Lee Berger's Blog

While I prefer shoulder mounted camcorders, I generally don't mind using Handycam style camcorders, especially when size and weight are crucial. This past weekend I loaded my Sony V1U into a waterproof pannier on my bicycle and did some interviews and pickup shots on the Pinellas Bicycle Trail in West Central Florida. Work and fun combined! The thing I don't like about today's crop of Handycam style camcorders is that the viewfinders don't rotate downward. I'm 5'6" and with tripod up high I cannot see through the viewfinder without an apple box or step stool. Years ago I had a Panasonic AJ EZ1U Camcorder. It was the first generation of 1/3" three chip cameras in the Handycam form. While it's LCD viewfinder wasn't particularly sharp, it was big and rotated downward. It can be done.

Panasonic AG-EZ1U with down tilting viewfinder

Here are some universal questions:

Why are we here?
What is the meaning of life?
Does the light go out when you close the refrigerator? (of course it does)

And

Why won’t non-talent (politicians, CEO’s, managers, etc.) practice or at least review their script prior to a shoot using teleprompter?

It happens every time. They show up usually not having seen the script and do an initial cold read. Then they, the director, and/or their handlers start the script edits. All while the clock ticks. With every read, more and more bobbles occur, the non-talent becomes increasingly self-conscious and even frustrated. The director tries to create edit points and instructs the camera operator to change focal length. After a while neither can remember when the camera was wide or tight. Worst of all is that you can see the subject’s eyes scanning as they read the prompter. Sometimes the big ego insists on trying to get through the entire script in one take, but can’t. I’ve had this happen even when I know we will be going to B-roll, where we’ll be in VO, but can’t convince the subject.

I always try to advise my clients to come prepared. I ask them to spend at least 15-minutes in the office, with the script prior to arriving on location. I explain that it’s a good time to make edits, and practice reading out loud. It's a low pressure, no cost environment to revise and rehearse. There's really no excuse with today’s communication technologies where the script can be delivered via e-mail to computer, Blackberry, I-Phone, whatever. It seems as if this advice is rarely if ever taken and the results are often at best a compromise. If there is nothing to cut away to, changing of focal lengths can look like a band-aid.

Lately I’ve been saved in this situation when shooting HD for SD delivery. I can keep the shot at medium wide for each take. Then in post I can crop in between takes creating a faux cut in. It even works better in a Chromakey situation where you can defocus the background plate to create the illusion of shallow depth of field. This however won't save a cold read.

I have an out of warranty 500 GB WD MyBook hard drive that sometimes does not mount, no matter what. And sometimes all of a sudden it will mount. Not good. I use it for backup and while data is not critical, it would be inconvenient to loose it.

I recently bought the Newer Technologies Voyager Q a SATA/SATA II. It's bare drive docking device. http://www.newertech.com/products/voyagerq.php With it I purchased two 1TB bare drives.

Upon one lucky and successful mounting attempt I backed up the problematic MyBook to a new bare drive.

Once the data was safely backed up I thought, what to do with the MyBook. I decided to open it up and pull the drive. I planned to try it in another external drive case. So I went on the internet and found out how to open the MyBook case (it's kind of like removing a bicycle tire). Once I got the drive out I discovered that it is a SATA drive. Interestingly it was wrapped in a foil cover that I removed. I slotted it into the Voyager Q, booted up my Mac and presto, immediate mounting of the drive. Confirmation that the issue was not the drive, but the SATA to USB/FireWire interface in the MyBook case. Now I still have an extra 500 GB and you can never have enough.


Freed from its case, and a foil cover(?) the WD drive sits happily in the Voyager dock.

A friend and associate of mine told me a tale of woe the other day.  He made 1,000 dupes of a DVD project and delivered them to his client.  Not long after that the client called with bad news.  There was a tiny, tiny error in the program.  A couple of seconds of the dreaded "Media Offline."  He told me, "It was the kind of error you could overlook if you took your eyes off the monitor for a second."  I said,  "It's the kind of error that you might miss if you're tired of looking at the program."  You know the feeling on a long form project where you say to yourself, "I'm tired of this section I'll just jump the play head to the next."

 

The simple solution is to use the Reconnect Media function before you output. Simply right click on the Sequence in the Bin and select Reconnect Media... from the contextual menu. 

 

Any Offline or missing Render files will appear in the Files to Connect Section.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course there is no substitute for carefully reviewing your program before output. This workflow is just a little insurance.

My friend Dean recently bought the new Nikon D90 DSLR with HD video capability.  His company Dean's Photography Services owns many DSLRs and his justification for the purchase was to be able to shoot short videos for some of his clients.  He went along on a recent shoot as PA and to take some stills.  He also wanted to shoot some HD video that I might be able to use.

Yesterday he came over with the camera to see how the footage looked and how it would import into FCP.  The Motion JPEG AVI clips imported into FCP with no problem, but when I placed them into an empty timeline FCP did not ask me if I wanted to conform the sequence to match the clips.  Item properties reveals the codec to be Apple OpenDML JPEG with a data rate of 2.4 MB/sec (An Apple Codec in an AVI wrapper?).  The audio is 16bit, 11.025 kHz, mono.  A render or intermediate transcode would be necessary.   Upon playing the 720P, 24fps footage I noticed a couple of things.  First of all it looked a bit soft.  Kind of mushy or painted.  Dean said that he might have missed focus a bit.   The other thing I noticed was that the apeture was pumping  in auto mode.  I suggested manual settings and Dean said he wasn't sure you could in the video mode.  We decided to take the camera outside and run a test on focus and exposure.  Here is what we discovered:

1.You cannot engage auto focus.  Manual focus is your only option.
2.There are no focus aids as in the still mode so you have to eyeball it.
3.You cannot use the optical viewfinder at all.
4.You cannot override the auto aperture and it tended to over expose a bit.
5.And of course you are limited to 24fps.

