Looking for pointers - 1st HD wedding shoot

[Troy Davis]

hello,

I have been shooting all of my weddings in SD so far and finally decided to shoot an outdoor wedding in HD. I will be using a Sony fx7, XH A1 canon, and HV20 for a 3rd back cam. I will also be shooting to sony SD tapes. Just looking for any pointers that may help in my first HD shoot ?

Thanks,
Troy

[Noa Put]

You already have experience shooting weddings, why do you think shooting in "HD" will make any difference? I convert all my hd footage, no matter what format/codec it is, to Canopus HQ AVI files and edit those as easily as back in the SD days. (and that on a 3 year old pc)

edit: well, just thought about the framedrops that might be a concern since they cause much bigger problems then a framedrop when filming in SD. To prevent just that you should use more expensive tapes or like I do, use an external recorder like the Sony hvr-dr60 and film simultaneously to cassette and ext drive. I use cheap sony premium cassettes now without any issue, but ofcourse any drop-out that might occur is less problem since I use tape only as back up and ext drive as main recording medium. (I never import tape, just when I need to) Helps a lot in securing your footage. But since you use several camera's you are minimizing dropout problems as well as you can switch to another camera if necessary.

[Dave Partington]

The biggest issue outdoors is usually audio. Make sure you have good (and close) audio capture that is shielded from the wind!

Also, plan on wet weather, then if it's fine it's a bonus!

[Chris Harding]

Hi Troy

Shooting styles will be exactly the same of course but although you say it's your "first HD shoot", are you planning to deliver the final product on BluRay???

When I replaced my cams about 18 months ago I couldn't find an SD camera so I went to HD...like Noa I simply transcode back to AVI and edit my weddings as if they were SD and they are outputted onto DVD. Although 99% of my brides own a HD TV I have yet to come across one that actually has a BD player!!

You can. of course, render direct from your HDV files to SD but personally I have found the resolution difference between HDV to SD and AVI to DVD is so small that it's hadly worth it with the much longer rendering times!!!

Chris

[Philip Howells]

Troy

I think Noa's put his finger on the only matter of concern, dropouts. You'll find as many different recommendations as there are readers when it comes to stock; some swear by the most expensive HD tapes, others stick with what they've always used. With that in mind, and not having any technical expertise to fall back on, we took the advice of a BBC engineer at a London trade show which was to buy decent quality Panasonic DV tapes (which we bought for about UKL1.50 each in 50's). Their advice was that any tests they'd done were inconclusive except that the best advice was not to change brands but to stick with your chosen one so that lubricants didn't get mixed.

In the long term I'd encourage you to move to tapeless recording as soon as you can afford to do it. We took the advice of a Sony engineer and went with the MRC1-Ks. We did one job with tape as backup and then dumped the tape almost completely.

The exception was to keep a cassette in the machine so that if an event overruns the card capacity we can simply press record and the tape starts. There is the usual loss of sync as the tape starts but that's a small loss. In the long term we're switching to EX1Rs with S+S cards which can be hot-swapped.

Finally in terms of workflow we record and edit in HD then output a DVD-compliant MPEG stream using a modified codec in Avid but also archive an uncompressed HD file as well. We recently upgraded to a beefy computer which, with Avid Liquid's background rendering, means we rarely have to consider rendering time.

Hope this helps but remember it's just one opinion.

[Troy Davis]

Thanks to everyone. So if I understand you all correctly, I can shoot to my Sony mini dv tapes as if I were shooting in SD. I would then load the video from the cam to my NLE (Sony Vegas 8) as a HD format and then render as MPEG format? Anyone know what a good codec is to achieve the best quality for online HD viewing in Vegas? If not I can always check the Vegas forum.

[Jordan Brindle]

Are you putting it on blu-ray? If not, be prepared for the hell that is getting good looking 'HD' footage onto DVD.

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/what-hap...d-quality.html

[Troy Davis]

No. The HD recording for this particular event will simply be used to display HD online (i.e. Vimeo or Youtube).

[Chris Harding]

Hi Troy

Just import into the timeline and render to Sony AVC MP4 and use the 1280x720 preset and then upload the MP4 file to Vimeo or YouTube...easy as that!!

Once to get to where you want footage back to DVD you will jump thru hoops as Jonathon has already said. I personally transcode my HD footage back to SD and then go the SD route. You don't need any special intermediate codecs to create MP4 files for online clips but depending on your decided workflow you might need one for HD to DVD.

Chris

[Troy Davis]

@ Chris

I see the Sony AVC MP4 but knot the 1280x720 preset. I do see 1440 x 1080 and 1920 x 1080. Btw, I'm using Vegas Pro 8. Do I have to make this a custom setting?

Troy

[Philip Howells]

It seems to me that there are two elements to the opinions Troy seeks; firstly is whether there's any point in shooting/editing at a higher quality level than you want to deliver and secondly how it's best done.

I have two takes on the first element - one is an unscientific one which is that the higher quality you work with the higher quality your eventual product is likely to be and more persuasively, if you're making a product with a long future life it's simply good sense to record and edit HD.

The second element is simply NLE dependent. I happen to use Avid Liquid which has a decent and simple path from HDV timeline to DVD compliant MPEG stream - which, with small adjustments and considerable processing by TMPGEnc, produces the best quality DVDs I've ever seen even if I do say so myself.

[Mike Hammond]

Just a thought....Does the OP need to worry about lighting more so with HD shooting as opposed to SD shooting? I myself have only ever filmed weddings in HD so I wouldn't know the difference (if there is one), but I could swear I've read that HD requires more light to get an equally lit picture.

[Roger Van Duyn]

Like Phillip, I too use Avid Liquid, and there is NO hell in going from HDV to DVD. It works great. So well, in fact, that although I took advantage of the Avid Media Composer upgrade offer, I'm still using Liquid because it is SO EASY for me to shoot in HDV and output to DVD. It saves hours and hours of work and frustration.

And it's just as easy in Liquid to export a WMV 720P file that uploads directly to Vimeo or YouTube with no re-encoding on their end. Then you can embed video from either to another web site. It's been working for me for several years. Of course, it's pretty hard to buy Liquid anymore, but the very inexpensive Pinnacle Studio is built on the Liquid engine and it can export nearly the same way. Time is money when you are in business, so saving time is profitable.

Of course, your mileage may vary.

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Roger Van Duyn

And it's just as easy in Liquid to export a WMV 720P file that uploads directly to Vimeo or YouTube with no re-encoding on their end.

You are mistaken if you think that your WMV files are untouched. Both Vimeo & YouTube re-encode all uploaded video files to H.264 compliant MPEG4.

[Gerald Webb]

Dont know how true this is, but I read online that if you render to f4v 640x360 it will go straight through without re encoding. I tried a few and that initial period where your vid looks like rubbish b4 it gets better didnt seem to be there.