I just received the Canon ZR800 DV camcorder today and I gave it a very quick whirl, handheld, around my house just before the sun went down. Color graded. I plan to shoot some serious video with it soon, just to showcase that High Definition is the not the A and Z of videography. This $200 little camera can produce some good footage if you are careful with the shooting and playful during editing. Sample footage here!

I also received today a shoulder bracket, a 52mm reverse ring to mount macro lenses, while Tiffen sent me a Steady Stick for a review. I will be reviewing that in 2 weeks time (update: review posted).

An enthusiastic online friend recently traveled to an exotic country to shoot a documentary. He is not a professional, but he wants to be one. Unfortunately, inexperience strikes fast when doing such leaps. The friend arrived there pretty much with just enough tapes, the HV20 and a tripod. But truth is, there’s more than that needed if you are after a professional result. Here’s a list of things you need to get with you if you are shooting serious documentaries away from home:

1. Your HD camera and the stuff it came with. ($700 to $1500).
2. Enough tapes. Maybe about 25-50 of them. ($150).
3. A steady, fluid, tripod. It’s important to be ultra stable. ($200)
4. A shoulder bracket. This is needed for “reporting-style” shots. ($50)
5. Two ND filters, at different strengths. ($100-$150)
6. A polarizer filter. ($50)
7. A good wind-shielded shotgun stereo microphone. ($200)
8. A stereo lavalier mic and wind-shielding for it ($50).
9. A wide-angle lens (for scenery). $250
10. A telephoto lens (for wild-life). $250
11. A fast laptop with a firewire port and enough RAM able to capture the footage and let you review your tapes at the end of the day. If an important scene didn’t come out right, you must re-shoot the next day if possible. ($1500)
12. A 500GB external USB 2.0 hard drive to backup your tapes. ($200)
13. A 5-in-1 light reflector to be used on interviews. ($30)
14. A second battery and a travel charger that works on the country you are going to. ($50)
15. Headphones to review the audio recorded. If your audio was problematic during an interview (e.g. too much wind), you must re-shoot. ($20)
16. The appropriate firewire and USB cables, and an HDMI or component cable that will allow you to potentially review your footage on a TV if required. ($30)
17. A big enough camera bag that will let you carry some of the stuff mentioned above. ($30)
18. Cleansing gel and cloth in the event your lenses need clean up. ($20)
19. A cleansing tape in the event your tape head needs clean up. ($15)
20. Travel insurance. A license that will allow you to shoot professional stuff on other countries, as well as “image release” contracts for your interviewees. ($?)

Good luck with your documentary or travel video. Get your wife to carry all that stuff…

One more on color grading. This is some color graded footage I shot with the Panasonic LX-2 digicam last week in Lake Tahoe. The camera is able to shoot 480/30p and 720/15p (would have been nice if it could do 720/24p at least) so it’s an interesting one.

I love the dramatic look of the following too. I used Aav6cc, use almost all options on Color Corrector, and I also used two Magic Bullet plugins back to back to get this look.

BTW, just a note to my video-related readers: My phone number changed (apparently it stopped working a good while ago, but I hadn’t notice as this is not my real number, but a gateway from the real phone world to VoIP). My new number is now listed in my “contact” page. As long as you call between 12 PM to 6 PM PST time, I should be able to take your call if you have any video-related questions (it’s faster than answering emails, I get too many lately). Alternatively, install GizmoProject, the VoIP application, and call me for free from in there. My Gizmo/SIP info is also listed in my “contact” page.

We spent Thanksgiving at the Village of Squaw, home of the Winter Olympics of 1960. We booked an apartment there for 4 days and we had a great time — minus the fact that there was not much snow so my JBQ could not ski. I love these small apartments as they are fully equipped, so I can cook there. We didn’t hike as the weather was very cold (-12C to -4C), so we stayed in for the most part and… watched lots of TV.

Nonetheless, I did find the time to shoot 40 minutes of video, which translated to the following 3′22″ clip. HD version here.

The Westcott reflector arrived! It’s huge and it does make a difference on lighting!

Pheww… that was NOT easy! Achieving the “300″ look is a major pain in the bum, but I think I can manage it “ok”. To be able to try and color grade that way (bleach into bronze color the whole scene except the reds), I needed a clear “as shot” picture during their movie shooting, but I couldn’t find any that had a good resolution. So I found this one instead, and I played with it. Here’s what I came up with:

Here’s the actual grading that took place. It required 3 “Magic Bullet Suite” plugins one after the other (modified versions of the “Bleach bypass”, “Bronze” and “Coolish” templates were used), the “NewBlue Colorize MSP” (it comes with the retail version of Vegas Movie Studio, check your Vegas box), the freeware “Aav6cc” and the “Color Corrector”. The plugins must be used in the order I showcase above. However, each scene is different, because of different composition and lighting, so on every scene the values of the suggested plugins must be changed accordingly, otherwise you will end up with ugly results. There might be an easier way to do this, but I haven’t found any.

Update 1: Here’s a much easier to follow guide, using only Vegas’ own tools and the freeware Aav6cc plugin. While easier and cheaper, the result is not as good, but it might be the only way for some video enthusiasts.

Update 2: Another, easier, grading version using the free color tools, this time by using Curves. It’s better-looking than the above one, but still not as good as the first one.

Update 3: A last one, I promise. This one is the easiest to follow, but with Magic Bullet’s “Tropico Wash” template in use. Most of the job is done by Aav6cc. Guide here, resulted image here.

