Delivery questions to ponder

Sorry – this is long but relevant:

I just re-read this entire category and I have some questions to ponder and take this subject a little deeper.

In my work and business we’ve been using FTP for file delivery for something like 15 years now and we’ve probably been serving our own FTP on site for about 10 years, which is a way to save 1/2 of the upload /download process compared to an off site FTP. Up to a point that has worked out for those customers who are willing to come and get their stuff or put their stuff on our site. For us that has been many of them, but there is always the YouSentIt crowd and those that need files put on their servers with specific specs and in specific places.

Over those years we’ve all become steadily more ambitious with uploads and downloads. At first, it was just a few files from a voice record, then more and more and more depending on how much time and relative connections on either side, pushing our luck along the way. At my facility, we are routinely moving finished or reference Quicktime or other media around as large as 4 gig.

But even so, somewhere around a 4 gig file is on the upper limit of what I think is reasonable compromise between a realistic upload/download experience with our current setup. That’s quite a bit actually, relative to the 50 megs we first did in the mid ‘90’s and at the time we considered that risqué.

So here we are in late 2010 and because of so many variables out of our control. How to deal to have a plan to meet so many needs? Interfacing with another site it at the mercy of their connection, our connection, the speed we get in between, equipment, file types, and maybe most difficult: The client’s perception of what is a realistic file to deliver this way.

Case in point: A couple of nights ago, we uploaded a 4 gig file to London (from Los Angeles). It had to be done in one of the short list of required high quality file types (including uncompressed). Based on their list and relative quality consideration we chose the less of the evils and went with ProRes HD 1080. Like others here have experienced, it had to be loaded to their site and the company receiving the file wasn't willing to come and get it from ours. Even though we have a decent connection and the receiving end had a decent connection we weren’t getting even 1/10th of our potential upload speed and this was a 7+ hour upload -- even when there was no other activity in our office at the time. No harm done, I suppose in the middle of the night with no tight deadline, but of course, my client didn’t anticipate this and there is an education needed here to explain all the variables to this transmission that are out of our control their only point of reference is what it is like to load a YouTube video and they want to know what the H*** is wrong with us, why would it take 7 hours? And it was only 4gigs because it was only 3 minutes long. Obviously ProRes HD is a lofty choice and there are more compressed options, but that was the expectation, so we do our best to meet the client’s needs and to push the envelope (in the name of science) if no harm is done.

So here are a few the questions that are on my mind:. I use the term FTP generically to describe all similar options:

1.) What size Internet pipe is the typical small post company going to need to be on the ready for day-to-day requests that are on the rise and increasing in ambitiousness. 3by3? 5by5? 10by10??

2.) What kind of a pricing model seems to fit these kinds of services? FTP has been for us a side dish – a way to get the work done that enables billable time -- not specifically revenue center. But if file transmission IS the service, what is the value of this as THE service? What price can you put on a file loading in the middle of the night while everyone is sleeping versus when you in the midst of it on a busy day with other demands on your connection and other resources? How can you possibly price with consistency for something that has variables out of your control – such as the recipient’s connection, or general conditions on the internet at a given time, or the myriad of file types and sizes – without having a pricing model for just one of your services made of exponential variables?

3.) How do we manage client expectations and stay grounded in reality? Taking from a current example: If a client wants to send 26 1/2 hour shows in DV PAL Quicktime to Russia and the client convinced that 180+ gigs of upload is a better option than shipping it all one little hard drive? Maybe I’m the crazy one?

4.) What services/hardware/resources fit the bill to offer a non-proprietary and the most flexible for all of these goals?

5.) When are we going to all get together and standardize a delivery format that we can all agree upon, live with and rely on without having exponential variables every step of the way?

Comments appreciated. Thanks.

Mike Klinger
Tree Falls Post
(323) 851-0299
mike@tfpost.com
http://www.tfpost.com

PBS still does a satellite feed once a week so stations can download and then store the shows on their servers. Done realtime via satellite.

We post 30 second promos for their shows on a local FTP server that has a simple web interface...they don't need to upload to it, only download the files. We post DV NTSC standard def because that's what they want.

Mike made a great post...we are moving soon and we now have Cable modem with 30 meg download and 5 meg up. The new place will be T1 only and we will start with 3x3...huge difference.

I uploaded a 1.3 gig DVD build the other day and it took about 35 minutes with our cable internet speeds. Not too bad. Charged $20 US for the upload.

If Google can get a foothold they promise gigabit ethernet speeds across the internet which will be a huge game changer. That would work!

We also priced out online FTP sites but they have storage limits....not near what we need, and pricey.

For now we limit it to the :30 spot. And longer programs we have delivered in H264 HD and they hold up pretty good. We "decompress" them to ProRes before editing and it works pretty good, although not entirely ideal and the national broadcast snobs won't buy into a highly compressed codec like H264...yet.

Great post...

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production and Post
Owner/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
http://www.tiltmedia.com

Scott Rachal: We are lucky here in Lafayette, as that is the LOWEST tier. We can upgrade to 20x20, 50x50 or 100x100 with our municipal provider.

You're extremely lucky. There are areas in large cities that still don't have cable modem connectivity. We were unable to get cable internet to our building until about a year ago because it had not yet been run to the neighborhood where our building is located. And we're right across the street from the region's largest power provider, whose offices take up an entire city block.

Even with cable modem availability, T1 was a better choice because of the huge variation in speed and service we got with cable. It's specs were much faster than T1, but in actual use, the T1 is MUCH more reliable and upload speeds on average are about the same.

Most people are struggling with the speed issue and one of the reasons this forum was started was because of the repeated questions posted in other forums from people frustrated with the upload process in terms of speed, process, quality etc.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog

This is a quick overview to Michael's general questions. There is no cheap answer. Unless you have a dedicated service, FTP is slow, and there is nothing you can buy to make your cable provider's slow lines speed up the process. This is the only real reason why tape, and Fed'exing drives still exist. T1, T3, and DS-3 lines are expensive to insanely expensive. And they still have limited bandwidth, so when you have to do distribution of very large files to a LOT of places, without satellite uplink, or VYVX fibre, there are dramatic limitations. Digital Delivery as of 2011 is realistic for commercial spot delivery for "the masses", but to deliver shows over generic FTP without dedicated hardware on both ends, it's just slow.

Bob Zelin

Not sure I understand what you're saying. We make more money by encoding and sending digital files than we ever did sending tape dubs. With tape dubs, we had to buy the tape (Beta SP 5 min. tape = $5); make the dubs in real-time and spot check them in real-time; then physically ship the tape (Fed-ex overnight @ about anywhere from $13 to $20/shipment...and that was a special deal because we shipped hundreds, sometimes thousands a month). Total cost per tape dub was at least $20, plus our markup plus our dub fee. Total, somewhere in the $40 ranger per tape...but we only make about $15-$20.

With digital delivery, we can encode the spots in faster than real-time, spot check them, then FTP them with off-the-shelf software that cost us a one-time fee of about $79 per computer (5 years ago).

Total cost to us per spot? Neglible. We charge $25-$35 per encode/upload with essentially no cost....so we keep all of that. Plus we don't have shipping cost. Client is happy because it's less expensive. We're happy because we keep more money and save time.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog