The Video Animal’s Cave

Hiya all, I am back from a long bout of hard work and it is time to finally finish up this series of articles on web video posting.

In previous articles we set you up so that you could de-interlace and compress your video properly. Now it is time to do a bit of embellishment and make a few minor corrections before you give it to the world to look at, cut down, love, hate or just ignore.

To understand sort out the last bit of confusion when compressing video, you need to understand a ferw basics about video size. You will often hear this referred to by video geeks like myself as ‘aspect ratio’.

The common problem that most face with HD video is that it is in a non standard size.

When we talk about the size of a video you will often hear it called “Aspect Ratio”. This is the ratio of width by height of the video. Television is 4:3 and HD is 16:9. In computer based video there is a large amount of variations when it comes to picture size. The ratio is great to define how big the width has to be compared to the hieght, but the computer needs more defined information. This is where pixels come in. For example, television is 640X480… that is there are 640 pixels across the top of the picture, and 480 across the width of the piture… kinda like the square footage of the video image. Most television and YouTube video is 640×480 (notice that the ratio of pixles is exactly 4:3) and HD video is wider (1440×1080… generally… notice once again that the ratio of pixles is 16:9)

If you compress HD straight up it will most likely compress in a 4:3 aspect ratio unless you know what setting to use. This stretches out the people on the screen and makes them all look funny. If you ever watched an old western before the invention of pan and scan or widescreen video formats you know what i mean (i used to think clint eastwood was really tall and thin)

Many compression programs will automatically adjust the video and output in a widescreen format, this is great as long as you are looking at it on your computer. As far as i know, most video hosting sites will still try to cram your video into the standard 4:3 aspect ratio, as HD is still a relatively new format and their programs were designed to handle standard video.

Aspect ratio has another handy use, if you reduce the amount of pixels in a video , yet still remain within the aspect ratio, you can lower the amount of data it takes to put your image on screen. The image will be a bit smaller, and the clarity will be a bit lower, but if you are dealing with a really long and detailed piece of video this can often be the only way to cut down the data. To go back to our ’square footage’ analogy. Making a room in your house that is 16 feet by 9 feet will take a whole lot of material, however, make that same room in minature… perhaps 16 inches by 9 inches and you will use very little material. You won’t be able to see as much detail (or live in it) but the room will still ‘look’ much the same. In video, the easiest way to half the amount of data is to cut the amount of pixels in half… an image that is 640×480 will be half the data size if you compress it as a 320×240 pixel image. You still maintain the aspect ratio, so your subject won’t get distorted, yet you cut the amount of data you need to make the image appear on screen by half. Now that you understand a bit about aspect ratio, it will be easier to mess with it in the setting of your compression software to get the results you want!

To get a widescreen image in to a 640×480 video you need to either manually adjust the image within your editing software, or, apply a filter in the compression software. Personally, i find the filter works best and takes less of your time messing around with settings.

Start by making your HD film within a normal HD timeline. It should allow you to edit in real time ( as long as you have enough ram to keep up!) When you are ready to output the video you need to ‘preserve the aspect ratio using letterboxing.’ THis means adding a black line on the top and bottom of the video so that the image is squished back in to the shape it is supposed to be in.

The easiest way i have discovered to do this so far (and that works flawlessly every time) is using compressor which will be a part of your copy of final cut pro. Although I haven’t used Premier or other video editing software to do this, I am sure they have something that works much the same.

With the segment you want to export open click on File>Export> Using Compressor. This will open up the compressor program and open up the compression viewer so you can see how the video will look. Highlight the video you are exporting under the ‘batch’ tab. The video will now appear in the preview window. If it was a 16×9 video you will notice almost immeadiatly that the image looks distorted. That is because the preview window shows the image in a 4:3 aspect ratio automatically. Correcting the distortion is simple.

First we need to decide which setting we are going to use. For the fishing video I am working on I want it to be really small so I can email it, so I am going to go to the extreme and compress it as small as I can. To do this Iwill output put it as 160X120 .. maintaining the 4:3 aspect ratio, just really tiny. To do this, click under the ‘Setting’ in the ‘batch’ window go to ‘web streaming (quicktime 6 compatible)>mpeg4 100kb streaming.

If you look at your preview window you can see that on one half the screen is the approximate results of the video… and it looks really pixelated. Not to worry. It won’t be nearly as noticeable because the video will be so small on the screen people will not be able to see all the details. (see video example)

Now to letterbox.

In the inspector, click on the ‘Filters’ Tab… the button that appears to be a piece of film covered by a gray square. Check on box beside ‘Letterbox’…tada!!.. oh wait.. nothing has happened.. stupid apple default…

Due to some very silly thinking on the part of the programmers, the default letterbox setting is one no one ever uses! You need to set it yourself… don’t worry. With the ‘Letterbox’ filter highlighted, adjust the ‘output’ to ‘16×9 1.78:1′, and your black bars will appear. Your video is now ready to output. Click the ’submit’ button in the batch window.

You can also add those black bars manually with a filter within the editing software by applying a letterbox filter to the video before you export. For those of you using simpler video software this may be the best solution. Often when you go to export the video it will add these bars automatically for you if (such is the case with Premier) if you export an HD video in a standard format. Finally, Quicktime does include a setting called “preserve aspect ratio using letterbox”, but in my experience it doesn’t always work.

