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Video & Audio Optimizing
Hello all,
In 24+ professional years mostly as an editor mostly editing commercials, infomercials, corporates and a TV show, I’ve only done a handful of wedding videos and each have been freebies for my family members. Aren’t the freebies always the ones that end up with the most to “fix in post”!?!
I just got done shooting a wedding for my niece in Augusta on February 14th which, for the most part, looks and sounds pretty good. For the wedding itself, I used three three-chip mini-DV cameras and I recorded 20 seconds of a chip chart at the beginning of each so that I can go to the three-way color corrector and eye-drop away on the white, black and gray and tweak from there. So far, so good.
However, I have footage from the rehearsal reception and wedding reception that is pretty dark and I certainly wasn’t going to light it at the time and mess up the ambience of the night! In the three-way color corrector, I adjusted the mid levels upward to 120 and, consequentially, was able to adjust downward the black levels to minus 8. While this looks better and the best I can get, it is certainly well less than ideal! Does anyone know of a plug-in or setting that would take dark shots and make them look pretty good?
Also, I had to use a camera mic for part of the wedding because the Priest refused to wear one of the wireless lavs! I had a wireless lav on the groom, however it is only usable when the couple and the Priest are all together because the groom was quite talkative during the ceremony! So, I’m forced to use a camera mic to get at least 50% of the audio, which is very echoey, has a lot of bump sounds when the tripod was being used and is not very crisp. Does anyone know of a plug-in or setting that would optimize this? I’ve tweaked audio in SoundTrack Pro before using SoundSoap to get hums and buzzes out, but I think this needs more than that.
Thanks in advance very much,
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1 Reply
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First, when I did wedding video, I always just put a lav on the groom, one on a podium where readings would be done. If the groom was chatty, that’s what they got. I found ALL of my clients loved hearing the bride and groom chat away during the ceremony. They found it more important than the actual vows. I’d just use it.
Low light, what you did is about it. But the problem with using a chip chart is that you have to be sure to set the white balance on the camera to that same chip chart everytime you start recording in such a varied environment. Anyway, to lighten up dark shots, what you did was about it. There are some more tips on doing this in more depth in the APTS book “Advanced Color Correction and Effects in FCP 5”. Very worth a look. Having done more years of professional weddings and live events than I care to admit (thank goodness I’m out of that mess, what hard work for no money), dark shots are dark shots, you can only fix them to a point, and that’s it. NTSC-DV is not the best codec for grading.
As for echoy room noise, well, you can get rid of some “noise” in STP, cut the echos are there for good. You can’t really filter them out, since they’re the same frequencies as the original voice you want to keep. A Noise Gate and Compressor filter combo could help, but only to a point.
Welcome to the headaches of wedding video…
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