[meteorite-list] AD: Video Footage of our trip to Oman

[Darren Garrison]

On Sun, 05 Jun 2005 10:34:08 -0700, JKGwilliam <h3chondrite at cox.net> wrote:

>Obviously the thoughts of a person who has never produced a video.  You 
>need to figure in the associated costs as well like travel, equipment, 
>fuel, blank tapes, more equipment and finally and most importantly, lots 
>and lots of time.

Nope.  IF someone started, from the very beginning, with the intent of producing a video for
commercial distribution, THEN costs of travel, equipment, yadda yadda yadda would go into the
equation.  But for someone who made a video for their own purposes and then later decided that maybe
some other people with the same hobby might enjoy seeing the video, I do NOT count those costs into
the equation.  If the video were going to be made even if nobody ever than the filmer were ever to
see it, then you can't pretend that those are parts of the costs.

And time?  I don't buy the justification that some people use that "since I make x amount of money
per hour in my career, then my free time is valued at x dollars per hour".  As if they should be
paid, say, 20 bucks to take a nap or 35 to watch a DVD.  What you do with your free time has no
relation to what you do on your job.

And, for the record, I've been working with video on the computer on the hobby level for quite a few
years.  And the time I spend doing it is for the pleasure of doing it, not for a profit motive.

>If it plays on a DVD player at all, it's worth 20 bucks.
>

Obviously the thoughts of someone who isn't familiar with the DVD producing software available
today.  There is freeware software that will turn virtually any video file into a DVD with only a
couple of clicks.  See THIS for example: http://www.vso-software.fr/divxtodvd/divxtodvd.htm  Any
idiot can make a DVD.  

And, though I've bought probably around 500 DVD movies since the first year the format came out, I
would say that I've paid as much as $20 for no more than 20% of them (and those were usualy more
than one disc SEs).

If he wants to sell his discs at that price, I have no problem with it.  If people want to pay that
price, I have no problem with it.  I just suggested that he was putting way too much expense and
time into unneeded extra packaging that was running up his price needlessly.