Making Memories

by John Doan
November 17, 2005

This month's technology brief is going to be a departure from the normal as I write about a project that I currently have in the pipeline. My wife and I recently gathered up all of the videotapes that we have recorded of our daughter over the past two years. If you are like most parents, you have tons of 10-15 minute videos of your little one(s) swinging, feeding ducks, eating spaghetti or any other cute little thing you didn't want to ever forget. The sad truth, however, is that that footage usually stays on the tape until someday down the road when you want to tape a special occasion and you find yourself recording over that footage. With a small investment, you can turn your video shorts into a wonderful DVD that you can share with family and friends or even give as gifts. Here is a list of what you need:

Camcorder -
Whatever format you prefer is fine here, mini DV, mini DVD, 8mm, VHS, etc. However, you should look for a 3CCD camera, which is sometimes referred to as prosumer. The 3 CCD refers to "Charge Coupled Device." The mega-pixels your digital camera references is the number of pixels in the CCD. Typically digital cameras use a single CCD so a given pixel must be one of the three primary shades, red, green or blue. With a 3CCD sensor, your camcorder dedicates a pixel to each of the primary colors. So essentially a 400,000 pixel 3CCD camcorder records with the same resolution as a 1.2 mega-pixel digital camera. Most consumer camcorders, nowadays, combine the capability of shooting stills with the ability to shoot video. Same is true with digital cameras shooting video. However, if you want high quality video get a good camcorder and vice versa.

Be sure that your camcorder offers digital output. This is known as Firewire, but sometimes referred to as 1394 or iLink depending on the manufacturer of your camcorder. If your camcorder offers USB connectivity, that is not true digital output, but it works fine for what we are doing here. If your current camcorder doesn't offer digital output, you can still capture your footage using an analog converter that is available with most editing software.

Camcorders record to a digital or analog format depending on the kind of camera. VHS, 8mm, S-VHS and VHS-C are the more popular analog recording formats. Mini-DV, digital 8, and mini-DVD formats record to a digital file. File formats of digital video are typically AVI or MPEG. AVI is raw video footage while MPEG is compressed video.

Video Editing Software (Non-Linear Editor, NLE) -
This is the program that brings all of your video together. Examples of video editing software include Pinnacle's (Avid) Studio, Ulead VideoStudio, Adobe Premiere Elements to name a few. Mac users have iMovie included with their OS. These are considered consumer grade editors and range in price from $50-100. Depending on what type of output your camcorder provides, you may need to add a video capture card (Analog) or a Firewire card (digital) in order to "import" video from your camcorder. Pinnacle offers packages that include capture cards eliminating the guesswork of whether or not the card and the NLE software is compatible.

DVD Burner -
If your computer doesn't offer a DVD burner, you are living in the 90's! Today's burners are reliable, cheap and available as an internal or external unit. Popular recording formats include DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM and DVD+R Dual Layer. The first two allow for up to 4.7GB of recordable space or approximately 2 hours of video. DVD-RW and DVD+RW are re-writeable media, however they are not typically compatible with standalone DVD players. DVD-RAM offers up to 9.4GB of storage but are housed in cases and need to be removed to play in a standalone player. They hold 4.7GB of storage per side, so recording more than that requires you to turn the disc over if outside of a DVD RAM drive. DVD+R Dual Layer is the latest offering and gives up to 9.4GB of storage on a single sided disc which is typically compatible with standalone players.

Hard Drive Space -
A single 60 minute mini-DV recorded at LP will consume approximately 15 GB if you capture at full quality. The hard drive you capture to should be different than the hard drive containing your operating system and NLE.

So enough about the technology, let's get into what it takes to make a DVD. Using your NLE, you want to capture or digitize all of the footage you have. If you are limited by hard drive space, you may want to do what is called "Storyboarding" prior to capturing. For example, I video spread across a several tapes we filmed on our vacation to the beach. By capturing those 5-10 minutes of footage I was able to create a 40 minute video using the minimum amount of hard drive space, as opposed to capturing all of the footage on each tape, I would have needed at least 50GB of free drive space. If you have several 10-15 minute sequences that span a month or a season, you may want to capture all of those together and call it "May 2005" or "Spring 2005." The point here isn't what you call the video, but rather how would you find the video you wanted years down the road. So what am I telling you that you didn't know already? Hopefully nothing! That is what is so great about making videos, it is easy as pie. However, making good videos takes practice, patience, and more practice and patience. Doesn't hurt to have an artistic eye either! Here are some tips to jazz up your videos, making it something friends and family want to watch.

1) Transitions -
These are the cross fades and special effects (i.e. page turns, explosions, etc) that make going from one scene to the next not as abrupt. Used correctly, they add to the dramatics of a video piece. Used incorrectly, they become a focal point and turn a classy movie into a special effects catastrophe. The thing to remember in using transitions is "target audience." If you are making a movie of your child at the beach, it neat to have an ocean wave come up and "Wash" away one scene to the next from time to time. Just don't over do it. If you are making a movie of your child's baptism, fancy effects might not portray the right message.

2) Special Effects -
These add color, make a clip look like old film, speed up or slow down a clip, etc. These effects can help you synchronize a clip to music by speeding up or slowing down the clip. They also help correct a poor lighting situation. One of the tricks of the trade is to convert poor lighting situations to black and white footage. This helps bring out additional detail while removing the poor color renderings.

3) Background music -
Try adding your favorite song to the background of a particular video. Remember that sound is at least half of the video experience. Even a slideshow played to music makes it more interesting than just a slideshow alone. If you are piecing together several 10-15 minute videos, try making a highlight video turning down the original volume or taking it out all together.

4) Mix in pictures -
Still frame photos are great for DVD's too. Baby pictures mixed in with baby's first steps not only add to the video, they make it more sentimental. If you want to add additional dramatics, use pan and zoom features (if you NLE offers it) to add slight motion to still photos.

5) Create Chapters -
Set your video up so that you can browse between different chapters without constant fast forwarding or rewinding. That is what DVD is all about. Remember how annoying it was to find a song in your first car because the tape player didn't have the song search function? Why would you want to go back to that with your video?

6) Have fun and practice -
Your first videos aren't going to win any Oscars or Emmys so use them as learning experiences. Try all the effects and transitions so you see what they look like on your home theatre. Take what you like to your next video and leave out what you find overdone or unfitting. Also just because your NLE doesn't have an effect called "Simulate Snapshot" doesn't mean you can't create one. By capturing a screen shot, reduce the length of that frame to 1 frame; use the color editor to increase brightness until only outlines of the screen shot remain. This frame will represent the "flash" of a camera. Place a copy of that same screenshot, untouched, next "flash" shot. Finally add a "camera click" as a background sound effect and voila, you have a still shot effect.

This topic could go on and on so I will wrap up so you have a chance to play on your own. As Hollywood continues to create new effects, they eventually filter down to even the consumer products. It was only within the last 5-6 years that an affordable NLE came to market for consumers and today's $50-100 products are better than what professionals paid $1000's for then.

Check out these links for more information on the products I mentioned here.

www.pinnaclesys.com

www.ulead.com

www.adobe.com