[svlug] svlug bylaws (Google Docs)

[Christian Einfeldt]

hi

On Dec 3, 2007 10:07 PM, Karen Shaeffer <shaeffer at neuralscape.com> wrote:

>
> ownership of those
> videos is a real issue. And I would think Google is the last
> entity to have any claim to own those videos.
>

I have shot hundreds and hundreds of hours of video for the Digital Tipping
Point film, and edited it, and I can tell you that all of this work is very
expensive, not to mention the value of my time.  Google has provided us with
the following, all free as in beer, AFAIK:  a high quality camera; an
expensive mic similar to a Sennheiser wireless mic; a camera operator; a
tape deck for capturing the video; miniDV cassette tapes; editing equipment;
and the time invested in doing the editing.

The camera is probably worth about $4,000.00; the tape deck about the same;
renting a meeting place like that would probably be about $500 for the
evening, just guessing; the cost of a camera operator would cost about $125
per hour or thereabout; plus fees for capturing and editing the footage and
compressing it.

IMHO, we should seriously examine the benefit that we derive from having
Google do this work, and whether, in balance, we are benefitting from
relinguishing rights over the material.  IMHO, we might find that we are
negotiating ourselves right out of all of the above benefits.  I think we
should think carefully before doing so.  IMHO, the service that Google is
providing is excellent, not to mention that they host the monthly
installfests.

Here's another thing to consider:  anyone who wants to edit that video is
going to have to use the raw .dv to do the editing, because replicant fading
is a real problem with each generation of compression of video from
compressed video.  You want to always work as close to the original .dv
files as possible, and that .dv equals 1 GB for every 4.51 minutes.  So a 40
minute tape generally results in about 8.5 GBs of data, and a 60 minute tape
results in about about 13.3 GB of data.  And then when you edit the video,
you probably want to export the video to raw .dv for compression, and you
will want to keep the raw .dv of both the edited and original files, at
least until it is clear that you are done with both, because you don't want
to reinvent the wheel.  Of course, it is possible to save your edits in an
XML file, which is tiny, but then you typically need to either re-capture
the original .dv file or save the original .dv file.  But you absolutely
need to have the original .dv files to create new edited files from the XML
files, and they probably need to be stored in the same paths relative to the
paths they were in when they were first edited.

Storing and manipulating that data is non-trivial.  So anyone who has
aspirations to editing this video needs to think really seriously about how
they are going to do so, at least if they want high-quality, high-res
results.  Another thing, is that on the average desktop computer, it will
take about 7 to 1 real time to render changes made.  So every hour of
footage that is edited and re-rendered will take about 7 hours to render,
depending on the horsepower of your machine.

So who wants to take on the responsibility for all of that video work?  Not
me.
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