My first video

[telemonster]

My first video, made of 2 years of random clips captured on a SD-550 ELPH.

YouTube - SCUBA Diving @ Lake Rawlings

(Editing talk below)

Editing was absolute HELL because the Canon uses MJPEG, and my tool of choice for editing (Adobe Premiere) required codecs to handle editing MJPEG. Premiere is way more friendly to DV. Getting the video to youtube was another huge challenge, because Premiere/MicrosoftDV export is 720x480, and the video was edited at 320x240 (youtube friendly and the native res of the video). Ended up exporting to MPEG2-TS and then using AutoGK to convert that to MPEG4/xvid. I'm not happy with the compression on youtube, perhaps should have gone h264, oh well.

 

[sharksdelight]

Welcome to the wonderful world of underwater shooting and congrats on completing your first film. Now lets see how we can help you progress...each film should have a purpose, a story, a theme so just sticking clips together with music in the background will not cut it. Avoid the many back and forth pans that I saw so much of in the first minute and a half (as far as I watched). Get below your subject to give it depth.
Here is an article that might help you further. I would update it as it is 2 years old but most of it very much applies.
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/underwater_douglas.html

Most important....have continued fun.
Steve:14:

 

[PerroneFord]

My first video, made of 2 years of random clips captured on a SD-550 ELPH.

YouTube - SCUBA Diving @ Lake Rawlings

(Editing talk below)

Editing was absolute HELL because the Canon uses MJPEG, and my tool of choice for editing (Adobe Premiere) required codecs to handle editing MJPEG. Premiere is way more friendly to DV. Getting the video to youtube was another huge challenge, because Premiere/MicrosoftDV export is 720x480, and the video was edited at 320x240 (youtube friendly and the native res of the video). Ended up exporting to MPEG2-TS and then using AutoGK to convert that to MPEG4/xvid. I'm not happy with the compression on youtube, perhaps should have gone h264, oh well.

I exported video from Premiere at various sizes. Not sure why this was a problem for you. And yes, h.264 is the way to go for going to Youtube if you want it clean. I even tried compressing to FLV since that is what it's final format is, and it still messed it up. H.264 has consistently given me the best results.

 

[ronscuba]

Hey Telemonster, underwater video is pretty cool isn't it ?

I remember my 1st video. I couldn't believe it. I'm diving, with an expensive piece of electronic equipment underwater, recording exactly what I see. Then I get to cut out all the bad footage, put it together and add a song that I like. Way fun, I knew I was hooked.

Sticking a bunch of clips together and then adding music is exactly how many of us start. Especially if we are new divers and/or have no topside experience with video. Heck, even Howard Hall puts out videos without dialog that just have footage and music. Steve offers great advice in his post and in his linked article. He is a pro and probably has created and thrown out more videos than I have dives.

As a amateur hobbyist, my only advice is to take baby steps and enjoy yourself. Watch some videos by other people, taking note on what you like and don't like both in the footage and editing style.

 

[Empty V]

Nice job for a digital still camera dude! The music was great, made me feel like I was in a super nintendo game hahaha! Think of an underwater video a lot like making your own movie. Have an idea of what you want to tell your audience and how you want to capture that with your camera. I make films and shoot video for a living so a lot of what I do is planned out with shot lists and storyboarding. I plan on carrying those skills over to u/w video if I ever finish the modifications to my housing. The more planning that goes into your filming the better your videos will end up.

Billy

 

[telemonster]

Ah cool! Since the video was mostly clips that I had captured on a still camera (with video capabilities), there was never enough pre-planning to really go into a full storyboard mode. I've got a few books that I really dig for thinking about shooting (on land), one being "Film Directing Shot by Shot" by Steven Katz.

The flip side is Canon has made it really easy to bring their low cost elph series underwater... but when it comes to real cameras, the housings don't really come cheap.

Ron - checked out your stuff on youtube... very nice!

 

[tregtronics]

I absolutely love Canon, and I really enjoyed the clips I saw in this thread! Great Job! I am impressed at the quality you get off the ELPH, especially after going through so many conversion programs. I think it is pretty impressive that you navigated through all the software, to finally get what you wanted. I too started with the same type of music montage, and still rock them all the time. It is an easy way to put a day or two's shot's together to share. Throw some music up that hopefully tells a bit of a story about what you are looking at and voila' share away!

I just wanted to give a couple pieces of advice…
Here’s two that I learned from Annie Crawley in a H2O PHOTO PROS workshop in La Paz, Mexico (Link is to photos and videos from the event…) she is cool, I have to give her a shameless plug. As far as shooting goes, she told us “Slow is Pro,” I don’t think she trademarked it YET, but it is good advice. I think it is in her DVD as well. When you hit that record button, make every movement as if you were in Molasses. It looks better; just chill hard core even when you see a really big animal. Second… Leave yourself a bit of leader before and after the shot (keep running for a second or two on your camera once you let the subject go out of view, since you probably don’t have infinite space) to give you something to edit with.

Some advice as far as editing…
I can’t tell you how much I was converted from a PC guy when I bought elegant little MAC MINI 3 years ago. I took it, plugged in all my PC hardware (mouse, keyboard, monitor) and I have never wanted to touch a PC since. I was an IT tech in college, and did all sorts of computer work; a PC zealot since the age of 8. That little $600.00 MAC MINI changed my life. I bought $300.00 final cut express (I think they just slashed the price so it is even cheaper) and I have been so happy. You will be so happy. I run a nicer system now, I do HD footage, and the MINI really didn’t have the juice to do big projects, but for what you are doing, you would spend your time diving and sharing your films instead of using conversion programs.

Great videos all around, I really like the DIVX site, Stage6, the videos come out crisp and small in size, I am going to have to take another look at divx.