Hello all!

Just a rookie from Sunnyvale, CA (south SF Bay) greeting you all! :)

I'm happy to have found this forum. :)

Welcom Ted,

What do yo shoot?

Garrett

Hi Garrett,

Well, I'm a school teacher, so I've videotaped my students and that's always good for a few laughs. :)

I've gotten into paper crafting, so I'd like to do some tutorials.

Nothing really fancy or in-depth. :)

How about you?

Hi Ted,

welcome to the board from San Jose (Campbell).

Axel

Ah, the pretty part of San Jose = Campbell. ;)

Thanks for the welcome, Axel.

Enjoying our hot weather?

I'm sweating the hell out here :-) but in around an hour I will get out and make some test shots with my new video tripod. It's a Manfrotto 701RC2 HDV head. I will get some shots where I live and will get some stuff for my San Jose Edition :-)

Axel

Oh me too! It's almost 9 PM and my AC is still kicking on! Crazy!

What camera are you using?

(And do you know of any local classes, etc. where a person can learn this stuff?? LOL)

I'm running a HV20 on the tripod, looks better than the HV10 on it :-) but I love both. The picture quality is amazing and so I bought both. The HV10 is around a year old now. I have used that one together with a Sony TRV240 for my last two weeks road trip from Denver to the Bay Area. Since the outcome was SD DVD for friends and familiy it does not matter that I mixed HDV and SD. Now I have two HD cams and I'm ready for a HDTV but this has still time.
This year I make a road trip from Bozeman, MT through a couple of National Parks back to San Jose. Just three weeks and I'm off again, yes......

What are you doing with your cam besides docus for the kids?

Hello Ted and Alex,

I'm a little further north than both of you but it was still pretty hot up here.

I shoot just about anything I can. Any excuse to take the cameras out is good enough for me. I do this as a hobby but also do some paying gigs so I can finance my "addiction". Most of the stuff I get paid for are live stage shows. School plays, dance recitals, musical festivals. I either produce and sell the DVD's myself or on occation do some freelance camera work.

Right now I'm working on one music festival an one dance recital that I'm a little late on delivery so naturally I'm on the message boards. ha ha.

Ted for your paper crafting I just talked to another videographer and he told me about a new product that Adobe has that allows you to basically take a Powerpoint presentation on one side of the screen and have a video on the other. They sink up and is totally web based. He uses it for what he does which is mostly medical lectures. That could be a cool idae for instructional material.

Just be warned, this video stuff is pretty addictive. Next thing you know you'll be buying all kinds microphones, shoulder mounts, and field recorders; and you're wish list will still be 10 items deep. Alex, I hear you on the tripod. I'm trying to work my way up now. I'm drooling over a Sachtler DV6-SB. I have a Miller DS10 and a Cartoni Action Pro now that I'm trying to sell so I can get a new one. So if you know of anyone who wants a nice fluid head tripod let me know.

Good to meet both of you.

Garrett

Just be warned, this video stuff is pretty addictive. Next thing you know you'll be buying all kinds microphones, shoulder mounts, and field recorders; and you're wish list will still be 10 items deep. Alex, I hear you on the tripod. I'm trying to work my way up now. I'm drooling over a Sachtler DV6-SB. I have a Miller DS10 and a Cartoni Action Pro now that I'm trying to sell so I can get a new one. So if you know of anyone who wants a nice fluid head tripod let me know.

Good to meet both of you.

Garrett

I hear you!!!! I started out with just a digital point and shoot camera from HP, followed by the Sony D8 cam, than a Canon A80 and now.... HV10, HV20, both with wide angle lens from Canon, additional filter when the lenses are not used, like polarizer. Zoom H2 for extra sound events like railroad shots, which was my original intention.
The optional equipment is getting bigger and bigger but since I'm using it during hikes and travels I need it to be light and it isn't any more :-( I have to stop to buy things......

Maybe we can meet for a beer in the next weeks? Like small local grouping?

Hi Garrett,

Yes, I hear Novato gets plenty hot! Are you north of Frisco?

Talk about addictive:

I can't decide between an HV30 or an HF10...

I got to swap out my broken HV20 at Best Buy and since I couldn't decide, I swapped out my HV20 for the HV30 (no cost to me) and purchased the HF10!

