editing editing software/ Camera

[mrpink89]

When it comes to editing what software would you guys recommend? I was thinking about using adobe and adobe after affects.

I am also using a Canon fs 200 to shoot my movie. My friend is letting me use it since I can not afford an awesome camera. Some people in the project are concerned about how it will look. I think it will look decent, to me what really matters is the audio which I am recording separately. Anyways, does anybody know of any type of indie film that was filmed on either a canon fs 200 or a camera like that? I wanna know so I can get a feel to what it would look like.

 

[escher]

Looks like the FS200 is a regular tiny standard-def camera. What's really going to get you is the small resolution. Standard-definition (720x480) doesn't look that great on today's larger screens. You also might run into compression artifacting issues during color grading (or greenscreening/matting), depending on the bitrate it uses to encode its MPEG-2 video files. You'll want to shoot with the camera's maximum 9Mbps bitrate setting for sure, but I don't know off the top of my head what that looks like as I've primarily been dealing with DSLR h.264 HD footage.

It shoots in anamorphic 720x480 widescreen, so you'll need to remember to tell your editing program about this so it can display the footage in a non-distorted manner -- choose DV 16:9 (non-square pixels). It is nice that it uses the full sensor to record the anamorphic widescreen. Older cameras did a crop-and-stretch operation which caused a very noticeable drop in image quality.

This camera has a 1/6" sensor, which is tiny. This has two primary effects:

First, it's not going to do very will in low-light situations. If you plan on shooting with indoor lighting, you'll need to add bright external lights or risk grainy footage. Get some shoplights at Home Depot or a bunch of chinese paper lanterns if you want a nice, soft diffuse look.

Second, the small optics means you'll always have a very deep depth-of-field (everything in focus). You won't be able to get shots where your subject is in focus and the background is very out-of-focus. (Zooming in can help achieve this effect, but it also cuts down on the amount of light hitting the sensor and will perform even worse in low light.)

It has some presets for white-balance, so be sure to learn how to work that setting. Auto-white-balance is generally not recommended. It also appears to have some form of limited control over manual focus, which could be very important. Auto-focus will make you curse life, so get very familiar with the camera's manual-focus abilities.

Another BIG downside: the camera only shoots in 60i (60fps, interlaced). Not only does this give you that "soap opera" look (which I hate), but you also have to deal with interlaced footage. Read all you can about this so you can deal with it properly. You can de-interlace down to 30fps to get a more filmic look, but this might look a bit choppy since the motion blur in the image is only correct for 60fps.

As for editing software, I only really have experience with Final Cut Pro 7 (and earlier versions) and Adobe Premiere Pro (what I currently use). I know there are cheaper options out there, but can't really recommend any because I've never used them. I do hear good things about Sony Vegas Pro.

 

[mrpink89]

Escher,

Thanks a ot for your reply. It was filled with a lot of great information. I looked up the interlacing problem and I believe it could call be fixed with the editing equipment.
I began to wonder if I could even shoot with this camera seeing all the downsides. But, it's all have and i'm willing to give it a shot.

WHat did you mean by choose DV 16:9 (non-square pixels) for 720x480 widescreen. Is this a question the software asks when using it?

I know that soap opera look may be a downside. However, since it will be a low budget slasher film ( even saying low sounds like a lot of money) I hope people take the movie for what it's trying to achieve, and that is. funny movie where people die.

 

[escher]

You use the equipment you can get. It is much more important to actually do something. My first video short was shot on VHSC, digitized via analog capture card at half-resolution, and cropped to widescreen.

I looked up the interlacing problem and I believe it could call be fixed with the editing equipment.

Yep. Every video editing program that I know of supports deinterlacing. Alternatively, you could just keep it at 60i for the full 60fps look. Either way, you need to tell your editing program that the footage you're working with is interlaced so it knows how to display/edit it properly.

WHat did you mean by choose DV 16:9 (non-square pixels) for 720x480 widescreen. Is this a question the software asks when using it?

Yes, it should be. I'll do my best to explain this. This is a bit over-simplified, but is correct enough for practical use:

Okay, so back before widescreen televisions a regular TV was a little wider than its height. The ratio was 4/3, meaning if the TV was four feet wide, it would be three feet tall. (That would be a huge TV, but it illustrates the point nicely.)

