This is a reply to an email I received asking about camcorders. I though the info might be of use so I have posted it here.

Ok Kimmy Sue,
I see by my inbox you have a busy day planned for me! I will address each email separately so we don’t get all crossed up here.

Camcorders.

The argument that you need a purpose built camcorder to record video instead of using the video capabilities of a still camera gets weaker everyday.
Consumer camcorders were the best in the past and even up to last year, but it has all changed now.

Most consumer camcorders have very small lenses and because of that they restrict you greatly in what you can really achieve. For family ‘point and shoot’ of course they are fine but if you want to go further then they will always fall short because of the lens. If you look at some you will see they have very small openings for the lens itself.

Video is just photography on crack. Ultimately the quality depends on the ability of the camera or camcorder to record light and that really takes us straight to the lens. The main difference between something shot by an amateur and something shot by a pro is depth of field. This is important. Remember I told you to try to de-focus the background footage? The reason for this is that if you look closely at how movies and TV shows are shot you will notice that the main action is always in sharp focus and whatever is happening in the background is out of focus. This is achieved by being able to control the aperture of the lens. Most consumer camcorders cannot do this or cannot do this very well.

Shakin’ all over.

You have entered the world of high definition. This means that you now have a new best friend. Meet Mr. Tripod! You may as well have him surgically attached to your body because from this moment forward you are forbidden to take hand-held shaky shots following your husband around the house annoying the crap out of him! The codecs being used to compress the HD footage you are taking do not “compress.” They actually take a whole bunch of the image data and throw it away! This results in small file sizes with amazingly good quality. The trade off is in the ability of these new codecs to display motion smoothly. Panning across a scene too fast or moving the camera will result in jumpy or jittery motion so you have to keep that to an absolute minimum. Use a tripod or BE a tripod… it’s up to you.

Audio.

This first thing you are going to notice once you settle down and get over the video editing excitement is that hey!… my videos sound like shit! That’s because they do! The audience wont notice, they will just leave either physically or mentally without knowing why. The most important part of video is… audio! You must get a cam that has a jack for an external mic. The on-board mics of camcorders and cameras suck mightily and will destroy any effort you make in creating a good looking video.

Put A Sock In It

Actually that’s incorrect. Put a sock ON it. When shooting outside using an external mic (because you read the previous paragraph) take a wind sock with you and always use it. There is nothing worse than getting home and discovering that all you can hear in the video is the sound of a gentle breeze constantly blowing across the mic surface… and nothing else.

Compression

Currently for High Definition we have two main camps. Under one label you have h.264 under many guises such as AVCHD, .mov, MP4 blah, blah, blah. On the other side we have HDV. HDV is the same architecture as MPEG2 which you find on standard definition DVDs. The difference is that the resolution had been ramped up to HD standard and the bitrate (amount of data per second) has equally been ramped up from around 4 to 5Mb per second to around 25 Mb per second.

Both give great quality but the AVCHD/MP4 camp gives smaller file size. The real difference for me is that AVCHD/MP4 still presents the user with great difficulty in editing and requires an enormous amount of processing power to manipulate.

Whilst the whole MP4/H.264/AVCHD camp represents the wave of the future HDV will still be around for a long time yet and is easier to deal with. HOWEVER take note that HDV camcorders use tape to record rather than solid state memory cards so you can only transfer it to a computer in real time. An hour of video takes an hour to get on to the hard drive.

So what to buy?
Well I guess it comes down to cost in the end so here are some recommendations.

Camcorders

Kodak Z18 Pocket Video Camera.

For around a hundred bucks this little camcorder is great for “talking head” videos for online type presentations and can be carried around in your pocket to shoot anytime you want. It has a mic jack so you can plug a decent microphone into it for good sound and records very nice HD footage.

Click to see in full

Canon Vixia HV30

This is a HDV camcorder recording to tape. It is my pick of the dedicated camcorders because Canon have included a big fat ol’ lens out the front allowing for great shots and good control over depth of field and low-light situations. It has external mic capability and produces beautiful video.

