Question about film edit, cameras and etc.

General Discussion
1

I am working on a half hour documentary.  Here is what I have to work with so far and I was hoping some of you know something about this to make some recommendations. 

 

what I have

 

IMAC quad core i7, HP Quad core i5, T2i canon, H4N recorder, Kodak Zi8.

 

Things I am looking into:  A higher end or additional video camcorder possibly the canon Hv40 or maybe a higher end???  types of microphones, lens, Final Cut pro or express. I already have Sony Vegas and I am familiar with it, but wanted one of the other two.

 

Just the basics…not the ideal is what I am looking for. 

 

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

2

I’ve been working in TV and corporate video since 1976. I started when everything was shot on film and have worked through the early video years up to what we have today.

How much are you willing to spend?

A good video camera with a 20x lens, a decent tripod, wireless lav mic system, external short shotgun mic would be close to $4000 or $5000. Good lights and other production stuff like HD monitors can be just as much.

I like Sennheiser mics. For High Def, I use a Panasonic GH-1 and a Sony HXR-NX5U cameras, Sennheiser G2 ENG wireless system with body packs and a hand mic transmitters. I prefer recording the audio and video with one device not 2, so a real video camera is better for monitoring what you record. The Canon, Sony and Panasonic 35mm cameras that shoot HD video are really nice, but they don’t have good live monitoring. If you don’t know what you’re doing it can mess you up. For DV, I use a small Panasonic 3CCD camera and big professional Sony 3CCD cameras. I just got a Manfrotto tripod for $350, and it’s real nice for the smaller HD cameras. The sachtler I have costs several thousand. 

I have not used Sony Vegas, but I use Avid, Adobe Premier and Final Cut Pro. I’ve only used Final Cut Pro with the AVCHD cameras. I use a 2008 intel dual quad core processor power mac, 4 GB of RAM and have a little over 4TB of video storage.

If you plan on shooting and editing in HD either 720P or 1080i, you should get a ton of RAM, and a lot of hard disk storage. I only shoot and edit in 720P, and that is taxing my computer. You can try using iMovie, I’ve used it with DV and it’s pretty good for a free program.

If you have not done this type of work before, you may be better off hiring people to help you. Maybe some kids in college or even high school that are studying video production. 

3

 

Thanks Shark. I Have been practicing awhile now. I like the looks of the new Canon XA 10.   I have used imovie and vegas, but not final cut.  Vegas makes workflow really easy.  I figured final cut and Avid were industry standards. I have 3 TB space right now, but only 4g of ram. I will mostly be doing interviews where I have control instead of fun and gun man on the street stuff.  I like what you say about on camera audio.  Most folks I have talked to recommend having an outside recorder like the H4n for audio.  I was looking into the rode Mics.  What do you think of the HV40. Heard some good things about it, but I figured it was still just consumer grade. Also Panasonic 100B?

4

Great info Shark! The company I’m currently with uses the Sony NX5 and for the most part we really like it. Great cam for interviews.

 

Solo, I’ve seen some really nice images from the T2i you mentioned. Another potential sticking point with the DSLR camera is:

Audio - no professional audio I/O, recording outboard is OK, but then sync becomes an issue

The Panasonic 100b is a great standard def camera, a lot of bang for the buck, but it is still standard def. Here is a link to the specs:

http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelDetail?storeId=11201&catalogId=13051&itemId=94944&surfModel=AG-DVX100B

3TB should be enough space to hold a project or two, the question here is how FAST is your storage?

Your OP mentions a quad core iMac, so I would guess Firewire 800 or eSata, which should be OK. But USB is just not fast enough.

5

For cameras, it all depends on what your target audience and delivery mechanism is. I like the Canon cameras, both the consumer and pro level. I don’t like the HDV format. I think you’ll be better off with an AVCHD camera if you want HD video. The HV40 is an HDV camera. 

I also don’t like 1080i because the editing overhead is greater. I prefer shooting and editing in 720P/60 or 720P/30. Not sure how many consumer cameras will shoot 720P so that may be another issue. The Panasonic GH1 I have can shoot 720P and it can also be hacked to get higher quality video, but I haven’t done the hack. I shoot 720P on the Sony cameras even though they can shoot 1080.

Also for editing a combined audio video recording is easier to work with. Dual system sound requires perfect sync between the 2 sources. All movie production typically uses dual system but that’s what they’ve always done. With film, the sound head and the image are off sync by about a second, so when you cut film with embedded audio, it can mess up the audio, or you get lip flap. I don’t think you can get 35mm movie film with embedded audio. 16mm cameras like the CP 16 had magnetic audio tracks on the film to record audio.   

