Capturing from the HV30

Having spent my half hour on Yonge shooting with the brand-new HV30, it was time to capture. I’m using Final Cut Studio 1, so Final Cut itself is version 5.0.4 on my 1.6 GHz G5 tower. I connected the HV30 to the G5 via the Firewire 400 port on the front panel, with my capture drive plugged into the Firewire-800 port to keep the two devices on separate busses.
Setting the in and out points for batch capturing is the same as regular DV, but doing the batch capture itself seems to run into timecode errors on a regular basis. I seemed to hit an error every other or every 3rd capture, but clicking on OK sent FCP back to work and it would capture everything okay during the 2nd or 3rd attempt. The capture window for HDV is different than the one for regular DV, and you don’t get the image mirrored in FCP as you capture. Not a big deal as I normally watch the camcorder’s flip-screen during capture.
Capturing the first shot, the 24p, took no more time than usual, once I’d gone through the first timecode error message. Putting the clip on the timeline prompted a red render line across the top of that window, so I started to render. FCP said it would take 9 minutes to render the 30-second 24p clip, but I think it was closer to 4 minutes. Exporting said clip to QuickTime (without conversion) took seconds—it must spit out the render file pretty much as is. Here’s the 24p footage after Youtube got its hands on it:

I exited FCP and set up a new project in order to capture the same clip using Apple’s intermediate HDV codec. The 30 second 24p intermediate clip didn’t require rendering, and the export prompted a warning of 11 minutes, which was probably less than 2 minutes in total. Here’s what the lower-res 24p footage looks like:

Exiting FCP again, I set up a 30p project file. As with 24p, FCP indicated rendering was needed. The 30-second 30p clip generated a 2-minute estimate but actually took about a minute and a half to render, so it’s clearly less complicated for FCP compared to the 24p clips. I’m no engineer, but I’m guessing that it’s easier to pull the 30p data off the 60i tape feed from the camcorder. Exporting the 30p clip took a few seconds. And here’s the clip:

The next setting was the plain-Jane HDV, the 1080i format. Capture wasn’t a problem, and putting the clip into the timeline prompted the red render line. FCP initially reported 12 minutes to render, but the counter fluttered between 10, 11, and 12 minutes in the first 30 seconds or so. In actual time, the rendering took about 10 and a half minutes, so for 1080i, FCP guessed fairly accurately. Again, the export to QuickTime took 4-5 seconds, and this is what it looks like:

Capturing a clip shot in regular 60i standard-def DV was problematic. The easy setup choice for DV didn’t work—I kept getting timecode errors. I went in and played with the manual settings (mostly by selecting something else and then going back to the proper setting), and it started to capture. I got the audio rate mismatch error message when it was done, so I’ll have to go back and try to match what is undoubtedly not a 48k sample rate on the camcorder. Strangely, I had to render the clip once I plopped it into the timeline—clearly it’s not pure DV or I’ve missed a setting somewhere (the clip appeared fine in the viewer, but was a tiny square in the middle of the Canvas view before and after rendering). I went back to the manual the next day and realized I had left the HV30’s export setting at HDV instead of switching to standard-def DV—I’ll do a another test with the other setting to see how it turns out. Exporting this first attempt to QuickTime took just a few seconds. Here’s what it looks like (don’t squint too hard):

Finally, I set up a FCP project to compare the 24p and the 24p Apple Intermediate codecs. FCP didn’t seem to like me mixing the two on the same timeline as the image sizes changed when I dropped the 2nd type into the timeline. I set up some graphics and some split-screen action to compare. Rendering took about 2 minutes, and the export took less than 5 seconds (clearly, those render files are going straight into the QuickTime files). Here’s the comparison as it appeared:

This clip took very little time for Compressor to convert to the Youtube settings as detailed at Ken Stone’s site (here’s the article that I followed to set up Youtube 4:3 and widescreen presets) compared to DV clips (it takes at least 3 hrs to render a 2-minute DV clip, so the two formats are clearly quite different). The other HDV clips took much less time than past DV clips I’ve converted using these settings, too.
The Youtube website itself took longer to upload those clips, so any speed gains in Compressor seemed offset by slowdowns with YouTube. I had assumed that HD footage would take longer for both steps, so it’s a fair tradeoff.
Next time, I hope to have my 2nd field trip tests and results, this time to explore the different manual and preset options, and to try setting the export settings to DV for the old-school shots.

