Rico Bergholdt Hansen re-posted his amazing shots on Vimeo as a new video after some of my suggestions. HD version here.

Gray cards allow you to set the right white balance, while at the same time they help the camera guess the right exposure, shutter speed, aperture and gain. Doing color correction in-camera with a gray card creates no artifacts & it’s more accurate that when using digital color correction on post. More information here.

While gray cards are mostly used indoors (very good to calibrate exposure on low light among other gains), you can certainly use them outdoors too if the light conditions are weird (e.g. snowy surroundings, shooting under shadowy trees, cloudy days). Buy an “18% percent” gray card for $4. The smaller ones (more convenient to carry, but not as good for outdoors) cost $2. I made a video to show off the capability.

Here’s how you use them:
1. Place the camera at the place you will be shooting from.
2. Place the gray card vertically (without an incline, facing at the lens) on the spot you will be shooting at. If outdoors, place it as far as you can, as long as it still fills the frame when you zooming-in to it.
3. Put the camera into the non-automatic mode, and select the “Custom white balance” setting. All Canon camcorders allow for custom white balance (even the cheapest ones), but most of the cheaper non-Canon cameras don’t have this feature. If that’s the case, then you can’t use a Gray card, you need a camcorder that’s more serious than a toy (sorry, I had to pick at JVC).
4. Zoom-in all the way to the gray card to fill the frame (nothing else should be shown in the LCD screen or viewfinder but a dark gray color). At that point, set the custom white balance (according to your camera’s manual).

That’s it, shoot using that setting and enjoy true whites that are not yellows or reds. If the lighting conditions change (e.g. you moved from a very shadowy tree to a less shadowy place, or if the sun changed position a lot, or if you moved to another room), you will have to redo the four steps above.

Flower macro shots using close-up lenses (Tiffen CU+4) on the HV20, slow motion and extreme color grading. Download the 720p MP4 file or view the HD version online here.

Took 7:15′ hours to render just these 4′:10″ minutes of video, so you better watch.

You don’t want to carry around tripods or even a monopod? This is a solution that it’s almost as good as a monopod in stabilization performance, it fits in your pocket, and costs just $5. Some manual assembly is required.

Macro footage shot with my HV20 and a Canon 50mm 1:1.8 macro lens, turned into a slow-motion abstract project. View in HD and/or download it here.

Update: Video updated and replaced with a new version.

This is a generic tutorial on audio/video compression. It does not adhere to any specific application, but it teaches you what is what, so by using this knowledge you can export from ANY application in the market. So, here’s what you need to know:

* Many video editors require that you “tell them” in their project properties what kind of source footage you got. For example, if your source footage is NTSC HDV, you need to tell them to accommodate/optimize for 1080/60i. For PAL that would be 1080/50i. Then there is 24p footage, different resolutions, or plain DV or just digicam VGA video. You must always know what kind of source footage your camera outputs, so you can configure your video editor or utility to accommodate it. For example, if your camera shoots HD at 24fps and you let your video editor to use the default DV in a 60i timeline, you will get bad quality, and performance degradation during editing. So, get it right! Not all editors automatically recognize your source footage and auto-configure themselves.

* If you are using Sony Vegas, I would recommend you right click on clips in the timeline that lots of motion, select “Properties” and then “Disable Resample”. This will get rid of the “ghosting” effect during the final export. Not sure how to do that on other video editors, most of them don’t have the ability to turn it on/off.

* When you are finally ready to export, the first thing you need to decide is the medium you want to export to. Is it the web, the iPod, the PS3, a DVD, or simple archival? You see, depending the device you want to export for, different codecs and options apply. Here are some basic codec guidelines for some popular devices:
– iPod: 320×240 resolution, native frame rate as source footage, h.264 video codec 512 kbps, AAC audio codec 64 kbps stereo.
– Sony PS3 and XboX360: 1280×720 or 1920×1080 resolution depending if you have a 1080p or a 720p TV, native frame rate as source footage, h.264 or WMV or XViD video codec at 5 or 9 mbps, AAC audio codec 128 kbps stereo or 5.1 surround.
– DVD: use the DVD templates that video editors usually come with.
– Youtube: Same as iPod.
– iPhone and PSP: Same as iPod, but at 480×270 resolution at 1mbps bitrate.
– Vimeo SD and HD: Tutorials here and here.
– Zune and Creative players: 320×240 resolution, native frame rate as source footage, WMV video codec 512 kbps, WMA audio codec 64 kbps stereo.
– Archos and other PMPs: 320×240 resolution, native frame rate as source footage, XViD video codec 512 kbps, MP3 audio codec 64 kbps stereo.
– Archival: a lossless or near-lossless codec, like DV, HDV, mjpeg, Huffyuv, Lagarith, Cineform, ProRes, AIC etc.

