I've recently made a short film of an archery event with my A1 and would like to deliver it via DVD to members of the club. As the title states I have a couple of questions for you more experienced types :)

Whats the best way to monitor the colour of my video? In PP2 the colours look nice on my Dell 2407, exporting to quicktime seemed to wash the colour out so I frameserved to Sorenson squeeze and saved DVD compatible mpv which kept the colour as previewed in Premiere. This was then written to DVD using encore.

When I view the footage on my TV or on my mac in the office things looked a lot more saturated, the TV really blows the reds out making everything look way too rich for my liking, the same is true on the mac so maybe my Dell screen needs to be set up. Can this be done?

I can borrow an JVC video monitor from the office, but this has BNC connectors, is 4:3 and likely not HD, could this be used somehow to help me set up the colour?

Finally, I notice of lot of people use well known artists for the audio on sample clips, what's the rule of thumb here, is it generally okay to do this for non profit small time sharing with friends etc, or are there libraries of music that can be licensed for this use?

Many thanks

Paul.

edit: here's a couple of grabs from my video :)

http://www.olikai.com/archery1.jpg
http://www.olikai.com/archery2.jpg

I came across this site which has some free royalty free music. It can't be used for commercial purposed unless you pay for it, but for non-profit stuff it's ok.. Lots of good free sound effects and loops on the site too.

http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/free.html

This isn't going to be terribly scientific but it's somewhere to start and has the benefit of being extremely cheap to do.

Get hold of a (commercial) DVD that looks good (colour wise) played through your player/ telly combo.

Park your Dell next to your telly and feed the same signal to both telly & the 2407 at the same time (it's got so many I/P's this must be possible).

Dive into the Dell's menu settings and set the Dell to as close (colour wise) to your telly as you can get - this may not be that close, as the Dell is designed to look good with Explorer and Word. Switching it from PC/ Mac mode to User Preset is a start.

If your satified they're pretty close - job done!

If not, well, if you've got Dual Head O/P on your video card, I'd connect the telly as second screen and colour balance off that.

If that option isn't available it's not looking too promising.

You COULD, and this is getting esoteric, try this.........

If you've got a nice big colourfull still on your pc and the appropriate software, you COULD print out it's colour histogram.

Copy the still to a cd/ dvd and play it on your dvd/ telly combo. Set up your still cam on a tripod and shoot still (nice long slooow shutter speed) from telly screen.

Load back onto pc and print out it's colour histogram.

Compare histograms and apply appropriate correction to video based on the difference between the two. You should be able to work out a VERY rough approximation and with a bit of trial and error get it pretty close. Once you know you have to ALWAYS reduce 3% red etc etc, there's you work flow.

This is always assuming (big assumption) that YOUR telly is somewhere in the ball park and you aren't colour blind (don't laugh - it happens). I'd try your original finished product on a couple of other telly/ player combo's first before getting too carried away.

I can't see that JVC monitor being any help whatsoever, especially if you're working 16:9 HD and it's 4:3 SD.

Hope this helps.

The rule of thumb for music is if people have to pay to see it, you have to pay to play it. If its just for friends and such it doesn't matter.

Paul, video grab 1 is one of the best that I've seen yet. Awesome photo.

Don

Thanks guys, very useful info once again.

Don, thanks for the comment on the grab, I love that shot too as I did a focus pull to the target just as the archer released :)

I'll try and upload it somewhere so you can have a look.

regards

Paul.

Paul,

Check out www.digitaljuice.com. They're known for high-quality, royalty-free content. In the audio realm, they have their StackTraxx and BackTraxx products. They have some excellent specials every week and, if I remember correctly, they have some of the audio products on sale this weekend.