OT: The New Age of Broadcast Market

Here in the forum we have been mostly centered on output to dvd and broadcast. However, chew on this for a moment.

Actual to Projected $ spent on Online Advertising ( in millions )

2007 - 324M
2008 - 505M
2009 - 750M
2010 - 1024M
2011 - 1900M
2012 - 3400M

As i see it, this looks like the next big boom. We are still not including this in out post. Every now and then (3x or more bi-wkly) someone will post questions on this subject. We in turn tell people that this is not that kind of forum but we discuss and answer post for broadcast problems. While the internet is another broadcast type and we say it is off topic in the forum.

Internet Editors are getting busier every day. Though i have done both, the web is really paying the bills and i am not the only one in this new broadcast market. Internet Broadcasting is about 4 years or less from competing with satellite and cable. The networks will not be the only place an editor can get decent salary in the coming years.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

oops in the tittle

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Quote

and we say it is off topic in the forum.

Slightly off the mark their J... no one says this.

Almost all my work Broadcast or otherwise will end up either on the net BBC iPlayer et al or internal networks such as intranets or extranets.

This is pretty standard, it doesn't stop you needing to make a broadcast ready version as the standards are there for a reason. The main reason is quality.

There are loads of threads about compression technologies and settings for the huge variety of CODECs both for Disc based distribution and IP based...



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Bear in mind as well that looking at dollars spent on "online advertising" tells you absolutely nothing about anything related to production. Dollars spent on advertising are about 20% creative and about 80% media buy, in my experience. But the ratio slides when the buy is bigger. And when it comes to ads that originate on television ? the Apple ones are the best example I can think of here ? it's impossible to estimate how much is being spent on online creative, since there's such an overlap with the TV production segment.

So ? yeah. This is basically crap, from every angle, in my opinion.

>Internet Editors are getting busier every day.

What's an internet editor?



www.strypesinpost.com

When people watch media on the internet...a majority of it was designed for broadcast TV. TV shows on iTunes and Hulu, and on the various network websites. just because a lot more people are watching them online, doesn't mean that they are made ONLY for the internet. Most of the video hit the airwaves first.

But...if the medium changes, then we will change. I am an editor for hire....I work on what my clients and producers hire me to work on. I don't concern myself with where it ends up. I leave that worry to people who hire me.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Quote

we discuss and answer post for broadcast problems.

Sorry...there's that "we" thing again. Who's "we", corbett? Your advice is AT BEST 50% correct so please do not lump yourself in with "we". There are more corrections of your posts (by many) than constructive advice. Please no "we".

...and you have GOT to stop trying to speak for the masses. Just because web video is paying YOUR bills - that makes it a boom? You posted this same dribble months ago and it's still dribble. TODAY'S REALITY: EA laid off 600 this week. Comcast laying off up to 7,000. You are paying the bills with web video? Congratulations - rock on. Broadcast is still king and where the $$$ is...NOT web video. Until that changes, that's how it is.

Quote

J.Corbett says:
Internet Editors are getting busier every day.

strypes says
What's an internet editor?

I would like to know that one myself. I think corbett has developed his own industry nomenclature. Which "Internet Editors" are getting busier corbett? Name 5.

...and please...for the umpteenth time...have enough respect for the forum readers and yourself to SPELL CORRECTLY & USE PUNCTUATION. People would probably take you more seriously if you took the time to do this tiny little courtesy.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Wow, touchy subject.

If most of the post facilities who work on broadcast shows were honest they would tell you they have single digit profitability if that. Sure editors, compositors and colorists make some money. But a growth market this is not.

Personally I find the improved level of quality on many of the cable channels intriguing. Not sure if the companies producing it are making any money but my guess is that they are.

Although this thread might have started out talking about the internet I would like to have more conversations on this forum about the business aspect of our industry. What kind of new and evolving distribution channels are there and how can we produce content that can be efficiently and profitably sold to those channels.

Statistics are funny things, EA might very well have laid off 600 employees [sucks to be them] but EA's revenues are still probably an order of magnitude higher than Technicolor or Ascent Media's. These are going to be very tough economic times and it might not be a bad idea to have civil discussions about these sorts of issues.

The next 600 person layoff might be coming from a studio near you.

> I would like to have more conversations on this forum about the business aspect of our industry.
> What kind of new and evolving distribution channels are there and how can we produce content
> that can be efficiently and profitably sold to those channels

Thing is, this is really not a website for that kind of thing. We touch on those topics from time to time, but this forum is editing-based, and its main function is troubleshooting. We chat about some business issues, but we can't really change this forum to "How to start/run a production company" and let it distract from our main function.


www.derekmok.com

Derek is right. The occasional OT topic is fun for those that frequent this forum but it is noise for those that do not. I don't know what sort of forum would work as the ones that allow ALL and ANY topics often disintegrate into politics and religion and name calling.

