As for the video,

1. The flower footage for the intro, why flower? Macam tak kena. But can kena also, if the text also appear rotating as the middle flower. But the out transition (clockwise wipe) tak kena. if the wipe can start from the middle better. if the text also can be "wiped" together with the flower intro (render the text + flower to another video file, then baru wipe) EVEN BETTER.
2. when the snake is eating the tikus together iwth the catchy music, do fast cuts la better instead of one whole long shot of him eating. u cut cut cut the video to make it shorter, and susun ikut the beat of the music. then can gelak + gross at the same time.
3. since angle is limited, try having the view of him eat it from as low as possible, with his eyes like staring right in front of the cam while eating. maybe can start to show this part bila the catchy song repeats the 2nd time, like around 1:15 like that.

I didn't watch the whole thing since internet slow la today, so yeah thats my komen lah.


50 is a bigger number than 25. 1080 is a bigger number than 720. its all marketing, which sony traditionally excels at. sony erricsson phones have really, REALLY slow and bad UI. and yet they manage to sell it like crazy.

although I have to say, the GPS is really useful TO ME. it's really not an everybody's thing. Again sony knows how hard for documentary filmakers to find a really suitable camera for them (long battery, good low light, small, quiet, light, low radiation, solid metal, great stabiliser, great pre-recording modes, long, long, long recording) when filming in jungles, filming birds, predators eating animals, etc. I've spoken to a few docu filmakers and pretty much all of them are either planning or have already got the XR cam.

something like the intro of this, look at how the sticks and movements seems to be hitting at the right moment the song beat clicks. its things like this that will make a video macam ada feel best gila.

audio has 80% of influence of how good the movie is. video is only 20%. if the video footage is crap, colour is out, ada noise, etc2, audience will forget all mistakes as long as the audio is crisp, in sync, no delays, etc.

also look at how can transitions complement the mood/feel of the video.

oh and the footage is not mine ah, before anybody asks i just reedit je.

a good study of audio-video association and synching and mood would be to watch the critically acclaimed silent movie, Man With The Movie camera.

First 3 mins is intentionally blank, try to feel how the music plays a role to give the mood to appreciate the footages.



This post has been edited by C-Fu: Jul 7 2009, 11:24 AM

for weddings, you don't need
1. HD (then you need power pc to edit, and end result will be in DVD which is SD, so whats the point)
2. tape cams
3. super high optical zoom (digital/hybrid/max/other than optical zoom is worthless, avoid). 10x is good enough

you need
1. long battery life
2. SD/DV quality
3. monopod (and tripod if you can)
4. long recording on SD/DV quality
5. good low light quality
6. stabilizer

sd is standard definition. tv quality. dvd quality. hd is high definition. blu ray quality. pc quality. unless the output is just pc or blu ray, there's no point in going hd.

does any of you have any idea at all about AfterEffect's video stabiliser function? i suppose i might be able to do a short tutorial on that, might improve your vids.


other than that, might help if you make your cams heavier to stabilise it. or attach the cam to a small weight and a tali.

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Jul 13 2009, 06:36 PM

got lah. camcorderinfo.com is a good one, videomaker also (although its more for professional camcorders) and cnet if you're that desperate

but one time only! or few times, if you're stingy
dv cams are SD, unless you go for HDV lah. still the best HD format ever, IMO. software support is excellent, not heavy at all, colours dem good, and 5 6 years and running. my HDV cam also dah 4 tahun, still better than most new consumer cams

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Jul 18 2009, 01:32 PM

i buat tv production

sanyo tarak optical zoom, pana ada 70x. bateri lagi kicik, audio kureng cun. but sanyo ada HD lah.

i would get the pana. AND 2nd BIGGER BATTERY PLEASE.


mts, m2ts, m2t (i think), modd, moff, are all bluray player readable straight away, no need to render if u burn it as data into dvd disc or bluray disc. unless of course u do editing, in which case u need to render/combine the clips lah.

an excellent guide for buying/choosing a new camera. among the points:
http://www.videomaker.com/article/14222/3/


1. Why upgrade?

Possibly the most important question you must ask yourself is, "What's wrong with my current camcorder?" Unless you can answer this question, with specifics, you might be wasting your money. Sit down and list the specific limitations of your current setup - is it low-light performance? Is the lens not wide enough? Is the autofocus too slow? Is it difficult to edit? Be wary of marketing hype -- "my current camcorder doesn't have image stabilization" isn't a reason to upgrade, while "my video suffers from camera shake" is a reason, and a camera with image stabilization might be the answer.

