that some other users get comparable times. Hard to find solid feedback as so many posters on the net only create 10 min Youtube clips of skateboarding etc and don't seriously get involved in lengthy DVD and BluRay creation for paying clients. Oh well.

Pete

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Maybe it's a Vegas thing then because no other NLE I have used could take anywhere near to 24 hours to render a one hour DVD. We now use Premiere Pro & Encore but I do recall when we used FCP that rendering lots of still photographs did take a while but nothing approaching 24 hours. I would have evolved a workflow that would take 24 hours as I would be too concerned about a making a mistake & having to re-do it perhaps several times over. Rendering individual chapters & then bring them together when you assemble the DVD makes far more sense as if you need to change something it's only one small segment not the whole project. Encore is really great with the ability to generate from the same project a DVD a Blu-ray or as Taky just pointed out a Flash online version.

By way of comparison on our 3-year old dual CPU Mac Pros an SD DVD renders in 3x real time while a Blu-ray renders almost in real time on the system with a CUDA graphics card providing hardware acceleration (2-3x real time without). Interestingly it takes longer to render a 1280x720 H.264 MPEG file for Vimeo than a full HD 1920x1080 Blu-ray.

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

Ah. I see. Do you work in Encore? I assume you mean that Encore breaks up chapters automatically while breaking up the file size? Or are you doing it manually somehow?

Re: Anyone deliver on USB Drives?
 

About formatting in NTFS - I am not for sure becuase I don't use Apple products but I don't think NTFS is Apple friendly. You might want to make sure before you deliver a product on an NTFS drive to an Apple owner.