Need help with web video workflow - Could you take a look?

[rossagrant]

Hi guys,

I work for a casting company who spend all day everyday filming actors auditioning and have to get those clips online ASAP after the castings take place.

The clips are anywhere from 30 seconds long to 3 minutes and in a typical casting we probably have 50 clips taken.

The clips are recorded onto memory stick duos in a .MPG format.

We are just about to embark on a Mac journey by clearing out the 7 office PC's and replacing them with i3 iMacs with 8GB RAM each.

What would the best workflow be to get the clips off the card, in a suitable format to upload and where would be best to host the clips?

they need to all be included as seperate clips online with thumbnails and labelled by actor's name.

I'm looking at Mobile me now and the galleries there but you can't password protect albums unless they go through iMovie or Aperture and I don't want to include them in the workflow as I don't think they are necessary.

I think iFFMPEG might be good to use for converting to .mp4 but then I need to get them somewhere online ASAP, password protected and viewable by iPhone and iPad as well as Mac and PC.

I know it's a big ask but what do you think is the FASTEST and most efficient way to do this?
Thanks

 

[martinX]

Can't help with the hosting part, but I have some questions about the file format part.

You say the files are .MPG format. Do you know if this is MPEG1 or 2 (I'd guess MPEG2). If so, you may need to look at getting the MPEG2 playback component for QuickTime from Apple. This lets QuickTime play back MPEG2 files (obviously...) but it also lets you use something like MPEG Streamclip (which operates using QuickTime's playback features) for batch conversions.

Smarter people here may recommend Compressor but since I know SFA about it, I'll stick with recommending MPEG Streamclip for now.

 

[KeithPratt]

If the MPG files from the camera aren't prohibitively large you could upload them straight to a Vimeo Plus account, hiding and password-protecting them.

 

[rossagrant]

Can't help with the hosting part, but I have some questions about the file format part.

You say the files are .MPG format. Do you know if this is MPEG1 or 2 (I'd guess MPEG2).

Smarter people here may recommend Compressor but since I know SFA about it, I'll stick with recommending MPEG Streamclip for now.

yeah we use MPEG Streamclip now on the PC's we have to convert the files. I was hoping Mac might have something a bit faster but maybe the performance is only due to our hardware.

What about iFFMPEG? Also does Vimeo allow for batch uploads?

 

[elisedriver]

You can bulk upload to vimeo with their Beta Desktop client.

It's adobe air based - and is fairly stable for a Beta product.

Uploaded two files today myself

http://www.vimeo.com/dpollard/videos

 

[kohlson]

I would try and identify and characterize as many "pain points" as you can in your work flow, and then make sure that your solution will work to address them. Off the top of my head, you could be waiting on:
- Copy from the camera/MSD
- Encode into editable format
- Copying/moving on your LAN
- Editing
- Exporting to final format
- Uploading to Web
- Cataloging rough and final

Faster network (LAN/WAN), disk, processor may help these issues. Also, it may be that if you spend a little more on one thing, you may save a lot of time. Upgrading from i3 to i7-2500K, for example.
Recent Sandy Bridge issues not withstanding, reviews show that this processor is significantly better at media encoding than previous CPUs, so it may be worth waiting until Apple releases products with them.

 

[martinX]

If the MPG files from the camera aren't prohibitively large you could upload them straight to a Vimeo Plus account, hiding and password-protecting them.

THAT is a top idea. Trim in camera, copy files over to Mac, upload directly to Vimeo. Love it.