Is Videography your full time job?

Yes, it is my full time job. It takes a considerable amount of time, effort and concentration, in terms of reviewing, capturing, editing, titling, production of covers etc, to produce a high quality video to the standards we believe the client deserves.

Do you carry spare equipment on the day?

Yes, we always carry spare cameras, tape, lights and batteries.

Do you hold the necessary insurances?

Yes, I hold Professional Indemnity and Public Liability insurance.

If I send original photographs, Videotapes & CD's to you will they be returned?

Yes, all original materials sent to us will be returned.

Are there different types of DVD & menus?

There are basically two types of DVD, the DVD+R and the DVD-R, which is the recognised standard. We use the DVD-R standard. In order to ensure maximum compatibility and quality, we normally send the Video off to a professional company to produce the DVD with professional menus and chapters to help you get to the main points in the video quickly.

Are you a member of a professional organisation?

Yes, I am a Master Member of the Institute of Videography (IOV)( www.iov.co.uk .), and a qualified member of the Association of Professional Videographers (APV). This means that my work has been assessed and passed by a panel of judges of both organisations and that I am bound by their professional standards and subject to their arbitration procedures in the unlikely event of any dispute over our work.

I would like to use a clip from a commercial film in my presentation/production. Can you copy that from the film for me?

That would be illegal under copyright laws and we cannot do that. You would have to contact the original film producers and distributors and ask their permission to use the clip. If they agreed, they would charge you a fee for use, and would put you in touch with whoever produced the film to supply you with a copy of the clip, for which they would also charge you a fee. These fees could be quite large!

I would like to use a clip from someone else's presentation/production in my presentation/production. Can you copy that onto CD/ DVD for me?

Once again that would be illegal under copyright laws without written permission from the original copyright holder. If you can obtain that written permission for us, then we can help you.

Can you edit an 'in house' produced video for us and output it onto CD/DVD?

Yes, provided that you or your company have filmed the video, and therefore hold the copyright, we can edit it, providing it is on a format we can work with. A CD can hold about 10 mins of video at a reasonable standard of playback, whilst a DVD will hold between 1 hour 20 mins at DV quality, down to 2 hours at VHS quality.

What is the difference between the various standards and formats?

This is technically very difficult to answer, but in a simplified manner:

Filming is done on either analogue or digital media - analogue tape, such as VHS, VHS-C, Super VHS and some 8 mm formats were the main consumer formats for many years, and their quality on a nominal scale of 0 - 100 could be thought of as around 40, with Super VHS at around 50. The newer digital formats such as Mini DV, DV, DV Cam, Digital 8, etc can be thought of as around 85, whilst the true broadcast formats would be at 90.

The main point to consider is the loss of quality on copying. Every time a VHS tape is copied, it loses a considerable amount of its quality, whereas digital tape suffers virtually no loss. So if you have a copy, of a copy, of a copy of a VHS tape that you want edited, the quality is extremely poor to start with. If you can get the original, at least you have a chance of keeping the 40% quality it started out with.