First video project - any suggestions?

[cj0575]

Hi all!

(Edit - See first reply, below, for a summary.)

I have just recently discovered this site with ALL SORTS of great stuff. Thought I would ask a few questions for help getting started, if all you wonderful people would want to take your time to share! This turned out rather long, so if you don't feel like reading the whole thing, I will understand - but if you want to help a little, I was going to bold the most important points but can't as a new user. So I will **SHOUT** a few instead (sorry!).

(I am posting in the PE 10 forum because that is the software I am considering...but if there is a better place to ask, please tell me!)

The background is this: I was asked by some friends to video their wedding. I agreed, having some limited experience in the distant past (8-10 years!) with video and wanting to give them something special for a gift. As plans progressed, they asked another guy to film as well, for multiple angles. I asked a friend who does semi-pro video production for some ideas....and realized that I could very easily be in over my head with the creative possibilities! (The two projects I was involved in previously were straight stories with scripts and really only one clip for each shot.) We planned some shots and took lots of footage on the big day. It was a blast, honestly!

My situation now is this: I have probably around 4 TO 5 HOURS OF FOOTAGE, between the rehearsal dinner, set up, ceremony (the only part with two angles), reception, short interviews with guests, etc. etc. Lots of it is worthwhile, but some is shaky or just left the camera on or whatever (I have started cataloging it all). I also have the ceremony audio recorded on MP3 through the sound system.

My friends would probably be happy with whatever I give them, but **I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE THEM a (REASONABLY) NICE, CLEAN-LOOKING DVD** from this footage....without going back to school to learn video production, or spending weeks on end at it! The ceremony was a little over an hour, and I probably would have another hour or so of the other stuff in my final.

**FORMATS ARE POTENTIALLY A BIG ISSUE.** One camera was a new-ish DSLR, I think a Canon, which recorded in .MOV files at 640x480 60fps, non-interlaced. The other was an older Sony consumer camcorder recording in .MPG files, 30fps interlaced at a standard NTSC DVD resolution (I think). I will try to post exact codecs etc. later, but I do know that Windows Movie Maker doesn't like the .MOVs and iMovie doesn't like the .MPGs . The Premiere Elements 9 demo happily opened both of them, but I have read several cautions about mixing formats, interlaced vs. non, editing with compressed formats, etc. etc.

I am currently test-driving a new iMac and a new Dell, and could happily live with either for most things (on a personal level). However, I am leaning towards a Mac (except for the price!) because my video friend uses one with Final Cut, and if I ever do more of this stuff, it may be with him and I would want to be able to use the same software. I am not ready to spend $300 on video editing software, but maybe $100 if it would help enough over the freebies. I am intrigued by some of the auto-options (analysis, even assembly and transistions, etc.) available.

On the creative side, I found Steve's _excellent_ post on "Don’t just make a video. Tell a story.", which was quite inspiring! I can see I will need to spend a little more time "story-fying" my project. I knew I wanted to do something a little better than a raw chronological telling of the filmed events (after all, I already gave them copies of the raw footage!), but the article gives me some direction for how.

So far, what I envision is: A DVD with a menu to choose between the ceremony, scene select for individual events, like the vows or the cake cutting, and somewhere I have to find a good way to fit in the rehearsal with several events and the interviews at the reception. For the ceremony, I need to splice the two angles together reasonably, like have wide-angle audience shots interspersed with closeups of the musicians during songs, show the parents' faces at key moments. And especially, I want to get the bride's and groom's closeups for the vows and so forth -- I envision putting each on a ***SEPARATE ANGLE ON THE DVD*** so you can see either (or both) during playback....BUT I WILL HAVE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO THAT!

In general, like say, this doesn't have to be a Hollywood-level production, but at least polished. I also don't want to have to take months to learn everything...I could see doing something like this again in the future, but I'm not planning on quitting my day job and becoming a videographer!

So, ***MY BIG QUESTIONS ARE AS FOLLOWS*** - although I would happily entertain any other advice (technical, creative or otherwise) anyone has!

