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TV Production(VGA Scan Reverse)

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  • The solution really comes down to using the right piece of equipment for the job. It would be nice if there was a cheaper solution than a $500 adapter, or a $4500 full teleprompter unit, but being such a niche product cheap isn't an option.
  • The solution really comes down to using the right piece of equipment for the job. It would be nice if there was a cheaper solution than a $500 adapter, or a $4500 full teleprompter unit, but being such a niche product cheap isn't an option.
    It still boggles my mind how much the television industry overpays for just about everything. At least the teleprompter truly is a niche product.
  • It still boggles my mind how much the television industry overpays for just about everything. At least the teleprompter truly is a niche product.
    Almost every big company overpays for almost everything. It takes time to hunt for bargains. They could save a ton of cash ordering from monoprice or Newegg, but instead they order from someplace like CDW because it specifically caters to corporations, while also overcharging. Also, people who sell products to other businesses intentionally overcharge excessively because they know that companies will pay. Enterprise software, Adobe products, Autodesk products, Dell computers, convention center food, office supplies, are all overpriced because companies don't have time to hunt for bargains. Sometimes it's possible to find a better price through consumer channels. Sometimes it's a product that only has business customers, and then there is no way to get it legally cheap. In the present day when regular old people want professional products, this is a cause of much consternation.
  • edited April 2011
    It still boggles my mind how much the television industry overpays for just about everything.
    Every industry "overpays" for things.

    The thing is, while hacking stuff together is often fun, by and large the goods for which you "overpay" last longer and are reliable.

    A 55 gallon Boilermaker stainless steel boiling kettle with a built-in watchglass and thermometer, from Blichmann Engineering, costs over $600. You could probably put together a similar product, by yourself, for roughly half that price. However, it'll probably last two years and won't work nearly as well.

    Sometimes, professional-grade stuff is arbitrarily more expensive because the company can get away with it. Most of the time, though, it's more expensive for a reason.

    EDIT: Software pricing is a different beast. There, you get charged more for the "convenience" of an all-in-one package. We buy expensive instruments that come bundled with Dell computers. You'd better believe we overpay like fuck for those computers. But, when you're buying a $400,000 instrument, saving $1500 on a computer by building it yourself and getting it up and running really isn't a bargain. We need it working right now.

    Also, quite often, you're paying for a service contract as well. Tech support and such, so many field visits, parts, etc.
    Post edited by TheWhaleShark on
  • My thought process was a bit different. I agree that you often get what you pay for. In TV though, professionals often get paid a daily or weekly fee for providing their own equipment. Cameramen charge a few hundred bucks for owning their own cameras, editors for their own computers. Yes, the company is avoiding the purchase, maintenance, and eventual replacement costs on all of this equipment, but the math doesn't add up. I've seen assistant editors paid $50 a day to provide their own computer, and they were just off-the-shelf Macbooks.
  • It still boggles my mind how much the television industry overpays for just about everything.
    EDIT: Software pricing is a different beast. There, you get charged more for the "convenience" of an all-in-one package. We buy expensive instruments that come bundled with Dell computers. You'd better believe we overpay like fuck for those computers. But, when you're buying a $400,000 instrument, saving $1500 on a computer by building it yourself and getting it up and running really isn't a bargain. We need it working right now.
    Especially when it comes to gov't procurement practices, it can be a lot more economical to overpay a bit on a bundle and only have to process one purchase.
  • I've seen assistant editors paid $50 a day to provide their own computer, and they were just off-the-shelf Macbooks.
    Well, depending on how long you're contracted for, that can make sense. There's more to adding a computer to a company's infrastructure than the raw cost of the machine. But I see the point. It really comes back to the concept of a "convenience" fee. You're rendering a service for people, and you've invested time and money into being able to provide that service. Get compensated!
  • There really isn't nearly as much overpaying in the video/tv industry as there may seem to be. We have to provide our own equipment, we have to pay our taxes without having them dealt with for us, we have to insure own health and equipment, transportation; it all adds up to being able to charge a daily rate that makes it possible to do those. Plus we have to be available at all hours of the day, willing to work on holidays, weekends, early mornings, late nights, we don't get paid when a job cancels in advance of the date it was scheduled for.

