Archive for June, 2008


Canon FS100 Review and Process

Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes

Update: 9/16/2008

The following are YouTube videos that I made with the Canon FS100. These videos have been processed and color corrected.

– –

Update: 6/22/2008

See below for .MOD test files:

I tested out the solution that was provided at Eugene Turkov’s Blog to change the files to .M2V via the command prompt (see link for what I mean) to be far more efficient and quicker.

I’m going to purchase the lens adapted and test it out at a Best Buy to see if it will fit on the camera or not. If it does them I’m going to go ahead and make this purchase in July inshaAllah.

– –

Original Post: 6/21/2008

The Canon is the on the loose!

I’m about to become a raving fan of Canon. If you guys have been keeping up with some of the stuff I’ve been writing about you’ll notice that I’ve begun taking quite an interest in recent Canon products. See the following previous posts I made on the subjects of:

A friend of mine recently got a Canon FS100 digital solid state camcorder for about $400 from Best Buy withan 8GB SDHC flash card. Having played around with it I got to testing it. Now I’m not going to write a full review for this. Camcorderinfo.com has alread done that here:

  • Canon FS11 Camcorder Review — only difference between FS100, FS10, and FS11 is the onboard memory capacity. The FS100 comes with no onboard capcity and takes only SDHC cards, which isn’t really a downside.

When I got to testing the FS100 camcorder there were two things that I realized.

  1. The format that the video records in is .MOD files. For those of you who don’t know, this format is basically MPEG2 in a highly compressed form. In 8GB you can record up to 110 mins of video at the highest quality. Video editing programs don’t import .MOD files.
  2. The camera doesn’t allow for any lens attachments. So this means if you want to add a wide-angle or telephoto lens out of the box, you won’t be able to do that with this.

Solution to Point # 1

To edit files in Premiere (that’s all I tested it in) all you have to do is rename the file extention from .MOD to .AVI. This way you can simply import it into Premiere. Now once imported you’ll notice that the aspect ratio is off. To take care of this simply right click of the file in the bin and click “interpret footage” and tell it to “Conform to” D1/DV NTSC Widescreen 16:9 (1.2). This will take care of the editing process.

Bye bye TAPE!

Another solution is to simply install a plugin into Premiere CS3 to enable the program to read .MOD files. There is more on this at Eugene Turkov’s Blog.

Solution to Point # 2

In the post about Canon Powershot digital cameras I wrote, I mentioned a lens adapter.

My question is whether or not I can use this adapter on the FS100 or not. Has anyone tried it? You think it will fit on the Canon FS100 camcorder? If it does, then I’m sold.

  • Less than $350 for the camera (Amazon price)
  • $80 for a 16GB flash card
  • $70 for the lens adapter

That makes for ~$500…umm…wait a sec….

…for ~$150 more I can get the HF100 camcorder (see Amazon).

What are the Pros and Cons for spending the extra $150 now?

Pros

  • It has the ability to accept lens attachments.
  • Records in HD
  • only $150 more

Cons

  • HF100 only records in HD (no standard-defintion option) and AVCHD isn’t easily edited unless you put it through some conversion mumbo jumbo.
  • They’re probably going to come out with a new generation of AVCHD solid state camcorders very soon that have better imaging. I’m personally probably better off sticking holding off on going HD for now.
  • HD isn’t widely used for most consumer objectives and currently not widely demanded from my current client base.

What do you guys think? Give me your feedback.

Related Posts:




Filming Totally Naked!

Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes

Stu Maschwitz (author of The DV Rebel’s Guide) post on his blog the other day a trailer for a short film by Ayyaz Waraich (judging by the name, I think he’s Muslim) titled “White Red Panic.”

What do I mean by “filming totally naked”? The trailer above was shot with a “naked” Canon HV20…

…without any special 35MM lens attachments or gizmos. Just your simple $600 camera.

It’s amazing what sort of results keeping to simple principals of video, photo, lighting, sound, and editing can get you.

Personally I’m looking to get the Canon HF100.

It’s similar to to the HV20 in price and features, except that instead of recording to tape in HDV, it records to SDHC flash media in AVCHD (compressed high definition) format. Personally I hate tape and the time it takes to transfer.

Related Posts:




Have You Tried Microsoft Silverlight?

Reading time: < 1 minute

The other day a friend of mine was telling me about Microsoft Silverlight and stated that it’s a “Flash Killer.” This interested me in the sense that, being in a field were media is the main for of communication, I’m always looking out for different vehicles that might help me get results faster than I’m currently getting them.

I figured I’ll ask you all about it. So…give me your thoughts about this program :D

Related Posts:

  • No Related Posts



Create A Clean Archives Page With SRG Clean Archives

Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes

Don’t agonize, organize.

~ Florynce R. Kennedy

Lately I had found it a bit difficult to find posts within this blog that had become buried into the archives over time. In the past I attempted to create a archive page, but the layout just wasn’t “clean” if you know what I mean.

Today I decided to see if I can find a simple plugin to take care of the problem, lo and behold! I fell upon SRG Clean Archive. I now have a nice, clean blog archive! Its got a really cool feature where you can expand and collapse the different months.

If you have a WordPress blog setup, I highly recommend that you set it up. It makes it easy for your viewers to find past posts easily and without trouble.