Click to see in full

Panasonic DMC-DH1

Still camera with great video properties.

Click to see in full

EOS 5D Mark II

This would be my pick for a still cam to take video. No point telling you why… just watch this video shot with one. The final episode of “House” was shot entirely with one of these. By the way, take note in the video of the way it is edited. Look at just how they go from one shot to the next.

Click here to see in full

Web Video University

One of my favorite blogs is Dave Kaminski’s Web Video University. Dave has a heap of great video on the blog for making videos! Last week he did a post on taking a look at point and shoot cameras as an alternative to the very popular Flip style cameras for video specifically intended to go online.

I have been meaning to mention that particular post here for a few days now but as usual something always comes up. So rather than ramble on about it head on over to Dave’s blog and take a look for your self.

Web Video University on Flip Style Cameras

I just noticed that the guys’n'gals over at Camcorderinfo .com have posted their top camcorder choices for 2009. Although I feel pretty confident in talking about video editing software here I would be the first to admit that when it comes to camcorders I don’t have that much of an idea!

For me, because the technology is evolving so fast and new models are being released all the time, trying to keep up with it all is best left to the experts and in this case I totally defer to camcorderinfo.com. Anytime I have purchased a new camcorder since I first started playing with video I have simply gone to that site and have never been steered wrong.

Now having said that it is also good to keep in mind that those guys are total video uber-geeks and although they work very hard at remaining understandable to the average Joe… well sometimes the sheer amount of technical data gets a bit overwhelming!

Over the years I have developed my own system for using Camcorderinfo.com to safely make a great choice of camcorder and retain what remains of my sanity along the way. So here’s how to simply use Camcorderinfo.com to choose the best video camcorder for your needs.

Before you start you need to decide between high definition or standard definition and the key points really are quite simple. HD is going to require the need of a tripod or VERY steady hand while shooting for the moment. The codecs being used for both HDV (MPEG2 on crack for high definition) and AVCHD have some way to go before they will handle motion as smoothly as SD. Running around doing hand held shots of the kids in HD is not going to go well!

HD also means that you need a cam with a seriously good auto-focus feature as well as good manual control as anything even slightly out of focus looks terrible. SD is much more forgiving. HD will also require some pretty sizable computing horsepower for editing and in the case of AVCHD you need a Ferrari.

So really if you are going to using the cam for lots of fixed shooting and have the computing power to deal with it then HD is for you.

If you don’t fit into the above then I would go with SD at the moment. There are some very good SD cams on offer now because they are on the way out and for incredibly low prices. Additionally there are a number of video editing software producers that have come out with SD to HD video upscaling features that perform very well. These will only get better with time but even now they do a pretty good job of converting your old footage into HD specs.

So now that you have chosen the format here is the procedure:

1. Go to the Camcorder Ratings page and take a look at the top 20 to 25 camcorders. Understand that all the camcorders on this page are good. The only difference between them is whether or not they are good for you and your specific needs. Choose the ones that are the right definition for you (SD or HD) and are within your budget. Eliminate the ones that are not applicable. Eg. You don’t want a mini-cam like a Flip Mino etc.. You should be left with a list of ten or more cams that roughly fit nto the style of cam you want.

2. In a new tab on your browser or new window click on the first camcorder to go to the review page. Scroll down to the Good/Bad grid and check to see of there are any “deal breakers” in there. If yes, eliminate it, if no keep going.

3. Scroll back up the page and click on the “Conclusion” entry. Read the info and again look for deal breakers. If yes eliminate it and if no then note down the cam.

4. Go back to the Camcorder Ratings page and repeat for each camcorder you have on the list. It is very likely that by the time you finish this process your list will have reduced a lot.

5. Once you have completed those steps go through each of the remaining models and look for features you definitely want. The reviews are broken into sections so you can quickly go through to find these.

By now you should be down to about three or four (or even less) choices. Take your time and read through the reviews one by one. Take notes if you have to. Here is the important part:

6. As you are reading he reviews you must adopt an utterly selfish and self-centered attitude! The reviewers are attempting to write for everyone and from everyone’s point of view. You are only interested in your point of view. Keep a realistic view in mind of what you will be using the camcorder for and under what circumstances and conditions.