I got quite some email lately from users asking about how to color grade their footage. First things first: “color grading” is not the same as “color correcting” in video terms (although it can be in photography terms). Color correction is all about making the scenes look more natural, as they were in real life when shot (example), while color grading is all about “abusing” certain colors of a given scene in order to make that scene look different than the real life, often more stylish (example). Many movies, like the Matrix, were color graded the same way on almost every scene in order to create a cohesive, unique “atmosphere” that gave it a visual identity.

Anyways, there is no way I can teach color grading to anyone, because it’s not only a personal aesthetic issue, but for each clip/scene the templates and plugin settings you use are always different (depending on the lighting, colors used and composition). It is up to you to use these 4-5 most important color plugins the way you feel best. And these plugins on Vegas are:

1. Brightness and Contrast (comes with Vegas)
2. Color Corrector (not “Secondary”, comes with Vegas)
3. Magic Bullet Editors 2.0 for Vegas ($400, demo here or here. After installation check its “Use GPU” checkbox if you have a GeForce graphics card, otherwise it will be really slow)
4. Aav6cc (free download. On Vista you might have to install it as “Run as Administrator”)
5. Curves (optional usage, comes with Vegas)

Things to remember:
a. Make sure your source footage is not over-saturated, or the grading won’t take much effect. Do not use “color effects/settings” in your camera, always shoot in “neutral” color mode.
b. You don’t always have to use all of them in the plugin chain. Just use the ones that produce the visuals you are looking for. The more plugins you use, the slower rendering and encoding will become, so use with care.
c. If you use most of them at once in the plugin chain, use them preferably in the order above, although this is not mandatory.
d. Using Magic Bullet will make rendering and encoding 6x slower if you don’t have a GeForce card, and about 3x slower if you do anyway. So be patient with it because it’s the main plugin that can easily create the “wow” effect compared to all the other ones.
e. Aav6cc is a bit buggy when used in conjunction with PNG images. You might get a black preview window occasionally.

Now, just play away! Play with contrast, play with saturation, the three-way color wheel, the gamma, the 50+ templates that come with Magic Bullet, or independently handle colors using Aav6cc (I personally love to saturate the “yellow” color on Aav6cc and then check the “reverse influence”). It’s up to you to play around with combinations until you get a result that satisfies you on each clip. Good luck with it!

Update: For the most complex color effects you will need Magic Bullet, but some times you don’t. With a bit of skill, you can recreate similar looks without it, by using just the included Vegas tools and the free Aav6cc.

Example 1:

Contrast on 0.08. Color corrector saturation 1400, gamma 0.970, gain 1.050. Color Corrector’s “Low Wheel” 299.7 and 0128. “Mid wheel” 303.7 and 0.168. “High Wheel” 306.9 and 0.310. Aav6cc: Blue and Cyan on Saturation 50 and Lightness -50, Yellow on 65 and “invert influence”, Red on 50 and its lightness on 10, Magenta on 50.

Magic Bullet “grand sky” template. Color Corrector’s Saturation to 1750.

Example 2:

Color Corrector Saturation 2300, gamma at 0.700. Aav6cc’s Blue saturation at 60 and lightness at -15, Cyan’s saturation at 60 and lightness at -30.

Magic Bullet “Grand Sky” template, Color Corrector’s gamma at 0.700, Saturation at 2300.

I was pondering this afternoon if I would want one 30″ 2560×1600 LCD screen for video editing with Vegas or two 24″ 1920×1200 ones. After visually trying to fit Vegas on the resolution that governs the 30″ LCDs, it appears that I can fit on it 4 tabs of tools, the preview window in full HD size and about 3 tracks of A/V in the timeline. While this is not too bad, the reality is that for serious video projects you need more than 3 tracks of A/V. For that reason alone, having two full 24″ full-HD monitors is a better deal. You can fit all the tools, a small preview window (small because it won’t be used much) and at least 8 A/V tracks, and then you use the second full HD monitor as a “secondary monitor” for full screen video preview in 1920×1080 (so your preview video looks sharp because the zoom level is 1:1). Now, that’s cool.

The 30″ 2560×1600=4096000 pixels and the two 24″ 2x(1920×1200)=4608000 pixels give an edge of 12% more resolution to the dual screens, which is a good edge. However, the dual screens cost $800 ($400 each, and last week they had a promotion where they were selling those at just $300 each), while the 30″ alone costs ~$1200.

Conclusion: for video editing, it makes more sense to have two full-HD monitors rather than a single big ass one.

I felt like doing some shopping therapy today, so I spent about $350 for a SLIK 504QF-II fluid head and tripod legs and the 0.7x wide-angle WD-H43 lens for my HV20. It’s funny how I get to spend money on that stuff, and I always forget to buy a new bra (I am reminding myself every few days that I need 1-2 new ones, but I always manage to forget buying clothes).

I had a fluid tripod head before (the Bogen 701RC), but it sucked. I couldn’t get it to pan smoothly, at least not without a rubber band. With this new tripod head I am able to pan as good as with the rubber band, just by using my finger. Moreover, the tripod comes with good legs, which is something I really needed: on old timelapse videos of mine the video was shaky because the camera was moving a bit with the wind as my old generic Quantaray Ritz-branded tripod legs were too cheap and light.

Here is a sample video showing both the tripod head’s abilities and the lens’. Much better quality version here (3 MB).

Among the emails I got lately, I got a number of people interested in sports and 24p. Well, let me say this for one more time: you don’t want to shoot sports in 24 frames per second. 24 frames are not enough for fast-moving sports (it’s ok for chess and poker, and that’s about it). Shelling $1000 to get the HV20 just because “it does 24p” when you want to shoot sports is unwise. Use the right tool for the job and shoot at the default 1080/60i or 50i, usually in high shutter speeds. Use 24p only for indie short movies and artistic music video clips, not for normal lifestyle stuff.