We viewed the carefully focused footage and it still looked soft and mushy.  Dean's white shirt was blown out.  Here is a link to the full size image

 

www.leebergermedia.com/temp/DSC_0001.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One glaring drawback was the lack of connectors for an external microphone.  There is a small electret condenser mic on the body.

Our conclusions?  The D90 is an excellent 12 Megapixel still camera.  The HD video function could be useful in some non critical situations as a B cam or on an informal shoot as the A cam.  What I'm hoping is that it is the precursor to even better DSLR's that can shoot HD video.

Few FCP editors have anything nice to say about the Media Manager.  It's bitten me a couple of times when trimming a project to send to another facility.  Having said that it really works well in trimming large media files.  I like to capture whole tapes or large blocks of material.  Captured media is easier to deal with and it's kinder to the tape machine and tapes. 

Basically I take a large clip and subclip (CMD+U) just the portions I want to keep.  Then I rename the subclips to match the clip content.  This eliminates false starts, bad takes, and that rare instance when the camera is left running between setups. I use Media Manager to trim the subclips into individual files.  The resulting files can be significantly smaller than the original capture.  I often reclaim a great deal of storage using this method.



Once I have completed the subclipping process I select all the subclips.  Then I  right click on the selected clips to bring up the contextual menu.  I select Media Manager which brings up the Media Manager window.

 

At the top in the Summary section you will see the Original and Modified Media represented by two green bars indicating the file size after trimming.

In the Media section I select Copy media referenced by selected clips.  This makes a trimmed copy of the media, but leaves the original media intact in case something goes wrong.  The copied media has no additional compression added and will retain the original source timecode and reel #.  

I check Delete unused media from selected clips and uncheck Include Rendered Files and Use Handles.  I select Base media file names on Clip Names.  Later when I import the trimmed clips into my project they will be good to go.

In the Project section I uncheck Duplicate selected clips and place into a new project because I will to import them into the current project.

Finally in the Media Destination section I select the root directory of my RAID as the destination.  Media Manager will create a directory called Media with a sub directory named after the current project.  This makes it easy for me to find the trimmed clips after Media Management is complete.

Now it's time to click OK.  Once the files have been trimmed and copied I move them from the Media Folder to the project's Capture Scratch folder.  That way all of the project's media is in one place.  Then I import them into the project.   

Once I verify all the trimmed clips to be sure there are no errors I go to the original captured media and delete it from the drive.  I save the original offline clip and subclips in case I need to capture  again, but I've never had to.  As I mentioned earlier the trimmed clips are clones of the subclipped portions of the original media.  That means they reference original tape's timecode, and can be recaptured using the batch capture in case of a hard drive failure or accidental deletion. 

Unlike recapturing subclips, recapture the trimmed clips only references the trimmed media and not the whole original clip.

This process works with any codec including HDV. However as I mentioned in my previous Blog, HDV recapture is unreliable so back up those trimmed clips if possible.

I like FCP to make a new media file for each camera start stop.  I edit a fair amount of documentary programs with lots of B-Roll.   Ever since my early NLE days using AVID I've used the Subclip function to manage long B-Roll captures.  I don't like to scrub thorough long clips, preferring the film approach where rolls are cut up into individual shots or scenes, labeled, and hung in a bin.  This is the 'librarian" aspect of editing as one of my college professors used to say.

Rather than shuttling back and forth through tapes and batch digitizing selects, I usually capture full tapes or large chunks.  This saves wear on tear on my deck and tapes.  Given enough storage space, it's easier to deal with the material after capture.  Editing SD I use the Subclip function and then the Media Manager to trim away unwanted material.  This results in shorter source clips and some storage savings.  It's a bit time consuming, but helps me get familiar with the material.  It's made a bit easer when editing DV SD where you can use Detect DV Start/Stop to add markers.  

Enter Create New Clip on Start/Stop (available only in the HDV capture window.)  During capture it makes HDV subclipping a snap by creating a new media file on each camera start/stop.  First of all, not only are HDV tapes hard to cue, but the batch capture function is unreliable as those of you know who have dealt with the unexplainable "Can't Find Timecode" error.  So capturing full tapes or large chunks really helps avoid frustration here.  

During capture you can see the new clips being added to the bin.  For instance a clip called Cover will be saved as individual clips named Cover-1, Cover-2, etc.  When capture is complete I sort by duration to easily dispose of false starts (usually :05 or less).  Then I examine each clip and if necessary Media Manage to further trim excess (such as when a camera operator forgets to shut off the camera between setups).  I can also dump any bad takes or useless material by making media offline.  Finally I rename the remaining clips to reflect their content and use the "rename file to match clip" function to finish the process.  

One drawback is that sometimes up to five seconds may be lost at the beginning of each HDV clip.  A good justification for "rolling for speed" if the situation allows.  

Finally, because of the unreliability of HDV Batch Capture I treat all of my HDV media as if it was captured on a card and back it up to a second drive. 

Create New Clip on Start/Stop has long been available in Premiere Pro in SD.  I assume that it's available in HDV and HD as well.  Perhaps a Premiere user can set this straight.  I would love it if Apple would add it as an option for HD and SD capture.