On a final note:

Without going in to to much technical detail, it is important to understand that your image will get funky looking if you stray from the aspect ratio. It will simply distort the image. You might also have noticed that all the presets in our demonstration and indeed, in the software itself always cut the aspect ratio in half, or quarter or eight.. never by a 1/3 or some other division. This is because pixels are square, cutting them in half is easy, the software just splits them. If you cut them in a 1/3 the software has to compensate for the extra bits left all over the screen and do a lot more math. Simply put, you end up with more distortion. The rule of thumb is, when you are messing around with the pixels, always divide them in half, 1/4 ,1/8, 1/16 etcetera. (there are more technical reasons for this, but i want to keep it simple here) This way you avoid any extra distortion. We will talk about this in greater detail at a later time, because pixels really become a problem when you are manipulating text or images within a video.

And now.. A HUGE FISH (click the link…can’t seem to get it to embed today)

The Tarpon Jumpin Video

Good luck everyone!

The Animal

In part one we took a look at the first step to post decent quality video to sites such as YouTube, by using a filter to ‘de-interlace’ the footage in order to make the video itself web ready. Today we are going to look at compressing that file to make it small enough to be accepted, and still big enough so that it doesn’t look ugly.

To do that, we will start by figuring out how compression works and then some basic tips and tricks to making compression work for you, instead of against you.

What is compression?

Compression is just what it sounds like. It is taking something large and squeezing it down to make it smaller. When it comes to all things on your computer, compression is a standard way for the computer to take what could be a huge file and make it manageable.

How does compression work?

Compression isn’t a new thing, in fact it has been around since the early days of computing, in forms you might recognize such as ‘winzip’. Understanding how basic computer compression works is pretty easy.

Imagine for a second that data on your computer is like a string of yarn. If you took all the yarn you needed to knit a sweater and laid it all out on the ground it would probably fill the floors of your house. So you perform a type of compression, you ball it all up. You do it in a nice neat way because if you just grabbed it all and stuffed it in a bag it would get all tangled. So instead you slowly ravel it in to a ball so you can get to it as you need it. We do the same thing with data, we roll it in to a neat ball on the hard drive so that it doesn’t get tangled up. The computer does it in such a way that the data flows smoothly, because if we hit to much data at once (like a knot in the yarn) the computer slows down do unravel it all and we get loading or freezing on our computer.

Back to the ball of yarn. If you took that ball and squeezed all the air out of it it would get smaller. You would have ‘compressed it’ If you could keep it that way you could store a lot more balls in a much smaller drawer. This is exactly how digital compression works. It takes all the extra spaces and repeated bits out of a file and replaces it with smaller bits of code so that it can be stored in a smaller space. To do this it uses something called a ‘codec’

Ok, I get it, now what the heck is a codec?

Unlike the ball of yarn you can’t just take all the air out of a bunch of data. It would get messy and unreadable pretty quick. You CAN take out some erroneous and repeated data and replace it with smaller bits. Imagine every space in this paragraph actually takes about 10 bits in the data world. To us it is a space but to a computer it is 001011001. (i made that up.. don’t quote me) If we could replace this data with one simple mark like lets say ‘-’ it would take up less space. The problem is that you need to be able to ‘de-code’ that new mark and tell the computer “Whenever I say ‘-’ I really mean 001011001…ok?” That’s what a codec does. It ‘encrypts’ the extra data, and then uses a special ‘de-coder ring’ do decrypt it in the original larger format so the computer can read it.

So what does that have to do with video?

Digital compression really hit its stride when it left the world of compressing boring old computer files and started dealing with things like music. Back in the 80’s someone had the wild idea that we could take the same idea and apply it to sound. Instead of giving the computer every tiny bit of sound data and getting the computer to reproduce that sound, we could simply use a codec. Boom… we are able to store that data on small disks.. and the CD is born. Eventually we got much better codecs, and now we can store hundreds of songs on a cd using .mp3… all .mp3 is.. is a better codec that is better at compressing the audio data.

However, video was a conundrum. Video is much harder than audio in the grand scheme of things. With video you need to have color information for every pixel on the screen… how do you compress that without seriously altering the image? At first even short videos took up huge chunks of space on hard drives, it seemed like it would never really work.

It must have taken a dreamer to come up with the solution, because the solution lay in the sky. When you film the sky it stays a nice even blue, and if you have a steady hand, it will stay on the screen for a long time, in the same place. AHAA!!
What if instead of saying to the pixel ‘i need the color blue’ 30 times every second, we said ‘i need the color blue here for the next 800 frames’? If we could do that we could save a lot of space! Bammo! Video codec was born. The first place consumers really saw codecs at work was on DVD’s. DVD’s use an older codec called MPEG-2. Since then the codecs keep getting better, and now we have codecs that can do HD video on the same size of disk.

It took a long time to get right, and has really only become a viable technology in the last 10 or so years. But when we did get it right it revolutionized everything! When video and computers learned to play together nicely it opened up a new age of digital video and effects work, and suddenly directors could make movies like ‘300′ and ‘Titanic’… but thats another story.

Ok…so what does it all mean to me?

Understand codecs and you understand how to get good quality video on the web. Codecs are always improving and are not created equal. Old codecs do substandard jobs and eventually become defunct. Some codecs improve constantly but not all computers will have access to them. You need to strike a balance between quality and availability. Find a codec that does a good job but that everyone can see on their screen. The problem is that there are a lot of codecs out there.

