Man, I am in the wrong business...

How does one get started in the "conversion to DVD" industry? I bet I'd enjoy it a lot more than my day job.

Rob

Unless the customer is in a huge rush and expects you to put your life on hold to finish the project, you really shouldn't count rendering time in with your costs.

Rendering time is long, but not labor intensive. You can eat, sleep, go out shopping, whatever while you are rendering. These aren't really value-added activities for your client so you shouldn't get paid for this time. Yes, you could spend the time working on other aspects of the project. In that case you bill for the time you are actually working, not the rendering time. Chances are you will spend less time working on the project than you will rendering.

The other thing to think about is that having an older, slower, cheaper computer will lead to longer renders. If you billed for rendering time then you would be penalizing your client for YOU having not upgraded to faster equipment. On the other hand, if you spend tons of money on a faster computer and have shorter rendering times, then billing by rendering time would go down after you spend the money. This is rather backwards and is another reason why rendering time shouldn't be billed.

Now, if you've spent money on a fast rendering computer and you have a client who wants it done NOW, no matter what it takes, then by all means charge extra for it.

I would have charged closer to $900, with color/audio correction on 180 minutes of video. To render that out will take many hours! Every minute your system is tied up rendering one project is a minute you can't work on another. Time is money!

J--

I agree with everyone else on the CC & audio fixing. That's hard work.

Did the client ask for CC & audio work? If not, no reason to do it. :)

I guess it would be cheaper for me to do it since I probably wouldn't use Vegas at all to do this particular job. It just depends on what equipment you have available I guess.

So what would you use? What would your time estimate be to color/audio correct, encode and burn to DVD? How long do you think it would take you to get this job out the door?

J--

Well, depending on exactly what needed to be done to the video and audio, I would just run the video through a TBC to do the color correction, and the audio through a mixer and correct the audio there. I'd run it directly into the Sonic Fusion system and do a live encode, then burn to DVD. Should be about 4 hours to complete the job from start to finish. The only reason I would use Vegas is if the video or audio just needed to be fixed in certain parts and not throughout the whole video.

This is another reason to go through the video with the client before taking in the job so you know exactly what you need to do and what tools you will need to use to do it.

To get an idea of how to make money in the VHS to DVD transfer business visit:

YesVideo

They will transfer a two hour VHS tape to DVD for $29.99, and they make good money at that price.

The key to their success (they have thousands of retail outlets through an alliance with Kodak) is workflow. They have invested in hardware and software that automates the process so that the only thing the operator must do is load the tape, and press play. Chapter stops are inserted automatically based on software scene detection.

Of course, they do not do any custom work -- certainly not color correction.

To make money on custom transfers, I would recommend first referring the client to YesVideo. If they are happy with what they get, then they should be happy with you for doing the referral and will be more likely to deal with you on some future project. However, if they find they want much more, then they will appreciate the custom work you can do and will be willing to pay by the hour for that work.

As for charging for rendering, you certainly can not charge by the hour because, as has already been mentioned, you aren't doing anything during the render. Instead, figure out how much rendering you will have to do over the course of the year, figure out how many computers it will take so you don't build up a huge backlog, figure out the capital cost, and then amortize (i.e., allocate across all your jobs for 1-2 years) the cost of those machines, mark-up this cost by a 2x factor (at least), and that is what you should charge for the render portion of your work.

What you will find, is that this isn't very much compared to your labor.

For instance, if I can render three jobs a day on a computer that costs $1,000, and I can keep that computer utilized 70% of the time, and the computer needs to be replaced in two years, then the cost per render is:

$1,000 / (3 x 365 x 2 x 0.7) = $0.65 / job. If each render takes a full day, and I can only utilize the computer 50% of the time, then this increases to: $1,000 / (1 x 365 x 2 x 0.5) = $2.74. Even if I mark that up by 4x, it is only going to come to about $10 per job.

Thus, just figure out how many hours it takes to do the color correction, etc. and charge by the hour.

Another option you could do if you don't have to do any color correction or anything like that is to just take the video, mark up the price and then send it off to one of these places and you don't really have to do any work except the shipping back and forth. So if they charge $30 to do it, you charge the client $60 and you just made $30 for mailing out a package.

Thanks, Jason.

J--

You forget about the charge for drugs. Y'know, so you can sleep at night. ;-)

Rob

If you ever have a straight conversion job, you may wish to consider outsourcing to a company like YesVideo at http://www.yesvideo.com.

They charge $29.95 to convert a 2 Hour VHS to DVD. The DVD comes with chapters (obviously trying to use some type of scene detection), plus a cover with thumbnails of the chapters.

