heyy, sorry
the camera i use at the moment is a pentax optio 555 its a couple of years old. the pics are great but the videos are...umm, not great. i looked at the jvc everio hard disk cameras, a family member (who is a cameraman for channel nine) told me they were crap tho ugh. any opinions?
thanks
the reasons that your pictures are not great is because whilst your camera takes still images of a 3-5MP, when it shoots video, it shoots at a much lower resolution. i am suspecting that the format it shoots is something along the lines of 320x240 at around 15 frames per second. when you compare this to standard definition video which is 720x576 @ 25fps, you can see there is a big jump in quality. quick tip. don't use a stills camera to shoot video.
the hard drive cameras at the moment are still a bit out there. I am currently shooting with a Panasonic P2 camera which shoots to drive, but it is a lot of work to manage the process. You are better off picking up a cheap DV camera which will sort you out for the next few years until you can afford something better.
So is a fireport like a USB to connect it to the computer?
FireWire is a standard developed to work with DV cameras. The good thing about firewire is that all the hard work has been done. It has been around for a bit over 10 years, so every edit system supports it, and all operating systems support it. if you have a PC you might need to buy a firewire card for your machine. if you are on a Mac, the firewire card comes standard.
for more info on FireWire:
http://developer.apple.com/hardwaredrivers/firewire/index.html
i have a dillemma.
i have a panasonic gs-180, the image quality should be really good. but when i capture video onto my computer (through vegas) it always turns out dull is there something i have to change on the camera settings or is it the computer itself? what can i do to fix it? cause im out of ideas
check the settings that you are using for editing. the kind of quality drop you are talking about often occurs when there is a mismatch of settings. if you are using a camera bought in australia and capturing via firewire, your settings will need to be something along the lines of :
Codec : DV
Frame Size : 720x576
Frames per Second : 25
Audio : Stereo, 16 bit, 48khz
you also need to make sure that your capture settings match your edit settings. otherwise, your editing application will be trying to convert the footage on the fly to a different format, and will make it look like crap in the process.
if you could post a pic or sample of how it is going bad, that might give me a bit more of a clue as to what is going wrong. also, screen shots of your settings (capture and editing settings) will also help me figure it out.
OK, I've been looking at the ADVCs. Both ADVC110 and ADVC55 (
http://www.canopus.com/products/ADVC110/index.php,
http://www.canopus.com/products/ADVC55/index.php). The 110 is priced at $530 while the 55 is $200 cheaper. What I want to know is is paying that extra $200 really worth it? What great advantage does 110 have over 55. Will I need any of those extra bells and whistles in the future as my film making skills grow? These items seem perfect.
Big difference between the two units is that ADVC 55 has analogue inputs only (converts analogue video to firewire), and the ADVC 110 has inputs and outputs (goes both ways). Most people these days would only require the ADVC55. My reasoning? We need to look at the workflow. Shoot - use the ADVC55 to get the footage into the computer and edit it. Once edited, most people these days will :
- compress it to a quicktime or similar (and probably put it on youtube)
- burn it to a DVD
the only reasons to buy the ADVC110 is if you :
a) want to play your edited piece back out to VHS or your camera
b) you want to be able to view your stuff on a telly while you are editing
The second option there is pretty cool if you are starting to get serious about your work, but most people will just need to get the footage in.
Hey all, Ive bought myself quite a decent sony hard drive camera and have started filming not too long ago. I currently use Sony Vegas as my editing software, but for the outcome when im suppose to render the movie together i sit there bewildered at all the selections. Could someone please explain just the more important/better of the compression types or whatever to save as
Mpeg2 gives me sweet quality but too big file to upload onto the net and avi gives me an even bigger file. What would be good to go with for say a good quality video but smallest possible file size to enable others to download off the net without wasting too much download space. Also is Mpeg2 the only/best quality file type to save onto dvd?
Any info would be greatly appreciated.
ok, so what you are talking about here is compression. compression is what we use to take our edited video (which is huge) and compress it so that it is small enough to get where it needs to go.
MPEG 2 as you have correctly figured out is the compression standard for DVD. most edit systems will have presets there, so i wont go into too much detail unless needed..
for sending video to the web, my recommendation would be QuickTime. You can download QuickTime player from the Apple website (both mac & pc) and it will work with your editing application and give you a few more export options.
Now rather than re-typing this all out, I do remember that i tapped this all out for a video project that Johnny was working on.
I now have a quicktime copy of my new teaser on my PC (windows XP, not patched or updated for obvious reasons) which is like 190meg big. I would like to compress this to a managable (sp) size whilst retaining as much screen size and frame rate as possible (quite probably an oxymoronic ambition, I know.....).
Which prog should I use to accomplish this?
Whoever can help me with this gets to download my movie for free!
Hi Johnny,
Is it currently in 4:3 or widescreen?
I have listed details for both. The first set are for native size - ie - no size drop, but you may experience a significant drop in quality - always a trade off. I have listed a second set of details that are a slightly smaller screen size (still pretty big), but are going to look a lot clearer.
Details for 4:3 using Quicktime
Video -
Codec : H264
Frame Rate : Current
Keyframes : Every 25
Data Rate : Restrict to 1200Kb/s
Encoding : Best Quality (Multi-pass)
Size : 720x576
Audio -
Format : AAC
Channels : Stereo (LR)
Rate : 32Khz
AAC Encoder Settings - Target bit rate 96kbps
For 16:9
Video -
Codec : H264
Frame Rate : Current
Keyframes : Every 25
Data Rate : Restrict to 1200Kb/s
Encoding : Best Quality (Multi-pass)
Size : 1024x576
Audio -
Format : AAC
Channels : Stereo (LR)
Rate : 32Khz
AAC Encoder Settings - Target bit rate 96kbps
These are the smaller screen size options
Details for 4:3 using Quicktime
Video -
Codec : H264
Frame Rate : Current
Keyframes : Every 25
Data Rate : Restrict to 1200Kb/s
Encoding : Best Quality (Multi-pass)
Size : 512x384
Audio -
Format : AAC
Channels : Stereo (LR)
Rate : 32Khz
AAC Encoder Settings - Target bit rate 96kbps
For 16:9
Video -
Codec : H264
Frame Rate : Current
Keyframes : Every 25
Data Rate : Restrict to 1200Kb/s
Encoding : Best Quality (Multi-pass)
Size : 512x288
Audio -
Format : AAC
Channels : Stereo (LR)
Rate : 32Khz
AAC Encoder Settings - Target bit rate 96kbps
Hope that this helps.
Cheers
Al
Alright, well - I hope that sorts people out. Any other questions, chuck em over this way. Have a good one.
Cheers
Al
