Video Editing - Capturing Video at the Highest Quality...?

[GPallan]

Hey Guys. So just recently i've been trying my hand at video editing and even though i think i've got the basics, i still have a ton of questions when it comes to capturing and rendering (anything besides the actual editing).

I tried capturing a scene from one of my videos but i'm not very satisfied with the final quality. I'm using a high-end 3ccd video camera and i used a monster wire for the capture. I used the default video capture feature on Sony Vegas 5 at 720x480x32 in AVI format.

The video that i captured is much darker (as viewed on my video camera's LCD) and is also lacking the crispness and detail of the original. ???

What could be going on? Is this a common result (darkness and loss of detail) when you're capturing video?




PS. Would you guys recommend that use another program (sorenson squeeze, maybe) to render the final video to Quicktime, Real Media, and Windows Media formats (Even though Vegas offers rendering options)?

Thanks a lot guy!

[basschick]

vegas is a good program, and i've seen excellent stuff made with it.

check your camcorder - most likely, there are brightness and contrast settings for your viewfinder and lcd. my camcorder and the camcorders of a couple people i know have the viewfinder and lcd had default settings set at a brighter setting and with more contrast then the camcorders actually produced. i have set mine so it matches the actual videos as they are captured.

also if you shoot with autofocus and autoexposure, you may be able to tweak your videos so they'll be clearer and brighter by messing with the manual settings, or some of the presets. for example, some of my videos were coming out a little blurry till i tried sports mode.

[CanShakeit]

Howdy folks!

My names Greg, my wifes name is Leanna, and were starting to get around out here a little and seen this video editing thread. I've been watching sevral boards from the tracker and thought this might be a good chance to hop in here and say howdy.
Anyways, we just retired from the strip club this past fall and have 41 years experence between us. Leanna, my wife, she danced for 15 years, and 11 of those were spent on the road traveling the country as a feature show.
Umm, we have a personal site online that's been running for a little over 5 years now. We specialize in REAL strip club content.
Umm, I'm not real good about bragging on either of us, I could do allot with a mic in my hand, and Leanna's on stage! Bawhahahaa! But we both feel that action speaks louder than words. Umm, we been married 28 years this past May. We live on a farm in Indiana. I think that's about all I can say. If you have any questions about what I've said I'd be glad to answer. Umm, hopefully you don't count off for spelling here! Bawhahaaa!
------
Ok now about the video. I've shot thousands of hours of video in the clubs and that's pretty much a lower light setting. I thought I'd try to explain what has worked best for me as far as getting a "close" to correct feel on the video.
1. You have to remember that your working with 2 different types of pixel aspect ratios. The lcd will hardly ever give you a accuate feel. The best way that I found to get it close is open your captured video file in a project.
"I use vegas to by the way"
Anyway... Once you've opened the file and have it ready to play set your camcorder close to your monitor. Then play them both. Adjust the lcd settings until there close to what you see on your monitor. "Now this is providing your shooting in a similar light setting each time"

Now as far as rendering. Vegas has several differnet settings when it comes to rendering the file itself. "Not knowing what codec your using in the render process" But, you can cruch the file to the extreme and loose quality. Or not cruch it as much and have better quality, with the larger file size. It depends on your preference. In my case I choose to cruch as much as possible to push the surfer towards the purchase of the DVD's.. Which are excellent quality.
I have some sample freebies that run on our site that your welcome to look at if you'd like. http://www.LeannaTaylor.com/fvids.htm

Hopefully I covered the introduction here, and helped out a bit with the video question.
You seem to have a nice bunch here, I've been lurking for a while. If I get a chance to chime in from time to time I certially will.

Thanks. :thumbsup:

[GPallan]

Howdy folks!

My names Greg, my wifes name is Leanna, and were starting to get around out here a little and seen this video editing thread. I've been watching sevral boards from the tracker and thought this might be a good chance to hop in here and say howdy

Hey Greg And thanks for the tips. Matching my camcorder's LCD with my monitor's is a great idea

[gaybucks_chip]

A couple thoughts that might help.

