C100: Can the C100 burn in Date and Time stamp for a legal deposition?

^If I were you, I would draft a short description of how a modern video camera DOES "burn" the TD info into each clip as it happens. This might help tech-challenged trades like lawyers and medical folks to understand that things have changed over the decades. You're arguing against yourself on this. Nobody is going to expect you to be using equipment from the 90s nor would they ever not understand that TD info is programmable/changeable by you the operator in every case.

Also, you might be overestimating the amount of work in post. It is next to NOTHING! No NLE is needed and vMTS takes only two operations to complete- select the file, hit STAMP. This clip can be read by anything- PotPlayer, WMP, GOM.
 
nedcam said:
P.S. PUREDRIFTING: I thought of you today. Thanks for turning me onto the Osmo! The first few weeks I cursed you and now I am quite good at it! Today I shot for a private equity firm client a restaurant opening, which is a major event for this local chain now going nationwide, packed interior crowds and I cruised with the Osmo. People had never seen one and had a quizzical look on their faces, so in big black letters on my left palm I wrote with a Sharpie: SMILE! The crowd was so packed you couldn't have worked with a Ronin or such. Thanks!
Click to expand...

It's definitely a fun tool. I used mine on a recent shoot in Africa BTS/EPK for a big show and all of the camera ops and the DP went nuts, they all took a turn shooting with it and I used it to capture some amazing stuff of the sets out in Sahara Desert, walking through some outdoor huge sets. Footage was great and plenty decent enough quality for the EPK package. Glad it is making or helping you to make more $$, that's what it's all about. Sometimes I give it to my more tech savvy clients to play with or even a PA to grab some BTS footage. I found a variable ND that works okay, makes it easier to nail the exposure in the nuclear sun in the Sahara.
 
Ned, I briefly considered depos 3 years ago, then got bogged down in the certified vs non-certified aspect, and also that many gigs seem to go through court reporting agencies, which of course take their cut.
But I called our know-it-all friend Google and this is what he had to say:
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=choice+of+camera+for+deposition

2nd link is pretty gear oriented. Good luck, and maybe you'll get me doing them too as I scale down in life like you...

Good luck man, keep us posted!
 
Hi Controluserguy- the post I am referring to is mainly: If I shoot 16x9 HD I'd have to bring everything into an edit system, and these deps can go 7 hours, and then do a center cut and dumb down to SD, plus add the DT stamp. Also, there's software called Yes Law (among others) and some clients want the video synced up with the transcripts, so that's a LOT of post, takes many hours. The syncing is well paying but my whole goal for doing deps is to get some spare cash during semi- and real retirement because it' soooooo physically easy, and the equipment expenses isn't much. Lastly, you can't explain anything to these lawyers because you don't see them until they come into the room with their game face on. There's no technical conversations welcome, you suddenly have a room full of peeps making $300-$700 a hour and they look at you wanting to know when they can start. So on the paperwork will be the specs, just like a TV gig, and it will say whether or not to have the date & time stamp burned in. Some gigs they will want to leave with a DVD or card and the stamp would have to be there then, not added that evening in editing.

Hey Puredrifting- I bought their ND9 but that was too dense, where did you find the Osmo variable ND? I have not made any extra money from it, rather, I use it as a "value added" toy. Lately I did walking tours of a big home decorating client and there's no way I could have done it so quick with something bulkier. Also, I can go "through" little gaps. Also, would love your scene file.

Grovechuck- So....just got back from Miami where I shadowed the King Daddy of deps who allowed me to intern with him for two days. He is the guru of gurus, done 4000 deps, clients such as the State Dept., travels all over. Wow! I learned all I need to know to pass the test ($1080) on Aug 7th. The certification really isn't needed, you can shadow a pro to learn, but I'm using the CLVS designation as a marketing tool because, as you learned, the court reporters' companies tend to arrange for the shooter. I learned that the easy part is the camerawork, the challenging issue is multiple audio channels and doing the legal paperwork LIVE since it is part of the court records, so you can't nod off. Any of us old pros on this forum can shoot deps but there's so much more in regard to "procedures", statements read allowed by the cameraman, and unGodly legal forms. So in sum, an old pro needs to learn all this. I learned the hard way that the locals don't want anything to do with you, that's why I shadowed with two out of state guys.

A down side is the high percentage of cancellations. Also, every day you go out you don't know if you'll be working for one hour or 8, so everyone will have a two hour minimum. Most guys do available light, my guru has a 1x1 LED, so the cart is about one quarter of the gear of a regular day. I was worried that they would be boring but the 3 I've done so far were fascinating: $200mil lawsuit of two giant farmers fighting, someone lying as to stealing trade secrets (80% "I can't recall"), and today sat next to a state's attorney general questioning a giant blood testing company framing Medicaid.