Eg. The reviewer may note the cam’s lack of manual controls and downgrade his evaluation of the cam because of that. I on the other hand, have a ten year old son who only operates at two speeds. Dead stop or 1,000,000 miles per hour! There is no way that manual controls would ever be necessary for me. I would never have time to set them. I need really good auto-controls.

Once you have completed this process one thing will become clear… there is no perfect camcorder for you! All you can do is get as close as possible to the best one… not the perfect one. Good luck and I hope this helps.

In part two of this series let’s start to go through each type of shot within a video project and what it does.

Establishment Shots

These let the viewer know where we are and what is happening in a general sense. It sets the scene. In our vacation example it could be an outside shot of the house at dawn to convey the time and location. It could be an inside shot within the house in semi-darkness with a subtitle showing “5:30 am.”

It can be anything general that conveys to the viewer where we are. It “establishes” the area of action, the place, the scene and is generally a long shot taken at a distance from the action or where the action will take place.

So in summary an establishment shot can be the first shots of the video that introduce where we are and indicate why we are there.

Establishments shots are also used to introduce a change of scene.

As an example think of a conversation outside a court room on a TV show. When the scene changes to inside the courtroom almost invariably the first shot will be a wide long shot of the whole court room scene which clearly lets the viewer know – we are now inside the court room.

Or, in a wedding video let’s say we have covered the bride and groom’s preparations prior to them going to the church for the ceremony separately. Our final shot was of the bride’s car driving off.

We now have to introduce the next chapter of the story so we cut to a long shot of the Church itself. That now establishes for the viewer exactly where we are and what will be happening next.

This also fulfills another function of the establishment shot when used for scene changes – Rhythm and Prediction

There is an idea within the overall concept of communication (remember that’s what you are trying to do!) of rhythm. Videos have rhythm just like music and writing have rhythm and the key to rhythm is prediction. This is the basic appeal of rhythm to humans, you are actually predicting the future!

Sounds strange right? Not so when you think about it. One of the important points of appeal that we find in music is the repetition of a constant and predictable rhythm. Each time the beat of the music arrives at the exact point in time when we predicted it would arrive we achieve a sense of satisfaction, a sort of comfort. Well that sensation comes from having correctly predicted something happening in the future at a defined point (the beat) and it happening exactly as we predicted.

Think of a popular song that has a break in the rhythm. This is the artist’s intentional act of breaking the rhythm momentarily to create something interesting then returning to the predictable rhythm quickly which, if not overdone, you REALLY find agreeable. Why? Because not only have you predicted the future correctly, but you have also done so through adversity! There is the comfort of the rhythm, then the momentary discomfort of the broken rhythm, then finally a return to the rhythm… and we humans love that!

So in the example of the wedding shots, the viewer predicts the next shot will most likely be the church because they just saw the bride drive off somewhere. The next shot is the establishment shot of the church so the viewer feels “right.” He will now even more willingly follow your story because trust has been built up by you allowing him to feel safe in his predictions.

The exact opposite of this can also be used to effect as well. The horror movie editor’s stock in trade in this exact device! The director and the editor conspire together to get you into a rhythm, get you comfortably predicting the story and events and above all making your predictions correct… you relax and “go with the flow.” The cuts from scene to scene and shot to shot are at a slow and even pace.

Suddenly and without warning they introduce fast, sharp cuts between shots, images that are completely contrary to what you have previously been seeing and loud screeching violins! The result is that you are shocked out of your comfy state because everything you were predicting has gone out the window.

For a look at a real master of that technique just check the shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.” Enough said.

So, back to establishment shots. They are generally wide or long shots that serves to inform your viewer of where we are and in the case of scene changes they allow you to inform your audience of where we are now as opposed to where we were.

In part three I will go into the use of a combination of long shots, medium shots and closeups to further tell your story.

I was just thinking the other day… well I know that’s probably not my strong point but I was giving it a shot anyway. Anyhoo… there I was thinking about… whatever, when an old video editing saying came to mind – “garbage in, garbage out.”

