Pete's guide to home video IV - Capturing your video

Capturing your video

You have your footage on tape in the camera. You need to get it onto your computer's hard disk so that you can begin editing. Here's how. By the time you're done capturing, your footage will be on your hard disk, probably in the form of a set of AVI files.

Formats - DV, MPEG

I'm assuming that your camera uses DV format (Digital8 or MiniDV tapes). If you have a camera that records in MPEG-2 format, such as one that records to an internal hard disk or on Mini-DVDs, the process may be different and this article may not be of much use. (Mini-DVD disks should drop straight into your computer's DVD drive - far more convenient than messing with cables and connectors.)

You need a huge disk

As I mentioned in the first post in this series, DV format provides only slight compression of the video data. As a result the camera records a LOT of data - about a gigabyte for every four minutes of footage - and the AVI files that will hold this data on your hard disk will be about the same size.

For this reason it's probably a good idea to have a large second disk for holding your video files, rather than putting it all on your system disk (the C: drive on a Windows system). There are other technical reasons for keeping the video files off the system disk if possible, such as that the computer will be accessing system files on that drive at the same time as you're editing and that will slow you down some.

I have a second internal disk, about 60GB, which is about full of video files. I also have an external 250Gb USB drive. My older footage is no longer on disk, but I keep all the original tapes so if I ever need to recover the stuff I can read it back in.

Disks are getting bigger all the time - 500Gb disks are available and affordable, and recently Toshiba (I think) announced a 1Tb (that's a Terabyte, or 1000 Gigabytes) disk that will soon be available for around $400US.

If you're planning on doing a lot of filming, I suggest getting the biggest disks you can afford.

USB vs. Firewire

If your camera has a Firewire interface I'd advise using that (you may need to buy a Firewire card for your computer). There are two reasons for this:

First, Firewire is a little bit faster than USB 2.0 (and a lot faster than USB 1.0). USB 2 actually streams data at 480 Megabits per second compared to 400Mb/sec for Firewire so appears at first sight to be faster, but USB has higher transmission overheads and the bottom line is that Firewire is actually the faster of the two in practice. There is also an 800Mb/sec version of Firewire, but I don't know if there are any cameras that use this (if there aren't yet, you can be sure there will be before long).

However, the main reason for using Firewire is that USB is notorious for getting the audio and video out of sync by the time the data gets to your hard disk. This is a widespread problem that seems to affect many cameras when using USB, and it's not always consistent - sometimes everything's in sync, sometimes it's off by four or five frames, maybe more.

If you have a camera that has only a USB interface this is something you should be aware of - and that you're stuck with, I'm afraid. You may be able to fix the problem during editing, if your editing program allows you to detach and "slide" the audio and video tracks with respect to each other. You could buy a clapperboard, just like professional film makers use - it makes it easier to sync the video and audio by lining up the "snap" sound with the video frame that matches. (And now you know what a clapperboard is for. I also read about one guy who, whenever he finishes a shot, steps in front of the camera and claps his hands a couple of times - about as effective, obviously cheaper, and a handy trick to remember.)

Very dependent on the software

Most camcorders include a capture program as part of the package. Unfortunately the performance and features of these programs usually leaves a lot to be desired. As an example, the software that came with my Sony camera limits you to 10 minutes of capture at a time and doesn't know how to break the data down into individual files for each shot. This means a lot of work in breaking the files down by hand before editing can begin in earnest - a time-consuming and irritating procedure.

The Vegas software I bought fixes that; it includes a far better capture program whose only downside is that it only works with Firewire. It senses the places where I started and stopped the camera and automatically uses those markers to break the data stream into individual files, one for each shot. It doesn't limit the length of a shot, so if I leave the camera running for 30 straight minutes (as I did once) it'll capture the lot into one 30-minute file without complaining. By the time I'm done capturing to disk, every shot is in its own file, numbered in sequence, ready for editing. Having once been through the manual process of cutting and trimming, which took me several evenings to complete, I can't recommend highly enough finding a capture program that does this step for you.

Additional sounds

Sometimes you might have a project that involves having additional sounds available. I have a pocket digital recorder that I can use for collecting such things as voiceover dialogue, odd sounds for use as effects, stuff like that. It connects with USB and I can save the sounds to my hard disk as WAV or MP3 files.

You can also buy royalty-free music and collections of sound effects for use in your movies.