Apple owns and supports a program called ‘Quicktime’ that has been around a long time. Quicktime is a piece of software that can read and compress using several codecs. It is the standard in the video industry. You can spot a quicktime file when it has the tag ‘.mov’ at the end of it such as ‘mymovie.mov’. Microsoft has their own program ‘.wmv’ and flash has one too… ‘.flv’ (often called a ‘flash video file) The secret behind why these programs survive while others die is actually because they are a combination of codecs all contained within a singe reader. A ‘quicktime’ player can read 20 or so codecs that all have that same ‘.mov’ tag. Whenever a new codec is developed by the folks at apple (or they buy someone else’s work) they add it to their codec ‘reader’. Think of it like a family. Different people, but all with the same last name. The actual ‘codec’ it is using could be called something like ‘h.264′or ‘mpeg2′, but to make it easy for the consumer they lumped it in to ‘.mov’ so that you only need to download one piece of software to read it.

I get it, geeze, get on to explaining how it works!

So you made your video of your ‘gnarly whitewater run’ and you want to post it for the world to see. You de-interlaced it because some goober on the internet told you to, and now you are ready to kick it out of your editing software and post it. So you click on ‘export’ and you give it a name and there it is on your desktop.. but holy crap!!! the file is 5 gigs! You take a deep breath and wade in to the ‘advanced settings’ tab of your video editing software and you are confronted with all kinds of options… you click on ‘video for web’ and it exports to your desktop.. phew! the file is only 10 kilobytes! You click on it to watch it and… what the hell??? The video is the size of a thumb and so blurry you can’t see your gnarly whitewater run any more!!

Don’t panic. You understand the basics of compression and can now start to make compression work for you!

Step 1: Before you do anything you need to find out what formats are supported by the site you plan to use. YouTube currently supports WMV, .AVI, .MOV, and .MPG formats.

Step 2: Find out what the biggest file possible is. In the case of you tube that is currently 1024 mb and can be a maximum of 10 minutes in length.

Step 3: Leave the relative comfort of presets and venture in to the world of advanced compression!

I’m ready! … wait a second … what the hell are all these settings… help!!!

I am going to assume you are using Final Cut. (Sorry folks with premier, Don’t worry, a lot of this stuff will work the same fundamental way)

If you are using a basic editing program such as iMovie or windows movie maker, you won’t have as many options. The solution is to export it in all the different formats that the program will allow. Take a look at the size of the file, watch the movie and see how the quality is, and upload the one that has the right codec type, the best quality and is under your ‘file size limit’. (delete the ones you aren’t using because you can fill up a hard drive quickly)

If you are using Final Cut or a similar program it is time to open up the advanced settings for exporting your file. In the case of Final Cut.. it’s time to open up (duhn duhn duhn) “Compressor”. (File>Export>Export using Compressor)

The advantage to compressor is that you can preview the size of the file you are going to get after you export. This is super handy as it will let you play with the settings until you can get under the ‘maximum file size’ limit, while allowing you to play with the frame size and quality of your video. It even allows you to preview what the video will look like after compression, so you don’t get a nasty surprise after you have let it work at a file for 5 hours.

How do I make the file smaller?

There are a few different settings you can play with that will quickly make the file size smaller.

1. Frame size- If the video takes up less space on the screen, the file will have to deal with less pixels.. less pixels, smaller file size
2. Quality- This is sort of a ‘catch all’ setting. The lower the quality of the image, the more compression you are allowing the codec to do. Heavy compression will give you smaller files, but you may not be as impressed with the result
3. Bit Rate- We’ll talk about this more in a second, but lower the bit rate and you lower the file size.. and also,again, the quality.
4. Codec- some codecs will produce smaller files. In this case I generally recommend sticking with .mov and using the h.264 codec, unless your posting site doesn’t support .mov files.. which is pretty unlikely, but does happen.

I can’t say.. just hit these three buttons and you will get perfect quality video ready for the web. You need to play with these settings, get to know them and alter them depending on the video. Slowly striking a balance between file size and image quality. I can tell you that the ‘web streaming’ options give you decent quality video, makes sure that the video doesn’t stutter too much and will resize it nicely.

To see how the video is affected by your choices, click on the ’summary’ option in the inspector while you have the setting highlighted in the ‘Batch’ window. You can see that is shows the ‘estimated file size.’ Now all you have to do is play with the settings until you can get the file size small enough, while still being comfortable with the quality of the image!

The real key to playing with compression is playing with the ‘data rate’. Remember our ball of yarn? The data rate is the rate that the yarn is fed to the net. (or in this case..data) Imagine the internet is a series of tubes.. oh crap.. I can’t believe I just said that… I mean…

Imagine the amount of data that you can get from the internet at any one time is like a pipeline to your computer. The pipe has a diameter and can only feed so much data to the computer at any one time. Let’s say your computer has a data rate of 1000 kilobytes per second. If we try to feed more than that at any one time the pipe gets clogged up for a bit… and the video will freeze up as the computer tries to sort out the data and get the next chunk it needs. If we make sure that the video never exceeds this 1000kb/second, the video will always play smoothly! Your compressor is capable of making sure that the video is compressed enough to always do that!

The second advantage is that if you play with the data rate it will severely increase or decrease the size of the file after compression! The lower the data rate.. the smaller the file. As always, this will be at the cost of image quality. The higher the data rate.. the higher the quality of your video!

Anyway, thats it for this week. I think I have left you with more than enough to work on. I hope to have time to fiddle a bit with ‘Premier’ and be able to add a part two to this post for those of you without Final cut. All in all I am sure many of the concepts are the same and it will be up to you to fiddle with the settings.

Good Luck!

Next week we will discuss frame size in more detail, a brief word on pixelation and finally, look at how to add letter boxing to your video!

Until then, feedback is always appreciated. If anyone out there is a Premier guru and can give some options for web video, pass it on!

