How to make good videos(was:best practice)

[Shredster]

Hey, i'm just going to input some stuff here...whether or not it helps anyone, i care not, but this is my info:

GOOD MUSIC IS ESSENTIAL. If you had vasek going to something like "oops i did it again", chances are (if you saw the music title, but didn't know it was vasek, you wouldn't check it out)...however, if you knew it was vasek and you knew the music title, then chances are that vasek isn't going to look as good.

Also, i find it essential to make sure the video clips are somewhat in time with the music. It helps and makes it a better video.

Thirdly, plenty of effects, but not too many makes it more entertaining...included in that is slow mo'ing large tricks or just making clip transistions, such as dissolving effect or something.

I use Windows Movie Maker 2, which comes standard with xp, but you have to download windows movie maker 2 off of the windows updates page. Personally, i find it pretty easy to use, but can be a bit frustrating if you don't have a better computer. It decides to freeze a lot when i'm using it to make a large video. SAVE often.

The only downfall to windows move maker is that you can either save it as .wmv files, or really really stinkin large .avi files...I can make a fake .avi file by opening the .wmv file in windows media player and resaving the file as "blahblah.avi"...then geocities will let me upload.

Also (i'm not sure if other video editors do this), i am able to decrease or increase the size of the video to adjust quality. Generally upping the size does nothing, but decreasing it is effective when you want a 2 meg file rather than 4...doesn't affect quality too bad.

Anyway, thats how i make my videos. And those are my opinions.

[Jared]

Just a quick note on how you can insure higher quality-looking vids.

LIGHTING, LIGHTING, LIGHTING.

More light=clearer picture. Digital cameras claim to be able to shoot in low light conditions, but it looks like crap. Move some desklamps around, get an old worklight from the garage or shoot in sunlight. You will end up with a much nicer looking vid.

Advantages of lighting:
1. More contrast (we can actually see the bag, and the whole picture doesn't look grey and muddy)
2. Clearer picture (in high light, the CCD in your camera works better!)
3. Just plain looks more professional.

Tip: If you can, light up the subject from at least 3 directions. A light that is slighly behind the person, but offscreen can make the person stand out from the background. This is called "Edge lighting."

Theres no reason why we need to squint at grainy, muddy images.

Hope this helps.... keep making those videos. I love em.

-Jared

[Shredster]

Yes, lighting...i have a really hard time getting good lighting in the garage, but thats the only place i can play since my camera has to be hooked up to the computer, and i'd rather not drag a desktop computer outside...

Light comes in from only one direction...during nighttime, its nearly impossible since we have a tiny 90 watt bulb that lights the whole garage and i'm on the far side of it. If i turn on the garage light for the garage door, it helps too, but its on a timer or something, so it goes out every 5 minutes or so. During day time, its much better, but then, i almost get too much light. Also, it doesnt' help that my camera isn't the best quality ever, but i try, i honestly try!!!

[Chris Hanratty]

I'm not sure if this has already been talked about, but if someone with Windows Movie Maker experience could help me out it would be awesome.

In my video I'm making, I turned the music volume all the way up, to drown out the live sound of my playing, but near the end I want to have the music volume down, and the real live sound up for the last couple frames.

I can't figure out how to do this, anyone have a clue?

Thanks.

[Shredster]

I may be able to help:

Hopefully you have a very good understanding of movie maker...and hopefully you're using version 2...

I'm going to start as if you are actually just making a video from scratch...

1. Drag and drop all the video clips into the timeline
2. Import your music clip
3. Drag the music into the timeline under "audio/music"
4. Now, find the point where you wish the music volume (not live volume) from loud to quiet...Within the timeline, frame by frame within the timeline till you find the desired spot...a little blue line (i think its blue) is the "cursor" for the video...tells you where you are at at the video...
5. Once you have found that happy spot, go to "clip" "split"
6. This will split both the video clip and the music clip...this allows you to do two separate things:
7. On the first part of the music file, right click in the timeline under "audio/music" go to "volume" Set this one loud...
8. On the second part of the music file, right click in the timeline under "audio/music" go to "volume" Set this one quiet...
9. Save your movie file

Hope this helped...not very easy to explain, but i tried...