Years ago when I ran notorious nightclubs with loud rock bands, the sound guys had a similar but less genteel saying – “Ya can’t polish a turd!” I kinda liked the rock version better but the message is the same.

It doesn’t really matter if you have the latest and greatest video camera, the most powerful computer and the best video editing software. If the shots you are taking are garbage (or unpolished turds) then your final result can really only come up to being slightly better organized garbage (or a turd with a smooth surface).

My expertise lies in the area of video editing software and mostly consumer to prosumer software at that. I have however been fortunate enough to rub shoulders with some movie type folks in my day and managed to extract some of the basics from them.

In this series I am going to cover at a very basic level some of the fundamentals of videography to (hopefully) help you improve your own projects and perhaps help you to also avoid trying to perform miracles in post production because the shots don’t quite seem to be working out!

First of all it is important to understand that as a videographer your real job is to tell a story. Take a look at the footage from a news story, a music video, a feature movie or even an advertisement. You will see that what the pros are doing each in their own way, is telling a story of some kind.

The difference between a writer and a videographer is that as a videographer you are using pictures to tell the story. What those pictures are of and how they are composed and arranged is how you tell your story… or not!

The mistake many home movie makers make is that they attempt to record everything that happens in the sequence that it happens in real time. So the two week vacation on a tropical island turns into a set of 16 DVDs! What you really should be doing is taking a lot of shots that you can later edit together that tells the story of the vacation, it represents the vacation, it does not document the vacation.

By all means take lots of shots, that is a hard and fast rule. But, when you are taking those shots always keep in mind that you will at some time be putting all this together in the form of a story that someone else can watch and follow.

Don’t think that this does not apply to home movies. This is probably one of the key points as to why most home movies make plunging a fork into the flesh of your leg preferable to watching the movie!

So how do you tell the story?

Any video project can be broken down into the overall story, scenes within that story and shots within those scenes. Shots can be further broken down into establishment shots, long shots, medium shots and close ups. It is the way that you put these together that will determine whether you are telling a coherent story… or not.

The Overall Story

This is the broad description of… the story! “Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets the girl.” “Our Summer Vacation” etc.

There are many types of video projects that lend themselves to to you creating a storyboard before you begin. This is just a list of the shots that will be taken and the order in which they will appear in the final project. It is always a great idea to do that if it is at all possible. A story board will simply lay out the sequence of the scenes and shots from start to finish.

The problem is that most of us don’t do that kind of project where the shots can be prearranged, individually set up and shot. However if you at least keep the concept of a storyboard in your head while you are out shooting the family outing or whatever, the shots that you do take will be more likely to be useful when it comes to editing.

As an example let’s take the family vacation. Think of it as you are shooting your footage in terms of the overall story (Our Vacation) then in terms of scenes ( early morning on the day of departure at home) then in terms of shots that will show what happens in the scene. That way you can break the whole thing up into to bite sized chunks and concentrate on the shots you need.

So getting up at some ungodly hour of the morning and getting yourself and the tribe out the door could be your first scene. From home to the airport could be your next scene, on the plane the next scene and on and on. This way each event becomes a tiny part of the whole and becomes far more manageable.

Now obviously a Hollywood movie breaks this down far, far more than I have described here into tiny intricacies and details but let’s keep this real!

Over the next few posts we will cover some basics on what shots you can use when, and how to use those shots to keep the story moving and the viewer following.

What I would hope you can take away from this first post in this “video shooting tips” series is the concept of telling a story with your videos.

Don’t just randomly shoot everything that unfolds before you in any situation you are videoing. Try keep in mind or at least try to imagine what the overall story will be and what each scene and shots within that scene will do to forward the story for the viewer. This way when it comes to editing, you will be pleasantly surprised at how easily it can all fall together.

You should also find that your percentage of usable footage increases dramatically and as an added bonus, you may actually get to enjoy your own vacation instead of endlessly videoing your family or companion’s vacation for fear of missing “that great shot.”

Good luck! See you in the next post.