The guru who trained me the last two days is 75 years old! Wow! You mean us shooters can bring in money at 75 years old? Count me in! So I'm laying the groundwork now. We'll see. it's hard to break in because no one wants to hire the guy who messes up, so strangers, who are also seen as competitors, aren't embraced with open arms. Basically have to handle their overflow at first, that's my plan. And on any given day I would make about half or two thirds of a corporate shoot day but it's very easy! Indoors! But at least, if I wanted to, I could shoot deep into my 70s if I needed some spare cash.

Also, it will get me more of the other litigation support videos that I have done over the years, but not doing deps was a weak point because they want one source to be "our video guy".
 
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Hey Control: He had very nice equipment but the camera, by our standards, is primitive but that is all they need for deps. The specs are usually 4x3 because many courtrooms in America are 4x3. In fact, two years ago I produced an employee training video for a giant cruise ship line and the deliverable was 4x3 because the screens in the employee "lounges", and everything on a cruise ship is small, were 4x3 because the company is too cheap to upgrade. Same with courtrooms, also, the video tends to be embedded in the synced transcripts I described above so they want it small and SD. The most popular camera in this crowd is the Panasonic 160A ($3400 after rebate), I will probably buy the 130A.

I haven't bought anything yet just for deps, I want to make sure I can get a few clients first. My whole 38 year career was based on a three legged stool of revenue from production: Non-Fiction TV Shows, Documentaries, Corporate Videos. I had other smaller ones such as Litigation Support, Concerts, Live Events, etc. My mentor taught me diversification was the key to survival. So...I'm not doing TV as I did for a solid 25 years, I don't get calls from the big boys anymore for several reasons and the first one is gear. Very capital intensive. As you age your contacts in LA & NYC age out too. Secondly, documentaries don't pay what they did and have become DIY. The time I have left, which I see as a couple of years tops, I plan to finish with my present cameras (avoid 4K) although I have the usual lust of getting something new, just to play with it. The little Osmo has satisfied that need temporarily.

My guru brought 19 matching mics! But only used 5. He has two ganged 6 channel mixers, a small Ikan monitor and back up gear for everything, burns to a pro DVD burner, an external card burner and he records to one in camera card. Most of the time he sends the DVD to the client but sometimes he has to do the post work and the deliverable is often MPEG 1. A side note is he makes a wav file on a Zoom for the court reporter's file. Although to us here the tech is easy, there's many curve balls in deps such as: Attorney can't make it and wants to Skype, a sign language interpreter shows up, a foreign language interpreter shows up, they want a second camera on an attorney just to make sure there's no coaching, they want PIP and the spec sheet didn't mention it, etc. So at first blush deps can look easy but they have their days.

I'm trying to position my life where I can knock off at 5 or 6PM everyday and that's why I'm trying to do Catch & Release, but another big guru told me that's becoming phased out: They expect the shooter to go into editing for various reasons. Some will like that for the revenue though. This whole dep idea for me is a Plan B to make some spare change into my mid-70s if I'm bored or broke.

The beauty of deps is that they are very ritualized. Formulaic. There's a template. The main variable when you arrive is the shape of the table and how many attorneys there will be and if they all need to be miked. Otherwise, it's a LOT easier than a day of CEO interviews, right? We spent our careers making things look great but in deps, they actually prefer nondescript. It's just that it is a "live" event. Stopping is verboten. You easily can shoot two hours straight until someone calls a bathroom break, so I made a point of not having my usual morning gallon of coffee. You scribble notes on legal forms every few minutes and I have heard of videographers having to testify in court as to the veracity of their notes, but you can charge for that! Also what's very different is some clients demand you wear a suit!

But I do appreciate your suggestion about doing the meta data to burn in D&T stamp later, but it's in my nature to go with the gear and workflow the successful guys are using, so I don't recreate the wheel. I'd prefer to buy a new SD capable camera that burns in but they are all being discontinued so I'd need to buy soon, probably the 130A. I don't like buying electronics used unless it's from the manufacturer, such as B-stock used just for demos.

In sum, if you offer pros doing deps in a city 200 miles from where you live, so you aren't considered competition, and you offer to take them to a great lunch or dinner if you can shadow them, you can learn this, but it would also help to take the cheaper AGCV course. A good 7 hour day you'd make maybe $400-$900 with no post. It is perfect for the semi-retired cameraman but if you are in your prime I would not suggest deps because of the percentage of cancellations. That would interfere with your regular clients, but if you're a 75 year old shooter and your wife wants to go to Paris next month, it's a great way to make some extra dough, right?

Oh another thing, we tend to bring a lot of gear to a gig. Dep shooting they want you to distract as little as possible, you are not the hero, so you need to be a quiet figure at the end of the conference table. Quite different from what we normally do. Plus, there's a lot of time keeping involved due to media lengths, DVD lengths and also legally the attorneys need to know how long they've been questioning, so I had to have several note pads in front of me and it really kept me on my toes. After each one I Googled what the hell I was just involved in and it's pretty interesting!

Later,

Ned

P.S. I have learned that there's a big difference between shooters who do 100% deps for a living and the pro who occasionally does a dep every now and then. You want to learn from the 100% guys. They have their own brotherhood and have learned how to milk that market to generate a large enough revenue stream to raise a family, etc. They know how to get on the preferred list of the agencies and large law firms, etc., so hit that type up if you're interested.

