Train Chaser Tom Rogers:
“I'm slow, because I'm the one I have to satisfy”

Train Chasers are people who seem to "go all out" in order to chase a moving train (for example with a car). Train Chaser Tom Rogers, Reston, Virginia, has high quality demands and the hardest judge of his work is himself. He will gladly go back five or six times to the same shooting point to get what he wants. That takes time. But he thinks it's worth it. With 40 years in the TV business, producing and editing broadcast television, Tom knows video shooting, editing for dramatic content and he tries to deliver what interests train viewers:
“I try to tell a story of what I see from a passing train. I look at movements and always keep my shooting patterns fresh. For example I take shots very close to the train and intercut with other views as well as a view from far away. My zooming always matches the action”.

Due to his own high quality demands, Tom only seems to finish one video per year and has now eleven titles in all. He sells his DVDs primarily at some of the 10 or 12 local Train Shows in the Washington, DC area. There are several hundreds train shows throughout the States annually. Once a customer buys one of Toms DVDs, he or she always seems to come back and buy them all. Not surprising, when one understands that train modelers are very enthusiastic people, with larger or smaller layouts in their attics, basements or even specially built spaces. There are hundred of thousands of model train enthusiasts in the United States alone.

Finding BitVice

Five years ago Tom realized that he had to go into DVD production in order to keep up with where the train video market seemed headed. In the beginning he tried to find someone for the authoring, but soon realized that most people weren't that good at it and they also wanted a lot of money for the job. So he learned authoring as well. Apple's User Groups soon became a popular forum and there he read a lot of appealing stuff about BitVice and Innobits. He was unhappy with the results from Final Cut Pro's encoder Compressor - transitions squiggled at him! He bought BitVice and was (and is!) very pleased with its results. According to Tom, BitVice is over all a much better product than Apples Compressor:
“It delivers much nicer video image quality; transitions pass by flawlessly; and I see far fewer compression artifacts”, he says.

He does think BitVice's handling of Chapter Markers needs to be improved, though:
“BitVice brings the markers in, but they don't transfer well into Studio Pro. I use Compressor to bring the chapter Markers into DVD Studio Pro, but then I replace the video track with the BitVice encoding. That gives me the video quality I prefer and the marker placement I want. I understand that the folks at Innobits are working on the solution to that. The image quality is simply so much better and BitVice is visually way ahead of Compressor”, he says.

Editors note: Markers are fixed in BitVice 2.0
Text: Cath Blomkvist
Photo: Tom Rogers