Category: FocusPulling Original

11 May 2016

CreateSpace becomes Amazon Video Direct: What Does it Mean for Filmmakers?

Written by Paul Moon

Yesterday, in a surprise announcement, Amazon launched a new retail platform empowering video content creators to sell streaming media. It’s called Amazon Video Direct, and you can sign up now. What does it mean for filmmakers?

Previously, there were a few ways to get your films into the search results at Amazon.com, none of them ideal. The blue chip way was to somehow strike a high-level business deal, generally via traditional distribution channels, for both physical media and/or streaming media — big shot territory. For the rest of us 99%-ers, there was always (and still is) the option to just become an Amazon Marketplace seller, and use Amazon as an ordering system (you pack and ship DVDs/Blu-Rays after collecting the money, and giving a share of profit to Amazon), or to use Amazon as a complete order fulfillment system by sending them a batch of DVDs/Blu-Rays that they send out from their warehouses. If you happen to move product, they let you know when inventory is low enough for another batch…at your own risk, since your bulk might not eventually sell.

CreateSpace royalties for Amazon Instant Video rentals and purchases, being phased out

Lastly, for a long time there has been a parallel company under the Amazon umbrella called CreateSpace.com. Analogous to another Amazon acquisition we all know too well (and hate), Withoutabox.com, it had a clunky/primitive interface, and its technology was (and still is) way behind the times. The great thing about CreateSpace, though, is that it prints DVDs (not Blu-Rays, unfortunately) on-demand, as customers order them, so that you don’t have to risk buying in bulk. (Who among us doesn’t get free “merch” almost weekly from our creative circles of friends? It feels generous at first, until you realize — usually with a significant other looming nearby eager to get rid of clutter — that it’s just a melancholy off-loading of unsold discs from two-projects-ago.) Problem is, CreateSpace takes a gigantic, greedy cut of your profits from physical media: like, literally, if you set the retail price at ten bucks, you make about fifty cents in profit from a sale. It slides a teeny bit up from there, but seriously: can we justify charging much more than ten bucks for a DVD these days?

<br /> At some point years ago, CreateSpace began offering the option to take that uploaded DVD media and “transcode” the video (it’s magic!) for Amazon Instant Video streaming. So, when someone found your DVD on Amazon.com, they would also see an option to buy or rent the streaming version. Profit margins have been better for that, yet there was always a laughable limitation when streaming via CreateSpace: the maximum resolution is SD video quality (since it’s lifted from your retail DVDs). No joke: 720 by 480 pixels.

So now, the newest kid on the block is Amazon Video Direct. CreateSpace hasn’t explained very well how existing libraries will be affected, and whether CreateSpace content will have the option to keep their “spots on the shelves” preserving sales history, while upgrading the source media to HD. In fact, existing CreateSpace users like myself are weirdly getting punished for having a loyal history with Amazon: anyone can sign up immediately for Amazon Video Direct as a new seller (see the sample registration page at left), but migration of existing CreateSpace streaming videos to the new platform is expected to take about four weeks. At this point, it’s also uncertain whether Amazon will offer any option to merge accounts.

When it comes to video specifications for your uploads (seen at right), Amazon Video Direct is much more modernized than CreateSpace’s low-resolution, low-bitrate DVD rips from MPEG-2 SD video. In this sense and more, Amazon’s relatively low-key launch of its new platform is arguably a sleeping monster for people like us. You’ve probably heard about, and maybe tried out, services for retail video-on-demand (VOD) offered by VHX and Vimeo Pro. They are well-designed with extremely clean HD video capability, but there has always been an Achille’s heel at those platforms: they aren’t integrated into any retail search engine like Amazon’s. Proof positive: go to the bazillions of titles just sitting around, gathering no revenue and feeling super lonely (like my old film Lowertown Paducah, boo hoo). Like real estate, the problem is simple: location, location, location.