The Animal

This week I would like to talk about accessories. There are a ton of gadgets and gizmos out there. They are shiny and cool looking and you will want to get them for christmas.

What else do I need to get started?

Lets start with the one thing we all take for granted, and often forget to buy

Tripods

There is a big debate among photographers and video nuts like myself as to how much money you should spend on your tripod. The range is insane, from 20 bucks at your local wal-mart to multiple thousands of dollars at the specialty camera store.

I equate the difference between the low end and the high end tripod to wine. A 5 dollar box of wine will taste horrible, but you can drink it if there is nothing else around, a 20 dollar bottle of wine will taste one hundred times better than the 5 dollar bottle of wine and is totally worth the upgrade if you have the cash on you, and a thousand dollar bottle of wine is nice… but not 50 times nicer than the 20 dollar bottle of wine you just enjoyed. Not by a long shot.

Tripods are the same. a 20 dollar tripod is going to be a piece of junk, the panning and tilting will be sticky and show up in your shot and it will wobble with the slightest wind, worst of all it probably isn’t very balanced, so it might fall over at a moments notice. On the other hand, a 90 dollar tripod will be just fine, it will pan smooth, last you around a year of hard beating, be fairly balanced and is totally worth the higher price tag.

Like the $1000 bottle of wine, the $5000 tripod is for experts or aficionados with too much money on their hands. It will work perfectly, you will love it, but it isn’t worth spending 50 times as much. Particularly since we plan on taking it on canoe trips and tossing it down rapids. Imagine how much it would freak you out to get sand in the works of that tripod… or even a $500 one for that matter. The expensive tripods are great for studio work, as they will stay safe and get a lot of careful use, but for the outdoor guy, you need something that you can bash or lose and never look back at.

I like $90 tripods, every mom and pop camera store has them. Make sure before you buy that the head of the tripod has some sort of frictionless or liquid head so that you can pan and tilt smoothly. Test it to make sure it will support you camera, and blammo, you have a cheap ass tripod. Saving yourself about $500 off a standard video budget.

Lenses

Lenses are great. They can make a cool shot even cooler… and an outdoor shot spectacular. Lenses are one of the things that subtly seperates the amatuer from the professional.

Shooting water and sunny days there is a specific lens you cannot live without. It is called a polarizing filter. Unfortunately polarizers are not as cheap as other lens filters because they have moving parts. The other drawback is that they are not intuitive. You can’t just stick it on, point and shoot and expect it to do anything. You need to get a bit of practice.

A polarizing filter cuts out reflections. Technically, the concept is pretty simple. There are two lenses in a polarizer. Each lens has a series of light reflecting strands in them running across the lens. by spinning one of the lenses you change the direction the light is bouncing in to your camera. Doing so allows you to target light coming from a specific direction… such as the sun. This means that by simply spinning one of the two moving parts in the filter, you effectively can filter out the stuff that is causing the glare… such as the sun bouncing off the water.

This is hugely effective when you want to shoot the beautiful green waters of Killarny or have a great image of a car without being able to see yourself and the camera in it’s shiny paint.

The other major cool lens you can get, but CAN live without is a wide angle, or a fish eye lens. These lenses are usually pretty expensive, $100-$300, but are totally optional. The wide angle lens warps the image and is useful for shooting panoramic, because it allows your camera to see father to either side. The distortion is barely perceivable, but the camera can see more of the awesome mountain scape you are trying to capture. A fish eye lens on the other hand REALLY warps things, giving a cool artsy warp to your shot. This is an invaluable lens when you are shooting boats wizzing by your camera.

Extras

There are plenty of other cool tools out there, some useful, some are just something that looks cool to show off to other gear heads. My Girlfriend has a rule around our house; “If it doesn’t get used at least once a year it goes in the trash.”
Although often heartbreaking to throw away your coolest toy, it is a good way to keep the junk out of your camera bags, and keep you under budget.

No matter how cool a peice of gear seems, if you can’t think of more than one thing you will use it for, it just isn’t worth buying. In the case of teleprompters and steadycams, a little research can let you build your own for a fraction of the price. In the case of outdoor HD field monitors… you won’t ever really need it, so forgo the cost.

Remember that shooting outdoors also means you need to lug all your equipment with you, sometimes through swamps and snow. Keeping the weight down in your packs can really make a huge difference when you are hiking. The best way to keep the load down is to cut the extra gear.

That being said. Some gear you might want to get are things like:

• Waterproof Housing- Check out Ewa Marine. They have great underwater housing solutions for reasonable prices.
• P2 card reader- If you are using P2 cards in a Panasonc camera, you will NEED this
• Lens cleaner- make sure you buy a professional lens cleaning solution. Paper towels and cloths can scratch your lens and cost you big bucks to repair
• Waterproof camera bag- Check out Watershed bags for the best solutions. These are required for outdoor shooting
• Rain cover- although a plastic bag will do, sometimes a fitted cover works best

Thats a pretty basic list, but covers most of the gear we take with us on a regular shoot. I will add that a boom and steady cam are great assets if you have the space to take them with you, the money to buy them, or the time to build ‘em.

Any other suggestions you might have I would be happy to hear about.

Happy Shooting

The Animal

This week we are going to talk briefly about digital video editing software. Mainly dealing with the costs, and pro’s and con’s of a few of the systems out there.

Do I really need editing software? My computer came with something I think…

It sure did. If you own a PC, Microsoft included a thing called ‘Windows movie Maker’ with XP. If you can’t find it you can download it for free here
If you own a Macintosh computer running OSX, Apple included a program called ‘iMovie’ and ‘iDVD’ with the loaded software. If you deleted these from your applications you can restore them with the back up disk that shipped with your package.