* Video codecs. There are two kinds of codecs. The Delivery grade codecs and the Intermediate grade codecs. The first ones are supposed to be exporting/view-friendly, and the other ones archival/editing friendly. More information here on the subject. I would suggest to hunt for h.264 video, AAC audio, inside the .mp4 container format. That’s the most compatible and widespread format today on devices.

* Frame rate. Keep frame rate the same as the source footage (you should be able to find some “summary” information about your footage somewhere on your application). For NTSC that would be 29.97 (60i), for PAL 25 (50i), and then there’s 24 progressive frames, which actually in reality is 23.976 fps. I would suggest you export with the right frame rate each time and not round these weird numbers to 30.00 or 24.00.

* Resolution. When you export, depending on the camera you got, here are your resolution options and bitrate you should be exporting at with delivery-grade codecs:
NTSC DV 4:3: 656×480 or 640×480 (at 1800 kbps)
PAL DV 4:3: 768×576 (at 2300 kbps)
NTSC 16:9: 874×480 or 880×480 (at 3000 kbps)
PAL 16:9: 1040×576 (at 4000 kbps) or 880×480 (at 3000 kbps)
HVX or DVX 16:9 DV Panasonic cameras, export at 848×480 or 852×480 (at 3000 kbps)
AVCHD/HDV: 1920×1080 (9 mbps) or 1280×720 (5 mbps)
Canon TX1 or Kodak 720p digicams: 1280×720 (5 mbps)
Digital camera VGA 4:3: 640×480 (at 1800 kbps)
Please note that you should never export for web/viewing purposes with aspect ratios that are not 1.0000. I see a lot of people for example exporting DV at 720×480 or 720×576, but this is not the safe thing to do, because most applications don’t take into account the special aspect ratio value that these kinds of exports have, and so you end up with squashed heads. Use the above guide to get it right, and make sure that aspect ratio is set to either 4:3 or 16:9 for the above resolutions, or at aspect ratio 1.0000 if your application uses this way to represent pixel information.

* Bitrate. Bitrate is the amount of bits per seconds that the video uses. That’s the only factor that decides how big a video file will be or not. There are two kinds of bitrates: constant and VBR. In constant bitrate, you just tell the application to use a specific number of kbps or mbps, as shown above. But in VBR, you give two numbers: one for the average number and one for the peak number. For example, if you want an average bitrate of 3mbps, you can also ask the application to have a peak number of 5mpbs. The application will go as high as 5mbps only when there is a lot of motion on the scene and it requires more bits to encode it properly, while it will stay at 3mbps or below if the image is static and doesn’t require lots of bits. VBR is generally preferred for best quality, but it’s more difficult to figure out, if the application’s user interface is not well done.

* De-interlacing. If your camera does not shoot in progressive mode (most camcorders don’t, only digital cameras do), then you must de-interlace during export, otherwise your video will have “jaggies” (horizontal lines). You must hunt for a checkbox or option that’s called “de-interlacing” or “progressive”. Please note that if you are exporting in an intermediate format for editing/archival reasons, or back to the camera’s tape, you should not be exporting as progressive, because this is not the footage’s native format. Only de-interlace for “viewing” purposes, e.g. youtube, ipod etc.

* Audio bitrate. For audio select between 64kbps to 128 kbps (although you can have VBR for audio too). More than that is usually goes unused by many devices/headphones, so there’s no reason to use more. Use 44.100 Khz for sample rate, and Stereo.

* Audio Codec. Like with the video codecs, there are many different audio codecs you can choose from. But the audio codec should always be decided in conjuction to the video codec. For example, if you want to export in h.264 Mpeg4, you must use AAC, because that’s the way most players are optimized to read h.264 with. For DivX/XViD it’s mp3. For Theora video it’s Vorbis audio. For WMV it’s WMA, and so on.

* Containers. Don’t confuse “containers” with “codecs”. MOV and AVI are *not* codecs, so saying that “I exported as AVI” says nothing to others who might try to debug your problem. AVI/MOV are simply file formats that inside them can “host” actual video and audio codecs. In theory, you can have a gazillion different codecs in them, it’s just a container format to keep “glued” the different kinds of audio and video together…

There are three situations that most amateur video users just can’t put their head around. On online forums these are the most common exporting issues.

1. Pixel aspect ratios
I bet that trigonometry might feel simpler to some people. No matter how many tutorials are on the web about pixel aspect ratios, users just don’t understand them. I really hope that camera manufacturers stop using non-square pixels because it confuses the hell out of people, and most of the time they f*ck up their web exports resulting in youtube videos where people in them have heads looking like eggs, or in videos with vertical letterboxing.