6. How's the battery life? How much are extra batteries?

You don't ever want to be at a critical point in shooting and have the Battery Low indicator flash - it creates a dreadful feeling in the pit of your stomach. Likewise, you don't want to be an electrical socket nomad, moving from outlet to outlet, eyes always alert for a new source of power like a shivering drug user trying to dry out. Be sure to compare battery life on your camcorders and see how much extra batteries cost. At the very least, you should have one extra battery; if you'll often be far from home, you'll want more.
7. What recording media should I be using?

Camcorders record to lots of different media types: Mini DV, DVD, hard drives, CompactFlash, SD and SDHC. While Mini DV is still popular in high-end cameras, lower-end units seem to be trending towards non-volatile media, solid-state cards and built-in memory that will then be transferred to some other media for storage. This is the way digital still cameras have worked for years now. On the one hand, it's convenient not to have to worry about tapes, but, on the other, it's easy enough to duck into an electronics store and buy a bunch of videotapes on vacation, while it's more difficult to find a way to dump your built-in memory to a big hard drive to free up space.

9. What resolution is right for me?

Do you want to make movies or upload things to YouTube? Buying and using an HD camera requires some significant resources, from storage space for your video to an editing system that can edit the video to a television that can play it back. Don't buy a camera that's going to sit in a drawer because you don't have the resources to operate it. At the same time, don't buy a camera that's underpowered for your needs. Think ahead of time if you'll be editing and distributing video in HD.

for MY usage, its going to be either a very large HDD sized cam (like XR520something, 250GB i think) or a good SD card cam with OIS and the like, but with banyak2 good & expensive SD cards (good brand, fast &reliable, class 6). which gonna cost me a lot of money, so might as well go and buy HDV cams lah.

the only problem that i can forsee with SD cards are static electricity. u letak dalam beg or in the pocket, when it move about sure kena static wan. for sure data can corrupt.

the thing about these small cameras that pisses me off quite a bit are the size. the smaller, the lighter, the harder to make it stable. plus the smaller it is, the smaller the size of the battery - shorter power.... mAh!

big,big hdd size is because it should be fairly new, so new sensor, better lowlight, and newer hdd tech (less skip, lagi tahan electromagnetic, etc). I have puluh2 harddisk, and i know for a fact that hdd isnt that reliable for video at all (i just lost 1TB of 15GB/hour hdv quality footages, imagine :S). if desktop hdd yang besar tu tak reliable, lagi la the smaller ones.


i suppose most people kat sini know my opinion on sanyo guncams if you check few pages back u can see la hahaha. you better ask people who own that cam, see the drawbacks and advantages of that can and see if ur ok with it. that said i have no idea on your usage and requirements on a cam so i dunno what to recommend la.

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Jul 24 2009, 12:54 AM

videocams should accept SDHC, so go for SDHC - which is 4GB and up.

but only buy class 6 and above cards. its constantly recording to the card, so you would want something that is fast and reliable.

1. the tm300 uses 5.1 audio channel right? make sure in your editing program you set your project to 5.1. then make the right side channel louder than the other channels, since you are probably positioned at the right side in the car. and apply noise reduction also lah if it helps, most new video editing programs got some sort of noise reduction function.

2. if you are filming in a car, put it on a small beanbag. yang macam batu seremban tu except bigger lah. or ask your little sister/niece to make one for you it helps to absorb the vibration quite successfully.

3. don't use Times font! times & other serif fonts (yang ada ekor2 tu) are only suitable for traditional, printed media. for screen media, macam tv, only use sans seriffed fonts like arial, etc. yang tarak ekor punya. unless youre aiming for a traditional feel, in which case you should use traditional-looking fonts lah. dafont.com has tons of free awesome fonts (and symbols and logo as fonts).