If your needs are simple and you don’t plan on selling your masterpeice, then these programs will do what you need. However, I want to warn PC owners that ‘Windows Movie Maker’ is pretty buggy, and doesn’t really make a television quality DVD. Finally, against everything we are focused on here at the Video Animal’s Den.. it doesn’t currently support High Def. So if you own a PC (and you want High Def Video) you will need to go out and purchase another piece of software.

Mac Users are in luck. ‘iMovie’ is HD, and ‘iDVD’ will make your final DVD look nice. You will notice immediately however that there is a low ceiling on the things you can do. So this program is not recommended for professional use. If you are editing home movies, or even a low quality wedding video… this may be all you need. The best part is that iMovie is well integrated in to ‘Garage Band.’ so you even get a basic post production sound suite. All for free! Pretty sweet huh? Now you know why video people are big fans of Apple.

What editing software is best for amateur production?

Mac users may as well stick to ‘iMovie’ until they feel that they can’t do what they want and need more. PC users will have to start looking around right away for an HD editing software bundle. The best one out there for windows users is ‘Adobe Premier Elements.’ Adobe is a good company (even though they outsource their customer service to India… make you pay for shipping if you have to send it back… and take up to 30 days to get you what you ask for) They have a tendency to rush their software which leads to buggy releases, that will crash often. (So save your projects regularly) On the upside, they let everyone try out complete versions all their software for free for 30 days, and you can skip all the shipping and buy the whole kit and kaboodle on line, here. This gives you a chance to try it on your system and make sure it is the right software for you. If you only have one DVD to make for your cousins birthday party, 30 days should be enough time to make that DVD and skip buying the software all together. (Adobe will hate me for saying that, I am sure… but their customer service wasted 4 days of my life, so I consider it a fair trade) The cost of the final program is around 100 bucks. Totally reasonable for what you are getting.

Using ‘Elements’ has an added benefit. Adobe literally uses ‘elements’ of their full production suite to make these smaller cheaper versions. Using this software will get you one step ahead when or if you decide to upgrade to a full version of Adobe Premier. You will already have a basic understanding of the user interface, and how to take your final edit to DVD.

For the Mac user that wants to take a step up from iMovie, and make a more polished film; You can try a free trial of ‘Adobe Premeir Elements’ and see if that works for you, or Apple offers a basic version of ‘Final Cut’, called ‘Final Cut Express 4′. Unfortunatly, you can’t do a free trial… They consider iMovie the ‘free trial’ and FCE4 is very much an improved version of iMovie.

This masterpiece needs a professional touch. What post-production software should I buy?

Great! Now we get to look at the fun stuff. There are a ton of options for the prosumer market. But I am going to look at two, Adobe Production Suite for PC users and a “Final Cut Studio 2′ for Mac users.

There are other production suites out there, and I beg you to do your research. You might find that one of the other suites out there works better for you. My father uses in ‘Vegas’ as his front line editing system, and there are a few ‘homebrewed’ ones as well. I have taken the time and boiled this list down to the two I consider the best, but there are a few others out there worth looking at.

Final Cut Studio 2

Apple did a really good job about 5 years ago. They bought out a really good software developer and made their software work great on their platform. This in turn meant that you had to buy a Mac to use this hefty chunk of software, and now Macs dominate editing suites everywhere. It is pretty rare that you see something other than a mac in a film or telivision studio now a days, and Final Cut is the reason why.

Final Cut is a great honking peice of software. it will run you about $1300, and with that you will get absolutely everything you need. At first this seems like a huge investment, but it is offset by the fact that shelling out big bucks now will let you upgrade for much cheaper as new versions come out. This is basically a one time investment, with minor chunks of cash every couple of years to upgrade to a better version of the software. Apple also does a great job of upgrading and fixing their software for free, and their customer support is absolutely the finest out there. For that reason alone I would chuck out your PC and get Final Cut.

Adobe Production Suite CS3

Adobe Production Suite is a comparable bundle of software for the PC user. (They make a Mac version too, but Final Cut is better for the same price, so get Final Cut) If you don’t want to spend that much cash all at once, you can buy just ‘Adobe Premier’ ; which will let you edit and produce a full DVD or HD DVD. However, you won’t have all the sound or video effect software that Adobe is famous for (After Effects and Soundbooth). The full production bundle comes with a full version of ‘Flash’, ‘Illustrator’ and best of all ‘Photoshop’. This makes buying the full package a HUGE value. I ended up buying the production suite because I like to use ‘After Effects’ for titling and keying, and I need a copy of ‘Photoshop’ around for many other reasons. It was actually about the same price to get the whole package instead of buying these two programs by themselves.

Adobe’s customer service stinks. But they are trying to change that. Adobe also lets you try their complete software for free and see if you like it.. no one else is nice enough to do that. You can try out Adobe Premier here.

Pros and Cons

Final Cut has one major flaw. ‘Motion’. ‘Motion’ is the titling and effects software bundled with the package, and it does a decent job for basic titles. The big benefit is that if you are using ‘Motion’ to do titling and effects, you can make changes to the titles without having to output (this is a HUGE thing, we will talk about it more later). However, it is very limited and the quality is not always there. This is where adobe has the upper hand ‘After Effects7′ is the titling/effects software bundled with the production suite. It is an amazing chunk of software, does crystal clear effects, the best chromakey, and has a lot more titling and motion effects. The downside is that every time you want to make a minor change in your title, you will need to output, import and reintegrate the footage in to your time line, which can be costly if you are on a tight schedule.

