If you have read my story of woe below on how to make the most of digital film, you might be under the impression I have it sorted... errr no. In fact it still gives me grief. I think the technical term is "buggy". Anyway, for this last 3 minute video I took my own advice and saved as avchd in corel video studio. It played perfect on my pc but when it was uploaded to youtube the voice goes out of sync in the last section. I tried no less than 7 different settings etc and they all did the same thing..
In the end I saved and uploaded as mp4 hd at only 720p and it seems to work. I will also make the 1080p avchd public because it plays better except for the last 20 seconds or so. In other words I have had to do the opposite of the advice I give below. Go figure. One day it will all work as it should. :)
A brief (well I tried) description of getting AVCHD digital footage onto youtube etc..
I have been asked a few times what camcorder I use, what camera and how I get the video from digital to you tube.
I would love to say its easy...but it wasn't it was a right pain in the @ss. Luckily now it seems to have got a lot (and I mean an awful lot ) easier.
So here goes: My two penneth worth on camcorder films.
I use a regular camcorder. The one used for the first two films was a sony handycam that cost about £450. I got rid of it just because the footage , avchd , was so time consuming to deal with. In a nutshell , camcorders that record onto cards, use avchd . Thats just the name of the type of file. In the same way pictures are saved in files that might be jpeg.
The trouble is , or was, avchd wouldn't play in windows media player and needed to be "converted" to play nicely. This was time consuming and lots of hassle. The good news this has all changed.
Now, AVCHD plays on windows media the minute you import it. Since having windows 7, everything just seems to work. touch wood. So basically you can import film as easily as importing pictures. The big difference between film and photos though is that film will need lots of editing to get a half decent result. If you want to just save all your film onto a dvd thats fine, ie you film a birthday party then put it all on a disc. When you decide you want to put your clips in a different order or edit out the out of focus bits, you need an editor. Again this used to be hassle, but now I have just made the mull video on corel video editor and when it came to saving clicked "save as HD mp4" and what do you know? It just works. seemples :). AVCHD will get easier to handle every year as pc's get quicker etc etc. Oh and you do need a fairly new pc to deal with editing film, but I use my new ish laptop so nothing out of this world.....
The camcorder I used for the last Mull film is a panasonic sd60 (£350) from amazon with a great 3 second pre record function...
My tips for filming are as follows;
1.TRIPOD a big zoom on a camcorder is a no no with no tripod, a nice smooth panning one.
2. Tripod you see what I'm getting at :)
3. patience, be prepared to film 1 hrs film to get a 10 second clip.
4. A new ish pc makes life much easier
I've had lots of positive comments on forums and a couple off youtube that pose a couple of questions
1. why not use original audio all the time?
I've been told "real" filmmakers don't use camera audio much either. one reason is, if you're using a big zoom like on the sd60 , you might be filming a small bird/mammal 50 metres away. basically you can't hear it! if you can hear anything its just wind noise which would sound awful on a video. :) Also the sd60 picks up wind noise a lot and you need calm conditions or to be near the subject..
2. Is youtube playback as good as the original? Well this is tricky for me to tell because I view youtube and the original on the same laptop. So the limit of playback quality might be the "refresh rate" of my laptop monitor. To me youtube at 720p is pretty darn good and only struggles for the few seconds where something (a bird flapping) is real fast. I actually quite like the slow motion effect.Kind of gives a bit more drama and looks photo like.
I have converted the AVCHD original to dvd and played on the TV. It plays smooth and looks good (like sd tv) but doesn't have the sharp HD detail because DVD's aren't HD but its definitely "good enough" and yes its much smoother , better than youtube.
The revelation though was plugging my laptop into a lat screen using an hdmi lead. STUNNING! even at 32" the picture is crisp , clear and looks amazing. THis is the easiest way to store and playback AVCHD footage by miles. Using the laptop as a media player, is quiet simply the cheapest , most effective, quickest way to enjoy AVCHD. I did look at saving to blu ray then getting a player but why bother? If you have an HDMI lead you're good to go.
TOP TIP (and I mean really top tip) Next time I have to edit a video, I will be plugging the laptop into a big tv and using it as a 32" monitor. You don't realise what a fiddly job editing video is, until you see it displayed on a big tv. Why did I not know you could use tv's as big monitors? Still I do now, and so do you :)
Alex