Michael Horton
-------------------

Well said, D

Quote

Wow, touchy subject.

It is a touchy subject...and Derek's right - not really for a troubleshooting forum.

Quote

Statistics are funny things, EA might very well have laid off 600 employees [sucks to be them] but EA's revenues are still probably an order of magnitude higher than Technicolor or Ascent Media's. These are going to be very tough economic times and it might not be a bad idea to have civil discussions about these sorts of issues.

The next 600 person layoff might be coming from a studio near you.

EA (Sports) is my studio. I've seen people clearing out - and it sux. The stock price went from $50 to $23 in a month. That's more than 1/2 of stockholders revenue into thin air. That trickles down mightily as we are not outsourcing as much - meaning less freelance opportunities so it doesn't just "suck to be us"...it would suck to be you if you were freelancing for us. The economy hurts EVERYBODY.

"Internet Video" is not a "boom" and there are no specific video job titles geared towards it like "Internet Editor" or "Internet Cameraman"...it's just another form of transport for media. I'll bet most of you that have stuff online actually created that stuff in a different delivery format originally. Someone from Marketing came down and said "that spot you did for XYZ - please reformat & compress it for our website". I do it all the time.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Internet Editors is an editor that has most of his work going to the net. Now how is that different than the broadcast editor well here is one. no tittle safe, Its like view safe is tittle safe.
I deal with smaller companies that will have net only material, so i make a broadcast version and a web version. To me there's a difference in having the entire frame to deal with for style.

about WE
i try not to say i all of the time. and regardless if i am right 50% that means in the 3 odd years i have been here somebody has gotten help from me too. Also some of my wrong answers has gotten to a new answer. Like or not.

Maybe we should have a Buzz Page for side discussions but discussing the business as a whole should be inbounds.
I have seen people come with some wonderful comparisons from past editing styles, motivational rhythmic cut repertoire, graphics philosophy, style discussions, and everybody chimed in.

Think its worth the thread to have discussions on things of this nature. Video on the net will be as strong as broadcast relatively soon.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Quote

tittle safe

...nuff said.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

> I'll bet most of you that have stuff online actually created that stuff in a different delivery
> format originally. Someone from Marketing came down and said "that spot you did for XYZ -
> please reformat & compress it for our website". I do it all the time.

And it's actually causing some regression in terms of workflows. I just did a corporate showreel for a major electronics company that, in my view, is known for its humorous and hip big-budget spots. Their original material looks gorgeous and is usually well thought out. This is our company's fourth year doing this compilation reel so the personnel in house are very well versed in the process. But this year's media is probably the lowest quality we've ever had. Why? Because we're getting everything almost exclusively as a web-destined WMV or MPEG, or a video DVD extraction (Video_TS folders), and in one case, even a 252KB (!!!) file for a 30-second spot. So even though the company does broadcast-quality material all the time, this reel's video quality is in the toilet and there's nothing we can do about it.

This "internet obsession" is very bad for production and post-production, and old-fashioned ideals like keeping a DigiBeta master archived are being forgotten. I mean, I'm big on "content first, video quality second", but come on.

Any media creator, who's only prepared to master to an internet-quality medium gets burned sooner or later. If YouTube started charging for watching videos, you can bet your ass viewers would expect better, professional-quality productions.


www.derekmok.com

Quote

Any media creator, who's only prepared to master to an internet-quality medium gets burned sooner or later. If YouTube started charging for watching videos, you can bet your ass viewers would expect better, professional-quality productions.

Derek...you totally rock. Mastering for the internet is lessening the quality just to get something out there through a small pipe. Don't forget (most people - especially developers do) that the majority of homes do not have broadband. It's great to get something seen...but I always post up a disclaimer ..."the images you are watching are SEVERELY COMPRESSED so please contact me for a full rez version".

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

we might be 2 versions from excellent quality from vp9 encoder or h265. I do not skimp on quality of source footage. that would be extremely stupid since you are gonna compress. all of my footage has cam from the dvx or hpx line and hpx is recent.

you always want high quality. what people expect is what's changing. Cant tell you how many clients i have had show me the previous video and i think their high school grad has made it.

I refuse any bad footage. But 90% of my footage comes from us shooting it.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

I understand that LAFCPUG is here to help users, and it serves that role very well. It's kind of a catch 22, the people who's advice I trust the most are people who have helped me work through whatever technical issue I may have had in the past.

Sure there are other websites that are oriented more towards business issues, although I don't know of any for our industry, but I like to talk and listen to the people on this site.