2. Interlacing
Ah, this one is funny. Users who have never seen interlacing before are in panic. They come over to the forums and scream that their camera is dying! There are “weird horizontal lines everywhere” and they wonder if warranty is still good to send the camera back! Again, it’s a matter of the camera manufacturers to stop using freaking interlacing. We are not in the 1950s anymore.

3. AVI and MOV
There’s the misconception that all AVI files are DivX/XViD, and all MOV files are “the same”. People don’t understand that avi/mov are simply containers that can hold any kind of media format inside them, and instead they associate them with specific codecs. I got an email the other day: “why my 2 minute footage is 6 GB, I exported as AVI, it should have been smaller than that”. Ah, well, because you saved using the uncompressed codec. Duh.

Amazing work by Jeremy Saville! Very funny, very well executed — Jeremy is a professional in the entertainment business. Not to be missed!

Two more short movies of Jeremy’s here.

A second person in the past few weeks told me that hobbyist artistic videography is “meaningless”, and that has pissed the hell out of me. I will say this only once:

Videography done like on some of the videos below is art. Art is anything that can create or boost an emotion. And many of these videos do that. Not everyone’s videos are art, but there are some very capable amateur enthusiasts that know how to shoot, know how to edit and know what they want to present on screen (e.g. Charlie McCarthy, Remyyy). And this is NOT something that everyone can do. Absolutely not. It’s not as easy as it seems. It’s not as simple as taking a camera and pointing into random things. And editing at the end is an art in itself. I CHALLENGE you, the random reader of this blog, to take your camcorder and try to do something “beautiful & artistic” with it (expensive equipment is not required). Chances are, you will fail. It’s not as easy as it seems.

Beautiful imagery is not meaningless either. Cameras are not created just so we have a plot each and every time with a John Wayne style script. That’s just only one usage of cameras. Video cameras are nothing but “moving pictures”, and as beautiful still pictures are considered art, same for the moving ones.

If I haven’t convinced you yet, we will have to find an equivalent art to compare. And that’s the DEMOSCENE back in the ’90s. In fact, these two scenes are producing similarly-looking products. From wikipedia: “What began as a type of electronic graffiti on cracked software became an art form unto itself” and “the most experimental, unusual and controversial demos are often referred to as art demos or abstract demos.” As the demoscene developer has to be both an artist and a technical person at the same time, same for a videographer, he/she will have to master both. And some of these people out there, have done so. But they are VERY FEW who have done so successfully (no, I am not among them). Which is why videography is interesting, and why it’s true modern art: it’s challenging.

* I watched “El Mariachi” tonight. This is a 1992 Mexican movie that was shot for just $7000 and made it to the big screen with a 7.0 rating at IMDb. Another cheap movie is “Primer“, also shot for $7000, but in USA in 2004. I keep thinking that if the “Primer” creator had used a digital camcorder instead of 16mm (e.g. the Canon Optura Xi which was a pretty good model for the money at the time) he would have been able to make the movie for cheaper. If you are a video enthusiast you owe it to yourself to watch these two movies. They are the epitome of true indie film making and already legendary for that status. And of course, buy the “DV’s Rebel Guide” book. It’s the ultimate “that’s how you do it for dirt cheap” indie film book.

* Last night I watched the lighting tutorial DVD that came with the reflectors I bought two months ago. It was very interesting and simple, it really demystified lighting for me. I feel that I am ready to actually correctly use lights if I want to shoot a music video clip or short movie. Highly recommended to get these reflectors, if not for the included DVD too!

* I spent the day re-encoding some of my favorite Vimeo videos in a format that the PS3 can playback. I have a collection of about 85 videos so far. The PS3 is powerful and doesn’t sweat in HD playback, but its UI is not as good as AppleTV’s regarding media. Hopefully, Jobs will announce the AppleTV 2.0 on Tuesday, but I need it to not only be able to deliver 1080/30p, but also to playback WMV and DivX/XViD in order to be useful to me.

* I published a review of the Nokia N82. Expect next week a review of a 28″ PC 1920×1200 monitor too. I used it for editing my HD footage in 1:1 size, and I must say that for the first time I was able to see clearly how noisy the HV20 is — and the HDV-encoded artifacts too. In all truth told, if you want a “super clean” final cut, the HV20 is able to deliver a good 720p video, but at full 1080p it’s noisy and artifact-prone if you stick your nose to the monitor and you get careful on what you are looking at.

* Havoc Pennington left Red Hat. I don’t know where he’s going next, I wish him good luck, but I also feel sad because the last true leader on Gnome has left the house.