Micah Mcdowell
Forum Replies Created
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An XH-A1s with FCP is a fine combination and would be an ideal cam for skateboarding video…
However, if you’re intending to create a show for a network, you should research a bit deeper. The Canon may be sufficient quality for a pilot, but many networks have more specific requirements regarding how you shoot and deliver a show beyond basic “HD” capability. This varies widely among networks, and I have no idea which one you’re pitching to, so you need to find out from them.
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Well, one of the nice things about going to most video production schools is the access to equipment, so consider whether you really NEED to buy something if you can just use the school’s cameras for free. What advantage would it give you? Cameras are obsolesced so fast nowadays that you can’t count on it being up to date when you graduate.
That being said, I bought a Panasonic DVX100 the month I graduated high school because I knew I was going to use it for both college assignments and paying jobs, which I did. It was also a luxury to be able to shoot projects without having to sign out and return the college’s equipment all the time.
These days, I wouldn’t buy a standard def camera unless you get a screamin’ deal on a used one. There are Panasonic HVX200 cameras all over eBay within your budget or you could stretch a bit and get a new one from a reputable dealer. The HVX is a very versatile camera with decent quality and I think you’d be happier with it over a XL2.
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Well, the first question is what goal do you want to accomplish with a different lens?
It’s a fixed-lens camera so you’d have to use a 35mm lens adapter such as a Letus, plus the 35mm lenses of your choice. It’ll give you narrower depth of field for a more “filmic” look, but it will also eat up light.
There’s TONS of posts about this already here on the Cow, so search around and you’ll learn a lot.
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As was mentioned in that thread you read, the answer to your question is pretty much no.
If you’re using the Firewire port on a DV cam, it’s automatically already compressed to good old DV25, nasty looking compression. Recording to a hard disk or DVCAM deck gives the exact same result as miniDV in-camera.
The other thread already gave great suggestions for keying highly compressed footage. Your only other option is obtaining an uncompressed signal from your camera and capturing it to a computer using a capture card, but most DV cameras do not have this ability. What camera do you have?
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For print work, you generally want 300 pixels per inch (which in Photoshop would be 10,800 x 7200 pixels at 300 PPI). Print is often in CMYK color mode as well.
If it’s going to print, ask and find out what specs the printer needs for sure. If it’s for something else, it’s hard to say for sure.
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As was already mentioned, there is no Intel G5, so I’m going to assume you have just a Powermac G5.
Most G5s had PCI or PCI-x, and NOT PCI-e. Unless it’s one of the last run of dual or quad core G5s from late 2005, your card will not work, no way, no how.
Of course, having typed all of that, you mention running Snow Leopard. If you mean 10.6x Snow Leopard and not just 10.5x Leopard, then you must have an Intel and not a G5, so what I said is meaningless. Next time be less ambiguous and people can help you.
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Yes, Leopard is rather difficult to find now that Snow Leopard is out, but if you’re on a PowerPC family Mac still, that’s what you’re stuck with.
Remaining new copies of Leopard seem to be a hot commodity, so you need to work fast or else it may be more cost effective to just buy a new Intel iMac.
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Wow, that is pretty awesome to have that much video of your life thus far, and to have it actually make sense.
I went through some old family videos of my own the other day and I estimate that there’s about 2 hours of footage total, of everything. The camera didn’t get much use, to say the least. Of course, about half of the video is when someone would accidentally leave the camera running while walking around; it’s quite vomit-inducing.
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I don’t know how to do it upon clicking only, but in Windows XP you can go to Control Panel>Mouse>Pointer options and set it to flash when you hit the CTRL key. Just turn that on and when you click, hit CTRL at the same time. I’ve seen many instructors and tutorial videos use this.
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Hard drives themselves are generally the same for either platform, so I wouldn’t worry about what is “most compatible” with either PC or Mac as long as it has the interface you need. Results with Lacie drives are varied; I used to use one and it would also disappear and magically reappear occasionally, but for the most part it was satisfactory. I’ve usually had good results with Western Digital and Maxtor over the years in the really cheap external drive category.
Since you are using both XP and Mac OS, you will need to format the drive so both OSes can read and write to it. Both can read and write to the FAT32 file system (you can format it in XP if it isn’t FAT32 from the store). The only problem is that FAT32 has a file size limit of 4GB. That’s an annoying limitation for most video professionals, but you’re using it for digital photography, where you may never encounter files that size. If so, that’s your best solution by far.
If you do need >4GB file support, you have a couple options; you can format the drive NTFS from Windows and install one of several programs on OS X to make it readable, or format HFS from the Mac and install software on the PC side. From past experience, few of these software solutions are especially reliable or elegant, but that may have changed in the past year or so.