The solution is expensive, and not really the thrust of this article. You fork out the bucks for both Final Cut and Adobe Production CS3. Between the two packages you will have every single damn thing a video editing junkie can think of, except for 3d letters… which you will have to fork out even more money for. All we can do at this point is hope that with each release, ‘Motion’ keeps improving and that one day it will catch up with Adobe. (Yes… You can try After Effects out for free and compare… here)

Final Cut is also missing ‘Flash’ which comes in really handy for any web work you do. The reality is that the age of hard copy video is dying. Web broadcast and distribution is not just the future, it is now. Web is the only way to get true HD content out there without compatibilty issues or entering the HD DVD vs Blu-Ray debate. So having ‘Flash’ and other high end web compression apps is a huge bonus.

Final Cut wins on another side of the spectrum. The editing side. Final Cut is easy to use, doesn’t crash very often and works really fast. Premier is clunky, ugly, slow and crashes all the time. I like to think of Final Cut as a slick looking, well maintained luxury liner; fast, sleek lines, looks good, works well… Premier on the other hand is like an old tug boat; ugly as sin, slow, but gets the job done, and even if it sometimes stalls… it doesn’t sink. Since performance and ease of editing are really the most important parts of this debate, Final Cut really crushes Premier… so if you have a Mac… buy Final Cut.

In Future articles we will take a long look at the basics of video editing, and all the headaches that come with doing post production. For now i hope this helps you with the last big purchase before you can begin making a movie. Next week we will take a look at the accessories you will need to get your outdoor production started.

Stay Tuned

The Animal

Now you have a camcorder and some DVtapes full of excellent video of you running the biggest rapids ever. It’s time to ‘capture’ all that footage and begin editing. For that you are gonna a computer and editing software. This week, let’s look at the computer you need, next week we will get in to editing software.

I will be using the word ‘rendering’ a lot today, and it will come up often when we talk about editing. Rendering is when your computer crunches the numbers. It takes all the footage and transitions you gave it and then makes it in to a movie to show on your screen. In the past we had to do ‘renders’ as a separate operation. The computer took some time… up to half an hour depending on what we asked it to render… then we could look at what we did… then we had to go back and make changes after we saw it.. render it again.. etcetera. Now most rendering happens as you go. We see what the video will look like instantly. We call this ‘real time editing.’ To do real time editing with little or no waiting you need a powerful computer. The less power you have, the more waiting for ‘rendering’ you will have to do.

Is my home computer good enuff to edit my movies?

Chances are that the answer is no. To put it simply.

But, you don’t want to hear that. So let’s do a breakdown.

But my home computer is great! Will it work for now?

As I said when I first started all this, we are focused on HD video… ya, ya, I know.. you want to save a lot of money and buy an old school standard definition camcorder. You are still gonna need a decent computer to edit the film, and a good computer will make your first editing experience more enjoyable.

Minimum Requirements

There is a fast and easy way to test if your computer is good enough. Check the minimum specs on the software you want to use. If you fall below any of these, you will need to upgrade. **WARNING** Minimum Requirements are just that.. MINIMUM. Do not expect your computer to run this stuff quickly under these circumstances. Don’t forget, on top of all of this you will need a DVD burner so you can eventually watch and distribute your masterpiece. (Even better is an HDDVD or Blue-Ray burner so you can watch it in full HD!)

Let’s take a look at Adobe Premier Elements System Requirements. Premier is a decent inexpensive starter program, and will give you what you need to edit together your brother Bob’s birthday DVD.

• Intel® Pentium® (or compatible) 1.3GHz processor with SSE2 support; 3GHz required for HDV
• Microsoft® Windows Vista™ (32-bit only), Windows® XP, or Windows Media Center Edition (XP and MCE require Service Pack 2)
  
• Windows Vista: 1GB of RAM; 2GB required for HDV
  
• Windows XP and MCE: 512MB of RAM; 1GB required for HDV
  
• 4.5GB of available hard-disk space
  
• Color monitor with 16-bit color video card
  
• 1,024×768 monitor resolution
  
• Display and sound drivers compatible with Microsoft DirectX 9 or later
  
• DVD-ROM drive (compatible DVD burner required to burn DVDs)
  
• DV/i.LINK/FireWire/IEEE 1394 interface to connect a Digital 8 or DV camcorder, or a USB2 interface to connect a DV-via-USB-compatible DV camcorder

Most home computers aren’t that good, and chances are that if you are investing the money in HD video editing, you are a bit of a gearhead. So, this will be a great excuse to upgrade or buy a whole new system. The bonus is that the computer will be useful for more than just editing.

Interface

You might have noticed that you need a “DV/i.LINK/FireWire/IEEE 1394 interface” This is really important and is one thing that most of us don’t know about. Commonly called “firewire”. IEEE 1394 is a type of interface, not that much different from a USB port. It is standard in most Macintosh computers, but PCs doen’t usually come with one. (That includes 99% of PC laptops) You can install firewire in any computer with a simple plug and play card . At this time, you can get one for anywhere around 30 bucks. Not a huge investment. Currently, I don’t see any available for PC laptops, but I am sure they are available for around twice the price. I recommend that you get a professional to open up your PC and install it for you, as without experience you can damage or break your PC.

This port will be what you connect your camcorder to, and is essential for digital video. Yes… your camcorder has a USB port… no it won’t let you capture your video. The USB port on camcorders only allows you to get any photos you take with your camcorder, and is a bit of a trick on the part of the manufacturer to get people to buy one — thinking all the while they have all that is necessary to edit their footage.

