Articles

  I recently shot my 20h multi-camera shoot, a concert by jazz singer René Marie. After you do anything 20 times, you have a good idea what you’re doing and why. As it turned out, this experience helped crystallized my thoughts to a level that I hope will benefit others who shoot and edit with multiple cameras. Before the event, …

There’s a lot that goes into the perfect DVD, but one of the most fundamental aspects is navigation, or how you control the way the viewer moves through the content on the DVD. In this tutorial, I identify which aspects of the user experience you can control, and how to do so in two leading prosumer authoring tools: Sonic Solutions’ …

On January 14, 2006, I had surgery for a herniated disc. It’s worked well so far, knock on wood. It’s the same surgery Joe Montana had, and he played six weeks later, so the outlook is good. I’m writing this column because better work habits might have prevented the whole problem, and because it might be helpful for me to …

All of us have had audio rise up and bite us in the rear on a project or two, usually when we were focused elsewhere and not paying attention to levels, connections, and the like. Fortunately, with the right set of software tools and a bit of background information, you can eliminate many errors with little audible residue. The final …

It all starts with the camcorder. Not to state the obvious, but whether you’re shooting weddings, concerts, or interviews, or editing in Premiere Pro, Vegas, or Final Cut, each project begins with the shoot. This inescapable fact of videography life, plus a price tag that can approach five figures, makes camcorder selection a critical business decision.   Figure One. If …

I’ve produced a number of HDV-source projects in Premiere Pro, with generally good results. Recently, however, working with some multicamera projects, I started to notice some anomalies. When panning and zooming inside a clip in the multicam sequence, quality wasn’t what I expected. As you probably know, one of the benefits of shooting in HDV mode for SD output is …

All of us have had audio rise up and bite us in the rear on a project or two, usually when we were focused elsewhere and not paying attention to levels, connections, and the like. Fortunately, with the right set of software tools and a bit

To produce professional video on a budget, you need to master various visual and technical arts. But you also need to become a master of illusion, especially if you’re working as a crew of one. Here we explore the art of the single-camera shoot, and insert-editing techniques that will ensure that you have all the angles covered. Whether you’re a …

Last July, I shot a concert performance by No Speed Limit (www.nospeedlimitband.com) an up-and-coming bluegrass band whose banjo player, Stevie Barr, comes from my adopted hometown of Galax, Virginia. I did it as a favor for the local tourism directo

[Author’s note: This article is from 2001, and some of the original images are gone. I’ve used the thumbnails from the Extremetech article here. Sorry for the low quality. The article is of limited value now, though square pixels continues to be a concept that confuses many producers, and aspect ratio mismatches continue to appear both on TV and on …