Videography
 

i know this is a photography section. if its in the wrong section, where should i put it.

I would like to get people's input on video editing and such. Quality of final product like dvd and such. what kind of video camera (not dslr) do you use? editing software? workflow? hdv / avchd? 24/30/60 i/p?

thanks, cookie m.
:p

At school i'm using Canon XH-A1s. 1080I HDV.

I tend to use that camera on 16:9 aspect on 30F or 24F. 60i is just looks strange when pulled in HDV format.

Final Cut Studio + colour/motion/livetype/etc. for everything, ProTools for sound.

^^^ What he said for software. I am completely ignorant about video cameras.

i have fce and want to learn it myself..am i doomed? it seems the learning curve is pretty steep. i hate rendering time coz its so slow (haha)... should i want till the end to render and just make notes on a paper what i want to see then render later on?

fce? final cut express? never used it.

i don't know how you're rendering, but I always render using compressor. hella faster.

and it might help to turn down your render settings if you're not doing a production quality render.

how long are the videos you're rendering and how long is it taking for them to rendeR?

yah express...i don't think my imac will work with fcp or will be very slow at it...my goal is to have a great quality sd dvd using minidv based camcorder...

can you give me some advice on workflow?

I've used too many different cameras to keep track of, but by far my favorite has been Canon's X-series. My first prosumer camera was the XL1s and it was a fantastic machine. Since then I've progressed to smaller, hand-held HD cameras that have predominantly been made by JVC. I find that JVC's recorded footage seems to be slightly better than Canon, though the picture isn't as rich.

For editing, since I own a PC and not a Mac, I use either Avid Media Composer or Adobe Premier for non-linear video editing, Soundbooth for sound, and After Effects for titles and any special FX I wish to add.

Online videos tend to be encoded at 720i with a single pass as I've yet to find an acceptable setting that gives the perfect balance between HD and file size without resorting to FLV files. Offline videos are typically given as high of a quality as I can possibly can without distorting or creating random pixels and artifacts.

By the way, AVCHD is the spawn of Satan... I swear.

yay for h.264
:Puke:

i guess thats why if possible i'd stay with hdv if need be..

wouldn't it makes sense that the hd footage be better that the canon's minidv's footage...3ccds would make it feel richer but i'm still up in the air on which camera to get as well...prosumer or go with the hd and somewhat downgrade the content to sd