Lectrosonics make the industry standard wireless mic systems for broadcast journalists, but the Sennheisers are pretty good. Sony also makes a system for their broadcast cameras. You could use a sound tech with a good shotgun in a blimp on a pole running into a small mixer then to the camera. That is something that a lot of people like to do, I typically work alone. I like wired mics more, but wireless mics are very handy. Most of us older guys prefer a wired mic over the wireless. I don’t know anything about rode mics. We always used Sennheiser shot guns, and sony lavs, then when wireless came in it was lectrosonic transmitter/receivers and either Sony or Tram lav mics when I was in TV. The Sennsheiser wireless systems are at least 1/2 the price or less. 

The Panasonic 100B is a DV camera not HD, so it would hold you back to standard def video. The 100B is old technology, so I’d stay away from that. I like Panasonic’s P2, but the cards are pricey and you need to get separate card readers. AVCHD uses SDHC so it’s very low cost.

I like the Panasonic 3-chip AVCHD cameras a lot, but in Hawaii Sony owns the pro market. The Panasonic cameras didn’t have 20x lenses, so we ended up with similarly priced Sony’s. Sony, Panasonic, JVC and Canon all have good pro level HD cameras. If I had my choice I would have bought the JVC 700 shoulder mounted camera, but it was close to $10,000 for a complete camera with a good lens. The Sony was a little over $3000 for the camera and built in lens. Us old guys like on the shoulder cameras. They are more stable for hand held work, and you have a real lens with full manual controls for Iris, Focus and Aperture.

I’d look into getting as much RAM as you can. I have a request in for a 16GB increase for our editing systems. That will give us 20GB total. Final Cut Pro will do everything you need for editing in HD. I have heard good things about Vegas, but I have never used it. We started digital editing with the high end Avid on old power macs, so I stayed with Avid on the PC, then got Premier, and now have FCP on the Mac. I still think Avid is the best, Premier is easy to learn coming from Avid, but FCP seems awkward compared to Avid.

For workflow shooting on chip cameras… shooting video, stop and start the camera tight so you don’t have a lot of wasted space. Delete bad takes using the camera’s menu and tools. After you have deleted al the bad takes copy the AVC folder onto your hard drive and then copy it onto another hard drive for backup. Use Final Cut Pro or whatever you have to convert the video from AVCHD to the best quality editable video you can. After editing I export the finished video in the highest quality format I can then use another tool to down convert it for delivery. That way my final is always the best quality I can get. I typically clear out the digitized video and only keep the AVCHD file of the original once the project is finished. AVCHD files use much less space than the high quality video files.

6

 

Thanks to both you and Shark. I agree on SD being out.  I still like tape, but I think it’s leaving soon.  My plan it to shoot no more than 20 minutes of an interview with pre planned questions and outline of the project. Then put them all together doing voice over where I need to.  The T2I has good image, but I"m not quite up to snuff with it yet.  The thing I posted here for Yancy’s passing was shot on it. On board mic sux and has gain which is why I bought the H4N. However, I"m thinking I’ll get a camcorder with onboard and mic and headphone jack.  Wouldn’t mind trying Avid, but way too expensive.   I sort of wish I just stuck with pc rather than Mac in some ways, but I like the stability of Mac.

7

Macs are good, pricey but good. FCP and Adobe Premier are about the same price. Lokedin is right about disk speed, they have to be 7200rpm, and they faster your connection the better. Firewire 800 is OK, but eSata is better. RAID arrays are also better than single drives. My Mac has 4 drives, 2 are setup as a RAID for video, one is smaller and is the system drive and the 4th is a 2TB. Then I have an external firewire 800 to backup the internal RAID and an external USB-3.0 (only using 2.0) to back up the internal 2TB.

I do not think an onboard camera mic is good for interviews. Look around for a lavalier or even a shot gun held close by if there’s no wind. I made a bracket to hold a shotgun on my GH-1, the shot gun uses a AA battery for power.

The T2i with an external mic would work, but monitoring the audio can be a problem. I always want to hear what I’m recording because wind or other noises can ruin an interview. Just adding a directional external mic is going to make things so much better, but a lav is great for interviews.

I bought a Beachtek 2 mic mixer for small video cameras to use with the GH1. It lets you plug in 2 XLR mics and connects to the camera with a stereo mini plug. I have a mini to micro adapter because the GH1 has uses a micro connection. The mixer allows you to record 2 mics in stereo or mono or 1 mic in mono. They run about $300 for a good one. Check B&H photo for them there are a lot of models.

