Post by Lucyhappy on Jun 9, 2008 15:30:54 GMT
NB: We originally wrote this article with Spinning Vids in mind but it fits all round regardless I guess Hope it's of use to someone here
Hello All
Firstly, cheers to the online poi movement for getting us into making spinning videos, which has in turn got us into filming and editing home videos in a big way. We now like to film party/festival videos, family videos and holiday videos etc, it’s fun and interesting to do and is a great way of capturing your moments in time
Secondly we'll say this post outlines the way we film and edit videos but that by no way means we think it’s the ‘only’ or ‘correct’ way of doing it
Also, we're ‘ms windows’ users, so the information in this post is based around that. For mac users etc we’re sure the info is available somewhere on the net
Filming
Try and use a tripod for filming where possible (you can pick up a universal tripod for around £15).
For fire and glow work, use good lighting or night-shot where possible. Jerky and dark videos are a nightmare to work with and a bigger nightmare to watch. Think about your location, you’ll be happier with the end result filming somewhere that looks nice and that captures your lifestyle.
Don’t worry about copying angles and shot ideas you’ve seen, if you’ve seen a nice shot on someone’s video and you want to try and re-create it in your own way, then do!
Play with some ‘arty’ shots that take your fancy, filming from different angles instead of just ‘front on’ can be fun. For example, shots from underneath and above can make very interesting viewing.
Capturing your footage
We watch the footage through on the camera first, noting down the times of the footage we want to use.
Then, capture chunks of footage in blocks rather than in one big file (if we're capturing an hour or more of footage, we tend to do it in 20min blocks for example) and save them as separate files, this will make it much easier on your brain and your PC when trawling through your raw footage!
To capture, we use Windows Movie Maker. Even though we’ve got all sorts of editing suites we still use WMM to capture, mainly because it's easy!
You need it to be big enough to fill the screen so at least 640x480 is good. The main thing to watch out for regarding quality is the bit rate. The higher the bit rate is, the better quality your video will be. The file size also increases with the bit rate though so sometimes compromise is necessary.
We capture using the “High Quality Video (large)” setting. It has a variable bitrate so the quality stays pretty good while keeping file size manageable. The full settings are:-
File Type: Windows Media Video (WMV)
Bit Rate: Variable Bit rate
Display Size: 640 x 480
Frames per second: 30fps
Editing
Desperate to throw together all your raw footage and share it with the net as soon as possible? Naah, take your time. Good editing is a long process and can take many, many hours, you’ll be happier with the end result if you take your time.
For example, is the footage over a full day? Perhaps you can re-capture the feeling of the day by starting off with arrival or travelling shots and charting the day/gathering/spin/whatever with the video.
Break it up a bit and keep it interesting. Still shots, split screens, playing with the audio so you can hear real time instead of the music track, slow motion and text are all good ways of keeping your audience interested and giving you a great video. Plenty of cuts also help keep the video moving along nicely, although saying that it is nice to watch a talented spinner run with fewer cuts.
Windows Movie Maker is good for starting out. It contains all the basic editing tools to get you used to the process. Find a program you are happy with, we use Sony Vegas 6.0. we did use Adobe Premiere 7.0 for a while but you need a super computer to run it properly and it aint that user friendly! We find Vegas has great tools and is also very user friendly.
Music
We have heard it said “make the video then fit the track to it instead of the other way around” although we don’t do this. We tend to pick the track first and then fit the video to the length of it. Remember, tracks can be shortened by fading them in or out.
Although seeing some tracks on spinning videos has actually made us go out and buy an album by the artist, we’re not quite sure where we all stand on artistic licence and copyrights where music is concerned, most home videos on the net use music so the case for copyrights would be huge eh? But at least give credit to the music/artist you use every time.
If you're a producer you're sorted as you can make your own track for your video. ;D
Credits/text
Give credit to the people involved, music and yourself on the video! If you miss these bits out people are bound to only ask you about it anyway!
Rendering
Once you have finished cutting and adding any effects etc you need to render or export your video to enable others to watch it. We render in Sony Vegas 6.0 using the following settings:
WMV V9 Compression
Audio: 64 Kbps, 44,100 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo.
Video: 29.970 fps, 720x480,
Quality VBR 90,
And in WMM, we use the “High Quality Video(PAL)” setting :
File Type: Windows Media Video (WMV)
Bit Rate: Variable Bit rate
Display Size: 720 x 576
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Frames per second: 25fps
The main thing to look out for again is the bit rate. The higher the bit rate the better the quality and also the bigger the file size. Sometimes a compromise is necessary to keep file size down but keeping the quality as good as possible.
This process can take hours depending on your computer power and length of the video so be prepared for a bit of a wait. Time to put the kettle on!
Conversion/Compression
So, you’ve finished your video and realise it's still a bit big? To get it to a decent size to share with the web…
A good guide is:
Single person spinning videos: 3 – 5mins in length and 15 – 25mbs in size
Group/gathering spinning videos: 6 – 10mins in length and 45 – 65mbs in size.
To compress and convert we use WinAviVideo Converter. You can run a WMV through it and convert it back to WMV again. If you click on the “Advanced” button there is a slider bar to play with quality and choices for frame rates and encoding options. Usually we can make the video to whatever size we want using this tool.
That’s about it, we hope this helps/inspires someone.