    That doesn't even take into account the skill required to make a good picture, with good sound and deliver it in any of dozens of different formats that could be requested.
  • I've seen assistant editors paid $50 a day to provide their own computer, and they were just off-the-shelf Macbooks.
    Well, depending on how long you're contracted for, that can make sense. There's more to adding a computer to a company's infrastructure than the raw cost of the machine. But I see the point. It really comes back to the concept of a "convenience" fee. You're rendering a service for people, and you've invested time and money into being able to provide that service. Get compensated!
    For tax purposes, every piece of equipment I buy for work that costs more than €1000 is considered to be good for 3 years. Divide how much it costs by 36 (months in 3 years) and then I can claim that much against tax per month. For my laptop, it works out at about €85 per month.

    Equipment costs money to buy, to service, to keep, to store. Every tiny detail takes time and effort, and all that is paid for by the client. As it should be.
  • I've seen assistant editors paid $50 a day to provide their own computer, and they were just off-the-shelf Macbooks.
    Well, depending on how long you're contracted for, that can make sense. There's more to adding a computer to a company's infrastructure than the raw cost of the machine. But I see the point. It really comes back to the concept of a "convenience" fee. You're rendering a service for people, and you've invested time and money into being able to provide that service. Get compensated!
    For tax purposes, every piece of equipment I buy for work that costs more than €1000 is considered to be good for 3 years. Divide how much it costs by 36 (months in 3 years) and then I can claim that much against tax per month. For my laptop, it works out at about €85 per month.

    Equipment costs money to buy, to service, to keep, to store. Every tiny detail takes time and effort, and all that is paid for by the client. As it should be.
    And in terms of video equipment, there are also cases that can sometimes cost as much as the equipment they hold in order to transport the gear safely, as well as all the expendables that you go through on a daily basis, gaff tape, video/audio/power cables, connectors and adapters, along with still more that I'm not thinking of.
  • When I worked at a TV station as a sound technician, we would sometimes rent out our sound truck. I would come with the truck for free! I mean, I would drive it to where it needed to be, and then be on hand to keep everything in order, make sure shit didn't go missing, and answer technical questions. Usually the people hiring the truck also hired a competent sound recordist, but a few times I ended up doing the live mix myself. Anyway, I was a salaried employee, so I didn't cost very much, and everyone else would be freelance, and would be earning way above me.
  • My previous job was working at a production equipment/audiovisual equipment rental house and I was basically in the same situation. Clients would call us for equipment plus an operator sometimes and I(or other in house employees) would get sent out at freelance rates, while we got paid our hourly wage. There's no telling how much they profited off me in the 7 years I worked there before they laid me off because they couldn't make the smart decisions and rent newer cameras out at a more reasonable rate.
  • edited April 2011
    Almost every big company overpays for almost everything. It takes time to hunt for bargains. They could save a ton of cash ordering from monoprice or Newegg, but instead they order from someplace like CDW because it specifically caters to corporations, while also overcharging. Also, people who sell products to other businesses intentionally overcharge excessively because they know that companies will pay. Enterprise software, Adobe products, Autodesk products, Dell computers, convention center food, office supplies, are all overpriced because companies don't have time to hunt for bargains. Sometimes it's possible to find a better price through consumer channels. Sometimes it's a product that only has business customers, and then there is no way to get it legally cheap. In the present day when regular old people want professional products, this is a cause of much consternation.
    As someone who's spent his entire career working in enterprise software/hardware (and my current employer happens to have CDW as a reseller) I take offense to claiming that our stuff is "overpriced!" Okay, maybe it is priced higher than homebrew stuff you build via parts acquired from NewEgg, but as TheWhaleShark said, you're often getting support, warranties, service, etc., included in the cost whereas your NewEgg purchase leaves you alone to handle it if anything breaks. There is also, again, the "time is money" argument -- if you pay a few hundred bucks more but it saves you several hours of setup time, it also may be worth it -- even if you're not a corporation. It's part of the reason why I no longer build my own computers unless I really, really want a specific hardware combination to do the job -- if Dell or Apple or whoever has a suitable configuration for what I want, I'll pay a few hundred extra just to save the time of building it myself. Finally, some of the products I worked on were niche products that really didn't have a huge market, so they were sold at a ridiculously high price. However, the customers had the budget to purchase it (they had IBM z-series mainframes in their datacenters) and the product actually ended up saving them money over the alternatives (it was a product that helped offload data from expensive mainframes to cheaper servers while leaving it accessible to both sets of machines) despite the crazy high price.
    Post edited by Dragonmaster Lou on
  • edited April 2011
    The software I'm using is $1395 list price, and while I am sure they build in some pad to the price so that they can offer discounts, I don't really consider it too overpriced. It works and that's what is important, I don't have to think about every detail of working with it, I turn the computer on, open the program and start working with it right away. Knowing I don't have to think about it is worth the cost of a few days of work.
    Post edited by Mycroft000 on
  • My previous job was working at a production equipment/audiovisual equipment rental house and I was basically in the same situation. Clients would call us for equipment plus an operator sometimes and I(or other in house employees) would get sent out at freelance rates, while we got paid our hourly wage. There's no telling how much they profited off me in the 7 years I worked there before they laid me off because they couldn't make the smart decisions and rent newer cameras out at a more reasonable rate.
    After I quit the company I was hired again at freelance rates to finish off some projects. I should have quite while half way through more editing projects.
  • Tl;dr: Good shit costs money. Suck it up.
  • Tl;dr: Good shit costs money. Suck it up.
    Speaking of - WilliamsWarn personal brewery - $5660 NZD, plus shipping and handling. 15 gallon homebrew system - $1,895.00 USD plus shipping.
  • I'm looking into more commercial-grade stuff: 1.5 bbl and up. I could probably do a single-tier 55 gallon system for somewhere around $3500. Ideally, though, I'd shoot for a 3 bbl brewhouse to start, which can go from $12k to $35k, depending on what I'm after.
  • Tl;dr: Good shit costs money. Suck it up.
    Depends on the thing. There aren't good ticketing systems, and even this shitty ones cost tens of thousands of dollars. ;^)
  • edited April 2011
    Tl;dr: Good shit costs money. Suck it up.
    Depends on the thing. There aren't good ticketing systems, and even this shitty ones cost tens of thousands of dollars. ;^)
    Also, something like Oracle database costs a bajillion dollars. Yet for most use-cases MySQL or Postgres will be just as good if not better. They are both free and open source.
    Post edited by Apreche on
  • Teleprompter software for 1395USD? You could pay somebody to write you your own teleprompter software for less than that.

