Professional ???

[purejammy]

Recently my youngest daughter took part in her very first dance show.

I did ask Mrs Jammy to tout me for the video, but the lady that runs the dance show explained that her husband would be doing the production. Anyways, a bit of lost income aside, Mrs J and I decided to order a DVD at the princely sum of £10.

I went to the dance show of course and immediately clocked the chap doing the filming. My thoughts were, "My God he's using a small lense domestic cam for this? The lighting will throw his aut focus all over the place. I hope to the heavens he's not transferring this to DVD+RW via a domestic DVD Recorder! At least he has a tripod!"

Guess what?

Today the DVD arrived, and yes it was transferred to a domestic DVD recorder, all 3 hours of it on a single DVD.

Mrs J was already wary. When picking up the DVD the lady said, "You might have to tone down the Red colour on your telly to watch this". Well she was spot on, I haven't seen so much bleed since watching 'Saving Private Ryan".

As for the tripod, it was a waste of time the camera is all over the place. And I was right about the autofocus thing, the lighting, combined with inappropriate superfast zooming, make much of the footage unwatchable.

There were 2 DVDs in the pack (one for each 3 hour show of 2 shows) and 1 DVD wouldn't play ata ll. It was obvious from looking at the Dye that there was an awful lot of Dye bleed. Either this is from using DVDs (+RW) that have been used before, or it is extremely cheap media (perhaps both). To add insult to injury the whole packaging thing was absolutely amateurish (Cheap paper cover and cheap paper DVD labels).

And this guy has the absolute nerve to charge 10 quid for this.

Sorry about this, but I just had to get that off my chest!

[Marc Peters]

Robin, take a deep breath, rip the DVD to your HDD, and then edit a nice little 15-60 sec promo vid from the material you have.

[purejammy]

Yes you are quite right Marc.

I have already ripped it course, simply to edit my daughter's dances.

But thats a good idea, a wee Promo piece.

Happy again!

[Mike Thorpe]

Adjust the colour, cut the bits out, improve what you can and send them a copy saying "i fixed it as best as I could"

[Tony A]

What better example of false economy could you find? She who runs the dance show must be aware of lost credibility. As must he.

Valuable moments lost at what should have been a memorable event. How many others ordered discs, and were underwhelmed by them?

After sampling dolby sound, is there any incentive to go back to 78rpm records? Apart from nostalgia, of course. Yeah, you'll have to drive your point home. Show 'em how it can and should be done.

[Marc Peters]

Out of interest, where are the profits from this venture going? My sister asked me to donate my time filming and editing my nieces play for her playgroup, with the proceeds of the DVD going back into the playgroup.

She said it doesn't have to be anything special (essentially just a transfer from miniDV to DVD), but you so know I'll be there with multiple cams, wireless mics, (probably lights by then), and spend days labouring over the edit and presentation .

She's hoping to sell 30 at £10 a pop, so after costs for materials the group should make about £280. Not bad, eh? Getting the parents to donate a tenner would be much harder...

[purejammy]

Well to be fair, and I have just checked this, the proceeds are going to St Andrews Hospice, so I no longer mind about the tenner.

But tone33 is spot on, some cherished memories down the stank I'm afraid.