Better videos.

[Steve Rhoden]

Trey, First and Utmost make the sacrifice to get a high quality video camera and a good lighting kit (lighting).
That is the greatest investment you need to make in achieving the
quality you seek..no shortcuts..trust me.

Then of course you compliment that with sony vegas Pro and most
of the plugins available for it..there is now quit a few.

Anything else?

Steve Rhoden
TNX EFFECTS STUDIOS.

[Trey Isbell]

Most of my filming is of motocross riding fast action type filming and it is outdoors so lighting is out of the question.

[Melvin Gonsalvez]

Perhaps you can try out the Casio Exilim Pro camera. It does 720p, 1080p, and slow motion (300, 600, 1200fps) and I use Vegas Pro to output the collages in WMV HD 720p. You can get some cool slo-mo shots of your racing with that cam (300fps – 512×384, 600fps and 1200fps shots are smaller in height) as it outputs .mov files. The HD video is very good for a sub $1K cam and it even has an HDMI output.

[Don Hutcheson]

Trey,
I would suggest your most important starting point is a decent quality videocam. The dividing line between “average” and “good” is a 3-ccd (“charged couple device”–analogous to film size) camera. Consumer cams have one ccd, but a a 3-cd cam separates the colors into the three primary colors–giving you better contrast (as a result of better color)and richer, more lifelike color. Get the shot in good quality to start with. Then, as you can afford better editing software and peripherals, you can go back to the great original tape and render better quality output. A used 3CCD videocam (Sony PD150/170 or any 1/3″ ccd cam is good for non-HD) from a trusted Ebay source will be better than a new single CCD or single CMOS videocam. Find out what brand of tape the camera is used to and stick with it. And if you buy a Sony DVCAM format camera, shoot in DVCAM all the time. DVCAM is superior to MiniDV (except in HD) because it lays down a wider video and audio track. A larger original file won’t suffer as much degradation as it is manipulated and compressed in post (editing).

Hope this helps.

Hutch

Hutch

[Ron Shook]

Don,

Your advice is excellent, except this last part is misleading.

[Don Hutcheson] “And if you buy a Sony DVCAM format camera, shoot in DVCAM all the time. DVCAM is superior to MiniDV (except in HD) because it lays down a wider video and audio track. A larger original file won’t suffer as much degradation as it is manipulated and compressed in post (editing).”

The video layed down to DVCAM tape and to miniDV tape is identical and once it is ingested into the NLE, performs in post identically. DVCAM tape is manufactured to more rigid standards and moves through the tape mechanism more rapidly, thus separating the elements of the DV signal more, so that they are less prone to drop out and other problems should the tape path be slightly out of whack or dirty. The same size DVCAM tape as MiniDV will have less running time because it goes through the tape mechanism faster. DVCPRO25 tape goes even further along the robustness continuum by running even faster with a better tape forumlation than DVCAM with a cooresponding decrease in running time but only for camcorders capable of shooting this tape.

Practical considerations inform your decision about which tape forulation and format to use. It’s very hard to justify using DVCAM tape, which is 3 times the cost of miniDV for 2/3rds the running time, for a hobbiest project that isn’t going to significantly suffer if there’s the possibility of a little gitch here and there. It’s just as hard to justify using miniDV tape to save a few bucks for a commercial spot where you look like a fool if the good take has a glitch in it. Match the tape cost and quality to the job, but you aren’t giving up any imaging quality by using miniDV and not DVCAM, just increasing the slight chance of a problem. DVCAM tape should hold up better over time than MiniDV for archival purposes, and if you decide that you don’t need to keep what’s on it, is more reliable for reuse in non-critical applications.

Ron Shook
Shoulder-High Eye Productions
CreativeCOW Forum Host for Discreet edit*

[Trey Isbell]

Where can you get a decent 3ccd video camera for under 1000 dollars.

[Ron Shook]

Trey,

[Trey Isbell] “Where can you get a decent 3ccd video camera for under 1000 dollars.”

I’d say that you can’t, but then I’ve never attempted to do so, or even looked in that direction, so I’m not the one to answer that question definitively. I’d quess that if you doubled that amount you might have some success.

Ron Shook
Shoulder-High Eye Productions
CreativeCOW Forum Host for Discreet edit*

[Don Hutcheson]

Ron,

Thanks for the post. I agree with you in principle. I was assuming, since he shoots motorcycles, he’s wants the best chance at the best shot each time, with no chance of drop-out, since he can’t ask the bikers to do “take two”. Same with me and airplanes, or city officials in a documentary. I guess the DVCAM/MiniDV comparison goes on, although a 50%larger signal on the tape (DVCAM) does reduce the S/N ratio of the audio and video, if you can afford the tapes. I don’t take chances. However, I look forward to my first memory card videocam, since it will eliminate so many variables and limitations involved in using tape!

Cheers,

Hutch

[Don Hutcheson]

Trey,

Correction: I should have said that the SONY TVR-900 was superior to the “single CCD SONY vidocam” (as opposed to the SONY Mini DV videocam). The TVR-900 is also a MiniDV videocam.

thakns

Hutch

[Mike Bova]

Here is a video I shot with a Sony HDR-SR12. I rendered ir in Vegas Platinum to DV converted to DIVX. It looks great in DV but way too big of a file to share. Not that happy with the final quality though.

https://mike546.com/ace.divx

If it doesn’t load try a little later. It’s a $19 a year web host from EBay