P.S.S. I also learned that the litigation support software on the market that is utilized by the pros is 100% PC, I'm 100% Mac, I've only used PCs at the library. There are some Mickey Mouse work arounds for Mac. And this is another reason I'd like to just do Catch & Release, so I Fed Ex a DVD the next day and I'm done with it!
 
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^Excellent info Ned. You actually got my thinking about this type of job. OK, I'm on board with you now. It's not necessary to get anybody to bend to your equipment rather just use what they recognize that has been used. Roger on the Apple situation. I gave up on Macs in the early 2000s due to inconsistencies in presentations on the work front that caused last-second problems in the meeting room.
 
I know it was mentioned before but I was going through some things on my desktop and found this excerpt from Jem @ Canon-

External Monitoring & Recording
The EOS C100 features an industry standard HDMI port that can be used for either external monitoring or external recording purposes. This HDMI connector also contains an HDMI lock mechanism (for compatible HDMI cables), and is capable of outputting an 8-bit uncompressed signal.
When used to monitor or record to an external display, the uncompressed signal can carry industry standard timecode as either metadata in the video stream or as a superimposed timecode burn directly into the video footage. This latter feature is ideal for situations like recording legal depositions where this feature is oftentimes a requirement of the production.
 
I AM currently a legal videographer. Most states require the time and date stamp to be burned into the footage and will not allow any other method. DVD is still standard delivery even though technology is WAY beyond that now. Find an old SD camera (since DVD is common deliverable) that has time and date stamp and be done with it. Then either hold onto the camera for the possibility of future depos OR sell it when you are done. You'll tend to find more Sony cameras that do time and date than any other. Also you need a minimum of 4 lapel mics and a mixer. Ideally it is best to record to the internal camera media and also directly to an external recorder of some kind for a backup. It is boring work with very specific rules, etc. I don't like the work but it pays the bills right now so.........
 
I believe the Sony PXW-X70 can record a date/time stamp. However, it may not be able to record SD. 720p or higher only.
 
Hi Hudson, what camera are you using?

I just completed my first day of the NCRA's Certified Legal Videographer training and I couldn't use my C100 even if it did have the date and time stamp. Reason: Need to do smooth zooms into charts, xrays, etc. that the person is pointing to, and the still lenses that the EOS family uses, ugh, too jerky.

I have only been on three depos and I found them fascinating, although I suppose if you do them for years they would get boring. A $200mil lawsuit between two pharma giants over patent infringement, a top exec of a software firm accused of stealing company secrets, a big healthcare company accused of medicaid fraud. Feels very voyeuristic. When they were finished I immediately Googled the issues.

However, this area of video production is a real pay cut, so if I was younger, raising a family, I would stay away from deps. There's more money in other forms of litigation support videos and I have done many, very easy, but deps seem to be low paying. I learned they average a 25-50% cancellation rate, most of which is hard to bill for. They don't want to pay for parking or lunch, although lunch is often catered. The dep may only be two hours so there's goes your day...

The option of adding in the D&T stamp later by using metadata, no thanks. On a 7 hr dep, that would be hours of unpaid time that evening or next day, and I'm looking at this as something to do that ends at 6PM, always.

But as I explained earlier, this is just something I wanted to know how to do as I get older, just in case I need to make some money if my Plan A in retirement doesn't work out, such as another market crash. After all, the guy who just trained me is 75 years old! Not much video work you can do at 75, right?
 
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I use a Sony HXR-NX5U. Dual SD card recording and takes external flash drive unit. I record SD to the SD cards and HD to the external flash unit and also output via RCA directly to a DVD recorder. That is a bit more redundancy than is needed but it gives me peace of mind.
 
By the way, you don't necessarily NEED to be certified but if you do depos a lot it doesn't hurt. I've been doing legal video full time for 3 years now and don't have my CLVS.
 
The real reason to get the CLVS certification is that most jobs, in the Chicago area, are awarded by the court reporting firms and agencies who tend to default to their NCRA directory. But if you are OK with the amount of business you're getting then I suppose it doesn't matter.

What the seminar opened my eyes to is that, although shooting deps doesn't pay that well, many of these folks are making their real profit in post. When a corporate client wants a DVD I charge around $7. Legal shooters can charge $75-$100 I learned. My problem is that the syncing software is 100% PC and I am 100% Mac.

Best regards,

Ned
 
Either way, best of luck, Ned. I used to work in Milwaukee and did Chi Town jobs regularly. Yes, syncing software (when sync is requested) is still a bit old school. It is what it is. That area of business is progressing VERY slowly when compared to the rest of the production world.
 
Hey R, can I email you? I would like to ask some questions and since we don't compete in the same market you don't have to worry about me. If I ws PC rather than Mac I would pursue the post aspect. I'm at:

ned (AT) nedmiller.com

Thanks,

Ned
 
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