Comments

theceo wrote on 2/11/2005, 8:56 AM
Jay wrote "Then please explain to us why someone with so much "experience" has to come to this forum and ask such basic questions? Ever since you arrived, you've done nothing but ask questions and blow hot air. You're constantly bragging about everything you've done, everyone you've known or worked with, everything you have, yet you have not provided one shred of evidence. To the best of our knowledge, it's all heresay. It's all in your imagination.

What was my first question? I think it was about a 'flicker' problem. Found the answer somewhere else, no one here answered it correctly.

Last question was the use of "OT" all over this forum, since I'm not a 'forum groupie' other than operating a couple of forums in one the companies I run (I pay techies to do mundance stuff like that) I haven't really asked too many questions about the main purpose of this forum. I've also shared some of our knowledge about Vegas if I knew what someone was answering.

Now, I did ask a few 'OT" questions, about doing deals in the film/video/documentary world. I'm a newbie there, a newbie that has done it 'their way'.

My background is Software. I've had investments in many businesses over the years, mostly as an 'passive' investor where young people with ambition and a good idea needed capital.

The last ten years I've spent developing a major network of web sites that exist to do one thing, make money on memberships and sell product such as eBooks and now eMovies.

I don't normally brag about what I do or how much money I make, but I couldnt' resist when I saw someone telling people 'wrong' info and using a pitance like 140K as 'proof' of their success.

I saw ability to use video a few years ago on my sites when the first generic NLE's started appearing in software aisles like Best Buy and Comp USA, etc.

Since my sites revolve around 'distributing interesting info' that the mainstream media ignores or 'hides', I knew I could incorporate web video into my network of sites.

Now that I've made a handful of movies I've been presented with a potential deal by a major studio outside the USA. So I asked some 'experts' here what is 'normal'. I got wrong answers for the most part. There are things that are 'normal' in most distribution contracts, sure money amounts and percentages are negoitable, but oveall, there are things that film makers usually receive in return for giving 'rights' to distributors or othe studios.

Soon that deal either becomes a reality or it becomes a news story on one of our sites. I can say all day soon X Studio either made me a offer to distribute our films or say if no deal is made that a major studio (X Studio) inquired about obtaining rights. If the studio doesn't like being named in news articles, I produce the emails and show the story is true.

Have any of you ever created a film where the president of a major studio came to you saying "I want distribution rights for X country for your film"?

The X part of the story above will soon be known, we either get a deal or we reveal who said they wanted 'distribution rights' to one of our films.

So everyone will know soon what film it is, what country it is and what President of what major studio asked for the rights to one of our films.

So you haven't seen 'proof' of anything. What don't you believe? You don't believe the president of a major studio personally emailed my company asking for rights? By the end of this month the name of the person will be public info.

You don't believe I operate a company with over 300 content sites?

I do

You don't believe I have over 100 exclusive rights to books we publish?

We do, we actually have another 5000 titles we publish that are pre 1922 (ie. PD or Public Domain besides our new author rights). We also have a rare book division that creates full color facsimiles of rare works we own.

We also have a music division, a handful of artists we have on the label already and several more are about to get deals.

Anyway, I don't want to get into p*ssing matches with people over what they have or haven't done, but when someone says I'm making this all up, they've called me a liar. I'm not a liar and when I speak out on something it's because I know what I'm talking about.

Let's see the advice I got here was basically get a lawyer, I have severa on retainer and one who is a partner in some of my companies.

Real great advice and absolutely WORTHLESS.



Jimmy_W wrote on 2/11/2005, 9:14 AM


A 140k in a 3 to 4 month time period is hardly a pitance especially for those of us edit video for a living. Try paying your bar tab on what I make and you will most likely sober up. This was a flash disscussion and then it turned into a wallet match.

Jimmy


ken c wrote on 2/11/2005, 9:50 AM
the ceo, I agree w/you 100% re the earlier vids, ram are way out of date, I had recorded those back in 2000-2001, I need to update them to the wmv .. you can see my progress from those early rm's to the current .wmv large
screen look .. hopefully I'll keep learning new tips.

re scrolling front doors, I've found that long-copy salesletters work better since they're more informative, than brief doorways - at least for niche info-products. For brick and mortar type products, retail stuff, agree storefront type sites should be short no scrolling. Good insight.

Thanks to all for positive comments.

Ken
theceo wrote on 2/11/2005, 10:06 AM
ken, I don't knock people for 'trying', heck I admire the balls it takes to take a shot at anything in life, so keep plugging and trying, you learn a little from each effort, I hope :-)

Yes your .wmv was great, I'm about to place a 2000.00 order for Serious Magic product due to me seeing you use it as you did.

My only concern right now is if I can get someone to do an exclusive set or two for me only, that will make me decide if Ultra is for me.

I don't like looking like everyone else and as Ultra becomes more common in use, everyting might start to look the same, people using the same limited amount of sets bundled with Ultra.

So, if I can find a company creating one offs, (one of a kind) sets for clients, then I will probably be using ultra soon.

I have a major news project I'm working on involving a dozen or so names I own, and a virtual news room that no one else can duplicate might be the answer.

Also, having my own virtual sets that no one can use, might be a good selling point for our video production venture.

Ultra is an amazing application, but the limited amount of settings could be a problem down the road if many production companies start to use it.

Anyway, if something sells on the Net, great. There's a ton of companies that came and went the last 10 years that couldn't sell on line, even with huge budgets and tons of marketing capital.