RAM and Processor

Ok… now down to the brass tacks. Your computer will need lots of RAM and a fast processor. The slower the processor, the longer it will take to do everything… but the secret to fast ‘rendering’ is more RAM. I suggest going with a ‘Dual Core’ processor (or two) with a number like 3.0 beside it. As with all things on your computer, the faster the processor, the faster the program will run.

RAM is the real key to making this whole thing work. I would say that 90% of the complaints I get from new editors about their new system comes down to not having enough RAM. For today’s editng software you will need at least 2 gig of RAM. I suggest going with 4. Everything runs pretty smooth with 4 gig of RAM.
RAM stands for ‘Random Access Memory.” Your computer uses this memory to access things it needs over and over again. Think of it like this… your hard drive is like a huge filing cabinet. It takes time to get things when you need it. RAM is like your desk… When you need a file, you go get it from the filing cabinet and put it on your desk so you can go back to it over and over. The bigger your desk, the bigger the file you can keep on it before you have to go back to the filing cabinet.

Video…frame by frame.. is relatively small. But watching uncompressed video, manipulating it, editing it, playing with three or four pieces of video and music adds up. You would need a really big desk to keep all those file folders on, and, in turn, so does your computer. Add in the fact that HD compression is even bigger than SD, and you need the biggest desk you can get. I am talking one of those giant mahogany lawyer sized desk. Editing software will use all the RAM you give it. The more you have, the faster it will get things done. Current editing specific computers can have 16 gigs of RAM and up! Considering that 5 years ago I thought 1 gig of RAM was HUGE… that really is something. (Not only that, if you tell a tech guy you need 6 gig of ram or more he will laugh at you)

Good news… RAM is actually relatively cheap… Often no more than 100 bucks a gig, give or take. So upgrading is usually cheaper than most people think. Since RAM will make an exponential difference in the time it takes for your footage to render, upgrading RAM has the most return for your dollar.

To Mac or not to Mac

Here’s the lowdown. (this is my opinion and may start arguments) Apple makes the best HD video ready computers out there. I am not an Apple fan boy. I resisted buying a Mac for years. I thought of them a pretentious peices of unupgradable junk with a clunky operating system. That used to be true. Now they make a slick peice of hardware that puts my pc to shame and the operating system is perfect for creative software. Best of all, it comes with editing software for free. On top of that, it comes with a firewire port, so you don’t need to install one. Mac laptops are one of the few laptops out there that can run HD video editing software without major upgrading.The only drawback is price.

Macs are expensive. I accept that. But after doing a cost comparison of the ‘Mac pro’ tower, with software included, compared to a windows PC with comparable rigging and buying editing software, Mac actually came in cheaper. So there… take that nay-sayer. One more note on this… Final Cut is the better professional grade editing software. The competition and a few guys who trained on Adobe software will deny it, but almost everyone else would agree. Unfortunately, it only works on Mac. That is why almost every television station has a Mac set up in the editing suite. Final Cut is great, it is easy to use (comparably) and it works. There is nothing wrong with Premeir, it just doesn’t do things quite as well. **we will get more in to this next week**

If you want to save some cash. Buy your RAM after. Apple charges a lot for their RAM. You can get it cheaper if you shop around after you buy your system.

Laptops

Laptops are enticing. Since we are working outdoors a lot and rarely spend a lot of time at home while we are shooting, laptops seem like a great solution. They really are… but there are a few drawbacks you need to be aware of before you bu one as your primary editing system.

No matter what you do, a laptop will be more expensive. Due to the fact that the components are smaller and more expensive, you will need more money to get something that will run your software. Be prepared to spend almost twice as much.

Laptops are slower. Deal with it. Laptops are made to suck less juice out of the battery, be quiet and super small. To do this they trade for speed. You can get close, but a laptop will always be slower than comparable desktops. Be prepared to be frustrated at how long some things will take. That will be the price you pay for having something you can take on the road.

External Hard Drives

The hard drive in your computer is going to fill up fast if you use it to dump all your video to. Instead, invest in an ‘External Hard Drive’. Western Digital makes one called the ‘iBook’ that is up to 1.5 terrabites . It is affordable and works well, some minor technical issues from time to time, but that is to be expected with any piece of technology. Most professional grade editing software actually works BETTER if it has an external hard drive to use as a ’scratch drive.’ HD video requires a fast bus speed on the external hard drive to keep the information flowing smoothly, so get one that uses Firewire 2.0 if you have a Mac with a 2.0 port, or USB 2.0 for a PC.

When all is said and done, your computer is gonna cost about 1/3 of that budget we outlined two weeks ago. I recommend if you are buying a new system, take a good, long look at a Mac over a PC. It will pay off. Make sure no matter what you do, you have plenty of RAM and a large external hard drive. Next week we are going to look at the last big cost. Editing software. (and if you bought a Mac and don’t need professional grade tools, you just saved yourself about 400 bucks)

Stay Tuned…

The Animal

This week we are talking about camcorders. Specifically HD camcorders.

Why go HD?

The real question here is… why not. In order to get a quality digital video picture from any camcorder you will need to buy a decent broadcast or prosumer camcorder. That’s gonna cost you at least $3k. You can now get consumer quality HD camcorders… that have a nicer picture quality than the DV ones for under $1500. Almost all computer video editing software is HD compatible, and the increased space the footage takes up on your hard drive is no longer an issue. (hard drives are CHEAP) ‘

Also, in the end it comes down to being upward compatible. HD is the way that television is going. You will someday replace the tv you mom gave you to take to college… when you do… I bet you buy an high definition television. Watching DV footage on that TV will show just how horrible the image quality is. You will notice right away that your film looks amateurish compared to a deep crystal clear HD image.