4. to me the video appears to be quite soft, at least softer, in low light compared to the beginning of the vid. can see it's trying to hide the noise in the clips. though it might just be a compression thing, can you see if the original has the same softness as well?

5. one question, after 3:15 when you are showing the klcc bridge the bridge and the building got a bit of artefacting, or more like the image rosak a bit. a bit like dvd calar, got square2 wan. why is that? your camera dekat dengan phone ah? one thing you need to be very careful with HDD-based is how close it is to an electromagnetic radiation source, like handphones. your data can get corrupted easily man! and corrupted data is nothing compared to bad sectors in hdd :S

6. if you want to show images in video, youtube for "Ken Burns effect".

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Jul 29 2009, 10:56 AM

when you upload to youtube, what is the bitrate, format, codec that you use? and what's the filesize?

as for me, WMV9, 2mb/3mb bitrate 720p. audio 128 mp3. note that youtube used to have an artificial limit of 100MB per file,if you go over it, the file will be heaviliy compressed in youtube. try to make the filesize below 100MB and see if it helps.


as for the artefact, based on the looks of the artefact, i believe it might be due to media error (hdd error). did you empty the hdd before filming and seeing the artefact again? try to scandisk the hdd see if it has any bad sectors. kalau ade pegi hantar balik kedai

best way to scandisk, imo, is to go to Start button>run>type
chkdsk /f/v/r/x x: >> c:\scandisk.txt
(x: is the hdd drive)

leave your pc overnight, then check the report file scandisk.txt in c:\.

if it doesn't use hdd, then what? flash drive? sd card?

if it uses dv tape, then that's your problem lah. maybe during capturing your pc was busy doing something else..

the SSD technology is still having questionable reliability, not to mention inconsistencies between random seek/write & sequential seek/write across all memory chips & controllers.

that's why consumers jadi guinnea pigs first

there are 40 (or 19) pages of recommendations in this thread.

prob with non firewire/non digital offline editing (transfer/copy) is that audio/video can be out of sync, depending hugely on the capture hardware used.

trv320 is a really really good cam! minidv standard somemore (but using digital8 tape la). super zoom (40x or something like that), sdi, lanc, etc. pretty much everything that's lacking in today's crapsumer "konon-HD" cams. heck even the tape lasts longer than minidv tapes because of the material!! 10-15 years (before degradation from dv quality) if you're careful, store vertically in dark cool dry place. do you think flash storage will last you 10 years without constantly reaccessing the card?


take care of it! even last year i remembered i saw the price in ebay was around rm2k you try to mod it with some good slr lens, rail system, rode mic, and i guarantee you will have broadcast tv quality film-like footage!

if i were you, i'd collect all digi8 tapes as much as i can



speaking of 8mm cams, does anybody know of this particular camera called Bolex K2? have you seen one in malaysia, or know where to get one?

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Aug 11 2009, 08:34 PM

firewire is higher quality. the bitrate, or "perceived image quality" that it can push is higher than svideo.


ah....

if you have no idea about filmaking, go and watch the awesome documentary called The Cutting Edge. see how important editors is and how they are underestimated with their powers.

then you gotta decide what sorta thing do you want to capture - something live in action, nature & wildlife, short movie, travel, underwater (!!), etc. then do the easiest first, like for instance if you prefer live action, go and shoot baby's first moves or a wedding. Edit your footages from there to buat a short montage. find a fun subject, like just kittens ke, anjing berak ke, or that snake eating tikus thing.

few things to consider:
the more angles that you have, the better. 1 5 minute shot of something is worse than 10 of 10 sec shots.
one main angle to overview ("establish" the scene), then few close ups, one travelling shot (slow or fast).
learn to cut footages in timeline according to the music. set the music as the movie's duration. music video is in fact one of the first medium budding amateur videomaker's first real try of filmmaking in this world, so might as well start from there.


one man pro bono job, used two or three tapes (2-3 hours total footage), make sure i have footages from beginning of event till the end. and hell a lot of fun editing cause the kids were so responsive!

but i want you to see how i susun the clips and actions into the beat, itu je.

storage medium & video quality does not depend on each other.

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Aug 12 2009, 08:45 AM

iMovie has spotty avchd support. you better check with apple and sony for more info.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1014
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1793