Granted, your profit margins are great at VHX and especially Vimeo On Demand, but then we’re right back to the real estate analogy: it costs more to live beachfront, right? Among all the graphics thrown onto this page, here is the one you really came to see:

Like being represented by an art gallery, or consignment agreements, the cut of your Amazon Instant Video revenue is 50%. That’s no change from the CreateSpace royalty schedule, but the streaming quality is better, and this is the newest thing with potentially more traffic. But there’s more: did you see that part about Amazon Prime? You can also offer to get paid by the hour; but the royalty rate is piss-poor/laughable: $0.15 (and probably lower from the indeterminate further option to allow pre-roll ads). That movie I mentioned of mine, Lowertown Paducah, is also over at IndieFlix, and while that placement can’t even come close to the viewer penetration potential at Amazon’s platforms, the payout there ranges from 3 to 5 cents per minute. And they do, after a bit of arm-wringing, pay.

So, is your content a good candidate for this new Amazon Video Direct service, and for Prime? Speaking for myself, I plan to flush out my old films this way. Many of us still control old projects that have some life left in them for niche audiences, and when it comes to this, the adage is: what’s to lose? But there’s a caveat: as explained in the help system at this link, eligible uploads must include English captions. Could be a big problem (and it is for me), while CreateSpace hasn’t clarified whether migrated films to the new service will be disabled or grandfathered if captions aren’t included.

As for deciding between sold/rented videos versus Prime revenue, I suppose that if you think you could get tons of views from something in your body of work (cat documentary?), you’ll benefit from the exposure implicit in Prime because members don’t have to pay to watch — and the nature of viral content is that more volumes of interaction increase exposure, search result hits, reviews, etc. Meanwhile, the biggest virtue of Amazon (that I think folks taking exception can easily overlook) is that all smart TV platforms, meaning your average set sold in the past few years, have Amazon Instant Video capability as a native part of the interface. That’s not true for Vimeo VOD, VHX, IndieFlix and so on. And Amazon’s got another stake in this: competing with Netflix. All of these ingredients make for fertile ground when you’re trying to get exposure for your movies, and maybe even paying the bills.

May 11, 2016 FocusPulling Original Leave a Comment

13 April 2016

Zacuto Gratical Eye EVF: When HD and X Are Too Big

Written by Paul Moon

Zacuto today is announcing a new electronic viewfinder (EVF) to complement their initial flagship Gratical X, and their upgrade-able Gratical HD that is basically a Gratical X without key scopes (left to a la carte firmware upgrade purchases). The new Gratical Eye is the smallest of them all, scaled down to a little bulb, while ironically needing to integrate with a fully rigged-out system. Reason is, unlike the other Graticals that take standard Canon batteries, it doesn’t have any sled for a battery, and relies upon a 2-pin Lemo connector that you need to plug into an external power source (say, the V-Mount adapter you’re using with your camera rig, or on a professional camera, its own auxiliary power port). Also, unlike the other Graticals that have both HDMI and SDI inputs, the Gratical Eye only has a BNC connector for HD-SDI. So clearly, it’s for a very specific configuration that you may or may not have (or want) — but there’s meaningful savings in size, and a lower cost of $1,950, compared to the similarly fully-featured Gratical HD that remains $2,450. At just 14 ounces, it’s much lighter than the 1.25-pound bigger bricks. But like those others, it has a standard Arri rosette for mounting, and a Micro-OLED display with 5.4 million pixels, providing usable 720p resolution (with extra room for scopes and other data across its full 1024 lines of resolution).

Another critical limitation that you need to be prepared for is, it still won’t take 4K natively! That can be a deal-breaker for some, but there are ways around the limitation that you might overlook at first. Namely, if you’re recording 4K as opposed to 1080p internally, you still can set the HDMI output of your camera to deliver a distinct 1080p signal. And though the Atomos 4K recorders do not downscale, Convergent Design’s do. Limitation aside, what you get with all these Graticals is best-in-class durability, as they’re built like a tank, with eye cups that Zacuto is known for, with fog control and solid diopters. Zacuto also added a proximity screen saver, like Blackmagic’s new EVF designed for their URSAs, that saves battery power by blanking out when your eye’s not there. Sadly, there’s no indication that the feature will be added to the prior Graticals — probably because the feature requires a hardware sensor that’s not just firmware upgrade-able.