The number of vertical pixels making up this image is 480 (eg, 480 lines of resolution). If the pixels were exactly square, then you'd get 640 pixels across, eg. 640x480. But TVs didn't have square pixels. Oh no, that would be too easy. Instead, they crammed in some extra resolution by making the pixels skinny/tall, ending up with 720 pixels across.

What this meant is if you pulled your footage into your computer (which uses square pixels), the 720x480 image would look horizontally stretched a bit. To fix this, the editing program had to be told that the pixels for the image aren't square, but instead should be treated as NTSC/DV. This way the computer can correctly display the 720x480 image by rescaling its display on the screen to 4:3 proportions.

Does that make any sense?

Okay, so now on to widescreen. That video camere you've got there shoots widescreen video at 16x9 proportions, but then squeezes that image onto the 4:3 720x480 NTSC/DV format. If you just play it back in the computer everyone will look tall and skinny. So you have to tell your editing program that the image is a 16:9 "anamorphic" (eg. 'squeezed') source and it needs to be stretched back out to look correct. This is called NTSC/DV Anamorphic (or NTSC/DV 16:9 Anamorphic).

Your footage will not actually change -- it will still be 720x480 pixels in dimensions, but the editing program will jump through some hoops for you so it will look right on your screen.

 

[Joshua Lloyd]

Premiere is used a lot for it's ability to join hands with it's sister programs (After effects, Speedgrade etc.) A personal Favorite of mine, is Sony Vegas, as it's super fast and you get things done much quicker than any other editor (Quote my friend).

 

[escher]

Another reason I love Premiere is you don't have to transcode your footage -- you just pull it into your project and throw it into your timeline. You can even easily mix footage from different sources because of this. The only codec for your timeline that you have to specify is use solely for preview rendering, so for your timeline/sequence settings you merely specify the resolution, framerate, aspect ratio, and interlacing options.

 

[Sweetie]

Premier Pro is fine for editing.

Your camera though has me a little concerned and it'll be worth doing a little testing of the footage and editing software before you go out and spend lots of time shooting footage. It also depends on what you want to do with it. It's not able to shoot in high definition, but most people don't really need HD.

The reason for my worry is the camera (from what I see) can only shoot in 60i. 60 Frames per second interlaced. I've had previous issues where the camera I was shooting at and the output frame rate was different when using Premier Pro the footage came out really jerky. I had to output to the fps it was shot with and use an external program to change the frame rate.

I'm not saying you cannot shoot good images with that camera or you'll have the same issues that I had, I'm just saying, test it first so you don't get any surprises.

 

[escher]

Premiere Pro can handle 60i footage just fine, but you have to go into your "interpret footage" settings and make sure they're all set correctly.

Interlaced footage is such a pain. I don't miss it in the slightest.

mrpink89, if you can get ahold of any camera capable of shooting 24p footage, do it -- not only will your footage look better, but the lower frame rate means you can collect more light per frame, resulting in a cleaner source image. That being said, if you can't get access to a better camera, just use what you've got, and learn how to deal with any annoyances properly.

Better to actually do something than sit around waiting for the perfect equipment.

 

[mrpink89]

So not all camera's shoot interlaced? Any Ideas on a camera you would recommend that shoots 24p and not interlaced. I have been just debating on taking out a quick loan to get my equipment. I plan on not only submitting this movie to festivals, but to also put it online or sell dvds.

 

[mrpink89]

escher-

I managed to find a camera that shoots in 24p ads you were saying for a decent price. You ever hear of a "Canon VIXIA HF G10" It is a tiny camera like the fs 200 but I was amazed at how great the picture quality was from such a small device. I am going to ditch the fs 200 for this one.

 

[escher]

That is a MUCH better camera. If you're going to be submitting to festivals, HD recording is pretty much a must these days.

The sensor is bigger (1/3" instead of 1/6"), full 1920x1080 HD video, manual exposure, all good.

Potential problematic areas:

You'll want to shoot at the camera's highest data rate, which is 24Mbps. However, 24Mbps is not high enough to avoid compression artifacts in parts of the image that consist of smooth gradients, so keep an eye out for those. Be sure to get your white balance and exposure settings as close to the final look you want as you can, because color grading can really bring out compression artifacts. (It's still leaps and bounds better than that previous camera you were considering).

You'll want several memory cards as HD has a tendency to just chew through storage space. Make sure you've got a large hard drive in your computer for editing and rendering. You'll also want to get a spare battery or two, as reviews note that this camera tends to drain its battery quite quickly.