ok here is the deal i have just purchased a new digital camcorder and ive made a few movies driving around in my Classic Mini now the question is what program would you recommend to compile,edit,and finish and have a very nice finished video. Now i know the final product is going to reflect the quality of the video.

which brings me to my next question. ive seen the posts on taking mini pics but what makes a good video, i know different angles has a major roll but what kind of differences can i make at the camcorder that will make a drastic improvement?

i currently have a Sony HandyCam DCR-HC20 will be getting the firewire cable and possibly a card but for now i gotta work with the usb stream. i made a mount to fint in the car secured to the seats them self.

BTW i have abode Preimer 6.5 from a co-worker but i cant seem to get it working properly, i mean it takes like 2 hoursto convert to a finished video about 12 mins long, in my book its an awefully long time.

Thanks in advance,
Dennis

 

Most of the advice will fall under the same category as still pix. Look for those creative angles, etc.
What makes for cool video nowadays is editing. Check out what's popular in videos these days. View Spike TV's programming on the weekends.

 

One thing that may cause Adobe Premier to take so long is because your video file may be huge is size. In the past stuff I've done, I use Virtual Dub to cut and compress portions of the video I want. To give you an idea, a non-audio that I just checked was 196mb in size. I was able to compress it with Virtual Dub down to under 4mb which is a lot easier to work with in Premier. In the past it wasn't uncommon to have a minute long uncompress video to be over a gb in size.

http://www.virtualdub.org/

When compressing in Virtual Dub, I use Divx. You may need to get the free download of Divx to get this option. I use the free one and it does just fine for me.

http://www.divx.com/divx/

 

I know I'm looking to get some crazy fisheye video segments in- pretty sure those attachments are available for the Sony's .

I'm looking for the Fisheye attachment for my Canon ZR camcorder anybody know where I can get one??!?!?...I'm pretty sure the filter size is 30.5 .

 

Hey SnakeFart,

Congrats on your new camcorder!!
You ask a good question but the funny thing is, you already know the answer. Turn on America's Funniest Home Videos, and what do you see? Well, really bad amateurish video. Why? Well, the video is shaky, it's got people acting goofy on camera, it's not lit very well--people's faces in the sun are blown out or too dark, or inside the house, it's grainy, and you got time date stamps burned in.

While I'm sure you would never create video like that, the difference between a great video and a lousy video lies in part on the technical aspects, but also in how the content was captured. Tape a bullet cam to your visor and drive around, it'll be cool for the first 10 seconds, but will get boring fast!! You need to change angles.

Now of course, the MTV generation brought to us the idea that shaky video was cool, so if you've ever seen the raw footage a film student shoots of a music video--you'll see lots of short shaky video clips that don't make much sense, until you edit it to the beat of some fast, dynamic music, and then it looks "cool".

Today, you can't watch anything, even the evening news, without hearing sound effects. You'll hear the ever common Whoosh,shoooms, boings, and bing sounds.

If you want to make good videos, it's a lot like taking a good picture. A shot only needs to last as long as you need. But unlike a picture, you're telling a story over time. When you start a scene, consider what the viewer is looking for. He wants to know where you are. Thus you have the Establishing Shot. This is a wide shot that shows where the action is taking place--such as the sign of a building, or race track. Then you can cut to a medium or close up of the action taking place, and it will flow perfectly.

Again watch TV for examples. Any sitcom will start with the exterior of the house first, you'll hear some dialogue while still seeing the exterior, then they will cut to the people inside. Hearing the audio first lets you know that there are people inside that are important.

Like DiD said in another post about taking pictures, as a photographer, YOU CONTROL what the viewer sees, by knowing how to use your camera. In video it's the same thing.

Everything I'm saying here is basic video editing stuff. Understand the limits of your camcorder. Know that when you are shooting something that's backlit, that you know how to either gain up, or throw artificial light, or have a bounce card to fill the subject, or reposition the subject. That just comes from experience.

Filters like circular polarizers can do wonders for controlling reflections, as can ND filters for controlling light.

You can buy a Belkin Firewire card for around $50 or less. Premiere will work fine for your needs. I used to be a hard core Premiere user since the early days of Premiere 4.0. I switched after 6.0 to Sony Vegas 5 which rocks, but at $500, isn't cheap. But it's really fast, and offers absolute control.

2 hours to convert a 12 minute video isn't unusual. MiniDV records at about 3.5MB/s or 12GB per hour. Figure 6GB for 30 minutes or 3 GB for 15 minutes. Nobody wants to download a 3GB file to watch, so you need to compress that to something manageable. That involves reducing resolution from 720x480 to maybe 320x240. Btw 720x480 uses rectangular pixels, not square--so when you are throwing away 1/4 of the resolution, you're also resizing the aspect ratio, which takes time.

Also you're compressing it at an acceptable bitrate--from 3.5MB/s to something like 500kb/s or less. A lot of quality gets lost here from the original video. If you want to lower your time, consider making shorter video clips of 30 seconds to 1 minute and processing those.

You might take a look at the camera systems I developed---the VacuCam which will allow you to capture high quality, high action videos--that are switchable on the fly from up to 4 different angles.

http://www.VacuCam.com

Richard

 

octane, um not sure how to say this but THANK YOU just by reading what you said i instanly thought of the wonderful film of rendezvous a monsterous V12 coming to life behind a blank screen then coming out of a black tunnel to terrorize the quiet morning streets of peaceful Paris....ahh see what you made me do...now i gotta watch the film

 

You're welcome!

I still haven't seen the film, but I've heard so much about it. I think there was a small clip of it online somewhere and it was pretty intense! Whatever you do, be safe and responsible!!!

Richard

 

ok ive think im used to adobe now but i have a big problem now, when i record anything and attempt to save it to my pc the play back is horrible, its unbareable, however when i play it back on the camcorder it looks perfect. read instruction and it doesnt even say how to change resolution. i also pressed reset thinking it would help but noooo it still looks like crap.

will upload a video here in a min

 

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...php?photo=3823

 

Good job! You need to adjust your WMV compression settings. You seem to be on the Maximum Compression setting which is the worst image quality.

as for watching playback on your computer, what are your specs? How fast is your computer? What video display card do you have?

As long as playback on your camcorder looks fine, it shouldn't be a problem. It doesn't sound like a data rate issue with your computer--but more of a display card issue--can't display video fast enough. Data rate problems, i.e. slow hard drive, hard drive too full, etc.. wouldn't allow smooth transfer back to your camcorder.

There isn't a way to change resolution, unless you are rendering out a new version of your video clip. DV is 720x480 pixels. Anything other than that is no longer DV and won't be recordable back on your camcorder. If of course, you are just outputting for the web, it can be anything you want.

Richard

 

amd athlon Xp 3k + at 2.2 ghz with a gig of ram, video card is a radeon 9600 xt (128mb) i have 160gb HD with 92 gb free space my pc isnt the problem im sure, yes all the latest drivers, updates etc... i already have a video of good quality im my gallery and im not sure what the problem is.

 

Can you give me more details about "the play back is horrible, its unbareable,"

Is it jerky? Is it unrecognizable? What are you seeing?

 

did u watch the video???

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...php?photo=3823