They have a reseller program so you can be a wholesaler, plus they can generate leads for you. It takes 2-5 business days to process a tape (VHS and most any other format) and they say apx. 2 weeks for the entire process (with shipping). As a reseller, they can also private label it with your name and logo.

In a case like this (assuming it was conversion), you could have charged your $100, it would have cost you apx. $30 and you would have still come out ahead.

They accept independent videographers. Their service is also available at:

"Eastman Kodak, YesDVD service is available at CVS, K-Mart, Long's Drugs, Meijer, Albertsons/Osco/Savon, Rite-Aid, Target, Eckerd, Walgreens and specialty camera stores throughout the U.S.

Via Fuji, YesDVD service is available at Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Long's Drugs, Fred Meyer and independent camera stores throughout the U.S.
Via Konica, YesDVD service is available at Brooks Drug, Genuardi's Supermarkets, Giant Eagle, Kinney Pharmacies, Pathmark, Shaws, Weis Markets and independent camera stores throughout the U.S.

Via Fry's Electronics, Circuit City and CompUSA, YesDVD is available as a retail "service-in-a-box" package.

Via Sony at www.imagestation.com. "

Just an option

How could $700 or higher be justified for this type of a job? That seems very high and you are going to chase away a lot of customers with those kinds of prices. I would say that a good chunk of VHS to DVD transfers lie in the home consumer market namely family videos etc. and they arent going to fork out this kind of money.

This job would take about 5 hours to capture and set up in vegas and probably overnight to encode and minutes to transfer to dvd master. Unless you have stacks of job lining up and your PC could be doing other renders while you are asleep, I wouldnt charge for render time.

So far I think that John Meyer is most on the money in this thread. If someone comes to me and wants something like that done I would probably charge very liitle on the one hand but on the other I would do it by the hour - so it would add up. But I am not in the business of doing home movie/video to DVD archiving. And most of the people here aren't either and you can tell when they put prices in the 400 - 900 range out there.

This topic is kind of funny because last week someone was talking to me, an older man - maybe 75 - 80, and he asked what I did and I told him. Now they hear "film" and the first thing I thought they were going to say wasn't what they said - they thought I meant something like film transfers. He asked how much I would charge to dub off some old 8mm films. I explained I wasn't really set up to do that but he offered information that his daughter had taken some of the old family movies and had them put on "one of them little disks. A DVD I think" and said she paid $60 for it. And my sister in law just sent over a DVD of my wife and her from when they were little kids. 8mm film transfer to DVD - The money she paid, this is in Sweden, was about $30 in US funds.

Most mom and pops, granma and grandpas - they are just impressed that you can put a film onto a little disk. They don't care overall about serious color correction and audio. Most places I have seen that offer the service are around 30 - 50 for up to 2 hours of material. It is no different than going to a one hour photo lab to get your prints made. The masses do that - the more serious go to custom shops and the pro have ther own people they work with (And if the trades are any indication more and more pros are just shooting digital and taking it right into Photoshop and having digital files output)

Vegas is *not* the right tool for doing this sort of work. You need the hardware set up to do it if you want the turn around to = money for a solid ROI. I can tell you that if I started offering services like this I would, as I already said, charge a hourly rate. Color correction extra. Sound editing extra. Effects extra. Custom menues extra....and the only clients I would get would be one or two indy film makers - and chances are I would not even get them because they are doing it themselves anymore. mom and pop would not pay 100 times more to me when they can get it done at walmart for 30 bucks. Or for the smarter ones - when they can go to Walmart and just buy a set-top burner for under 300.

In other words, this isn't the business to be in.

However, I see a lot of corporate people with VHS dubs of their tapes. They might pay a bit more for service and accountability. The advice still holds, though. Charge for your time and then for the dub to DVD, charge for the length of the media-and ramp it up if their footage requires lots of compression to make it fit.

Rob Mack

I think you got right, Rob, all the way 'round.

J--

> Chienworks wrote: You can eat, sleep, go out shopping, whatever while you are rendering.

Please don’t tell my wife you can go shopping while rendering. Shhhhh... I have her convinced that you have to stay at home and baby sit it. ;-)

but seriously...

I would tend to agree that this is not a job for any NLE if you wanted to compete at the $30-$60 level. I wonder if you could get something like the ADS Tech Instant DVD 2.0 and just capture direct to MPEG2 and burn to DVD. According to their web site you can “Use the “Direct to Disk” feature in DVD Movie Factory to capture and burn to disk in one simple step”. That’s pretty much down to loading the tape and pressing go. If you can keep the price down I bet you could make profit at it.