The product isn’t vaporware and production models are actually going into the wild now. Shipping is estimated to begin on April 25th. For more information, visit Zacuto’s Store.

April 13, 2016 FocusPulling Original evf, gratical, zacuto Leave a Comment

29 March 2016

Two new full-frame Sony lenses: 50mm f/1.8 & 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 G OSS

Written by Paul Moon

Sony have just announced two new additions to their full-frame E-mount lens line-up. One of them is a surprisingly affordable alternative to their 55mm f/1.8 Zeiss prime lens, and the other is a very long telephoto zoom lens that serves to “compensate” for the shorter focal reach implicit in full-frame sensors, to those of us coming over from crop sensors.

Sony FE 50mm f/1.8

The latest in Sony’s ongoing tease, between their pricey “pro” lenses that deploy minor product differentiation for dramatic price inflation (example: their FE 85mm f/1.4 GM lens costs almost $2k!), versus amazingly affordable gear to democratize professional-quality filmmaking (example: their new a6300 APS-C camera), Sony has really hit it out of the park with this $248 prime lens. To anyone with a full-frame E-mount camera in the a7 series, this is a fantastically affordable alternative to the $1k Sonnar T* FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA lens. Granted, that Zeiss is extraordinarily tack-sharp, with better coatings, better bokeh (nine-blade aperture versus seven) and more glass elements/groups (7/5 versus 6/5). I wrote here about how it carried the weight of almost an entire documentary film project. But, short of being able to do a side-by-side comparison yet, we’re talking about video here, not still photography, and the thought of being able to buy four of these for the price of that one Zeiss means there had better be a clear difference! (Don’t forget, 4K video can only resolve the equivalent of about 8-9 megapixels.)

What it does have in common with the Zeiss, though, is that it skimps on optical image stabilization (what Sony calls SteadyShot). The feature has long been debated, mostly among still photographers who perpetuate the fallacy that it can damage image quality, and can substantially raise the cost of lens manufacture. Less known is the fact that even on a Sony body with internal 5-axis image stabilization, performance is appreciably better when you pair an OSS lens with IBIS. And for anyone without IBIS, the lack of OSS at this focal length is a recipe for amateurish jitter. Sony has offered OSS on similarly affordable E-mount lenses before in this small form factor (notably, their 50mm and 35mm primes for crop sensors). It’s an unfortunate trend, motivated by corporate accountants, and we can expect to see an elimination of OSS on mirrorless lenses justified by an increased deployment of IBIS into camera bodies.

Sony FE 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 G OSS

Though not quite in the same budget territory as the new prime lens, this long zoom at $1,198 offers lots of value to full-frame shooters. Reason is, if we were used to zooms on crop sensors (for example, the flagship 18-200mm zoom lens), going to a full-frame sensor meant that 200mm became not-so-telephoto after all. Absent a crop factor of 1.8x for widescreen video, 300mm gets us into the range of that visible focal length we had enjoyed at 200mm in the Super 35mm world. Granted, this isn’t parfocal, and lacks the continuous bright aperture of the wonderful 28-135mm f/4.0 cine lens, but f/5.6 zoomed all the way in is respectable — remember, the 18-200mm stopped down to a darker and farther f/6.3 at its maximum focal length. I also like the manual controls on this lens barrel, to switch between manual and auto-focus, and yes: Optical SteadyShot is included! Good for you, Sony.

Both of these exciting new lenses are available for purchase on Thursday, March 31 at 11am EST. I’ll let you know how they perform as soon as I get my paws on them, but sight-unseen, these look to be winners.