[Jeff Carpenter]

Actually, here I am talking DVDs…that’s pretty much only for my event work now.

All my corporate work is being put on the web (or internal networks) so the choice often revolves around what their web designers want more than anything.

Heck, most of them are just using YouTube which, of course, always uses the widescreen player now. So it’s the easy choice for those people too.

[Jeff Carpenter]

I don’t know that market either, but that seems reasonable given the type of jobs you’ll be doing.

A videographer can certainly earn a lot more than that but you’d need more experience and better jobs (high-end corprate work rather than weddings and events) before that can happen.

So what I’m saying is, you should be happy with this job and this pay at this point in your life, but don’t stop learning! I’ve seen people get comfortable with a videographer job and let it just be a ‘job.’ If you keep learning and improving then it can certainly become an actual career with greater opportunities down the line.

But don’t rush things too much. I learned SO much more shooting weddings than I did at any other job. I know a lot of people who look down on them but I’ve worked with many good videographers who weren’t any good at them. They’re hard…master wedding work and you can take on anything else. Take the time to learn and improve yourself. Every skill you learn now will be useful later on.

The big thing is to keep working on fun projects on your own time. Enter film festivals or just make videos for Youtube. The weddings will teach you a lot but they will NOT get you a better job. You need to build a good demo reel with everything BUT weddings. If you get cool corprate jobs, put thsoe in your reel. But if you only do weddings and bar mitzvahs, keep doing personal projects on your own time. THAT’s what will get you your next job.

That’s more advice than what you asked for, but these are the things I wish I knew 10 years ago, so hopefully it’ll help you.

[Jeff Carpenter]

I always suggest 16×9 first.

But I do agree with Mark. It’s up to the client’s needs. But these days I just say “I shoot in widescreen, is that fine?” and that makes it the default choice. It’s up to them to correct me if that won’t work for them.

But it’s been years since anyone has said anything other than “that’s fine” to me. So it just hasn’t been an issue for me.

I produce all my widescreen DVDs to letterbox on 4×3 sets, so everything I make is seen widescreen no matter what. As a compromise you COULD get a widescreen DVD to crop the widescreen images when it’s on a 4×3 set. You will lose some resolution doing that, so definitely test it to see if you like it before doing it for a client. But it’s possible.

[Jeff Carpenter]

I’m not sure if this will work, but it’s worth a try. It was developed for the Macbook Air (which has no optical drive at all) but I’m hoping it might work for you.

Basically, you’re going to use your Macbook as an external DVD drive over the network. Here’s how:

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT2129

The part I don’t know is, will the fact that you’re using 10.3 mess you up? It’s possible that 10.3 won’t know what’s going on and nothing will happen. I think that this is really for people RE-installing 10.5 on a machine that already has 10.5, so I really have no idea if it will work for you.

It’s also likely that you’ll have to upgrade the Macbook to 10.5 for this to work.

This is something to try first, at least. Let us know if it works or not!

[Jeff Carpenter]

1) What do you need Windows for? It will work, but running more than 1 OS takes up computer resources (and extra money). You should have a good reason before you do it, so make sure you’re certain. If you do have a good reason, you’ll be fine, it will work. I suggest either Parallels or Fusion instead of Boot Camp.

2) Snow Leopard is your only choice if you’re buying a new Mac. Macs generally won’t load an OS older than themselves. At any rate, Snow Leopard is fine now and does just fine with Final Cut.

Be sure to find Quicktime 7 in the utilities folder. Quicktime X is nice, but doesn’t do as much which is why they left QT7 in Snow Leopard. Use it whenever you need to do something more than play a video.

[Jeff Carpenter]

I’m assuming this was done with Boot Camp?

Is the Mac OS 10.5 or higher?

Follow this:
https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15554.html

They strongly suggest backing up all your files. Your Mac-half SHOULD be ok, but anytime you mess with hard drives like this you have to be prepared just in case something goes wrong.

EDIT: I found the same advice here, but with screenshots!
https://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/4101/leopard-deleting-a-boot-camp-partition/

[Jeff Carpenter]

What video format are you using? DV and HDV make chroma keying very difficult to pull off. Other formats have different degrees of ease. We use XDCAM now and it’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than our DV camera used to be.

Also, what camera do you have? Many of them will output analog component signals AHEAD of the digital converter so you can get an un-compressed image that way. This means it’s possible to run live video from the camera to a computer with a component capture card and record it directly to the hard drive as a higher quality signal than the camera’s native format.

This can go a long way towards making the key work well.

Other small tips:

* Make sure the green is lit evenly. To test, slowly iris up and watch for zebra stripes in the camera monitor. They should show up everywhere at about the same place.

* Get soft lighting on the green by setting up white foam boards and hitting them with bright lights to reflect it back at the green. Don’t light the green directly.

* Don’t make the green very bright. A strong, neon-green is NOT needed and sometimes makes things more difficult. A dull, flat green is ok. You need good saturation, not high light levels on that green.

* Backlight subjects with a tiny bit of purple to counter the green directly around their hair.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Doug –

The main reason I don’t like to give out raw tapes is that I’m afraid someone will edit a poor video and people will think I did it. I tend to relax that rule for other professionals, and I’ve given out tapes in the past when I’ve trusted the person asking. So you should be able to find someone to do this for you. Just try to sell yourself to them as a good editor so they aren’t afraid of what you might do with their footage.

I strongly disagree that 24p is “useless.” It’s another look, just the same as color vs. black and white in still photography. Try telling a still photographer that black and white is “useless” and see what they tell you. If your son likes the 24p look, then that’s all that matters. And if he doesn’t, that’s fine too. It’s totally dependent on taste, nothing more or less.

The good news is, most cameras that shoot it allow you to record in a 24 fps mode that goes to tape as normal 60i DV footage. Be sure that your shooter can do that and you’ll be fine. You’ll get normal DV footage that neither your camera nor your computer will think is any different from what you shoot all the time. There’s no reason to do actual 24 fps video since the 24p ‘look’ on 60i tape will look the same with a lot less trouble for you. (If you get a camera model, come back and check with us. Some of the older Sony cams have a horrible 24p that they “fake” and isn’t worth using. Most cameras do it right, though. We can give better advice once you know a camera model.)

If they shoot widescreen be certain that they can get an anamorphic image (as opposed to letterboxed). I don’t know how Vegas deals with anamorphic DV, but check the manual, I’m certain they have a way of dealing with it.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Select the file and hit Command-i.

At the bottom of the inspection window there is an area called “Sharing and Permissions.” See if you can unlock that area and alter some of the settings in your favor.

Another solution I’ve had work in the past is to change the extention of the file name. Add a “.txt” or “.zip” to the end of the file. Sometimes that shakes things up and lets you erase it.

[Jeff Carpenter]

1) Yes, After Effects will be better.

2) There are plug-ins you can buy for Final Cut that do a better job. Use google for that, I haven’t used any of them so I can’t suggest one.

3) What format are you using? HDV and DV are going to be difficult no matter what program you’re using.