This is just an opinion. Feel free to argue.

Ok, fine. HD is the way to go. What do I buy?

We talked last week about your budget. Take the money from the budget you laid out for yourself and plan on spending at least a 1/4 of that cash on your camera. Although camcorders are getting cheap, it is going to be your first line, your ground troops, your artillery… so make sure you don’t cheap out on this part.

Consumer Camcorders

Small hand held camcorders are nice. They come with some simple features and they won’t break the bank. Something to keep in mind is; the smaller the camcorder the shakier the footage. It will be hard to keep something that light and small stable. Image stabilizers are good, but not good enough.

Something most pro’s don’t tell low level consumers. A steady image is the key to looking professional. Big camcorders have an advantage of being easier to keep stable. Shoulder mounts and pure weight help steady the hand. This is one of the key differences between dad’s home movie and a professional wedding video. So if you go with a small camera, buy a decent tripod and USE IT.

The only other thing I can tell you at this stage is test, test, test. There are a lot of consumer HD camcorders out there. Read the reviews, go to your local mom and pop shop and test the bejeezus out of them. Find one with all the options you want, then search for the best price. Don’t jump at the cheapest one… there is a reason it is cheap. Jump at the one that makes you warm and fuzzy inside. For reviews on current camcorders go to Camcorderinfo.com. They are great and very informative.

Prosumer Camcorders

For the prosumer, you should be spending somewhere in the range of $5000-$10000 bucks. I recommend in the lower range. Sony, Panasonic and Canon all have amazing low range prosumer camcorders. I recommend Sony. I have used all three and in the end I keep marching back and buying another Sony camera. Here’s why.

1. Sony generally costs less
2. Most models can record HD video to a DV tape
3. For outdoor video I find the image superior.
4. They worked hard for my business and gave me all the options I wanted. (Sony may be the black sheep of electronics right now, but their pro camcorder division is still top notch)
5. Sony makes inexpensive underwater camcorder rigs specifically for their small camcorders. (more on this in a few weeks)

Cost is a huge factor. In outdoor video, camera’s are going to get wet, dropped, and eventually broken. It needs to be reasonable to replace. You don’t want your life destroyed because your 20 thousand dollar camera fell in the drink and you need 4 contracts to replace it. Options are also very important. It makes sense to be able to do the things you want when you are in the feild — but nothing is as important as DV tape.

I harp on this. People will find me annoying I am sure. But If you take anything from this, remember the Animal’s Law; MiniDV TAPE IS KING.

It is cheap- at 5 bucks a tape. It is re-usable. You can get it at the corner store. It is small and portable. It is tough… you can drop it off a cliff and it usually won’t get destroyed, and best of all you get 60 minutes of quality HD footage per unit.

Last time I used a Canon HD camcorder, it couldn’t record HD to the dv tape. It used a DV tape, but could only record standard DV video to that tape. Panasonic wants you to buy specal ‘P2′ flash drives. They are overpriced and don’t hold a lot of footage (and not super durable like a tape… trust me). So although, I love the features on Panasonics, and I love the look and lenses on a Canon, I have to warn people off buying them. Sony’s only flaw is that you can’t swap out lenses and the image err’s on the blue side, but for filming lakes and water, this is great. These factors may change in the future, and at that time I will sing a different song.

There is one other factor to take in to account when looking at camcorders is sound input. If image stability is the first sign of an crappy film, sound is definitely the second (Some even argue the other way around). Look for a camera with one or 2 “XLR” inputs. We will talk about sound at length in a few weeks, and having XLR direct input will be a HUGE advantage. If you really can’t find one in your price range, just double check and make sure that it has a mic jack. Many consumer camcorders don’t come with one. You will need it. The on board mic won’t be good enough for film making and you will be bummed out if you buy a camera and can’t hook up better sound to it.

These are my opinions and it is important that you form your own. Do the research. Your camcorder is your first line of defense, and if you hate it, you are going to hate your film. Once you buy it, spend time learning the options and how to quickly switch them up.

So.. quick review:

1. Spend at least 1/4 of your budget on your camcorder… don’t cheap out here.
2. Make sure it can record the HD video to miniDV tape
3. Make sure you have some sort of microphone jack. XLR input is preferable, two XLR inputs are great. ( this will generally only be available on the bigger camcorders)
4. Take your time and research the options. If you hate your camcorder, you will hate your film.
5. Small camcorders will be shakier. Buy a tripod and use it.

Now down to brass tacks.

What camcorder do you recommend?

Currently, Heliconia Productions uses a Sony HVR-V1U. I simply love it. It has proven rugged (dropped on day one of shooting… no damage) It was relatively inexpensive at around $5k Canadian at the time. It has two XLR input jacks, films in 24, 30 and 60 frames per second (which is really great) and it even came with a decent shotgun style mic. Last but not least, it records an excellent image to a miniDV tape (bet you knew I was gonna say that).

We also have a small hand-held Sony HCR-HC5 camcorder. Specifically because sony makes a waterproof sport case for it for around $200. This is invaluable. We went with a second sony camcorder to keep image about the same. The quality is lower on the smaller camcorder, but that was to be expected. So far it has served us well, and I was really impressed that the batteries recharge in about 15 minutes.

That’s it for this week. Next week we will be talking computers. Stay tuned

The Animal