Happy Film Making!
Lu & Tom.
Article Written By Goldie & Lucyhappy
Hello All
Firstly, cheers to the online poi movement for getting us into making spinning videos, which has in turn got us into filming and editing home videos in a big way. We now like to film party/festival videos, family videos and holiday videos etc, it’s fun and interesting to do and is a great way of capturing your moments in time
Secondly we'll say this post outlines the way we film and edit videos but that by no way means we think it’s the ‘only’ or ‘correct’ way of doing it
Also, we're ‘ms windows’ users, so the information in this post is based around that. For mac users etc we’re sure the info is available somewhere on the net
Filming
Try and use a tripod for filming where possible (you can pick up a universal tripod for around £15).
For fire and glow work, use good lighting or night-shot where possible. Jerky and dark videos are a nightmare to work with and a bigger nightmare to watch. Think about your location, you’ll be happier with the end result filming somewhere that looks nice and that captures your lifestyle.
Don’t worry about copying angles and shot ideas you’ve seen, if you’ve seen a nice shot on someone’s video and you want to try and re-create it in your own way, then do!
Play with some ‘arty’ shots that take your fancy, filming from different angles instead of just ‘front on’ can be fun. For example, shots from underneath and above can make very interesting viewing.
Capturing your footage
We watch the footage through on the camera first, noting down the times of the footage we want to use.
Then, capture chunks of footage in blocks rather than in one big file (if we're capturing an hour or more of footage, we tend to do it in 20min blocks for example) and save them as separate files, this will make it much easier on your brain and your PC when trawling through your raw footage!
To capture, we use Windows Movie Maker. Even though we’ve got all sorts of editing suites we still use WMM to capture, mainly because it's easy!
You need it to be big enough to fill the screen so at least 640x480 is good. The main thing to watch out for regarding quality is the bit rate. The higher the bit rate is, the better quality your video will be. The file size also increases with the bit rate though so sometimes compromise is necessary.
We capture using the “High Quality Video (large)” setting. It has a variable bitrate so the quality stays pretty good while keeping file size manageable. The full settings are:-
File Type: Windows Media Video (WMV)
Bit Rate: Variable Bit rate
Display Size: 640 x 480
Frames per second: 30fps
Editing
Desperate to throw together all your raw footage and share it with the net as soon as possible? Naah, take your time. Good editing is a long process and can take many, many hours, you’ll be happier with the end result if you take your time.
For example, is the footage over a full day? Perhaps you can re-capture the feeling of the day by starting off with arrival or travelling shots and charting the day/gathering/spin/whatever with the video.
Break it up a bit and keep it interesting. Still shots, split screens, playing with the audio so you can hear real time instead of the music track, slow motion and text are all good ways of keeping your audience interested and giving you a great video. Plenty of cuts also help keep the video moving along nicely, although saying that it is nice to watch a talented spinner run with fewer cuts.
Windows Movie Maker is good for starting out. It contains all the basic editing tools to get you used to the process. Find a program you are happy with, we use Sony Vegas 6.0. we did use Adobe Premiere 7.0 for a while but you need a super computer to run it properly and it aint that user friendly! We find Vegas has great tools and is also very user friendly.
Music
We have heard it said “make the video then fit the track to it instead of the other way around” although we don’t do this. We tend to pick the track first and then fit the video to the length of it. Remember, tracks can be shortened by fading them in or out.
Although seeing some tracks on spinning videos has actually made us go out and buy an album by the artist, we’re not quite sure where we all stand on artistic licence and copyrights where music is concerned, most home videos on the net use music so the case for copyrights would be huge eh? But at least give credit to the music/artist you use every time.
If you're a producer you're sorted as you can make your own track for your video. ;D
Credits/text
Give credit to the people involved, music and yourself on the video! If you miss these bits out people are bound to only ask you about it anyway!
Rendering
Once you have finished cutting and adding any effects etc you need to render or export your video to enable others to watch it. We render in Sony Vegas 6.0 using the following settings:
WMV V9 Compression
Audio: 64 Kbps, 44,100 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo.
Video: 29.970 fps, 720x480,
Quality VBR 90,
And in WMM, we use the “High Quality Video(PAL)” setting :
File Type: Windows Media Video (WMV)
Bit Rate: Variable Bit rate
Display Size: 720 x 576
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Frames per second: 25fps
The main thing to look out for again is the bit rate. The higher the bit rate the better the quality and also the bigger the file size. Sometimes a compromise is necessary to keep file size down but keeping the quality as good as possible.
This process can take hours depending on your computer power and length of the video so be prepared for a bit of a wait. Time to put the kettle on!
Conversion/Compression
So, you’ve finished your video and realise it's still a bit big? To get it to a decent size to share with the web…
A good guide is:
Single person spinning videos: 3 – 5mins in length and 15 – 25mbs in size
Group/gathering spinning videos: 6 – 10mins in length and 45 – 65mbs in size.
To compress and convert we use WinAviVideo Converter. You can run a WMV through it and convert it back to WMV again. If you click on the “Advanced” button there is a slider bar to play with quality and choices for frame rates and encoding options. Usually we can make the video to whatever size we want using this tool.
That’s about it, we hope this helps/inspires someone.
Happy Film Making!
Lu & Tom.
Article Written By Goldie & Lucyhappy