[Chris Hanratty]

Yeah I get it man, thanks alot. I'll give it a shot in a little while and let you know how it went.

[NotHisRealName]

A tip with burning DVD's. If you intend to put a lable on your DVD (you know, the sticker kind), make sure you use a DVD/R with a white or pre-coloured top (although I don't know of DVD's coming with tops any other colour than white).
The problem with putting a lable on a clear topped DVD is that the laser heats up the disk too much and the disk will skip before long.
This problem occured with my copy of 'The Move' (awesome DVD... go get it now!), so if you've any DVD's that you've bought online and it skips, try removing the lable if you see no scratches or obvious signs of damage to the write side. Then it should work well.

cheers.

[Chris Hanratty]

What bitrate should wmv's be compressed to? Can anyone recomend an encoding program that will convert a wmv to mpeg? Thanks...

[fred]

Hi everyone, here is u-nanim.works point about filming footbag:
-We never use a tripod, unless we are filming competition with two cameras, than we sometimes put one on a tripod, to have a saftey shot clean at any moment, and cut it with the close ups we do with the other camera close to the scene. For shred never, it is best to have a freedom of mouvement.

- We NEVER use the zoom. Well there is one exception in "Sick 03" I filmed from very far and much higher than the shred place, start the shot zoomed on the shreder far away, and zoom back VERY slowly, so my last screen had a tiny shreder far away and a beautifull sight around. You'll notice when you see it, the interest of this shot is the beautifull sight, not the footbag happening down there, I would have been very pissed if Vasek hit a never seen combo at that moment. For filming footbag, I wouldn't recomand to use the zoom, because the more you zoom, the less stabitlity of picture you get. The slightest move you make will be exagerated by the zooming, so big lost of quality. I would recomand to use a tripod if you realy want to zoom. We sometime zoom in and out when filming competition (very very slowly) that is with tripod camera only! Why slowly? Because the most beautifull zooms(to my opinion) are those that don't get all the attention on them, they serve the picture.

- About slowmo, we definately love it, gives time to appreciate every dex and every detail of the tricks and combos for themselves, and not appreciate a trick globaly as we do at normal speed. Somehow slowmo helps me to appreciate the technicity of footbag. Some different kind of intensity than normal speed.

- Musik!!! Very important. A good musik, with appropriate rythme can definately marry with footbag footage. So much to experience, so many musiks and so many different styles...I love it!! However we try to mix the musik and the original soundtrak, to hear a bit the feet on the ground, depending on the surface players are shreding on, you can have some interesting sound. Wooden stage is the best!! Also try to keep some props and hand claps after a huge session in the soundtrack. We always have a vasek live clip and other shred shots with live sound only on the video in beetween clips. Makes it easy to make a sound cut beetween two clips with a totaly different style off musik. Kind of a break.

- Fish eye! We use it A LOT. Just like chan, we like to move around the player, to find a position where you can see the ball clearly, Try as much as possible to be in front of the player, close to the ground is also our favorite angle, and of course we always try not to cut the body. When you are in front of the player, you have the freedom to try a camera move on either side of the player, 90° for exemple to end up on either clipper as soon as a trick is going from one side of the body to the other. If I don't have at least a wide angle, at best a fisheye (the one we use is actually a semi fish eye, somewhere between wide angle and fish eye), I get bored very quickly. With those optics, you can film from very close and find angles with the whole body. It makes the distance smaller on camera moves of the same angle when you film from closer, which means less of mouvement for the camera and the cameraman's body(barely need one step for a 90° move), double extra stability, and more time to finish your move when the ball is arriving!! The right distance to me is close enough so people can definately not walk in front of you, and respecting the player. part of experimenting is knowing the players. If a player thinks I'm to close he'll tell me only once and I'll stay behind. Some players realy don't give a shit, some don't like it... I never insist.