1) What would be a good solution to my ***FORMAT WARS***? I like the simplicity of just dropping everything into Premiere Elements and letting it figure things out...but I am not afraid of pre-converting, deinterlacing, etc. for better quality or editing speed. I just can't figure out what is the "best" (or even necessary)!
2) Any comments on the usefulness of iMovie, or even Windows Movie Maker, vs. Premiere Elements for this level of project would be appreciated! E.g., would multi-track editing help me?
3) Advice on other resources (web or print) that you think might help me? How-tos, getting-started guides, etc. etc. There are plenty of them out there, I know (trust me!) - but any that you would recommend? (I do have full access to lynda dot com and plan to use it!)

Wow, that got long! Millions upon millions of ******THANKS****** to anyone who braves all that prose and/or wants to help!

Chris

(Actually, just typing all of this has been helpful for me to get my thoughts down. Guess I should do that more often. If you actually got through all of this, thanks for listening. Now speaking of my day job...)

[cj0575]

Ack, it really looked better with bolding. Let me boil down my important points:

1) What would be a good solution to my ***FORMAT WARS***? I like the simplicity of just dropping everything into Premiere Elements and letting it figure things out...but I am not afraid of pre-converting, deinterlacing, etc. for better quality or editing speed. I just can't figure out what is the "best" (or even necessary)!
2) Any comments on the usefulness of iMovie, or even Windows Movie Maker, vs. Premiere Elements for this level of project would be appreciated! E.g., would multi-track editing help me?
3) Advice on other resources (web or print) that you think might help me? How-tos, getting-started guides, etc. etc. There are plenty of them out there, I know (trust me!) - but any that you would recommend? (I do have full access to lynda dot com and plan to use it!)

Thanks!

[Steve Grisetti]

Format wars are tough battles, cj. In fact, I did a tutorial for our subscribers a few months back about the dangers of mixing formats and what do do about it.

So first decide which format you want to unite your video as. Since your DSLR video is standard def and your end result will be a DVD, the DV format (720x480) is your lowest common denominator and the format you should, first and foremost, convert all of your other video to.

My advice:
1) Pick up a copy of Quicktime Pro from Apple. It's only $29 and it's a peerless tool. You can use it to convert your MOVs to DV-AVIs (if you end up working on a PC) or DV-MOVs (if you end up working on a Mac).
2) As for you "Sony that shoots MPEGs", you'll need to be more specific than that. At least figure out if it shoots in hi-def, AVCHD or standard definition MPEGs. Once we know, we can figure out how to convert it to DV-AVIs or DV-MOVs. If you, as it sounds, these are standard def MPEGs, open a Premiere Elements project, make sure it's set up for Hard Disk Camcorders and add all of those MPEGs to the timeline. Then use Share/Computer to output our DV-AVIs or DV-MOVs.

Once you've got a common format going, you can open a project set up for DV, bring in your footage and start editing.

That should get you started. Although I guess FIRST you have to buy your computers and software -- before you even begin to think about planning your editing.

Once you've made some decisions (Mac or PC, Premiere Elements, Vegas, Final Cut, iMovie or whatever) we can figure out what your next step will be.

[cj0575]

Steve - thanks so much for your reply!

A couple more quick questions, based on your responses:

1) QuickTime Pro - so I take it DV-AVI or DV-MOV would be the preferred format? That would be uncompressed digital video? Also, would Handbrake or Video Monkey be a viable converter solution for a one-off project?

2) Speaking of QT Pro and the Sony camcorder - my video is SD for sure, I think 720x480, and poking around the QT Pro site reminded me, I believe it video is in MPEG2, because I remember finding the QT MPEG-2 component to buy if I wanted to watch it on the Mac (but I downloaded VLC instead). Would I need this component also (another $19) if I go with QT Pro?

edit - add #3) I understand what you're saying about getting the two into a common format. Do I need to worry about (de-)interlacing or framerates? Or would QT Pro handle that automatically?