Just because people can buy a DVD recorder for less that $300 doesn’t mean they will. Some people will pay for the convenience of having you do it for them.

~jr

Years freelancing as a grip electric. Where billing is an art form.

But seriously, you do what the market will bear and you be honest.

Rob Mack

My part time video services business is about 50% film transfer (8mm/S8/16) to digital video, and about 20% transfer of VHS and 8mm video to DVD. The rest is a combo of original videography, slideshows and editing.

Even though this is an affluent area (Washington DC suburbs), my experience is that VHS and 8mm video to DVD is rarely a service for which people will spend serious money. I have a barebones price of $20 for a two hour disc, burned on a Pioneer 7000 set top burner, fed directly by a SVHS VCR so I can use the s-video output. I do find that people will pay to improve sound, so they can hear the bride say " I do". Of course, that requires a trip to SoundForge.

Most of the stuff I receive is awful - often recorded at EP in a VHS-C camcorder. I could spend a lot of time massaging the image and the end result would not be that much of an improvement over the source.

The Pioneer does have some ability to act as a processor on incoming video, and I will do a little tweaking if necessary. I make sure the client understands that this is a straight copy with no titles, no label artwork, no editing and no image improvement. This is an effort that requires attention ever 20 or 30 minutes and I can go on using my PC while it burns.

On the other hand, film transfer can bring some decent returns - perhaps it's because most of it is 30 or more years old. It seems to be considered a family heirloom. All my transfers are attended with constant changes being made in camera to deal with lighting that changes, typically, every 3 minutes. This is labor intensive, and I charge accordingly.

If I were trying to make a living at this, I'd have to eat a lot of beans. As a part ime effort, it pays for my toys and is growing steadily.

I think Mike has pretty well hit the nail on the head. One reason I charge what I do for jobs, such as this one being discussed, is there ain't no way I'm going to make enough money from it for the time involved. The truth is I'm trying to discourage such jobs. If I'm transferring video tape to DVD with color/audio correction at a bargin basement prices, which means I'm tying up my equipment, then I can't work on a "real" job for a "paying" client. It's as simple as that.

I've decided what my time is worth (as we all must, sooner or later). It makes no difference what I'm doing. I've only got 24 hours in a day like anyone else (in that we're all equal!). I can only do so much in that time I've been alotted. If you what a corporate video made, I'll make it at my price, which is far less than 99.9% of my competitors. If you want me to transfer VHS to DVD, I'll make it at my same hourly rate. An hour is an hour, it makes no difference how it's being used. That's the way it is with professionals. Ask an attorney. They charge X dollars an hour, makes no difference if they're representing you in court or writing a letter for you to a dead-beat client, it's the same hourly rate. Why should we be any different?

J--

I am based in Australia, and provide this service to many clients.

It occurred to me that many people might have a requirement to transfer Video to DVD (which has proven to be correct), and hence my establishing this service.

However, I live in regional Australia and folks have limited budgets.

Therefore, I developed a two pronged strategy, being:

1) A very basic DVD transfer service using a Pioneer 7000 DVD-R DVD recorder. I charge $60.00 for this including a DVD Case and basic titling on the DVD disc using a Casio DVD printer for up to one hour. (I adopted this approach after looking at YesVideo).

If it is longer than one hour ie, two hours then it is $120.

No chapters other than 30 second chapter breaks using the Pioneer recorder.

Beauty of this approach is no rendering and conversion to MPEG2 is in real time.

If they have a DVD R/W player, I can add chapters for an additonal $20 (it is a very simple process).

Also, the Pioneer DVD recorder can be attached to Vegas 5.0 via a Firewire interface. Have not tested it with DVDA 2 as I have a Pioneer 4 DVD burner.

2) If they want something more comprehensive, then I offer the Vegas 5/DVDA 2 approach.

Minimum charge is $120 for one hour (price is also incresed exponentially for the length of the video, maximum of six chapters, no other enhancements. If they want additional work it is $40 per hour extra.
Same DVD packaging, however I use an Epson 310 inkjet printer to print a more professional looking image on the DVD.

Why do I offer this service?

I am kind of in semi-retirement.

I have a great video editing set-up based upon Vegas 5.0.DVDA 2 and it is a great way of generating additional revenue to further expand and develop my video editing resoures, and buy me a beer from time to time!

Regards

BrianG

Brian, I hope you and other didn't misunderstand me. I think what you're doing, and the way you're doing it, is a great example and an exception to my "rule" (there always are exceptions, aren't there?).

:o)

J--