- Other thing that I dont think was mentioned, and is to us very important: Patience, good footage doesn't happen if you pop up in a circle for fifteen minutes. I try to ask players every time I shoot if they are ok with it, and try to stay a while in the same circle. Players have time to get used to the camera, and can focus back on their concentration. Then I leave them alone for a while go to another circle and comme back, so they don't feel opressed by me staying for ages close to them. Spending a lot of time filming is definately a key to quality footage. If I film for 2 hours I'll focus on 2 or 3 circles and move from one to the other.

- One last thing, about what Chan wrote about always looking in the camera. This rule is meant to be rule number one in filming anything. However, when you watch your screen and use optics, you have no appreciation of exactely how far you are from the player, distance notion is totaly faked. The way I film is more about keeping an eye every few seconds on the screen, holding the camera as far in front of me as I can, so my body is as far as possible from the player, and watching directely the player, in order to adapt my distance on every move he makes. This position makes it easy for your eyes to go from screen to player. If the player pops a huge Ps whirl towards you, and you are watching your screen, you will never guess that he is about to jump on your camera, keeping your eye on the player himself will give you the right appreciation for a quick jump back reflex. Of course I never spend more than 2 seconds without taking a quick look at my screen, and spend a lot of time staring at it to find a nice angle, but as soon as I have it I watch the player again. Man I'm getting cramps, hope this helps.

[ebo]

Lately I've been messing around with something you can see very
good at Sams Above Influence vid. There's that run of Chad, where
the camera actually moves with the bag, so the bag is always in
the centre of the picture. It looks particularly good when 1. you are very
close to the bag (which is pretty difficult, as you won't want to interfere
with the player) 2. you zoom in to the bag.

This shot is very difficult as the ball moves so fast, you have to get the
rythm of the ball's rising and falling. So, when I do this shot, I look
through the camera all the time, but I don't look at the bag. Instead, I
try to get into the bag's rythm and move the camera up and down according to where i think the bag might be. This requires some
experience I guess, but it produces sooo awesome shots when done
properly. Also, try to move your camera as smooth as possible, and
once you get the rythm down, you'll see the bag stays in the middle of
the picture all the time. Move the camera out of wrist, or with your arms,
whatever works best for you, and hold the camera with two hands for
more stability.


Now comes the coolest part: When you use this in your movie,
make it Slow-Mo. I think this technique is the reason why so many
people love the Above Influence video so much.

[NotHisRealName]

Now comes the coolest part: When you use this in your movie, make it Slow-Mo. I think this technique is the reason why so many
people love the Above Influence video so much.

More than it being the coolest part (regarding turning that shot into slow-Mo), is's also the most important, I think.
The Slow-Mo shots of Chad were awesome, but in normal time, the movement is worse than watching Blair Witch. There's too much motion, too quick and this can be quite disorentating to the audience. Slow it down, or don't do it, in my opinion.

Other things I've tried: Turning the camera on it's side to film. This gives a 'Taller' image and enables you to get a much larger image of the player. However, this is only possible if you can rotate the footage in post production/editing. Either that, or turn your tv/moniter on it's side to view the footage. But that's just stupid.

Also... be creative. You might come across something that hasn't been done before... something that revolutionises the way footbag films are made! Give it a go.

[wicked]

My style is ghetto, but its basically good shred, to the music.
I like effects but i suck at doing those.. I like the actual raw shred (no pun) more anyway.

Another important thing nobody has addressed is should the vid be player segmented, or player mixed. I like it player mixed for the regular humans and then segmented for the insane good guys (lon, vasek, etc.).

Thoughts? Who likes segmented and who likes mixed?

[ericksonj]

I agree...

