2009 a year of transitional video production!

2009 has been a wired year. To start off with I had the transition of switching from pc to Mac and was still getting used to it and developing HD work flows.

Form a video point of view I’ve had the opportunity to do some fantastic jobs ranging from hart surgery to long running projects documenting and capturing different parts of culture ranging form one-day events to community projects.

HD acquisition has now become the norm HD video content is really taking off on the web and the last part of the HD work flow left to become standard is the delivery at the moment every one wants SD DVDS and HD web clips.

I’ve also noticed a changing in how clients use media both as part of the promotion and there documentation. People now seem to value their media presence much more. This year has been the first time I’ve seen clients take advantage of media convergence where we have shot stills for them and then produced a video. The value for the client is they get stills which can be used in numerous ways but also we can turn them in to video which can be delivered on numerous platforms such as mobile devices the web and disks. For the client this is a grate time you can maximize you commission.

Below are 2 examples of videos I have produced with out shooting video. To the eagle eyed you’ll notice a short piece of video in the one and other video, this was actually shot on the 5dmk2 so although its video it still follows the convergence theme as it’s a still camera not a dedicated video camera!

Inertia flatland BMX promo film

I got into film making and video production though extreme sports, it’s a subject I wish I could shoot and edit every day however living in the uk its not something I get to do every day. Id been trying to make a bmx video for years apart form to Russia with love and park sessions 2004 this is the first proper bmx related oriented video I’ve produced, when I say proper I mean with the skills and equipment I’ve got now and the standard of the rider.

The rider is keelan Phillips who is one of the best flatlanders in the world. Check his web site out www.inertiashows.com

The video was shot in different locations’ across Leicester over 3 days.

. The video was shot on a sony z1 which is a 1080i HDV camera. Sadly I don’t have a fish eye for this camera so it meant I was shooting conventionally from a tripod.

Day1

Very lucky with the weather manages to go filming for 2 hours and clock 23 mins of footage. On this day we shot in a school using a z1 set to “cinine look” it was decided that we wanted a contemporary look.  The cine function on a z1 give a really jittery look kind of like the film 28days later.

At the end of filming it was arranged that we go shooting the following day. I suggested going early and 9am is deemed early, not quite what Id consider early but there you go.

Day 2

I get a text at 1.34am keelan has had nearly 3 sandy’s and wants to put back filming by an hour. Mistake as I no the tennis courts at kington park in Leicester will be being used. We get there and get 18mins before the second court is taken over by tennis players.

For this shoot Iain Jaques the second cameraman is using a canon 5dmk2.

Day 3 scheduled for kigton park again on the tennis courts. We tried doing moving footage but it was unsuccessful. Only one clip made it in to the video.

In the end the footage from the 5d was binned. There were some exposure issues. The 5d sees white as being white with zero detail, where as the z1 sees white at 108%. This means its possible to recover highlights detail on the z1.

Editing took about 1 and half days.

keelan phillips flatland bmx from stewart charles on Vimeo.

HDV to SD DVD new work flow!

Having had lots of problems and having to try out lots of methods of making dvds from HDV Ive now started using the following work flow.

Capture as HDV edit and then go file>export with compresser

it takes about the same amount of time as the other way but the qulity is so much better and its cutting out a process.

For now I will be using this method.

HDV 1080I to SD DVD

Until recently I hadn’t had to make a high quality DVD which had been shot on HDV. This hasn’t been an easy time working out the best workflow.

Footage shot on a Sony z1 at 1080 50i

Captured as HDV

Edited as HDV with rendering set to proress in final cup pro 6 using a late 08 macbook pro.

Initially I was doing the following workflow, completing the edit rendering the time line exporting a self contained quick time file using compressor to make the DVD authoring files.

The issue I was having was all the video on v2 or higher in fcp was showing artifacting that looked like it was over sharpened, and had aliasing when the final SD DVD was played. I’m making the assumption that there’s some issue with the way video is rendered on tracks 2 and above and must have something to do with the long GOP structure of HDV? Or it’s the mpeg 2 compression to mpeg 2 compression?.

I’m now using the following workflow.

Film capture and edit in HDV. When the edit is complete select the files in the time line then go file>export>quick time conversion.

Select proress and check interlace.

Once the file has been completed go to compressor and render the authoring files and your DVD should look a lot better!.

This method is the same as the one on ken stone web site except I check the interlace box. I have tried it with and with out and it dose make a difference!

Just in case its me I’m going to look into the settings of compressor!.

HDV to DV in final cut pro

Late 2008 I started working in HDV since then I haven’t done any thing in DV how ever recently I was asked to convert HDV to DV and this is how I did it. There seems to be more than one way I was on a tight deadline and this was the first method that worked.

6 min film on the time line in fcp. The source material was spread of 2 1Tb drives I don’t know if this had any thing to do with some of the problems I encountered.

The footage was shot in HDV edited in HDV the render sitting for the sequence was set to proress 422.

The computer is a late 08 macbook pro.

First method, exporting it form the time line as a QuickTime movie by going file>export quicktime movie.

Checked the make self-contained.

In the settings selected PAL DV anamorphic.

Opened a new project and imported the clip. Dragged and dropped the clip on to the time line but found when playing it back it appeared the filed order was wrong and gave it a bad jittery look. HDV has upper filed dominance DV pal has lower field dominance so for some reason the conversion wasn’t working.

Back to the original sequence and exported a self-contained movie using the sequence settings. This produced a HDV clip. I then made a new project and imported the clip. I dropped it on to the time line and exported a self contained QuickTime file. In the settings option I selected DV PAL 48Khz anamorphic.

I created a new project and set the settings to DV PAL 48Khz anamorphic. I imported the DV clip I had made in the previous stage and dropped it on to the time line. I then used print to video and it recorded to DV tape.

There is another way of doing this using compressor that I haven’t used yet. The next time I have to do this Ill try that method.