Web Video

Over the last few weeks, Mullet and I have been spending a lot of time discussing web video, and I realized haven’t written about it here very much.

When I started buying video gear seven years ago, the 3 major players in web video were QuickTime, Real Player, and Windows Media Player. All three played a range of codecs, but there weren’t easy ways of moving between the three formats. Being a Mac user, I used QuickTime by default, but I did have the other two players on my computer.

The players were all clunky and finicky. It wasn’t uncommon to see reduced frame-rates, lowered resolution, and even minimal action to make things look better.

Back then, I didn’t have a website or even an internet connection. The main means of delivering video was by running the signal from my capture card to my VCR. VHS was king—everyone, amateur or professional, used tape.

When I upgraded and got my G4, I suddenly had a DVD-R burner, and that led me to supplement Final Cut Pro with DVD Studio Pro (a couple months later, the Final Cut Studio bundle came out at a lower price than what it cost me to buy FCP and DVD-SP separately—thanks, Apple!).

Thus equipped, in 2003 I made history at the late, great Second Ciné video show by being the first to submit a video on DVD. But it was still a VHS world, and I backed up that DVD by exporting my clips to my VCR.

When I traded in my G4 for my G5, the new PCI expansion slot arrangement rendered my capture card useless, so I dropped the VHS option completely. By then, DVD burners were cheap enough that the indie world had shifted away from VHS.

DVD seemed to be the new king, unbeatable with its portability and flexibility. You could play it on your TV with a regular DVD player, or you could put it in a DVD-equipped computer. DVD sprouted in rental stores and retailers, offering special features and all the things impossible on VHS (subtitles and audio tracks in different languages, commentary tracks, alternate endings, etc, etc). The disks didn’t wear out like all tape-based technologies do—with care and handling, you would see the same image quality on the 1000th play as you would on the first play.

For an indie producer, you could easily crank out a DVD (maybe not the DVD-9 dual-layer format, but something that worked in most players and nearly all computers) that looked and played the same as the big boys’ disks.

I bought the 3rd edition of Chris Gore’s excellent film festival book in 2005, and we started to base our video efforts on the advice given. Film festivals were still king, and most of the ones that encouraged indie contributions readily accepted all the digital formats.

I bought Gore’s follow-up book on producing indie DVDs and used it as the main guide for our first appearance at the San Diego Comicon in 2006.

But it was at San Diego that I saw the future, and its name was not DVD but web video.

The big 3 players were still in the game, but Apple had introduced a new wrinkle—the iPod and iTunes. With incredible ease, you could download podcasts and listen to them on your Mac or iPod. The arrival of video-capable iPods sparked video podcasting. Flash video had arrived in force, with the help of some serious web video sites like YouTube. The big three media players changed membership, with Real player becoming a distant fourth. In fact, by 2006, I didn’t even have Real installed on my G5 as nobody was putting out video that QuickTime or WMP wouldn’t handle.

Gore and Mark Bell from Film Threat hosted a couple of panels at the con’s film festival (where my costumed appearance got some nasty looks from the black-clad filmistas—clearly a line is drawn in some people’s minds between the film fest and the convention itself!), and I attended a couple of them.

In one panel, Gore and Bell introduced the two guys behind Ask a Ninja as well as a couple of people from Hope is Emo, two of the most popular podcasts. I was still sans-internet at home, so I wasn’t aware of how big podcasting and web video had become. More people were watching these online videos than hundreds of film festivals put together.

But the indie aspect of these productions—Ninja was shot in the star’s apartment (painted up for green-screen production)—made it clear that you didn’t need a lot of money, just enough technology and, of course, a good idea well executed, to build an audience.