Also, I'm not so sure the discussions need to be about how to start or run a production company. Technology can be used to create a look that might help differentiate you from your competitor, at the company level or the editor level. There might also be some interesting discussions about how to transition to a tapeless environment, where are the bottle necks, what products work as advertised, and where can we gain some economies of scale.

It would be great for editors to be able to "guide" or help facilities that they work for decide how or if they should try different technologies. If all of us can help our employers be more profitable isn't that a good thing?

My comment about the layoffs at EA was not meant to be derogatory, I meant it, it really sucks for those people. I don't want to sound like Chicken Little "The Sky is(n't) falling" but there certainly is the potential for things to tighten up for all of us. One thing I've noticed in a couple of the facilities I have worked at recently is that the slower business gets the more conservative they get. They don't want to even think about how new technologies might effect their business.

I think this forum would be a great place to discuss how FC Server might improve (or not) our day to day jobs. What alternatives are there to FC Studio? What tools are available to help improve not only the quality but the throughput, all in context of managing our business.

This might be very helpful for those who have P&L responsibility and probably helpful for those who don't but want to better understand of what some of the challenges are for managing a business.

Amen, Derek. The next person who comes into my room and asks if I "can't just grab that off YouTube" gets a fork right in the eye.

yeah jeff make it a dirty fork too.

Thats what is happening. there a lot of people out there who think youtube isn't bad quality. Nor do they realize what limitations there are in conversion from lower quality, smaller aspect video. I have lost at least 1 contract quarterly due to my refusal to work bad footage.

i see the industry from a new age perspective. There are colorist. There are network editors. There are movie or narrative editors, and yes there are internet editors. All of which have a different approach to the industry.

Everything will eventually morph including the visual arts biz. Where the money is now may not be where it is tomorrow. Don't forget there were a lot of people that thought it would take years for HD to be finalized and swore to sd being the main footage mainly because the hd output had no place to go. Now hd and sd are somewhat like pro and non-pro.

Sorta like web or network.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Huh. You say things will probably change? Remarkable.

Look, I don't mean to be Mr. Negative here. But seriously, this is just nonsense. If you want to make broad industry pronouncements, that's fine, but they should at least be grounded in some kind of reality. I can sit here with my thumb in my ear and predict that by 2010 all movies will be stereoscopic and black-and-white will make a stirring comeback. And you know what? I might even be correct. But it doesn't change the fact that I'm just making stuff up, with absolutely no credibility.

Leave the industry analysis to the industry analysts. They're usually wrong too, but at least they have some clue what they're talking about.

We rail against the fact that people don't see YouTube as bad quality. They also don't see aspect ratio problems...

On the other hand, I think it is important for editors to know what our audience notices. Cut for emotion, not continuity or problems with picture quality.

Perfect films have very high budgets. In the real world, editors should be responsible for informing the people they work with what will get in the way of audiences becoming engrossed in the story being told. Budget-holders want to hear that no retakes are needed - people will not see the glaring error the backers are worried about.

It would be great if this sort of thing mattered to audiences, but for now it doesn't. Which will lead to the failure of BluRay.

I managed to edit out all the 'we's...

Sorry for keeping this OT tread going. If anyone has a better place to take it, I'll follow. How about cinematography.net ?!

___________________________________________________
Alexandre Gollner,
Editor, Zone 2-North West, London

alex4d on twitter, facebook, .wordpress.com + .com

Quote

Jeff Harrell says:
Leave the industry analysis to the industry analysts. They're usually wrong too, but at least they have some clue what they're talking about.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

> It would be great if this sort of thing mattered to audiences, but for now it doesn't.

This is where the misperception comes in.

I'll say this again. YouTube's low quality "doesn't matter to viewers" because it's free, it's at home on a computer, and it's short clips that usually don't intend for you to be watching for more than 10 minutes at a time. Try bringing a date to Iron Man at a multiplex after eating out and show a YouTube clip on the big screen. Now see if image quality "doesn't matter to audiences".

To compare YouTube and web video to broadcast and theatrical is wrong. Broadcast and theatrical are like events -- planning a night out, going to a theatre as a group, watching a big-budget film on its first day or release. You plan for it and pay full attention to it. YouTube and web video are snacks -- a fleeting moment in life. You watch it while on a five-minute break at work, when you're bored, when somebody else sends you a link.

Broadcast and theatrical content have a much more intense impact -- people will say "A film changed my life", make an actor into a star, makes you buy the DVD. That's why people are much more critical of broadcast and theatrical content. Web content is junk food -- tasty while it lasts, but usually you forget it in 10 minutes, like a gossip magazine, and people watch it casually -- they will turn their heads and talk to others, rather than focus their full attention. And because of the way they watch it, they are much less critical of web content -- hence the excessive glut of five-star ratings on YouTube.

