Is anyone using CD rom promo?

[jonnyflash]

I mailed out about 15 CDROM promo discs to hither and yon,
and about 2 of them worked out. The rest of the recipients could not watch the video, for reasons unknown to me. Stephen probably knows why.
Anyway, I tested mine on a mac and a PC, and it seemed OK, but in the end it wasnt.
So Im back to mailing VHS tapes.
my $0.02

[Happy Pig]

I went to my local duplication shop yesterday and asked about VCD. They agreed that it should be playable on most (generally newer) model DVD players and PCs. They did say however that the quality loss is significant, now are they just trying to upsell me into getting it done on DVD or has anyone else got experience with this?

[Stephon]

the VCDs that I've burned have been watchable, but definitely on the lower end of VHS quality. Of course, this all depends on quality of your original source video.

[Steven Ragatz]

Happy Pig,

DVD or CD-ROM simply are the media where the digital bits are stored. The fidelity of the video is restricted by the difference in size rather than the media. A CD-ROM has only 650 MB, as opposed to a DVD supporting a couple + Gigs. A DVD player looks for MPEG-2 files in a predefined folder hierarchy. If the player supports VCD-ROMs, then it doesn't care about the disk, and it just reads the data and plays it. A VCD-ROM will get you only about five to ten minutes of video footage if compressed at a comparable rate to DVD. Of course, if you try to save as much footage on a VCD-ROM as you do on a DVD-ROM, there is going to be a very noticable degradation. But if all you want to do is send out a couple minutes of promo video, then a VCD-ROM should do the trick.

Johnny,

If you would like, you can send me a copy of your disk and I will look at it and help you figure out why it isn't working.

Personnally, I think that the only real reason to use a digital medium for promotional material is if you wish to include some sort of interactive element to it. If all you are doing is getting video footage to the end user, then VHS is a far more widely accepted format. But if you are adding interactivity through menus, animations, or games, digital can get you allot more.

Steven Ragatz

[Stephon]

Yeah, I should have mentioned that I was referring to VCDs I'd made of hour-long television programming that I'd downloaded from the internet.

[jonnyflash]

Thanks for the kind offer Stephon, you are a digital scholar AND a gentleman. I will continue with the VHS, as many agents found that they didn't know enough about CD-ROM to watch my video(nothing interactive about my CDROM promo) and if it wasnt the software in their heads, it was the hardware on their desks that presented insurmountable barriers.I dont believe the world is ready for digital CDROM promo yet. DVD I can see, cuz it starts itself and DVD players are now common.
So I will take a raincheck on that favor......

[Stephon]

On Steven's behalf--you're welcome.

[jonnyflash]

er....thanks to both of you! <tee hee>

[Minnie Maniac]

Jim,

Your post stands out as providing a straight forward solution for a lot of stituations where you need to provide a promo video (obviously not all situations, such as applying for festivals...). What I want to know is - how much space do you need to host your website and do you know a reasonably priced web host? Seems like a good idea, but want to know costs involved etc.

Toni, currently in London (Hi Sam, Dan and Kim!), miserable, grey and cold like everybody always told me - I would have been disappointed with anything else...

[Jim]

[quote]Originally posted by Minnie Maniac:
<strong>Jim,

Your post stands out as providing a straight forward solution for a lot of stituations where you need to provide a promo video (obviously not all situations, such as applying for festivals...). What I want to know is - how much space do you need to host your website and do you know a reasonably priced web host? Seems like a good idea, but want to know costs involved etc.</strong><hr></blockquote>


These days, it seems you can easliy find web hosts that will give you 100megs of space for US$10.00-$15.00/month.

My promo videos on my site take up about 40 megs. An average 5-7 minute Quicktime web video should be about 10 megs. (I also have WMV small and large versions of my video.)

I'm going to take a poll and start a new thread about web hosting companies. I'm curious to see who other people use.

Check out this thread:
Who is your web hosting company?