The reason I mention these here is that gathering extra sound files can be considered part of the capture process, since you can't complete editing your movie until you have them and in my experience it's a good idea to have all your sound and video files in place ready before you start.

In the next (and last) article...

Editing your movie.

Pete's guide to home video III - Shooting your video

Shooting your video

So, you have your camera and you have your software - everything you need to shoot and edit your first movie.

I don't claim to be a top-notch movie maker. I haven't been to film school and everything I've learned about shooting video I've picked up from experience and by reading an article here and there. I still consider myself very much an amateur hobbyist. Nevertheless I can give a few simple pointers for those just getting started - nothing too complex, just a few tips that might save you having to learn the hard way. So, for what it's worth...

Read the camcorder manual

This may sound obvious, but I'll bet there are loads of people who (like me) just want to load a tape and press the "record" button, and don't take time to read the manual properly.

My advice is to take an hour or two to read the manual cover-to-cover. It pays off because you'll understand your camera better and know about all the features it has to offer, even if you don't remember exactly how to use them all; if you need a feature and know your camera will handle it, you can always look in the manual.

Start early, end late

By this I mean don't wait until the last possible instant before hitting "record", and don't stop rolling the instant the action is over. When possible start recording a few seconds before the action you want to capture, and always get a few seconds of extra footage before you stop.

The reason for this becomes plain when you come to do your editing. A few seconds of lead-in and lead-out on a shot gives you a little more room to manoeuver when you're trimming and fitting the shots together to build your movie. If the shot ends a tenth of a second after the action you're filming, you won't have time to do more than a hard cut to the next shot - you won't be able to put in a cross-fade or fade to black, for example. The best you might hope for is to freeze on a single frame to add the time you need for a fade.

Don't use in-camera special effects

Many cameras offer built-in special effects - negative image, sepia, black-and-white, soft-focus and so on. Don't use them.

If you do them in the camera, you can't undo them during editing - so if you film in black-and-white then realize during the editing that you really needed full colour for one shot, you're stuck.

All NLE programs I'm aware of offer more such effects, let you combine multiple effects (something the camera probably won't let you do) and generally do them better anyway. You're really better off waiting until the editing phase - that way you can decide which effects you want, if any, and get the final footage looking exactly how you want it.

Avoid fast zooms during the action

Fast zooms in and out in the middle of a shot look really amateurish in the finished movie. If you need to zoom, try to keep it slow and smooth.

That's not to say that you should never use fast zooms. Sometimes they can be good for effect, especially if you've planned the shot in advance and you know it's what you want. Some people like to keep the camera rolling between shots rather than stopping and starting the camera, and will zoom quickly between "shots" to get the angle they need. On occasion this can pay off unexpectedly - I've heard of people catching something on film that they'd have missed otherwise, or ending up with footage that was so striking that they just had to put it in the finished movie because it looked so good after all.

B-reel footage

The next time you watch a movie, look out for sections where two characters are having a longish conversation in a quiet place. What you're looking for are parts where one character has a long dialogue. Watch the camera angles. Does the camera stay on that character for the whole time they're speaking? In general, it won't - you'll see the camera switch to the other person at intervals, showing them listening for a second or two, before going back to the speaking character.

One way this is done during editing is to simply lay down the whole shot of the speaker on one track, then overlay a second or two of footage of the listener (without sound) every so often on an "upper" video track.

To be able to do that, you're going to need footage of the listener simply sitting there, not speaking. That's B-reel footage, and you should plan to shoot a few seconds of that stuff here and there so that you can do just these kinds of overlays when you come to editing. B-reel shots like this add interest to your finished movie because they break up long, static shots. The crazy thing is that nobody will notice if you do this, but everybody will notice if you don't - they'll sit for maybe 15 seconds of watching your speaker speak in an unchanging field, then they'll wonder how much longer he's going to gas on before something important happens.

Sound

Getting the sound right in your finished movie is quite possibly the single most difficult challenge there is. When you're filming, your ears are selective - you'll hear what you want to hear and it's natural to think that it'll all sound the same on playback. Wrong! When you review your footage you'll hear all kinds of background noises that you just didn't notice at the time. They're distracting and annoying, and by the time you notice them it's probably too late to do anything about them.

As an example, if you like, take a look at my 15-minute documentary of a Texas Reptile Expo and watch the section starting at about 8:40 where I talked to the nice lady from the Texas Reptile Hospice and Sanctuary. The place was crowded so there's a lot of background noise, but in particular there were a couple of people talking loudly nearby that I just didn't notice at the time.