If some players are much better than others in a video, then they should be segmented off, and the other shredders should be mixed. I guess this should not always be the case, but it seems like the video would just flow better. And I like it when the video ends with the best shred!

[Jared]

I just thought about something I did in one of my videos a while ago:

Notice how in almost every video (minus the live comp footage), the shredding-in-time-to-music effect is lost. Only by some slick editing can it be corrected.

It would be awsome if a video-maker could get players to shred in time with the future soundtrack. You would have to put the song on repeat, of course.

Then, just sync up the catching of the bag in post and voila, it looks sweet.

Oh, and if you use this technique, say so when you post the vid. I'd be interested to see how well it works.

[wicked]

Notice how in almost every video (minus the live comp footage), the shredding-in-time-to-music effect is lost. Only by some slick editing can it be corrected.

It would be awsome if a video-maker could get players to shred in time with the future soundtrack. You would have to put the song on repeat, of course.

Then, just sync up the catching of the bag in post and voila, it looks sweet.

Oh, and if you use this technique, say so when you post the vid. I'd be interested to see how well it works.

people their best at random times... you cant neccassairy plan for an epic day everytime, in that case, everyone would want to kill you for playing the same song over and over again, at least me anyway. Its all about having the camera out for long periods of time basically.

[crazydwarf]

alright I don't really make footbag movies (me and my friends arn't really good enough). But I do shoot short films a lot, I have 9 hours worth of tapes lying around. Anyways I use premiere and it rocks... slo motion is very cool, also for footbagging not sure but motion bluring for a sec might be cool. I like music in films usually... also

you can't do titles directly in premiere

actually you can do them right in premiere and it's not very hard, nothing to snazzy but you can deffenatly do plain titles right in premiere with the later versions... The coolest effect I have ever seen is to make the footbag glow so it can be followed by the eye easier. This takes quite a bit of time but is very cool, you should be able to do it with after affects.

[ebo]

One question still hasn't been answered yet - the issue of encoding the
video for the web.

I've been messing with a lot of codecs, bitrates etc. What's your
experience with those? What combinations have you found to be
the most effective in regard of file size and quality?

For Premiere users:

Do you export the video in uncompressed DV format and then
compress/resize it with Virtual Dub? If so, what settings do you use?

Do you compress and export it with Premiere only? What settings do
you use?

Thanks for any input.

[NotHisRealName]

I usually compress and export with Premier.
I've never done it any other way. This usually takes a lot of playing around to get the file size to something acceptable, without sacrificing too much quality.
I usually encode in WMV9 format, because I find it gives me the best balance between size and quality.

I can't really give you any setting suggestions, though, ebo. For me, it's a case of just setting it all up pretty much as the default, and then just playing with the audience (I think that's the option), to get an aceptable quality, depending on the download type (64k modem, 128k modem, whatever).

BTW, I use Premier Pro.

[ebo]

I use premiere pro, too, but it doesn't give me the possibility to compress
the sound in mp3 format, although I have the lame mp3 codec and another
one installed.

I avoid wmv, as it's an evil microsoft codec, and has it's downers -
I remember how Mac users (Allan!) would be pissed off because
it took a year for the wmv9 codec to be released on the Mac.
With wmv, you can't use the slowmotion feature in Zoomplayer.

Anyway, I found some good settings:

-export from Premiere in uncompressed DV Avi.
-load the file into Virtual Dub
-compress the sound as mp3, 48khz, 128bit
-set filters: deinterlace, then resize (i do 320x240, whatever suits you)
-set codec xvid, 1-pass CBR, bitrate about 700kbps. Under "advanced
settings", set the quantization type to "New Modulated HQ", and enable
the options "Quarterpel" and "Global Motion Compensation".

(The quantization type was my main problem, as the standard set H.263
type makes it look all choppy and blocky).

Hope this helps,

bjoern

[Jas]

hey i was just wondering, where could u download latest adobe premier and compressing vid, codecs etc?
Basically all programs needed for good .avi vids?