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Video Editing – 4K

When I first started editing videos, I worked with 1K videos. The PC I built was adequate to that task and was a considerable upgrade to my off the shelf PC. When I built the PC, it was suggested that a graphics card like the GTX 1050 was fine for those sorts of videos.  Go Pro Studio worked OK but was prone to hang on occasion.

Later, I decided to upgrade my camera to 4K so I would have more pixels to work with when I zoomed in on more distant images.  I knew that 4K editing would be a challenge for the PC I built. It turned out that GoPro Studio was woefully inadequate so switched to Premiere Pro CC. I hoped that working with Premiere wouldn’t be that big a challenge but ran into issues almost immediately.

The 1^st remedy I tried was to use proxies where I could work on videos as if they were 1K and then process them as 4K. That introduced another step into my editing which was prone to fail.

I had crashes with my PC with the newer versions of Premier Pro CC so started looking for solutions. One of the 1^st solutions I tried was to drop my overclocking of my AMD 1600. That seemed to help a little, but I still had crashes when running Premier Pro. I went to the MSI boards in search of a suitable upgrade for my PC & ended up upgrading my power supply. I also dropped overclocking my memory and dropped back to an older version of Premier Pro.

At this juncture, I was mostly crashing when encoding for YouTube. Digging deeper into the encoding process, I realized that it used my graphics card for this task. Switching to software only helped since it took my relatively weak graphics card out of the equation but was slow and would still occasionally hang.

All the literature I reviewed said that the graphics card had little to do with video editing with Premier Pro but encoding seemed to be an exception. I upgraded my graphics card to a GTX 1070 and suddenly my encoding problems disappeared.  My encoding now goes by without any hangs running with the much more powerful graphics card.

I brought my overclocking back to my PC & memory but found that Premier Pro would still crash on occasion with the CPU overclock. Memory overclocking seems to be fine and my system runs much faster encoding with the latest version of Premier Pro.

Bottom line is that you do need a powerful graphics card for encoding 4K in Premier Pro. In addition, you may need an upgrade power supply to run the graphics card.

Discounted Block Rates Versus Invoiced Regular Rates

Most of our customers prefer our pre-paid discounted block rates but some prefer our invoiced regular rates.

	Remote/Travel Hourly	On-Site Hourly
Discounted Block Rates	$35.00	$45.00
Regular Rates	$38.50	$49.50

Rates

Discounted Block Rates Versus Regular Rates

Regular rates

Regular rates can be adjusted to a discounted rate when additional funds are deposited.   If you would rather not pre-pay, then you will receive an invoice with the regular rates.

Discounted rates

Discounted rates require a positive balance. You may be  switched to the higher regular rate if you don’t have funds available. The pre-paid amount eliminates numerous invoices for small jobs.  You will receive an accounting of what the jobs entail and how many hours were spent on each task.

Please consider these alternative methods of making payments:

1. FAX both sides of the check (409-945-6553) and I will electronically deposit to my account.
2. PayPal Account – number.1@comcast.net.
3. PayPal via our webpage – http://downsconsultingservices.com/BlockHours.html. Calculator attempts to add fees in for target payment.
4. Payment online via QuickBooks.

We credit the amount we receive for credit cards minus fees.

 QuickBooks: 3.4% + $.25

PayPal 2.9% + $.30

Square 3.5% + 15 cents

Most of Downs Consulting Services’ (DCS) customers buy block hours or put cash on the books. This keeps us from invoicing for each individual service so we offer our discounted block rates.

Block Hours	Non-Block Hours
Remote	$    35.00	$38.50
On-Site	$    45.00	$49.50
Travel	$    35.00	$38.50
Hourly Rates

The tax rate is 8.25% but Data Processing (e.g., websites) exempts 20%.
Reimbursements & some services are non-taxable.

Block rates are 10% lower than invoiced rates!

Save money by purchasing block hours.
You are credited the net amount that PayPal puts in our account.

Example: 10 hours of website work

Suppose we project 10 hours of web work. You have 2 options :

1. Deposit $350 by check. There are no fees associated with a check but it takes longer to get into our account and get your project started. If a check is returned then we will add a fee of $30.
2. Deposit $360.75 via PayPal or Credit Card to cover the PayPal fees. The net amount that we get from PayPal is credited to your account & we will draw from that as we spend time on your projects.

$350.00 (10 x $35)
$   10.75 PayPal fees (2.9% + .30)
$360.75

Note that Sales Tax will be added as required by law. 

Buy Block Hours

You can  buy block hours (Add to Cart Drop Down) or use the calculator Buy Now Button on the block hours page.

 

 

Example Using the Calculator & Buy Now:

Let’s assume we want to deposit $360.75 in our account so we will have enough for 10 hours of web work. That will cover the PayPal fees.

Login to PayPal

Please enter the item price you calculated & click update. You can use a credit card if you prefer.

 The Buy Now Button does not fill in the item price so enter the amount you calculated. Click update & login to PayPal. 

Here’s a example of how your money might be spent if you started with a net deposit of $373.10.

In this example, the .61 hours of web work on 5-31 was taxed but the rest of the work was not. The rest was not since maintaining network services is not taxable.

Date	Services and Time:Description	Credit	Hours		Rate	Net	Balance
							w/o Tax
19-May	new block	$373.10				$373.10	$373.10
20-May	new SSL for mail, check Outlook on PCs		1.50		$35.00	($52.50)	$320.60
21-May	Investigate SPAM		0.50		$35.00	($17.50)	$303.10
24-May	SEO – Google+		0.08		$35.00	($2.80)	$300.30
28-May	update – blog, SPAM, backups		0.42		$35.00	($14.60)	$285.70
29-May	SEO tactics – Buffer, social media		1.17		$35.00	($40.85)	$244.86
31-May	Update  logo on-site		0.67		$35.00	($23.35)	$221.51
31-May	status – emails		0.08		$35.00	($2.91)	$218.61
							$218.61
							$218.61
					Sales Tax		$ (1.54)
					Grand Total		$217.07