    From what I've heard so far, you want two browser windows with the same HTML in both. A script in the first window creates a slider that controls the rate it automatically scrolls down, and it sets the second window to be scrolled the same amount. The second window has everything mirrored by a stylesheet.

    I could drop out of school and do stuff like this and charge 400 dollars per hour per sale.
  • edited April 2011
    I didn't pay list, I got 30% off, still $976 plus shipping though. Basically what you need to make is a fully featured word processor program with a scroll control engine added to it.

    I'll see if I can record a video and show you a quick demo of what all features you need in order to get people to be able to use it effectively.


    I haven't edited audio or anything so watch muted:

    Post edited by Mycroft000 on
  • Ah I was thinking much simpler like something where you create a document in another program and then drag something back and forth with a mouse to adjust the scroll speed.
  • Yeah, there's a bit more to it than that. There's also lots of other factors not even shown here.
  • The software I'm using is $1395 list price, and while I am sure they build in some pad to the price so that they can offer discounts, I don't really consider it too overpriced. It works and that's what is important, I don't have to think about every detail of working with it, I turn the computer on, open the program and start working with it right away. Knowing I don't have to think about it is worth the cost of a few days of work.
    Cheap compared to some of the stuff I worked on.... I think the list price of the software I mentioned earlier was in the tens of thousands of dollars range, but some big customers sometimes got it thrown in for free with one of our RAID arrays. Then again, those RAID arrays sometimes pushed 7 figures, but that was also par for the course for mainframe-compatible RAID.
  • At least that is better than sony charge several thousand dollars for a code that unlocks a feature on a camera that the camera is already capable of. Not even a component that does anything, just a code to unlock the ability to record in 24fps at 1080 resolution.
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