Shooting Smooth Video
If you’re someone who loves the jerky look of MTV video, skip this post. But if you want to be able to eat dinner and then sit down and watch one of your own videos without throwing up due to motion sickness, keep reading.
When you shoot with a still camera on a tripod, chances are you use a ball head, a gimbal head or a panning head. For video, you’ll need a panning head, and most experts prefer what’s called a fluid head.
A fluid head uses viscous oil between the mechanical components that allow the smoothest movement. This makes panning, starts and stops all record more smoothly.
Unfortunately, fluid heads can be very expensive, running into the thousands of dollars for those that need to support very large video cameras.
For the average consumer video camera, there is one inexpensive fluid head that I’ve tried and can recommend. It’s the Bogen/Manfrotto 501HDV Fluid Video Head. Most stores sell it for well under $200. It supports more than 13 pounds (much more than any consumer camcorder would weigh) and offers a stable way to pan your camera.
Some of my favorite features of this head are that it offers variable friction on both the pan and the tilt axis. You can vary the friction. It offers a sliding camera plate and it is set up to work for either right or left-handed shooters.
One negative for the 501 is its weight. It weighs 3.5 pounds. If carry a one pound camcorder and need a 3.5 pound head, chances are it might keep you from bringing the head along at all. But fight that temptation. All video gear of this nature suffers this problem. You can get carbon fiber heads that weigh less, but they will cost much more.
It’s well built and Bogen offers a five year warranty to support the product.
Consumer Video Tips Q&A
Every week or so, we’re going to pick at least one question from our audience to answer on the blog. Hopefully, these answers will help everyone. If you have a question, send it to bournemediagroup at gmail.com.
Here’s today’s question from Robert Sorbo…
When importing a movie from Final Cut Express 4.0 into iDVD that was shot 16:9, iDVD stretches it even further on output.
I shot the footage on a Panasonic DV953 camera with its 16:9 mode. FCE recognizes it correctly, but iDVD does not.
I Googled it and found others that have had this problem and had success by changing the movie’ size in the Quicktime conversion.
That didn’t work for me. I did get the movie to burn correctly in Toast, but then it doesn’t keep my chapter markers.
Just wondering if you’ve heard of this and know a solution.
—
It’s always hard to know the precise answer to something as complex as this Robert but in consultation with my buddy Alex Lindsay at the Pixelcorps, I believe this could be a problem related to iDVD misinterpreting the non-square pixels for square pixels and stretching them.
Our good friend QuickTime Pro
can help here. Just use QTP to convert to “pro-res” before sending the file to iDVD and all should be well.
This is probably a good time to point out that Apple’s QuickTime Pro (which is cross-platform) is a swiss army knife that should be in everybody’s video toolbox. It’s great for solving problems like this one.
Affordable & Improved Audio For Video – RODE Videomic
I’ve already talked about the importance of improving the audio you record along with your video. Here’s an inexpensive way to do that, and still get great results.
While you may eventually need several different types and styles of microphones, you’ll almost certainly always have need of a shotgun mic. Shotgun mics are very directional. They record audio in tight patterns and at greater distances than your video camera’s built-in mic.
While these mics can cost thousands of dollars, Australian microphone maker Rode makes the “,” which sells for about $150.00.
The Rode Videomic plugs into your video camera using a standard Mini jack and mounts to your video camera’s accessory shoe. The mic features a built in shock mount that reduces handling noise. Best of all, since it offers a tight pickup pattern, you can reliably record sounds as far away as 20 feet.
The audio quality exceeds what you’d expect to get for this price point. It offers very low noise with very rich and full sound especially compared to most built in video camera mics
If you hope to do professional work, you’ll need to step up to the more expensive shotgun makers. But if you’re just starting out, Rode offers you a great way to improve your sound without busting your budget.
Audio is as Important as Video
If you’re at all serious about your video projects, you need to get serious about audio too. This is so important that I’ll be covering this topic on a regular basis.
Today we’ll just go over the basics.
Let’s start with your camcorder’s built-in mic. Chances are, it sucks. The built-in mics pick up too much ambient noise. The sounds you WANT recorded, end up getting lost in the mix. Built-in mics are notorious for picking up the mechanical noises of the camera and can’t be directed at the sound source you’re really interested in recording.