But

I'm a Silver Premiere Rewards Zone member (tells you how much I spend there!) and this means that I can play with the HF10 and NOT have the normal restocking fee other customers have (15% of $1,000 = $150 that I save!)... so that's pretty cool.

So this gives me about 14 days to play with the HF10 and see if I'll like it.

I'm not a beer person (don't like the taste personally), but I can grab a soda or something while you guys grab beer.

Or Starbucks?

I wouldn't mind having a local support group because I am DEFINITELY the newbie of this group! :)

And being a teacher, I have most of my days free until mid-August.

I'm afraid the HF10 is AVCHD/H.264 codec?! I have pretty bad experience with a H.264 codec from a Samsung. I got test material and load it on my machine for editing with Vegas 8 and it was not funny to see how my C2D at 3.6GHz was vreeping around with 2 to 10 frames per second in preview. Since than, something more than HDV is dead for me as long as Intel is not bringing an Starship Enterprise computer core :-)
Editing HDV needs already a lot of power but this is helarious. I hope you have good machine sitting at home.
Even if the HV30 is the "older" model I would prefer it.

I'm also not the beer person, since I have to drive so let's get a coke :-)


Axel

Ted,

I'd have to agree with Axel on getting the HV30 over the HF10. Two reasons from my perspective. The first being the the AVCHD codec for recording isn't as good as HDV is at this point. Many people will say that HDV with its mpeg-2 compression isn't as good a d AVC and will point to Blu-Ray. It is true that AVC blu-ray is better then mpeg-2 blu-ray but that is because they have put extensive prossessing into the compression and are able to get a stellar looking end project. On the capture and live encoding end the hardware required to do that good of a job just doesn't exist in a package that would fit into a camcorder.

Also, for me, I'm not a big fan of only having flash or HD based captures. I am looking at Flash or HD based capture but I would have to also have tape or other physical media as a backup.

As far as NLE I find both take a pretty decent machine. I have played with AVCHD files and they are slower and there aren't as many NLE programs that will take them. I just finished building a new machine off of the Q9450 Quad Core and I'd have to say something at least close to that would be the minimum I'd use for editing HD footage.

Yes, Novato is north of SF by about 20 miles. San Jose and Sunnyvale is a bit of haul for me but I do have relative down your guys way. I'm not much of a beer drinker, sometimes wine, and with the 20x zoom on my A1 I've been told to stay off the caffeine to avoid shaky video.. :).

Ugh...now you guys have me even more confused! LOL!

I was pretty much convinced to go with AVCHD (HF10) only because it's the wave of the future, and I LOVE the fact that it's tapeless. :(

I guess I'll continue to get views on both sides of the camp.

I want to go back to being six, when other people made decisions for me! Haha! :)

Thanks for the input, guys.

AVC is the future but the computer manufacturer need to supply the right computing power before you can use it and the software guys need to optimize the steps in encoding it in the cam in a way that you can work with it like you can work with HDV or DV. In 2000 where I bought my first cam it was a similar situation. My computer was a AMD with maybe 400MHz and DV was creeping but it was never like today with the AVC stuff that I had and my machine is pretty nice. I don't know if a quad is the solution since the quads are having a lower frequency and I thnik what you need for AVC is frequency speed to get a good flow in the preview. I'm running my E6850 at 3.6GHz and the preview was extremly slow. Even in a player it was not that easy to watch.
Garrett: Are you trying to overclock your system? Would be nice to hear how it works out.

Axel

Hey there, Axel.

Well, I decided to go with the HV30 and I'm sure I'll be happy with it.