DVD suddenly looked less essential, just like VHS. Apple introduced its TV interface, and with flatscreen TVs and computer monitors becoming essentially the same, the average consumer realized they didn’t need a disk or tape to watch movies, TV shows, and indie video. The messy blue laser fight didn’t help, with the traditional market split into 3 different camps—DVD loyalists, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD. Even with HD-DVD losing the fight, most people I know aren’t rushing into the blue laser world. After seeing CDs largely replaced by web music, most people are expecting the same of video.

So… in the 9 years I have been dabbling with indie video, I have seen it change completely. A physical product is no longer the primary goal since you can find a larger audience thorugh the magic of internet pixels.

Mullet and I are prepping our old feature, Babysitters, for web in small chapters. Our long-in-development DVD project is now a web video project with a DVD version also available. We’ll follow the footsteps of successful web video people like Rob Schrab or the guys behind Chad Vader and put the videos online and make a full-quality DVD available for sale.

More on web video to come. After all, it’s Tuesday. There’ll probably be some new development on Wednesday….

Earth Hour, YouTube, and Web 2.0

We had a big media blitz for Earth Hour here in Canada this year, and I decided to do my part and shut off all lights and appliances for an hour on March 29th. This I did.

But I did run one electrical device: my camcorder. I put my trusty ol’ Canon Ultura on my tripod and parked it in front of my balcony window to capture the beginning and end of Earth Hour. I used my Canon wide-angle adaptor (similar to this but not the same model) on the Ultura to make sure I got as much of the landscape as possible, so the balcony railing and the ceiling above it are both curved—but I caught a much wider angle than I would have otherwise.

I captured it the next morning to my hard drive, used Final Cut to edit it, and sent it through Compressor to prepare it for YouTube. I sped the footage up to 1000%, so each minute of video became 1.7982 seconds. I must admit I was impressed with Final Cut’s abilities to do so—with frame blending, it became seamless. Watching the headlights of cars showed how smooth Final Cut can be.

Here’s the video:



You’ll see someone slide the screen door open and then the balcony door several times—if I do this again, I’m putting a moratorium on going out on the balcony until after the camera’s shut off!

After I’d rendered and exported the video to QuickTime, I used a Compressor preset I’d obtained from Ken Stone’s website. The tutorial you’ll find there (by Brian Gary) is quite thorough, and I’ve been really impressed with the quality after YouTube finishes rendering. One thing to remember—you can ignore title-safe and action-safe as your entire video ends up on YouTube.

As I was waiting for Compressor to finish rendering, I wondered what the world in front of my balcony looked like on video on any other night—would it be a noticeable difference? So 24 hours after Earth Hour, I shot more video, with the camcorder in approximately the same spot.

I captured the subsequent night footage, sped it up and exported it to QuickTime as before. Then I brought both clips into Motion, where I planted them side-by-side with a background and text to try to make things clearer. I considered doing a wipe back and forth between the two clips, but side-by-side made the most sense for quick ‘n’ dirty video. I sent it through Compressor and then uploaded it.



As of tonight (April 1), the first video has 137 views and the second has 98. Some people have added comments, the “honors” link shows that the videos were in the top videos for their category, and I feel I’ve made a small contribution to the Web 2.0 phenomenon. Interestingly, the first video I put up, Hotdog, has gone from my 3 test viewings to 22 views since the other videos first appeared. I have no idea how anyone wathcing environmental videos would respond to Hotdog’s somewhat scatological bent….

I have had some time to think about the impact of these videos given the comments people have made—there was a 2-person mini-debate about global warming in the 2nd one—and I think I should have made clearer that I was shooting a great swath of residential space, where streetlights from a few major roads as well as row upon row of residential streets, dominate the landscape. The busiest stretch of highway in North American, the 401, crosses just below the horizon as well, so a lot of those lights were not part of Earth Hour. If I’d been able to shoot the skyline from my tiny bathroom window, I would have cpatured the CN Tower and the bank towers downtown going dark, as well as parts of Riverdale and the Beaches. So, in hindsight, I would have put in captions or title cards to put things in context—I didn’t intend the comparison video to present Earth Hour in a negative light (no pun intended).

If I’m still in this apartment a year from now, I’m definitely repeating the experiment and I’ll post all 4 videos for comparison.