Guy Mcloughlin
Forum Replies Created
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Still pretty huge compared to the Micro 4/3 mirror-less cameras…
Canon 100D/SL1 the mirrorless killer?
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>>>Sometimes I’ll shoot for 6 hrs and have 6 hrs of footage
>>>DSLR’s won’t fit the bill for these shoots…There are some DSLRs that can handle 6 hour shoots. 🙂
The Panasonic GH2 and GH3 has no time limit for the length of the video you can shoot as long as your memory card has room and your camera has power. The longest single video I’ve shot to date is 80 minutes with a GH2 camera. ( a symphonic musical performance )
With the GH2 a fully charged camera battery records about 80 minutes of video, and with the GH3 a fully charged battery records about 120 minutes of video. To power the camera longer than this you can add a battery grip to the GH3 which enables you to record one video 240 minutes long. Beyond this, you can use an external battery or AC power system.
Currently the largest SDXC card you can use with the GH3 is 256 GB, which will record a single 20+ hour video with the GH3 camera.
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There are lots of people who are not happy with the video recorded by the Sony A99 camera…
A99 Video a Major Disappointment
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The GH3 audio level setting is really an AGC-Boost control, where the AGC boost is +3 dB when the camera is set to 1, and goes up to +20 dB at level 19.
The native noise floor for the GH3 is -66 dB RMS, which is quite good for a DSLR, but you have to set the camera’s audio level to 1 and feed the camera a strong -15 dB signal to realize the full 66 dB range. This means you need to use a good external mic pre-amp or mixer to achieve a low-noise recording with the GH3.
On the low-cost side of things, the JuicedLink Riggy RM222 mic pre-amp would be a good match for the GH3. It provides up to 30 dB of clean gain, along with phantom power for professional mics. ( RM222 costs about $330 )
Moving up in price, you might want to take a look at the Sound Devices MixPre-D mixer, which offers a huge range of professional features, but will set you back about $900.
Also, remember to set your GH3 to use the 50 Mbps MOV shooting mode which records audio in uncompressed LPCM format. This mode records a higher quality video image and the best audio this camera can produce.
…One last option is to use a low-cost portable recorder like the Tascam DR-40 which has reasonable mic pre-amps ( just don’t go past level 65, or you will start to hear noise in your recordings ) and can supply phantom power to professional mics. The Tascam DR-40 sells for about $140 at B&H Photo in New York.
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I am usually more concerned about audio noise than what the place looks like.
If you shoot with a large sensor ( Micro 4/3 sensor or larger ) camera you can always blow-out the background to eliminate details.
But trying to get rid of background noise is very difficult.
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I am a Windows based editor ( Sony Vegas Pro ), so I would be looking for one of two formats:
AVID DNxHD 10-bit 4:2:2
Cineform 10-bit 4:2:2
…As both of these formats are editable on BOTH Windows and Mac platforms using the same binary files, where Apple ProRes is READ-ONLY on the Windows side of things.
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1080 HD video has an aspect ratio of 1.78 ( width = 1.78 times the height ), so unless you crop into your image, the correct display size that maintains the 1.78 aspect ratio would be 720×405 pixels.
So you will have to frame your image with black-bars or crop into it.
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One last thing…
How do you handle text assets ?
i.e. Editable text that appears on screen
I normally keep these as separate text documents, with the same naming/ID conventions as the storyboards.
I also work with text that has been formatted as editable Fireworks PNG files, where Fireworks keeps the text as editable meta-data that is part of the PNG file, and is rasterized on the fly when ever the file is saved.
These text PNG graphics are then linked to my NLE project files ( text is laid out using full video resolution on an alpha-channel background ), which are simply dropped into the NLE timeline. All the links are automatically maintained, so if the external PNG files are updated, the NLE timeline automatically reflects these updates.
Working this way, it’s handy to be able to give someone folders of project text assets to updated, and all you have to do is copy the updated Fireworks PNG graphics to their respective folders, and your NLE timeline is ready to render an updated video file.
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I recommend buying the brand name Panasonic batteries, as I find the brand name batteries hold more charge and generally last longer than the third party batteries.
If you are lucky you might be able to find some used.
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Nope.
The HMC-150 uses the newer style Panasonic VW-VBG6PPK batteries. Many of the newer Panasonic Prosumer cameras use this battery.