Built-in mics are also typically of low quality. They are very small, and are limited in the frequencies they can record accurately.
There are a variety of microphones designed for video work, and in future posts, I’ll describe them and how they’re used.
How to Choose a Consumer Video Camera
It’s always the same question…”Which camcorder should I buy?”
I don’t know. That’s the simple answer. But I can help you with a list of things to consider when selecting a video camera.
The first and foremost factor is deciding how you want to use it. If you hope to make low-budget motion pictures for major market distribution, you’ll want a different camera than you’d want if all you need to do is document the birth of your dog’s new puppies.
Video cameras (not surprisingly) offer greater capability, depending on cost. So what’s you budget? There are three primary budget ranges to consider. $1000 and under. $1000-$4000 and $4000 and up. Most consumers are looking for something that costs less than $1000. Fortunately, there are many cameras that fall into that category.
Next on the list is format. Do you want to record to tape, DVD or hard drive. For consumer-level cameras, I usually recommend against DVD formatted cameras. Tape is the easiest to deal with, but does require that you budget for an ongoing expense.
Another consideration is what features do you need? Some that I suggest you look for include an optical rather than a digital zoom, a miminum of 720p HD quality, HDMI outputs, replacable-rechargable batteries, an easy way to mount the camera to a tripod, manual control over things like aperture and exposure and lastly, the ability to add an external microphone and to monitor the audio as it comes into the camera. The audio features are perhaps the most important to me personally, since I know that without good audio, it doesn’t matter what the video looks like.
Lastly, make sure your camcorder will work with the editing software you prefer. For instance, if you prefer iMovie 08, Apple has provided a complete list of compatible cameras here.
The Biggest Lie In Video Production History
“We’ll fix it in post!”
NO! YOU WON’T!
One of the biggest mistakes made by video shooters is the false belief that they can fix mistakes in post.
If you didn’t get the sound as you recorded the shot – if you were out of focus – if you’re hand-holding technique resulted in poor footage, etc., etc., etc., you will probably be sorry if you think you can fix it after you shoot it.
Even long-standing professionals know that it’s hard to sync dialog, or cut around bad footage. Amateurs have even less chance for success.
It’s always best to get it right in the camera. Besides making it actually possible to get the result you want, getting it right in the camera is less time-consuming, less expensive and less stressful, than trying to fix it later.
Don’t be lazy. Stay on the shot until you get it right. You’ll be happier in the end. And you’ll actually have a realistic chance of getting the results you want. Hoping to fix it in post will most likely mean failure.
Nikon D90 as a Video Camera
The Nikon D90 is a DSLR that also shoots video. This review deals strictly with the D90 as a video camera.
The movie mode is an incredible idea. This is the first DSLR that also shoots real 720p HD video. (There’s even an on-board HDMI port – a rarity in this price range.) The process of recording video isn’t very intuitive. It’s obvious that this camera was designed for still photography NOT video. The ergonomics are not terrible for shooting video, but could be better. And the results? If you’re patient, good at manual focus (the D90 autofocus is switched off in movie mode) and you shoot from a tripod, you can make good video with this device. But it will take some practice. After numerous tries, I haven’t been able to focus the camera for video so I gave up on it.
While I appreciate the bonus of the movie mode, it’s important to note that I wouldn’t buy this camera just because of that. You can get a much better quality dedicated digital camcorder for $1000. The lack of an audio input other than the built-in mic, and no control whatsoever over aperture and shutter speed eliminate many cool tricks that could be done with this camera.
That said, I can see a whole bunch of cool videos being made with it anyway…much the way people take advantage of a Holga camera’s flaws to make a creative statement, people will be able to do the same thing with video on the D90. I just won’t be one of those people.
I do believe this camera is ground-breaking in that it shows a huge interest in the convergence between still and video. And I expect the next Nikon DSLR will have an even more advanced, refined and valuable approach to shooting video. But the execution leaves a lot to be desired in my opinion.
NOTE: I had trouble working with the movie files (they appear to be AVI’s) in Final Cut Pro. So I imported them into , a free utility that converts them into .mov files that worked well in both Final Cut Pro and iMovie. You should also note that Nikon doesn’t supply any movie conversion or editing software with the D90.