1. The content you're transferring from your camcorder is digital, so the quality of the cable you're using won't make any difference whatsoever. The data is either there or it's not, quality won't change based on any part of the hardware capture chain.

2. What you're seeing on your monitor after capture should be pretty accurate to what's there in the .avi, so if it's inherently dark, something is most likely awry with the LCD monitor on your camcorder. I would echo Greg's suggestion, and perhaps offer another one: Take the SVHS or composite video out of your camcorder and hook it up to an external video monitor (CRT rather than LCD) and see what you're getting relative to what's being displayed on the LCD screen built into the camcorder. You should be able to adjust the relative brightness and contrast of the internal LCD to match what you're seeing on the video monitor, which may or may not be a close match to what your computer monitor shows.

3. If your specific problem is lack of crispness and detail on the final encoded video, that would definitely point to the codec and/or encoder settings you're using. It's always a tradeoff between file size, sharpness/detail, and how smooth the video is when you're encoding using any of the lossy codecs (WM, QT, Real, etc) and sometimes you have to tweak the settings some to come up with a good combination for the particular video you're encoding. For example, we shoot a lot of video outdoors, and that doesn't compress as well as video shot in, say, a hotel room because the leaves and other elements of the background are moving constantly and take more space to store than the white wall of a hotel room does.

I can't speak to the codecs built into Vegas, but I can say that Sorenson's codecs are, by reputation, of very high quality, and I've found that they generally do a better job both in terms of quality and file size (not to mention encoding speed) than the built-in codecs in Premiere. I've heard similar things about Canopus Procoder, but haven't used it.

Hope that helps!

[GPallan]

Hope that helps!

Hey Thanks BoyFunk.

BTW...the bad quality that i'm talking about is there before (and after) rendering. It's the raw AVI footage (right off the camcorder) that i'm talking about. The image is darker and is lacking the details and crispness of the original video (as displayed on the camcorder's LCD).

Oh and i did attach the camcorder to the TV like you said, and the quality was all there. So, i don't think it's the actual video that's too dark or whatever. I think it's something that i'm doing (or not doing) while i'm capturing the video from the camcorder. hmmmm...Any ideas?

oh and btw...I just used Premier to take some frame grabs, and unlike the actual video footage, the frame grabs look perfectly fine (I'll attach one below).

Allan

[GPallan]

would you guys perhaps recommend that i at least pay a professional video editor to come by and give me some basic tips and maybe edit (and render, etc) a segment of a video? What did you guys do when you first started to do video editing?

Allan

[Lee]

What you *might* want to do, is shoot a PM across to Jasun and see if he could spare 10 minutes to walk you through some stuff.

Failing that, im sure he would welcome some additional editing work

Regards,

Lee

[longboardjim]

Howdy folks!

My names Greg, my wifes name is Leanna You seem to have a nice bunch here, I've been lurking for a while. If I get a chance to chime in from time to time I certially will.

Thanks. :thumbsup:

welcome you two ( canshakeit )!

jim

[CanShakeit]

Thanks for the welcome guys.

Hey GPallen. Have you visited the Vegas forums area? Those folks are extreamly helpfull over there when it comes to questions. What I see you talking about here as far the video being darker is pretty much the norm. If you try to lighten with the setting it washes it out. Then if you go the other way its to dark. Video is a whole different animal really, and it takes allot testing by trial and error to get use too.

One other thing I was thinking about here is your harddrives. You are rendering from one drive to another I assume. I know you can't render video on the same drive as the origianl file with much luck.

[GPallan]

error...

[gaybucks_chip]

There isn't any inherent technical or quality reason with rendering to and from the same drive, provided the drive is fast enough to read and write the data simultaneously. If there were a problem, it would manifest as jerks or skips in the rendered video, not in darker-than-normal scenes.