Jim

[Rex Boyd]

I have just put together a promo CD to hand out at a showcase I'm doing next month. The files on the CD are nearly the same as on my website with a few changes to personalize the disk for my agent and also very importantly the CD contains MPEG's of my 4 promo videos that are much larger than the Quicktimes on my website. I chose MPEG's even though Quicktime is better quality because it still seems that I run into people who are hesitant to install Quicktime on their PC's for whatever reason. ( mostly laziness I'd say but then again I'm too lazy to install Window Media Player on my Mac ) The reason for making the CD's instead of just putting the larger files on the net is that my CD with the videos and lots of printable photo files comes to 250 Mb. Broadband is still just catching on here in England so I think the CD is the only way to go in this case. And even if the files can download on Broadband in a few minutes they still load almost instantly from the CD.

So anyway from what I've tested so far the website on my CD is easily accessible from Mac's and PC's and the video while not any where near as good as DVD can be still be played fullscreen at an acceptable quality. The other bonus is that CD-Roms are incredibly cheap these days and I ran off 50 copies at home in a couple of afternoons. The cost of making the CD's for the number I need to make is much lower than the cost of hosting that much space on the net would be.

Whether this gets me any more work or not remains to be seen but I should know in a few months time.

Rex

[le pire]

I book acts for summer engagements and I get a lot of promo Videos, CD-ROMs and DVDs each month.

All three formats are fine for me, HOWEVER, I always have to make a presentation to the client. I do not like the CD-ROMS because I have to switch from the TV/VCR to the computer, go through the menus, loading and all that, and then the video is usually on a 4 inch by 4 inch quicktime screen.

My presentations go MUCH smoother when I go from one VHS tape to the next. So I start with all the VHS tapes and then go to the CD-ROMS-- often times a client will go with the first act they see so in this case a CD-ROM is a disadvantage. I do try to point out to the client that "this is the guy you want," but I don't press the point, because after all, THEY are the client. This is a detail, but one worth mentioning.

My other problem with CD-ROMS is that people send them to me in slimline jewel cases or even worse the little 3 inch CD-ROMS. THESE GET LOST ON THE SHELF or misplaced in the office. If you are going to do CD-ROM, then PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE send it in a DVD case and print up a NICE cover.

Speaking of covers, lets talk about labels. Scrawling your name on a piece of adhesive and sticking it to the tape looks like crap. Please don't do this.

Glueing your business card to the VHS tape in place of a label is not a good idea because often a corner of the card becomes unglued and then the tape gets stuck in my machine when I hit eject. Please don't do this.

Blank labels that you can run through your printer are not expensive and this really doesn't take much effort.


If a promo video is 5 minutes long, why do people put them on 120 minute VHS tapes? The tape itself is HEAVY and this is making shipping costs higher. These tapes are also fairly expensive-- it is it like $10 for four tapes at best buy. $2.50 per tape. Whereas if you buy 50
ten minute VHS tapes (from tapeonline.com) they cost .75 per tape. If your going to go through the trouble to film, edit, and reproduce a demo video, then it only makes sense to put it on a reasonable tape. It looks far more professional to send a 10 minute tape, and it costs less!!!

It may sound like a "big commitment" to buy 50 tapes, but you should go through those in one-two years. If not, then you haven't mailed out enough videos.

DVD's are quite new and I don't receive a lot of them. The only problem I have encountered so far is that some DVD's work on the computer, but not the DVD player hooked up to my TV set. I have no clue why this is.

Just some advice... take it or leave it.


étienne

[pablo]

VHS

Whenever I ask an agent or potential client about which format they want my edited show on, they always request video.

Some agents like to send out CDs because they are cheaper to produce and mail, but cheaper & smaller is not always better.

[MarcusM]

Lately I have been using DVDs at the agents request. I have only used CD-roms a few times and i used VHS a lot last year. But for some reason DVDs seem to be the new VHS. Its cheap to mail, good quality, just make sure that the DVD will work on most DVD players, or else you just lost the job.
~Marcus