Making Professional Videos

[PostModN66]

It is great when people post videos of any production quality, but it is a special treat when the video is well edited and professional.

I would like to think that my own "Lofthole" videos are not bad in this respect,  but I have been knocked out by the quality of Quintopia (EDO), Silverfox and others.  So what are your tips for making a really good "professional" video?

Camera?
Lighting?
Editing software?
Editing techniques?
The title pages?
Selection of music?

Etc.......

Cheers  Jon   

[Bob Wild]

I have been using a Sony Handycam (pre-HD) for family and holiday videos for years and have tried it on my railway. It's OK but not brilliant. As with all videos I find it difficult to resist the temptation to pan round the scene. A stationary shot always looks better especially if something is moving (a train or a dog) in the shot. You also need to give quite a bit of thought about zooming in and out. Obviously with such a small scale it's quite desirable to zoom in quite close, but you have to be careful with the depth of field. Sorry not many answers but a few pointers to think about.

I used to use Ulead Videostudio for editing which is very powerful but I've found quite unreliable when burning DVD's. I currently use Arcsoft Showbiz which seems fine and burns my DVD's much quicker.

I have noticed however that when you play the video I posted in my construction topic on the wife's I-pad, which has an HD camera, the quality is awful. I'm surprised at that - I would have thought that Apple would have covered this.

[scotsoft]

Camera?
Lighting?
Editing software?
Editing techniques?
The title pages?
Selection of music?

I would put lighting at the top of the list.  If you can achieve realistic lighting then even a cheap camera will give decent results.

As for the others, it is a combination of them all 

cheers John.

[Cooper]

I tried shooting some video of my layout only the other day. I had the fluorescent lighting bar lit because I thought it would give a well lit scene. On playback all the clips had a strange light level oscillation which I can only attribute to this. They were so bad I deleted the lot. Is my assumption on this correct?

I too would welcome any pointers to shooting and editing good video. I clearly need the guidance!

[ColinH]

Got exactly the same result using my inbuilt laptop camera. Interestingly does not affect the pics on my camera in video mode or my phone, but picture clarity is not as good with those.

[ngauger]

I have more experience in the editing side of things, but have not really had a great deal of time to film my own layout (as it's not finished yet!).  I guess in the true spirit of film making, one should draw up a story board, and build up interest in this way.  You could add narrative (even if you don't want to appear in it yourself!).  Take some time getting down close to your layout, finding good perspectives and angles.  It's surprising how good it can look from certain angles, but not so good from others.  Not rocket science I shouldn't think!

BTW  I can echo everything folk have said about lighting.  I think good scenarios can be created by using basic household lighting bulbs, like those halogen's you get everywhere now.  You're basically recreating the sun indoors.  Having said that, it's amazing how many kinds of light there are out in the real world, all of which would totally over expose your layout.

The jury is out on the sound front, for my part, with anything to do with film, never say never, it is an artform after all, and is in the eye of the beholder!
Experiment, you have nothing to lose!
Most of all, have fun, and always post/link them here first!!

Take care

Andy

[Tdm]

Shooting good footage is an essential first step, but using a good Video Editor to put it all together and add sound, transitions, and special effects can make a difference.
Personally I use my wife's old Sony Handycam to take the footage (that gets about half an hour's footage on a small disk), then edit it using "AVS Editor" software which is not the most friendly of video editing packages but has a lot of facilities and you can output in various formats including direct to YouTube.
All my YouTube clips that I have produced were done initially using either "AVS Video Editor" or Google's free "Picasa" photo editor in the case of still photos. I personally usually add my own music tracks as background sound.
When videoing trips out in my Classic Car (a Triumph Stag) I attached the camcorder to the top of the dashboard and plug in an extended external "mike" cable attached to a microphone permanently located inside my bumper just above the exhaust pipe in order to pick up the unique V8 "Burble" of the Triumph Stag engine.
Have tried other Video Editors but always return to using the AVS one as I know it's "foibles" well enough by now even though it defaults to NTSC (American) format rather than PAL (British) if you don't specify what you want.

[d-a-n]

I use a Canon 7D, 6D  or 5D mk3 DSLR with whatever lens I have to hand on a hugely weighty old Manfrotto 055 series tripod. I'd recommend the L series 100mm f/2.8 macro but it's very expensive and you need a bit of room to use it. Generally on the office layout, I use a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 stopped down as far as it would go for depth of field (the 7D is better in this respect as it is a crop sensor) and run a highish ISO but a cheapo lens like a 50mm f1.8 would serve just as well as you're not running it wide open. I don't like DSLRs for filming much though as the focus is hard to get right on such a small moving object if I wanted to pan - you could buy a follow focus but this pushes the cost up again!
Professionally, I'm a stills photographer so can't offer as detailed or accurate a reply on video as I'd like (or be able to if it was about stills) - however, I hope this helps!

I tried shooting some video of my layout only the other day. I had the fluorescent lighting bar lit because I thought it would give a well lit scene. On playback all the clips had a strange light level oscillation which I can only attribute to this. They were so bad I deleted the lot. Is my assumption on this correct?

I too would welcome any pointers to shooting and editing good video. I clearly need the guidance!

Fluorescent lighting recycles at a certain rate of hertz (50 or 60Hz), this flickering isn't enough for the human eye to see in action but that's why some fluorescent lighting can give people headaches. The same applies to old CRT monitors. The way round this is to capture at a different frame rate, for example 24fps or 60 fps instead of 25fps or 50 fps to put it out of synch with the lighting - you can do this with the DSLRs I use and would expect this to be a feature on other cams as this type of situation isn't uncommon.