On playback it got really bad, with this guy talking about how he was breeding snakes and getting louder and louder until it drowned out just about everything else. At that point the footage became unusable and I had to snip it. (Incidentally, you may notice how I used B-reel footage in a couple of places in that segment.)

The point is to be aware of background noises so that you can try to control the situation. Had I been conscious of the loud people nearby, I could have done something about it.

In the next article...

Capturing your video.

Pete's guide to home video II - Choosing your software

Choosing your software

First, I must point out that I'm a Windows XP user. I'm told that Macs have some great software available for dealing with multimedia, including some really good video and audio editors, but because I've never used a Mac I can't say anything about that. What I write here is based purely on my Windows experience.

Also, I've had some bad experiences with some of the editing software, and I won't be holding back about that because I feel that someone has to warn you, gentle reader, before you go spending your hard-earned beans on software that just doesn't do what you're paying for. We'll get to the lemons shortly.

Let's start by assuming you know nothing about editing video.

What is an NLE?

NLE stands for Non Linear Editor, which just means that you're not tied to editing your video stream in the order that it comes out of the camera. You can trim clips, move them around, lay them over each other and all kinds of other things.

Different NLEs provide different features but most of them follow a pattern. There's a timeline on the screen, usually running from left to right, where you can drag and drop your individual video clips from your camera and arrange them into time order. The timeline is usually arranged as tracks laid one above another, so that you can line up video on one track and audio on another. The Vegas software I use gives you six tracks - three video and three audio - and you can add a seventh (either video or audio) if you need one. Just to give you an idea, the three video tracks are one for your raw video, one for overlays and special effects and one for text such as subtitles and credits (but you're not constrained to use them just for those purposes - those are just labels); the audio tracks are for the voice track from your video, background music and sound effects. The professional version lets you create as many video and audio tracks as you like.

To get a feel for an NLE, try out the Windows Movie Maker that comes as standard with XP (I understand Mac comes with a bundled NLE too). Switch from the 'storyboard' view to the 'timeline' view to see what I mean. WMM is very basic (only one track for video, one for text overlays, two audio tracks, and a limited number of transitions and effects) but it contains all the basic features that all NLEs have. Try using it a bit to make a short movie - getting an understanding of the process will help when you buy some better software, I guarantee it.

Some NLE programs

There are lots of NLEs available - go to your local software store and you'll find a wide range. That means that choosing a good one can be a problem. I went through three awful programs before finding the one that works for me, so while I can't provide a comprehensive rundown I can tell you what I know. For what it's worth, here it is:

Ulead software is supposed to be pretty good - I can't vouch for that so you may want to check online for reviews.

Roxio VideoWave 7 gave me bad headaches last year. I don't know if the problems have been fixed but when I tried it, it kept corrupting its own data files and had to be reinstalled only to have the same problem happen again and again. Other users on their web forums complained of the same problems.

Magix Movie Edit Pro 10 was better but I found that it wouldn't preview any video clip longer than about two and a half minutes - the audio kept playing but the preview screen went blank. Their tech support guy was sympathetic but couldn't help, so it went back to the shop.

Pinnacle Studio Plus 10... what can I say about this software except NEVER, EVER BUY THIS PRODUCT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Some people are able to use it without problems, but it seems that for most people it simply doesn't work. I beefed about this in a post in November; I just looked at the web boards and it seems the problems are still there. Don't waste your money.

Sony Vegas Movie Studio+DVD Platinum

This is what I use now. I should say I don't work for Sony and they're not paying me to say this, but this is what I'd recommend. It's a bit more complicated to use than some of the other offerings, but that's because it gives you far better control over the whole editing process. And it works.

So... what to look for in an NLE

Since all good NLEs let you perform the basic editing functions that you need, the differences between them boil down to utility and additional features.

This means that you should think a little about what you want to be able to do in your videos, so that you can find software that provides the features you need. Want to be able to do bluescreen/greenscreen effects? How about slow-motion or playing a section of video backwards? Or being able to freeze a single frame then zoom into some detail in the frozen image? What about being able to download free plugins to add new features to your software? Does the software provide you with a useful set of transitions, sound effects and other media files right out of the box? Can you download extra content like that for free? And very important: how is the tech support? The questions you ask will help you find the software that will do what you need.

In the next article...

Tips for shooting your video.