They are different formats. And you would never, ever bring a date to "Panda sneezes" at the local cinema. Content matters more than image quality, but image quality will never be obsolete.


www.derekmok.com

Quote

Try bringing a date to Iron Man at a multiplex after eating out and show a YouTube clip on the big screen. Now see if image quality "doesn't matter to audiences".

You don't even have to take the experiment that far. How many of us have gone to the movies and seen some piece of pre-feature advertising that originated as standard def? Picture quality does matter to the audience. It sometimes doesn't matter to the producers, because they've got many priorities to juggle, and also sometimes because they're idiots. But it does matter to the audience, and the audience does notice, and if you think they don't, you're simply not paying attention.

But above and beyond everything that Derek said (correctly), television and cinema are also art. Maybe they're high art, maybe they're low art, but they're art, because the people who make them genuinely care about them. I sat in a color suite in Hollywood in the fall of 2001 and watched a DoP meticulously grade a series of shots. The show was an episode of "Will and Grace." Nobody would assert that a TV sitcom is world-changing art, but it's still art, because the people who make them care.

If you stop caring about your work, you're not an artist any more. You're not even a craftsman. You're just a computer operator. And for your sins you deserve to be tortured slowly before a warmly applauding audience. And preferably filmed, by somebody who cares enough to get the color of the blood just right.

Quote
like a gossip magazine, and people watch it casually

interesting point derek. i wonder if this same discussion happened in the book publishing world in the 1700's when magazines were invented?

the numbers i posted are real numbers. Those are not world numbers. They are United States only numbers.

But since some of you think that a discussion on future markets are not a topic worthy topic i guess it wouldn't make sense to YOU. maybe just as some look for ways to knock my post i will be reminding you when ever you come with philosophy or opinion outside of direct necessity.

I thought it would be an interesting topic that would help people see a more diverse way of looking at the industry. Maybe consider other money streams.

Oh there are a few preditors out there that have web oriented selling techniques. If you don't personally sell your craft and only edit maybe you can understand that but it exists never the less.

BTW as a person who is an avid NBA Live player. You can look directly at the people making the games to find out why EA has suffered. After NBA Live 07 (which was the best version ever), everything went to the toilet as far as game play. They went back to traditionally restrictive game play and purge their loyal users.

I guess that was them saying, " there's no need to explore new areas or to satisfy customers."
Narrow minds make narrow pockets.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Quote

the numbers i posted are real numbers. Those are not world numbers. They are United States only numbers.

...from W-H-E-R-E Jeff? Where did you get those numbers? For once BACK UP what you are saying with F-A-C-T-S.

Quote

BTW as a person who is an avid NBA Live player. You can look directly at the people making the games to find out why EA has suffered. After NBA Live 07 (which was the best version ever), everything went to the toilet as far as game play.

You are so right, corbett...a multi-billion $$$ company is suffering because one of it's 200 + games (one of it's slower sellers, btw) isn't living up to your expectations.

OMG

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

i agree with most of what you said derek. Web can not be compared to theatrical yet but its coming close in spastic segments.

Loose Change
That film changed my perception. Not only of the event but more so my thought on what net video could do.

I do not think of web video as an alternative to theatrical big budgets. But it is becoming an alternative to TV. And in some cases the content is better than the predictable satire of 1 hr TV shows. CSI starts and ends the same way 98% of the time.

I just recently saw a short where they used a town of mannequins to show the perspective of a killer. Very original. Very entertaining.

The movie release will be king for a long time. But if you compare TV to web well its not that far apart. There are pay movies starting to be more common on the web. Things like Apple Tv and that windows TV are boosting the market for online content.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

i think the problem many of us are having with your topic J - is that those numbers are for inline advertising in general and from my experience , 60% of that money is in media placement and programming. there is probably 30% on graphics and whatever left goes to video.

nobodys saying that youre stupid, what they are saying is that youve taken one small piece of information - taken it out of context and built a whole philosophy around it.

web video is nothing new. its been around in one form or another since like 1997. and since then ive not seen its existence change my workflow AT ALL. sure now i have to address various compression and delivery mechanisms but as far as shoot, edit and post - its still the same. i still address title/motion safe and i plan for broadcast and wherever it ends up afterward is all good.

Quote

Loose Change ? That film changed my perception. Not only of the event but more so my thought on what net video could do.

Indeed. Never before have so many had the power to do such appallingly awful work.

Quote

nobodys saying that youre stupid

I wasn't. But I'm man enough to admit that now I'm really, really leaning that way.