And if you're capturing from a DV device using FireWire, there's absolutely nothing you can be doing to screw up the capture (well, other than having a slow drive that drops frames); it's simply a dump of digital data with no image processing whatsoever.

So my guess is that somewhere in the bowels of Vegas or Premiere (whichever you're using), you've got something set that's lowering contrast or brightness or something on what you're viewing. If you want to try one other test, you can take video that you've captured from the camcorder as an .avi, and output it and write it back to the camcorder on a fresh tape, then view the tape. My guess is that you'll see video that's the same quality as the source. If you do, then it's definitely something in the settings of either your editing tool (Premiere or Vegas) or perhaps in the settings for your monitor or monitor drivers.

Vegas and Premiere are incredibly powerful and flexible, but the cost of that is they're also full of switches and adjustments, so it's entirely possible that something just got tweaked by accident. In that case, if you get too annoyed with it, having someone that knows the program you're using come over and take a look might save you a lot of time and frustration.

[EmporerEJ]

Howdy folks!

My names Greg, my wifes name is Leanna, and were starting to get around out here a little and seen this video editing thread. I've been watching sevral boards from the tracker and thought this might be a good chance to hop in here and say howdy.. :thumbsup:

Greg-

I was intrigued by your post, and thought I'd take a quick look at what you had to offer. When I got to your page, the problems start.
(Now, I'll speak to you as a surfer and potential subscriber would here)

I tried to look at your sample videos.
I clicked on the link, (I didn't read your instructions of course, 'cause I wanna see what I'm buying fast...lots of pages to look at on the web!)
My media player launched, blinked a "codec download error" and nothing showed on the screen.

But being a very interested surfer, I looked at your instructions, figuring I'd spend a few more minutes trying to see these great samples.
Being the REALLY smart surfer, I understood what a codec was, so I went to the site listed to get the necessary codec. (I wondered why you just didn't have a download link on your site, but hey, who knows)

Went to the codec site, and got lost. It looks like it was written for developers and other geeks.
Couldn't find the codec I needed, downloaded something that LOOKED right, and it was just all gibberish. All about developing something.

About that time, the wife was walking around the house, so i just gave up. Maybe I'll try again sometime, maybe not.
Think I'll go to the easy site instead. That one had simple click and go wmv links. (I buy lots of adult videos, and think Bill gates is well, so I know all about windows media cause I got it free with my new computer. It was just in there and worked without messing around.

I think that should be a fairly accurate example of what a "determined" surfer would find.
A non determined surfer would bail before that. the first click and fail link would lose them.
I understand you were going for ultra good quality, but what many fail to recognize is the average surfer neither cares, nor has the patience for it.
If it's not absurdly simple, off they go.

I wish you luck, just offering an unbiased look at what you have to offer.
It would be nice to have more "real" stripper content.

:thumbsup:

[djdez]

generally videos are darker when transfered to your computer. a lot of times what may appear to be excessive light in your lcd display is the perfect amount of light. on the flip side as in your situation, what appears to be perfect light in your lcd is just not enough when transfered to your computer. I've been doing video for 3 years, have spoken to numerous people about it... and while I'm sure there is a reason behind it all.... nonetheless that's just how it is.

[djdez]

Hey Thanks BoyFunk.

BTW...the bad quality that i'm talking about is there before (and after) rendering. It's the raw AVI footage (right off the camcorder) that i'm talking about. The image is darker and is lacking the details and crispness of the original video (as displayed on the camcorder's LCD).

Oh and i did attach the camcorder to the TV like you said, and the quality was all there. So, i don't think it's the actual video that's too dark or whatever. I think it's something that i'm doing (or not doing) while i'm capturing the video from the camcorder. hmmmm...Any ideas?

oh and btw...I just used Premier to take some frame grabs, and unlike the actual video footage, the frame grabs look perfectly fine (I'll attach one below).

Allan

btw: the model is a hottie. I'd hit it