Hey thanks for the welcome.

The work I do is pretty varied from filming a beauty contest in Ethiopia through to some scientific filming in London. I've worked on lots of corporate stuff as well as some drama. How about yourself?

Good see another British female - there don't seem to be too many of us on this forum!

Tell you what Annie - isn't Premiere Elements 4 amazingly good for the money? I loaded it onto a friend's machine as he wanted to start with something simple and I was very impressed indeed with the simplicity and intuitiveness of the program.

Premiere Elements four is a lot simpler than one and two were - I skipped three and jumped onto four as soon as it came out - that was just after I'd bought the XH A1 and needed something that would cope with HiDef.

I don't find the titles part particularly intuitive to use, but that may be just because I don't have time to use it as much as would like and feel like I'm back to square one each time.

Greetings from the Hants / Sussex border. I'm about half way between Chichester and Portsmouth.

JSW

Its great to see so many people from good old Blighty on here!

Hey Annie, still not that many female camera ops!

Hi Kathy
Did not mean to ignore you. I didn't see your post.
I started doing this two years ago. Was asked to do a 'simple' corporate film that turned out to be quite complex. Bought and learned Avid Liquid (make that 'started to learn) and how to use a camera, do sound, lighting etc too.
Have done a bit more corporate stuff and am currently completing a really fun and interesting commission to make five films about musicians for distribution via the web.
I have a mostly finished film about sailing across the atlantic that I made on spec. May get this released as a cover DVD on a sailing magazine. Some more corporate and specialist TV channel stuff possibly in the pipeline.
I wonder what the other Brits on DV info do?

Funny, I didn't see Kathy's post either - must have been because it was on the next page, and I hadn't noticed a new page had been started!

My video is mainly for myself, but I also provide clips for others to use. Wildlife only. I give a lot of illustrated talks, and I have started using video clips alongside photos for that.

I live in South London.
Using DVX100 indoors, on tripod, for music shows, and HV20 outdoors.

Patrick - you seem to be mixing 4:3 (DVX) and 16:9 (HV20). Or maybe you don't use both cameras on the same shoot.

Tom, you can still do 4:3 SD on the HV20 and 30.

I still do a lot of 4:3 because it's still better for some jobs where 16:9 would end up being letterboxed anyway. I still have a 4:3 telly and most computer monitors are nearer 4:3 than 16:9.

I got the impression my post moved from one page to the next, might just be my imagination though!

Sounds like people are shooting some interesting stuff! Do you guys ever do meet ups or anything?

Not as far as I know but there is no reason why we couldn't except that people are spread all over the place.
Colin Reid called me about a spare time project that he was organising but I've been too busy to participate.
Maybe there are other projects or other ideas?

Tom,
I use the HV20 outside, as it is amazing in good light. Indoors, I still want the extra sensitivity of the DVX100. I did shoot a Gilbert and Sullivan performance using the DVX100 as my main camera, and the HV20 locked down to cover the whole stage. To get maximum light sensitivity the HV20 was shooting 25p, and the DVX100 50i. Colours were more saturated with the DVX, and there was more noise on the HV20. Even with some correction in Vegas, they were not a very good match. However, as the cuts were always between HV20 on wide shot, and DVX100 close up, I think it was not too distracting. It helps that the soundtrack was excellent, using top quality audio equipment in a dual system.
The final DVD was 16:9, letterboxing the DVX100. Vegas upscales really well. In fact, I think I could probably have got away with upscaling the project to 1440 x 1080, but there aren't enough people with blu ray players yet.
Patrick