14 hours editing seems a bit much, but script to shoot to edit to finish might be right

Good job, Ken -- it's always nice to see a face behind the forum name.

Since you're soliciting comments, I have one. Not intended to be a criticism, because I'm certainly just a bozo in the small ring, but...

Although Stacy is certainly pleasant to look at, I think that camera lingers on her just a tad too long before transitioning to the next scene.

Maybe I'm just oversensitive to this -- it reminds me of seeing Dan Rather's signoff in the early days after he took over from Cronkite. He'd say "Good night" and then freeze into a goofy, phony half-smile, looking very artificial as the credits began to roll. (No, I don't think Stacy looks goofy... it was just a way of illustrating my point.)

...it reminds me of seeing Dan Rather's signoff in the early days after he took over from Cronkite. He'd say "Good night" and then freeze into a goofy, phony half-smile...ROFL

...and in the following days it got worse...Good night..PAUSE..SeeYa Tomorrow...PAUSE...Take Care

Gotta agree, she lingers too long and I found having her so far out of the frame disturbing.Liked you editing setup though :)
Bob.

You are very good Ken . .

However . .. I do a lot of event/community type shoots. I have to "deal" with the lighting as I get it . .AND there is a fair amount of Post correction too . .. hey ho .. But, Ken, you have the advantage of a controlled lighting environment? Yes? Well, I thought the lighting and the angle of your friend did little for her . . IMHO she appeared to "flat" on. Maybe a slght 3/4 turn on and a bit more "flattering" lighting would have made me recognise I was looking at a piece of video work to "engage" with - a bit of "lighting" makeup wouldn't have gone amiss - she is a pretty girl - let's see this?

Also the lower 1/3 stays on toooo long. Fade it in and out if necessary, but once read let it go and let the "full" Frame breath again.

These are only twitches from someone who does have the failities you have - but, none-the-less, great job.

MORE please!

Hiow much was all that kit in the background? Phew, lotsa Do$$ars

Grazie :)

Hi, thanks Grazie, others...

good point re too long on first clip, will trim it.. thanks..

one comment I got from another board was that I talked too fast.. so that's interesting..

the lower thirds, that's also an anti-piracy watermark thing I did.. so someone doesn't lift the clip saying "welcome to our members' area..videos..etc" ... agree though, otherwise I'd just leave it off, especially the entire outro clip w/stacy at end..


ken

I think theceo must have been looking at the wrong clip.

I thought Stacy was very attractive and that guy Ken didn't look too bad either.

I didn't think it was blurry. It was soft but not blurry.

Only negatives:
On the intro perhaps cutting away from Stacy just before she finished speaking would be better.
You dwell on her for too long at the end. It's apparant that she is struggling to sustain the smile.
And the captions are held for far too long.

Overall, I wish I could attain that quality.

Alan

I agree with Alan, The actors are fine after all the pitch is about daytrading
not shampoo. Keep up the great work.
BTW Ken did you use ULTRA for your keys>
JImmy

yes, ultra and that was the MSL3 'master control' set.. agree re clip timing ...and that's me talking.. with stacy ....

appreciate it..

ken

I think most of us knew it was you Ken.

I love it!

What encoding product did you use to convert to Flash?

Ho did you create the player, or was it the encoding software?

Alex

It's flash - All you have to do is create some space on the web page and put a link to the flash file (well, there's some other stuff that goes around it, I think dreamweaver will pretty much add everything that's needed automatically when you pull in a flash file.

Since he also has a WMV format file that you can download, my bet is that he simply imported the WMV into the Flash stage.

Hey Scottw, I know it's flash, I just wanted to know what product
he uses to convert the .mpeg or .avi file to flash. And I also like the player.
I just wanted to know if the program he uses for flash conversion also created the player. I have a site/business that is ALL flash video.

Check it out at http://www.videolistings.ca

Thanks for your input.

Regards,

Alex

Great job Ken. I love the set :-)
My only comment is about the way you said ...Day Trading university's new state of the art online.... It's at about the 33 sec.mark. It sounds like you say "state of thart" instead of "state of the art". OTOH, it could just be a result of the encoding.

Mike

I guess I don't understand the question. If you look at the source for Ken's page, it does basically the same thing as your page does - the player is the standard Flash plugin from Macromedia.

As far as encoding, let Vegas do it. You select Windows Media 9 Video as the render format, send it out to a WMV file. You can then import this file into Flash - so you aren't really converting it too flash, but imbedding it within flash (though Flash may convert the WMV info into something else - I'm not certain).

--Scott

ken, nice work. A lot has been said about stacy, you can overlay pointers to the lib as you wade out Stacy at the end. I would consider enlarging your screen image more, the background is too busy and dominates the scene. Remember its your advice being promoted, not serious magic backdrops.

I think (but obviously Ken KNOWS whether...) the video has been converted to Flash video. The downloadable clip is .wmv, but the one that plays in the web page is Flash.

Conversion to Flash format can be done via SwishMax, or "natively" within Flash Professional MX2004. The latter uses the Sorensen Squeeze codec, giving darn good video with darn small filesize.

The "flash video" format is more recent than the older Flash .swf format (which still exists, of course), and gives higher quality.

good points.. actually I didn't do the flv encoding, I hired a programmer at scriptlance to do it for me, for $25 ... :) outsourcing!

the way I'd do it is via flash mx 2004 w/the flv encoder... but I'm using mx 2002 and haven't upgraded .. so I outsourced it..

right re talent feature vs background, good point ...

ken

I would like to know more about the background and what camera did you shoot with? (It doesn't look like any Serious Magic background I've seen).

The background is from the latest Serious Magic Ultra Set LIbrary #3 (came out a few months back).

Looking very good, Ken. You've learned this stuff pretty dang fast!
It's natural to speak too fast, and in a longer program it's OK to do so, because people can become accustomed to the faster cadence. But if they only get to know you in 90 seconds, you'll want to slow that down a tad.
Very nice bit of work. Can you contact me off line about it?

Hi Spot, sure thing, just sent you an email. It's thanks to your DVDs that I was able to get up to speed in using Vegas .. I remain indebted to you..
terrific job. Best instructional video I've ever seen, in any field. It worked.

ken