This will allow you to add external XLR mics to your T2i. I also just plug in the output of my wireless receiver into the GH-1. The receiver uses a hot shoe to connect to the camera, so it sits where the external flash would go. I also have a 2 to one hotshoe adapter and various external flash adapters that allow me to have 2 receivers and a flash or small external flood.

The T2i will give you a really nice shot with an out of focus background that a small consumer camera can not do without being maxed out on telephoto. I use my GH-1 when I have to go somewhere and shoot both stills and video clips. I can do both with one camera. 

 

8

Should I spring for FCP or is Final Cut express enough?  It sure is hard to transfer all my movie files from my pc to my Mac also.  Pain. Also…vegas captures from DVD super easy. With mac it seems you must buy DVD ripping software. That canon xa10 looks interesting.  Do you like the CMOS over the CC?

9

If you like vegas on a PC I’d try that and see how it goes. It’s better to stay with something you know and like than to learn a new program. If you like the PC there’s Adobe Premier which I like better than FCP. I have an older version, so I can’t do HD with my software, that’s why we have FCP. Don’t be afraid to try low cost editing software, some are very good and very easy to learn. It’s when you want to do a lot of layering and effects that Premier, FCP and Avid start to show their power. FCP has nice color correction tools. 

I haven’t used FCP express, or the newer iMovie so I can’t say anything about that. I liked how easy iMovie worked when I first got my imac years ago. For simple editing it is a good program. On the PC there is windows movie maker which if part of windows. It’s a good simple editor but I don’t know if it does HD. 

Windows computers will most likely give you a choice of AVI, WMV, or MP2 as your final product. Macs will have MOV or MP4. Both will also output back to tape, and create DVDs. So that’s something to think about too. 

I have not seen the Canon camera, but I like what I’ve read and the specs are OK. The only thing I would not be happy with is the 10x lens with a 30mm (35mm camera equiv) wide angle. If you will be doing mostly interviews it will be fine. The lens may be a little short for long shots and maybe not as wide as you’d like for some shots. On the plus side, the 30mm wide would have lens distortion than a 26mm or 28mm wide, so that would be good.

Traditionally CCDs have been better, but CMOS has been coming on strong and there are few cameras with CCDs now. The big plus side of CMOS is better low light performance and low power consumption. The down side is something called rolling shutter, which can cause funky images when you shoot fast moving objects or pan the camera quickly, that is being worked on and may not be a problem with the newer cameras. That was something I checked on when I got my GH-1.

The imager size is the key to better quality images. The T2i has an imager that is huge in comparison to the 1/3" imager on the XA10. There will be noticeable differences in image quality if you compare them side by side, and the depth of field of the XA10 will be very different. It’s really nice to shoot interviews with the background out of focus. You could do that very easily with the T2i, but it will take a little bit of work with a 1/3" camera. 

I would get a large external drive and copy all the video files to it, then plug that into the Mac and they should be accessible. With a USB2 drive it will take hours to copy TerraBytes of data.  

 

10

CMOS vs CCD - I really like the interviews I’ve seen from CMOS cameras. I’m working on an interview shot on a Canon 7D right now. The camera op used ambient lighting + 1 professional light and a nice lens (17X if memory serves) just beautiful! The thing to watch out for with CMOS cameras is the rolling shutter (or jello) effect seen in high speed motion. Here’s a youtube video that shows what that looks like:

 

 

I preferred tape until recently when we bought our NX5. 16GB SDHC cards hold 86 minutes of 1080i, and only cost about $20. A lot less than comparable tape formats! We simply treat them as tape and vault them - just in a much smaller vault.

3 chip CCD cameras don’t suffer from that. The edit house that I’m at now works in 1080i, but that’s because we do have a lot of VERY fast storage - 32TB over Quad fiber (see, quads are faster even in computers! ;-)  )

At home I work just as Shark mentioned - Final Cut Pro 720p / 30fps - though I’m getting a GoPro that will have me playing in 720p / 60fps.

You mentioned Final Cut Express. My Dad (retired director) uses Express and loves it. He only comes to me to color correct and finish.

Shark also mentioned preferring wired over wireless mics. As much as I like wireless freedom, I choose wired whnever possible. re: A few years ago I did a shoot in Ventura Harbor. My audio guy brought a VHF wireless kit (yes, I know, he shoulda had a UHF kit). We could actually hear boat traffic…nice.

 

edit: sp

 

11

Here is one I did quickly with my first attempt at imovie on the T2i.   Using onboard Mic and it’s obvious.  My vegas would have been better, but it’s warping the images for some reason. I’ll likely have to do a reinstall. 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09pXAl3BrG8

12

I just want to reiterate about having a fast hard drive with a lot of available space along, and a computer with a lot of RAM.  I burned up a hard drive on a PC several years ago when I was editing footage of a surf trip.  My computer kept crashing while doing heavy rendering.  It crashed one to many times, and then stopped working.  I also found that I would get headaches from looking at the monitor while running scenes back and forth for hours on end.  The hardware failure was the last straw, and I just gave up on editing videos for good.