In fact, I purchased this

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/552441-REG/Master_Works_JSGCHV30_DVD_Jumpstart_Guide_for.html

So now I'm committed to it! ;)

If you guys ever plan on grabbing a soda (or tea or whatever) somewhere let me know...and if I'm free, I may just show up. :) I'd love to learn from you guys...since I'm sure you both know so much more than I do! :)

Hi Axel,

Here's my latest build:

Intel Q9450
ABit IP35 Pro MOBO
4 gig crucial ram DDR2 4-4-4-12
2 oem 750 GB 32mb buffer drives (run in Raid 0)
1 retail 500 GB WD Drive (Program drive)
BFG 9800 GX2 Video Card
Creative Extreme Fatal1ty Sound Card
Corsair 750W PS
Lite-on SATA DVD R/W
Rocketfish Full tower server case (actualy made by Lian-Li for Best Buy, no longer available, it was a $300 case on close out for $79)


I had it running up at 3.4Ghz with a slight bump in voltage. It was rock solid but since this is my editing machine I wanted to try to keep the heat and voltage down, so I've got it running at 3.2Ghz and no problems. I've got three screens connected (22", 19", and a 19" LCD HDTV throught he HDMI out). I can preview at full frame rates, full screen Best quality on my 19" LCD TV with Vegas 8 Pro (as long as I don't have more than 1 FX on the video track) I usually just do preview Auto since that gives me full frame rates even with several FX's on the track.

you're right about the AVC codec. I think the problem is it's still not very well developed as far as NLE's go. There aren't that many companies that can handle it. One thing that would probably help is to convert it into the Cineform Codec. I use it for my HDV editing and it really helps not only in speed but it also holds up much better to multigenerations of color correction and edits.

Ted, congrats on the purchase. I'm sure you won't be dissapointed. Since you already had the HV20 you probably know a lot of the ins and outs fo the camera. I'm not sure when I'd be availabel to get down there an meet but if I could figure it out I'd be up for it.

you're right about the AVC codec. I think the problem is it's still not very well developed as far as NLE's go. There aren't that many companies that can handle it. One thing that would probably help is to convert it into the Cineform Codec. I use it for my HDV editing and it really helps not only in speed but it also holds up much better to multigenerations of color correction and edits.



Hi Garrett,

Can you explain the Cineform codec more? Is it a software or something that allows a person to convert the AVCHD into a different format?

What school are you teaching at? I grew up in Sunnyvale and am planning on going to a 15 year reunion in October at Fremont High School. I now live in Las Vegas (8 years ago it was impossible to for a first time home buyer to even think about buying a house)

Brett, you're just a kid then at 33. :)

I teach near Cupe Middle School so my kids feed to Homestead (probably your rivals). :)

Hi Ted,

CineForm is a company that makes a software that converts your raw footage into an intermediate codec (or multimedia file format) that you then use in non linear editing programs and then render out to your final format (AVCHD, MPEG-2, AVI, etc.). The main advantage is that it is very close to an uncompressed format so each it handles the various filters and effects that you may apply during your editing much better than either an AVC or HDV file. It also encodes the files using more color information so that again helps retain the color during edits.

There's a whole section devoted to CineForm on this forum:

http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=115554

The link is a pretty good start to understanding what it does. One main advantage is that it will speed up your editing process (after encoding) because you end up dealing with uncompressed files. Remember that HDV and AVCHD have to go through a rendering engine just to preview. That is due to the file structure and the fact that they are both are GOP (groups of pictures). In other words each frame that is saved to the disk or tape does not contain complete information to build that frame. It only contains what has changed from one frame to the next. So, for instance, HDV uses a 15 frame GOP. Only every 15th frame contains complete information. So, when you watch an HDV file, your hardware has to look at the group of 15 frames, decide what each frame is suppose to looke like, then output to your monitor. That's why it moves so slow compared to watching an AVI file. The CineForm Codec takes the 15 frames and rebuilds each frame with complete information. The downside is cost (you have another program to buy), and you need more HD space when editing.

Sorry if you already knew a bunch of this but just wanted to try to be clear.

Garrett

Hi Garrett!

No! That was awesome. Thanks for the information... I knew NOTHING about it. :)

I'll take a look at that link so that my head fill with even more information! LOL!

Thanks again. :)

Back when I was there my teacher (Tim Shannon) would "lend" me out to all of the other high schools in the area to help out with their shows, so I knew them all...

So middle schools I went to Sunnyvale Jr. High... I sure do not feel like a kid anymore no longer am I the youngest on gigs... now I am the "if anyone knows Brett will guy..."

Ah, yes...Sunnyvale Jr. high is part of the Sunnyvale district. I'm with the Cupertino District (which feeds into the Fremont District).

At 33, you're a kid to my 41 years. ;)