Related Posts:

  • No Related Posts



Ilmcast, birthing pains

Reading time: 6 – 9 minutes

One of my goals is to be able to provide content in the following quality:

My first experience in producing a lecture was The Strangers, followed by Desert Rose and Darkness2Light. Although with time the standards for Islamic video content has been rising I don’t believe the standards are where they should be. The above video should be the standard for Islamic content in terms of production quality. No less.

–

The next logical step toward setting that standard was the birth of IlmCast.com. AlMaghrib in their efforts to reach out to more people and deliver the knowledge further and wider than ever before started a project called “AlMaghrib Radio on Demand” where they would post a new lecture every month.

Personally I thought that the concept of extending the “free-line” in Islamic content was great but the approach wasn’t great. I proposed setting up a separate website that would act as a brand in and of itself. Sort of like how EmanRush is for AlMaghrib. The advantages being that it was web 2.0 friendly.

  • Content can be syndicated to the people via RSS, iTunes, and Facebook
  • There would be a sense of social community where people can post comments and feedback as well as blog about it on their own blogs.
  • People can share with other people through services such as Digg, StumbleUpon, or simply email.

The initial approach didn’t give this level of usability.

–

As we progressed into the third month of IlmCast, one of the things I wanted to do was to systemize the process. Initially I figured what we can do is simply have the video recorded. I can take it and encode and compress it to a specific size, after which it would be uploaded so that editors can get the footage to edit and finally out put it up for me to format it for final distribution.

I decided to test the process on IlmFest. After a couple weeks — one thing I’ve learned was, double handeling video is a BAD idea. In order to make the best of everyone’s time the work flow process from event to ilmcast will be as follows:

If there is going to be video recording of a lecture event, there should be a dedicated person responsible for this task. Their job is to make sure the video gets recorded, edited, and put online on the IlmCast server for later portion where the video is encoded for online distribution.

Development Stage:

  • Dedicated individual should be in charge of video, just like how there is a person for food, hospitality, etc.
  • proper equipment and should be secured: microphone, cables, camera, lights, as well as human resources for tasks such as doing the recording, lighting, editing — the event organizer should set aside a budget for this just like they would for food and other aspects of the event.
  • Permission from the speaker and location should be sought out before recording takes place (usually done with release forms)

Production Stage:

  • Standard should be a two camera shoot. (if they cannot find a second cam, then 1 camera can work). Camera 1 takes a medium close up (shoulders up) at a 45-degree angle, camera 2 takes a medium long-shot (thighs up) at an opposite 45-degree angle. — – Ideally it be great if 3 or 4 cameras can be brought in to get some b-roll footage. Cam 3 would be audience from behind the speaker and cam 4 would be extreme long shot from the back of the audience in the form of a tracking shot.
  • Lighting should be adequate. The ideal setup for lighting is to take the wedding video approach. About 6 tungstun lights around the room on stands that position the lights 12 feet above the ground (see image below), giving a 3-point look on anyone in the room.

  • If they don’t have that option then getting simple lights that light up the speaker from the sides can work. — – If the organizers and producer is on a shoe-string budget, then make the best of in house lighting as they can, like using lamps, mirrors, sunlight, etc.
  • Audio needs to be fed directly into a Camera. There is no excuse for not having this.

Post Production Stage:

Editing is the responsibility of the producer. He/she should have an editor to put it together. If their editor needs help/guidance to execute then it should be sought out (I’m here to guide). A proper finish has the following done to it:
  • Audio Cleanup – this requires adjusting the background noise levels, as well as EQ settings. If they don’t know how to do this, then simply ask! It literally takes 10 mins to clean up the audio if it was captured properly, just a matter of knowing what buttons to push.
  • Color Correction – Whether it be the brightness, contrast, color balance, hue, saturation, etc. All of this should be adjusted. Purpose of this is to balance the video to give it it’s proper look, or to save it from its horrible look (which usually happens due to bad lighting). If shooting was done properly, then hardly any color correction should be needed.
  • Titleing and Letterboxing — This is part of the IlmCast branding. Always opens and closes with the ilmcast title screen, and has the slight letterbox on it.
  • Encoding — The final output should be encoded in WMV format at 640×355 deinterlaced, 1.5Mbps CBR (constant bit rate), 128kbps audio CBR.
  • Delivery — After output, the WMV file is to be uploaded onto a server so the distribution and marketing guys can handle it.

Distribution and Marketing:

  • Syndication — Once the video is on the server. The marketing and distribution guys should download it, encode for purposes of online distribution and syndication: FLV, MP4, MP3 — after which our brothers and sisters will rip it off the website and put it on youtube, post it on their blogs and forums. (which is great for producers of IlmCast lectures since it brings back links to Ilmcast website and more people hear about it and subscribe to the RSS and iTunes feed.)
  • Facebooking — Major releases should have a “launch/release” date where events can be made.
  • Emailing — Qabaail leaders can be encouraged to send out an email to their lists and get everyone to subscribe and stuff.
  • Blogging and Reviews — bloggers and the people in the video can post it on their websites and other such places.

–

Every step of the way there are lessons. It will be great to see IlmCast turned into a well oiled machine.

Related Posts:



Previous Posts
Get Adobe Flash playerPlugin by wpburn.com wordpress themes