Entries tagged with how-to - Channel 10

How to: Shoot and Edit a Time-Lapse Video

Tina — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:00:00 GMT

We see it all the time. The passing of the night sky in an episode of "Survivor". The quick steps of pedestrians making their way through a crowded street corner. I've been asked by a few poeple about shooting Time-Lapse video, and just for the record I'm no expert but I can tell you how I shot and edited this video.

First, I wanted to film something that had an ending. It doesn't have to have an ending but I find it more interesting. So I threw some birthday candles in a skinny cow ice cream sandwich. With the knowledge that both the candles and ice cream sandwich would eventually melt and thus, giving me an ending. I mounted my Panasonic DVX100B camera onto a tripod and set up my shot against some tile in my kitchen. You want your shot to be as still as possible so I suggest either using a tri-pod or set your camera on a pile of books or something else flat.

I lit the candles and then recorded the candles and ice cream melting in a normal speed. It took roughly 30 minutes for both of them to melt.

Almost all digital video cameras have the ability to do an interval recording. And this is the most common way of shooting a Time-Lapse because who wants to sit at there camera for two days and watch a flower bloom while switching tapes and batteries. You might record every 20-30 seconds and record up to 2-3 seconds of video each time. I didn't need to do this for this piece because it was so short to begin with.

I then imported the footage into Premiere Pro 2.0 because that is what I use to edit.

I then brought my footage into the time-line. Then I right clicked the clip I wanted to speed up and then I chose speed/duration...I then chose to speed up the footage by 7000 percent. I tried many different numbers but this particular percentage seemed to have the best effect.

I then went to soundrangers.com and searched for a tune that set up the melodramatic vibe I was going for.   Once I found it, I then imported the MP3 into the video. I then exported the entire movie and there you have it. A thirty-seven second movie that tells a story. Time-Lapse style.

I've never shot a true time-lapse using a still camera, but Nic Fillingham is our resident digital camera expert so maybe he can give us a quick tip on how to do it.

If you have any other tips or I missed something feel free to chime in.

The Geek Stories: Behind the Scenes of BarCampSydney

nhodge — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 22:11:00 GMT

BarCampSydney, held at University Technology Sydney on Saturday 3rd March 2007. Being a Saturday, I hired my 15 year old son Liam to be my cameraman for the day. Thanks, Liam!

The better audio quality is thanks to a new condenser microphone, which is highly directional and sound recorded with excellent quality. The only real mistake this video is not tweaking the background lighting in different lighting circumstances, and having to resort to the Shadow/Highlight video effect from some parts of the video.

Image: fellow Microsoft Geek, Michael Kordahi at BarCampSydney.

There was no formal storyboard for this show, as it was a vox-pop (vox-populi, or voice of the people) style rather than single talent with a formal 'story flow'. The simple idea was to capture interesting people/things, and ask the "what is your geek story" and see where the interview would lead. Voxpop is easy without the tripod; and you have to get around to get the stories.

During the day, Liam and I photographed still shots with my Canon IXY 600. Using Windows Vista Photo Gallery, I could quickly import, tag and upload images to Flickr (conference picture colloboration site). Tagging in Photo Gallery, and the grouping by date captured conveniently sorted into sets so I could see what had been/had not been Flickr'd.

The new "the geek story" branding has now appeared. Thanks to Adobe After Effects 7.0 and the Venetian Blinds, Optics Compensation (to get the edge-of-a-TV-tube feel) and finally a Glow. I just love After Effects; it is Photoshop with time. Since being at Microsoft, I've used more Adobe products in "production" than my 8 years at Adobe. Interesting, that.

Editing Alone.
There will be three on10.net videos from the 90 minutes of footage. Again, my finding of 1 minute of footage is 8 minutes of post-production is holding as a metric. Still pictures are easy, video is relatively tough and time consuming. The editor is working with the theme, the footage, the audio and the final output - and all this takes time. Being the onscreen interviewer, director and editor can take it out of you. Don't know how Scoble does it.

To make life a little easier, there were interviews that were not in the theme on on10.net, so they were quickly cut, encoded and uploaded to YouTube (conference video collaboration site). Yes, you will see a Microsoft person asking about Linux distributions, Ubuntu, PHP and dynamic languages. For next time: add "The Geek Stories" outro video so people know where the video came from.

Image: Joel Pobar at BarCampSydney, Photo by Rex Chung.

Sadly, I absorbed the feeling of the BarCamp without being in any of the sessions. I would have loved to see Joel Pobar's MapReduce work. However, I have a feeling this won't be the last opportunity to see Joel talking on this topic.

Behind the scenes: The Geek Stories

nhodge — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 04:15:00 GMT

My first video for on10.net, the community hosted by along with the other Enthusiast Evangelists, is now live.

Last week, it was a little scramble to align Jeff and my calendar's, but it's all good and worked out best being postponed to this week. I had storyboarded this video, and learnt that this is the best way to communicate a story to your talent.

Over weekend I purchased a Sony HDR-HC7 handycam, tripod, microphone and assorted accessories. Some years ago we had a small handheld Sony DV handycam - but DV isn't hip anymore: so onto HDV. The camera is only a few weeks old, and has the all the external extra connections. The gun microphone worked well when close to the subject. I've purchased a quality condenser microphone for the next interview (thanks for the tip, Paul!)

The video was shot Tuesday afternoon by myself & a tripod (car park, Microsoft Australia) and Wednesday (Harbour Bridge) with the talent (Jeff Alexander). A Security Guard popped in for a quick look at what we were doing (2m39s in). Two dodgy guys, a silver road case and multiple laptops underneath a world-famous icon - is a little suspect. There were two police officers who walked past a little while later, also curious. Good to know our bridge is in safe hands.

Captured footage for this episode totalled roughly 29 minutes, edited down to 16:03 minutes. Maybe next video I'll get to the front page, ah Larry?

Edited on Wednesday afternoon using Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 (on a Toshiba M400, running Windows Vista Ultimate), further topped, tailed and transcoded in Windows Movie Maker and uploaded to the cloud Thursday morning. Some small backend issues resulted in the video going live Friday morning (AU AEST time).

Having edited the video, there are still elements where I am not 100% happy. The intro for The Geek Stories has to change; and the audio required too much work to get it into a 50% state of OK-ness.

A key element of this video was learning the video publishing process here at on10.net, and to ensure I schedule the correct amount of time for post-production. My estimation is 1 minute of video captured equals 8 minutes of post-production. Whilst I am highly suprised how quick rendering HDV (1440 x 1080) is on a mere 1.83Ghz Core Duo laptop, I'd love something with more grunt. One can never have too many cores, I reckon.

Do you have a video to the web production story? Love to hear it.

How to shoot video!

Tina — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 18:21:00 GMT

Here at 10 we have a resident shooter whom we call Finley. Scott Finley to be exact. He is one of favorite camera men to work with. Here at 10 as well most of us shoot many of our own segments and are learning how to properly shoot video as we go. Scott and I spent some time at my house shooting my refrigerator. Yes, that's right. Very exciting. We go through some tips on how to shoot better video. We talk lighting, audio and camera shots. This was actually just an internal video but Laura twisted my arm and legs until I posted it publicly on my blog. So I hope you learn something and if not, I introduce you to my refrigerator. :)