And you're right, a company needs to know how to use video to present themselves now, it is becoming a key marketing tool. Do you have a digital business card yet? I've been using them for a couple of years, people love getting them. And you can say what you want clearly about your company in 50MB of video on them. If you want a long video there are even DVD biz cards now.

ken c wrote on 2/11/2005, 10:09 AM
sounds interesting .. re digital biz cards... I almost never venture out of my home, so I don't network or do business in person, I'm like the matrix, all my marketing's online .. so I haven't had biz cards in years..

re the ultra sets, one good feature is that you can customize all but the tracking shots, very easily with custom pngs and more, so they won't look like other people's ..

agree re as v-sets become more commonly used, it's important to create new looks .. so that's one flexibility that ultra offers that I like..

ken

Jay Gladwell wrote on 2/11/2005, 10:26 AM
theceo wrote on 2/11/2005, 11:10 AM
Jay spewed, "If you don't like the advice you get here, you can always leave. Don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out!"

Have you bothered to look at your 'work' at your site www.gooddogproductions.com ?

Please stay off my threads, I only have to point to your videos to show what you know. Not much I can see.



theceo wrote on 2/11/2005, 11:19 AM
Zon, I think most people that 'hate' flash is due to all the problems making it work in the early days of 'flash'.

It has it's uses, but any site with it as the front door to their site and no other info is asking to be a site that most search engines won't index very well. But then again, I won't be surprised to see some 'expert' here saying how search engines mean little on the net. hehe

Due to the high quality of 720x480 in double pass 1M streams using .WMV, I think WMV is now the way to go and it is cross platform since MS now supports MAC OS with WMP.

Only using Flash on a front door was the point I was making, it kills a site, you lose viewers and it gives nothing to a search engine to index and rate.

Full screen flash is ok inside a site, but right now I use .wmv almost exclusively since the quality is better imho. Try rendering a vid for flash or real or wmp at 720x480 and see the quality between the three. The trick to .wmv is doing double pass at 1M original size (should be 720x480) When you see the three outputs at that level (size) then you can decide what you think is the 'best" versus size of file and ease of viewer use (having all the latest updates to use).

ken c wrote on 2/11/2005, 11:29 AM
all-flash sites are usually awful... I click off of those myself.... some of the all flash templates have good elements to use, but all-flash is not user-friendly.
.
best to have hybrid designs, small bits of flash for site tours or high-impact video clips .. main thing is salesmanship that goes on in creating benefit hooks w/the visitor, for return visits and initial/backend sales..

ken

Jimmy_W wrote on 2/11/2005, 11:40 AM
Jay, do you remember Zippy?

JImmy
vitamin_D wrote on 2/11/2005, 11:45 AM
Shame this thread has gotten so offtrack...

In answer to the question posed in the topic, the "point" would be streamlining the user's needed resources.

Flash offers some very nice compression tools, putting it within the same space as WMV and QT output, but nitpicking image quality is beside the point -- Flash acts as a container front-end that allows a designer to dynamically mix every type of media in ways not possible with HTML/CSS; and it ha's a back-end of ActionScript which allows everything to be moved and controlled with a degree of accuracy and flexibility that no combination of HTML/CSS and Java will do as well.

To anyone who "hates" Flash, you've not seen a well-designed site. I'm with anyone who understandably hates having content force-fed, which is why I strongly advise my Flash clients (people I'm designing Flash based sites for) to give enduser's the _option_ of turning features on (music, for instance), rather than the imperative to turn it off. That said, clients don't always listen :D

A site that gets a B in my book would be subanyc.com -- hate that it takes over my entire damn screen, hate that I have to turn the music off -- but it looks beautiful through and through and is functionally a breeze to navigate. If they ditched the screen-resize, I'd give it an A. It could never look this good in HTML, and it's at least as functional a any HTML design could hope to be.

I'm putting the finishing touches on a site right now and once it goes public, I'll pass it along. Flash is the Web done right on so many levels, it'd be a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater because a lot of people frivolously use splash pages, animated eyecandy, and sound instead of incorporating these elements functionally.

- jim
Jay Gladwell wrote on 2/11/2005, 11:48 AM
Jimmy, yes, I remember Zippy! Frightening, isn't it?

Jay
hookmeister wrote on 2/11/2005, 6:40 PM

take alook and you tell me if flash MX video is worth it
http://www.proxus.com/components/FLV_Player.php

everything has its place
Coursedesign wrote on 2/11/2005, 7:00 PM
Very nice!

There is no question that Flash has a place for video.

Have you seen Volvo's Flash ads? They were so good that Macromedia sent a whole team over to meet with their web design team. Very subtle use of Flash and very effective.
scdragracing wrote on 2/12/2005, 11:54 AM
>>>http://www.proxus.com/components/FLV_Player.php<<<

pretty sweet-looking video... but the picture quality would have been better, with far less bandwidth useage, if they had wrapped wmv video with a flash player, see: www.slicktv.com

it uses your existing wmv player engine, but i believe that you get the benefits of flash, for things like hotspots to call up urls(?) if someone clicks on it... you can't have hotspots with wmv, but the quality of the flash video codec is lousy, it's inefficient as hell, because it's basically just another name for the sorenson video codec... it looks like garbage, unless you lower the framerate way down, and throw a bunch of bandwith at it.

lets not confuse ourselves by calling internet video codec picture quality "nitpicking"... once you actually start paying for some serious internet bandwidth, you'll understand what i'm talking about... try to elevate it to the status of codec picture quality when editing in vegas, which is where it should be.

you can do that slicktv studio thing with director, but i bet it's kinda complicated :-0 what i was looking at it for was a single downloadable exe file that gives feedback to advertisers via the internet, every time that it's played on a pc that's connected to the internet... we are talking at least $10 per thousand views, or even up to $35 per thousand views: http://www.vonage-forum.com/printout610.html

this is cutting-edge stuff, we have to try thinking out of the box!