I am advertising that we will be offering HD in the fall, when consumer players are available. How much are you planning on charging for hd? I am thinking an extra $00 to $1000.

Don't you have to wait until some kind of recorder is available as well? How about HD disc authoring software? I believe it will happen but not quite yet.

My friend and I are shooting weddings in HD for as little as $2,000
to $2,500. We are using Sony HDR-FX1
They can get a standard def DVD, or HDV tape, or D-VHS or a Hdd with footage until blue ray is a reality in the US.... I am wicked annoyed that blue ray and related technology isn't here yet, what's taking them so long?????

Neglecting early adopters at the really high end, I'm guessing at least two years before this is more than 10% of anyone's wedding business -- maybe longer, possibly a LOT longer. Certainly won't be quicker for reasons I gave Here.

Actually, we only do Hi-Def production or 16mm or Super 8mm
We won't shoot standard def except for friends...

Actually, we only do Hi-Def production or 16mm or Super 8mm
We won't shoot standard def except for friends...
It's not worth it. WE WILL EDIT in Standard Def, however...

Do you transfer your Hi-Def to 16mm? How do you deliver HD to the client??

You can deliver in WMV or QT as well as SD DVD which looks a lot better when it's HD source. I'd guess at the moment maybe 70% of weddings in Oz are shot in HD. The only problem I've heard of with using HDV cameras for wedding is they're too small, the VHS cameras look more "pro". That's one big plus for the XDCAM or else add some serious matte boxes etc to the XL-H1.

As for getting more money for delivering in HiDef, no, no, no, you paid less, see the camera is smaller.

Bob.

lol @ bob, good call mate..

as for wedings iin HD, my point across every board i frequent is the fact that until the client is educatd enough to know and APPRECIATE the difference, then there is no point. Its hard enough to sell them on SD, let alone get them to upgrade to a format they see no immediate use for.. .Im really only going to worry about HD when my potential clients ask me for it.. at the moment im shooting Z1's and DVX100 and downscaling and upscaling to 720p from each cams respective formats, and to say that the only real difference is sharpness would be an understatement.
Also the DVX when shooting in Progessive, can easily have its footage upscaled to 720p in Vegas without too much hassle, AND look as good (but not as sharp) as the JVCHD101e.
Until they work out a storage and archive workflow with DVCProHD, thats when im really going to get into THAT format..

but for now, its SD until im asked to shoot and deliver to HD..


As for price, i wont do HD below 4k, reason being is that post production requires afew more steps as well as providing "future proof" formats (such as M2t on tape or HDD) of the finished edit. All this takes time, and i can do a 15min corp job for more money, than i would do a 2hour wedding for the same if not more

not sure why you would charge more, the cams are about the same price as a Xl2 or any other highend dv cam.

I will charge more simply due to the time factor as I use the cineform intermediaries to work with my HDV footage. I have to render them out, do everything like as if I was working with SD footage and then render back to HDV which takes a phenomenal amount of time to render on my system. So, I will be charging more until I can A: afford a dual core, dual processor MOBO that will cut down time and B: when the workflow is made simpler, ie native HDV editing in Vegas.

j razz

native HDV editing in Vegas.

You should read past posts here on why that is not good for the output quality.

It's OK for less demanding uses, but then why bother with HD?

I know that it uses a mpg compression, but every time you save, you lose quality. If I open it, render an intermediary, edit, render back out to HDV, do I not lose quality? I am sure that someone is able to get around this issue to where we can edit the footage directly without taking a noticeable hit to quality. When this happens (or when the HDV process becomes more streamlined) that is when I will lower my prices for HDV. That is the point I was making, not that editing in HDV was a good idea at this point in time.

j razz

With CineForm as your source, you don't lose when rendering back to MPEG. Several tests have confirmed this. Their product is nicely optimized for conversion. Similar story when you're using a proxy, and then rendering with HDV only once, or from HDV to DVD.

We'll start offering some HDV later this year, and we'll charge more for several reasons:

1. The SD output is superior to the output of SD cams
2. The HDV content will be kept on hold for future delivery systems (BluRay or whoever wins that battle) for some period of time.
3. We may encode in WMV HD and include a compatible player, and the price will reflect the higher quality along with the player.

I think it makes sense to charge more for the format while the market will bear it. There will come a time in the coming year(s) - God, I hope it isn't months - where HD will be expected, and all clients have HD TV's. But now, we all pay extra for HDTV's, so we as producers should be charging more to shoot and deliver HDV product.

thank you davidmcknight :)

"not sure why you would charge more, the cams are about the same price as a Xl2 or any other highend dv cam"

its not abotu the camera my friend, its about the post production time, its about the finished delivery formats (most HD deliveries will also require an SD equivalent <at this time> for teh client to watch it until the new formats are available.

On top of that, processing of 2hr HDV material is ridiculous <even with intermediate>, even on a dual core system, and when u consider colour grading, magic bullet, transitions and effects (i dont use many of these apart from grading.. but some people WANT the cheese...) processing can take over 30hours for a 2 hour presentation.... and thats ON a dual core system... especially if im using magic Bullet....

Then theres the WMV/QT h.264 encode, AS WELL AS the SD MPG2 for SD dvd as well as the cineform conversion back to M2t for transfer to HDV tape ...

so yeah.. nothing is free.. . the time it takes to get all this crap out, pretty much ads about 30 to 50 hours to a normal SD project... and this is just converting from one format to another...

When u consider a HDTV is up to 5 to 6 times MORE than an SD TV, i think charging a thousand dollars on top of the standard price is actually too cheap...

here in aus though, the market has already set a precedent which is slowly killing the wedding market and devaluing what its actually worth.. with idiots not charging appropriate rates simply to score the job over the competition.....

"Why would you charge more?"

Because the clients with an HDTV and an HD/Bd Player will be able to afford it. In fact, they would be insulted if you don't charge a premium price to match their premium ego.

Actually they expect HD to cost more, so charge them more.

There is always D-VHS tape which is now and works superbly and is very cheap as far as VCRs.

JJK

Shoot in HD. Capture Cineform Connect and edit. Render a widescreen SD dvd and include a WMV HD file as an "extra" on the dvd. Print to tape HD as a future-proofing archive. Deliver. Charge more. Darryl

I'm not a wedding photographer, but let me just throw something in. If you shoot your weddings in HDV and keep the footage to yourself and sell the video in your normal SD way, in two or three years time your couples will be saying "I wish we had hung-off on our wedding until HDV was around" and then you can make a follow up (upgrade) sale.
Mike Stevens

You can do this in native now in premiere 2.0 or FCP