Thanks again! Will try to come back with more details tonight.

[Steve Grisetti]

I would not recommend using Handbrake to convert your video. If the results matter to you, Quicktime Pro is well worth the small investment. And, yes, it will level the playing field in terms of frame rates and interlacing. That's, in fact, the point!

I don't know anything about the MPEG2 component.

DV video is not uncompressed. It used DV compression (hence the name). DV is about a 5:1 compression. It makes the video files small enough to work with, yet minimizes the damage done to them by compression codecs.

Again, before we get too much more specific, you'll need to get specific about your equipment and decide if you are going Mac or PC and which software you're going to edit with.

[Barb O]

an older Sony consumer camcorder recording in .MPG files, 30fps interlaced at a standard NTSC DVD resolution

cj0575,
can you identify the model number of this Sony standard definition camcorder ?

[cj0575]

Hi again -- thanks Barb and Steve for your replies. I apologize for my delay here - this is definitely a side project and things have been busy at my day job!

Regarding my video files - the Sony was borrowed (I am not a professional videographer!) and I don't have the model # handy. But, here is the basics of what MediaInfo tells me (this has been enlightening to me):
MPEG-PS
1 video stream: MPEG-4
6 392 Kbps, 720*480 (4:3) at 20.970 fps, MPEG Video (NTSC) (Version 2) (Main@Main) (CustomMatrix / BVOP)
1 audio stream: AC-3
256 Kbps, 48.0 KHz, 16 bits, 2 channels, AC-3 (DVD-Video)

My .MOV files show as follows:
MPEG-4 (QuickTime)
1 video stream: AVC
21.8 Mbps, 640*480(4:3), at 59.940 fps, AVS (Baseline@L5.0) (1 Ref Frames)
1 audio stream: PCM
1 536 Kbps, 48.0 Khz, 16 bits, 2 channels, PCM (Little / Signed)

But perhaps the current details won't matter as much (other than limiting the final quality) if I run my clips through QT Pro. I do like that idea, Steve!

I did settle on using a Windows PC - maybe if I were a pro (or even semi-pro) I would go Mac, but I just couldn't justify the cost for now.

I am still thinking Premiere Elements 10 and have downloaded the demo. The Sony suite tempts me because I gather that DVD Architect Studio is more powerful for authoring, for example it supports multi-angle DVDs, which Premiere Elements doesn't seem to, although that is not a must-have, just a it-might-be-cool, feature. Does Premiere Pro support multi-angle DVD output? I have toyed with the idea of "renting" it via Adobe's subscription service.

I watched a few tutorial videos over at Adobe.com about syncing multiple audio and video tracks, and I think I can handle that part in the editing. I also saw the neato multicam feature, which is something else that tempts me to rent Pro for a month or two. It is almost exactly how I envisioned splicing the feeds from my two cameras together and cutting back and forth! Otherwise, I gather that will be a rather more manual process...

Thanks again!
Chris

[Steve Grisetti]

Sounds like you're coming right along, Chris!

The biggest challenge, with all that footage, is going to be cutting it all down to something short enough that it keeps the audience engaged.

For me, the sweet spot I always shoot for is 40-45 minutes. And that's usually cut down from 3-4 hours of video.

Keep us apprised. And I hope you'll share at least a sampling of your work in our Gallery!

[momoffduty]

I like the multicam in PrPro too. After the multicam sequence is created you can fine tune the split clips in the timeline.

4 to 5 hours is a lot of footage! It may be easier to organize the segments into folders in PrPro. My last edit I named the files per cam. C1T1_001 for example was Camera 1 Tape 1 clip 001. C2T1_001 was Camera 2 Tape 2 etc. It makes it easier to see at a glance in the timeline which clip is from which camera. And I log the clips on paper and write notes & stars, then during the edit I check off in red ink which ones were used or if I used only the beginning of the clip and a note if I want to use the end of the clip later.

Best wishes on your project!