13

I have not had the head aches yet. I have had the crash problem on the pc.  Hopefully the mac will fair better.   

14

Here's the video that I made, which caused the downfall of my computer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lst4HdQwnls&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

 

 

 

15

I’d worry less about your post workflow and worry more about your shooting skills until you have finished production. I also work professionally in video both freelance and for large TV shows.

 

I edit on a 7 year old mac with 1 GB of ram at home and my scratch disks are external POS’ that Ive had for 5 + years. Ill edit various HD formats and I have not had a single issue. You could also Upres after the fact and save yourself a lot of rendering heartache. Fancy equipment a good film does not make. 

 

And i Know it was mentioned before but audio is going to be a million times more important than almost anything else unless you plan to narrate the whole time. 

 

Best of luck!

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double post. See below.

17

 

Agree.  I just want to learn about editing.  When the time comes for that, I’ll likely pay someone to make it look right or have them as a part of a team. Mostly I’m an idea person and writer.  BTW: That bit I posted was at a funeral and I was hand holding a DSLR.   I think all of it takes a back seat to story line though. If it’s not interesting, it can look perfect and no one but film folk will notice.   If it’s interesting, more than likely, only film folk will see the flaws?  What do you think of the Zoom H4N for external audio? I hear mostly only the expensive cameras have good audio?

18

Canon HV40 is a good way to go to get into HD.  Tape based which saves money on gigs and gigs of storage.  I feel HDV is better than AVCHD especially the Canons.   You have to factor in prices for SD/ Compact flash/ P2 cards as well as hard drive space.  Tape sits on the shelf and doesn’t take up space on your drives unless you are working on something.  FCP express is an option to keep your costs down but FCP studio is a great program.  MAC over PC all day long.  Canon 7D if you really want to get exceptional picture quality with a range of lenses for various types of shooting.  Rode shotgun mic is a good one for the price.  Works well as an unbalanced shotgun.  Knowing what types of mics work for what you are shoothing is important.  Balanced audio is obviously better but you can get away without it if you are smart ie. no long cable runs near power cords for lights etc…  I have been shooting and editing for 20 years and it is nice to work with top of the line pro equipment but you can do extraordinary work with prosumer gear.  I had all my gear ripped out of my truck coming back from the San Felipe SCORE race last year.  My new setup is:  Canon 7D, Canon HV40, GoPro HD, Rode Shotgun, MacBook Pro hooked up to a 50" Sony LCD, FCP and Adobe After Effects, and several 2 TB G-tech raid drives.  I can shoot a wide variety of subjects including on the fly interviews.  You can fake a high end production with this gear.

19

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Canon HV40 is a good way to go to get into HD.  Tape based which saves money on gigs and gigs of storage.  I feel HDV is better than AVCHD especially the Canons.   You have to factor in prices for SD/ Compact flash/ P2 cards as well as hard drive space.  Tape sits on the shelf and doesn't take up space on your drives unless you are working on something.  FCP express is an option to keep your costs down but FCP studio is a great program.  MAC over PC all day long.  Canon 7D if you really want to get exceptional picture quality with a range of lenses for various types of shooting.  Rode shotgun mic is a good one for the price.  Works well as an unbalanced shotgun.  Knowing what types of mics work for what you are shoothing is important.  Balanced audio is obviously better but you can get away without it if you are smart ie. no long cable runs near power cords for lights etc..  I have been shooting and editing for 20 years and it is nice to work with top of the line pro equipment but you can do extraordinary work with prosumer gear.  I had all my gear ripped out of my truck coming back from the San Felipe SCORE race last year.  My new setup is:  Canon 7D, Canon HV40, GoPro HD, Rode Shotgun, MacBook Pro hooked up to a 50" Sony LCD, FCP and Adobe After Effects, and several 2 TB G-tech raid drives.  I can shoot a wide variety of subjects including on the fly interviews.  You can fake a high end production with this gear.

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Hey guys I appreciate all the great information.  Keep it coming.  Booth...I have been intrigued with the HV40.  I know some professional folk that own a few of them and use them for B roll or interviews. I saw image comparison of an Hv40 and XAH 1 and I thought the Hv40 had a better image.  So far, I have enjoyed the T2i. I even think the little Zi8 in perfect light isn't awful.  Is it true that many of the award winning docs are still shot on SD?  That would seem strange will all the HD stuff out there.