Please Help Me Make These Videos Better!

Beatlesfan1225

Beatlesfan1225

Hey Everyone!

I'm going to throw this question in the newbie forum, because it emcompasses all aspects of shooting a video, so it didn't feel right putting it in one of the more direct sub-forums.

So, I'm going to put two of more recent Youtube music videos below. I'm having some trouble getting these to the quality I would like them to be at. Not in the music, but on the video side.

I shoot them on a Canon T3i, and the audio is synced up later from my sound equipment I'm using in the videos. This works stellar, and I've had no conflicts with this. It's the video quality I'm struggling with.

The first video's quality is a tad better than the second, I think in the second I didn't quite get the camera to focus on myself right, which degraded the quality a bit. But, the song was so damn long, and I was so damn happy with the rendition, I couldn't bring myself to reshoot it all ;)

So even in 1080, the videos seem a bit blurry and pixelated, which I'm struggling to understand, since I'm shooting them on a T3i and editing/exporting them in 1080.

I suspect the lighting in the videos plays a huge part in this, along with the difficulty I have focusing the camera on myself. You'll notice that I have a tendency to color correct the videos a tad, and in these two, I suppose I went a bit green. (Maybe it was the hat!) I correct them for two reasons: one, it makes it a tad more interesting to look at, and two, I think I instinctively do it to try to cover up the lack of decent lighting.

So, here's my question: Dissect these videos. Feel free to go look at more of mine (Not promoting, you'll notice they're all a tad different) Please let me know what you think I can do to get these looking nice and spiffy in their HD glory on Youtube. Please be constructive!

Thanks for all the help in advance!

Oh, and one thing - The problems with the quality in the videos are much more apparent in full screen, which you can't do on IT - I suggest clicking through

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VnOV-k9WkQ
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8VnOV-k9WkQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdJuTMKDnn0
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bdJuTMKDnn0
 
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The stop is changed by holding down the a/v button near the top of the buttons on the back, then by turning the index finger wheel. Lowest number possible is what you want. Then press the ISO button on top behind the wheel to bring up the ISO menu, and set it as low as you can while still maintaining exposure. Shutter should be as close to 1/48 as possible if your shooting at 24fps, or 1/60 @ 30fps.

From there, if you move the camera a little closer to you and widen the shot out a little, you get even more blur for the background. You'll be less able to move back and forth, but you're not doing that much movement anyway, and it'll add that separation from the background.

Lowering the lighting on the walls and/or raising the light values on you would help with the separation as well. If that's not an option, coloring the light on the background to not be exactly the same color as you would help separate quite a bit.
 
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You've been given quite a lot of info so far on the visual side of fimmaking but it's certainly worth mentioning a bit about the audio, as you've a good voice and it's a shame not to make the most of it, due to some poor engineering/mixing.

The most obvious problem is the guitar in the first video, which suffers throughout from quite serious phasing issues. So serious in fact that it sounds as if a flanger has been added in mixing! I'm guessing this phasing is due to the timing variation (distance) between the two mics, although the mic positions seem very similar in the second video where there's no obvious flanging/phasing effect. Instead, in the second video there is a lack of mid and mid-high frequency content in the guitar sound, making it sound much bassier and quite dull. It's possible that this too is a symptom of a phase issue (phase cancellation) but it seems spread over too wide a range of frequencies and is more likely caused by the guitar mic positioned/pointed too close to the sound hole. The solution to the phasing is to be aware of it and to spend a little more time testing the mic positions until you find relative positions which avoid phasing.

The reverb you've used on your voice sounds like a church or other large space reverb, which obviously contradicts the relatively small room we see in the video. Unless you're making a music video, you would generally want the reverb to match the visuals as far as diagetic music is concerned. Additionally, you have not used this same reverb on the guitar (or you have used extremely little of it), this puts the guitar in a different acoustic space to the voice, so you end up with a guitar which sounds very present and the voice sounding distant (although they are well balanced volume wise). Because of this, the second video sounds like a separate singer and guitarist rather than the single singer/guitarist we see in the video. If you wish to keep the large reverb on the voice for some artistic reason and are not bothered by the contradiction with the visual image, then you really need to add that same reverb to the guitar.

There is also more prominent finger sliding noise in the second video and possibly a little too much essing in the first video. These are more minor issues and again, could be reduced by some fine adjustment to the mic'ing positions.

Hope this was useful?

G
 
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Thanks for the responses, guys. Extremely helpful - I've learned a lot from this discussion I plan to carry on over to a new video series. I'll start that next week and hopefully within a week have some products to show you guys.

Thanks for the audio tips AudioPost, I'll certainly take them into consideration.
 
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Hey all!

So I've made some progress in this process with a more recent video. Double posting things here on the site is something I hate seeing, so I won't do it myself. I'll just link the screening room thread I made for the new video below.


As you'll see in my description, I'm still not where I want to be with all of this, this newest installment was made in a very short amount of time for a class, but I think a lot of the changes noted throughout this thread will be noticeable. Still a ways off, but getting there!

http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=53546
 
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