Editing suggestions

[Divesherpa]

Try to find a more normal diver to film. That guy you have there is a fricken zoo. There are bubbles streaming out of the neck of his wetsuit. For God's sake man, what were you thinking?
Other than that it looks good. I should know. I'm a video guy from way back.

I guess I'm just drawn to diving with abnormal divers. The bubbles continually escaping from the neck seal is a problem. No more Cuban joints before the dive. We'll have to stick to something more American, like Denny's



Thanks for the computer advice, Kim. Editing on the laptop isn't optimal. I ordered an external drive WD 200GB with firewire. If I can scrape together some funds, I may build another system for editing. I'm broke after the camera, housing, software, and hard drive. Video is too damn expensive, but so fun. My wife and dive buddy both enjoyed watching the un-edited videos straight from the camera. Outstanding fun for us newbs!

Ron, your stuff is awesome. Thanks for the links. I'll watch them all and take pointers from each.

Cheers,
Jamie

 

[Kim]

Using an external firewire drive should help a lot. Presumably it'll be 7200rpm. I use one on a computer at school for the kids school videos. It works reasonably well for that.

 

[ChrisA]

There are various styles of editing. The simpliest is what I'd calll "the slide
show" it just Here is a shot, here is another, and here is one more. This can be
good just like a "real" slide show with 35mm slides can be good.

There is another style and it's much harder this is where you tell a story. The
story can be simple like "John and Jane go scuba diving. They see a turtle,
they see a shark. The dive is over" Even this simple plot will keep a viewr
watching, even a non-diver viewer. There are some "tricks" required here.
You need establishing shots and a few other kinds of shots and follow some
rules andyou really can Film making and videography book cover this

So much fore editing, on to camera work....

The shots are good, most of us would be happy to get them but if you are looking
for professional level quality you will have to cut down on the camera
movement (pan and shake) and on use of the zoom, both ofthese are
very distracting and kill the illusion of "being there". If done right, the viewer
is "transported" and forgets about the camera. Zoom and movement are
things the human does not do so it breaks the ilusion. Same with editing,
the eye jumps from place to place, editing, if it is to be transparent and
not noticed needs to emlated the way the eye works, that's why fancy
transitions don't "work" it is used to let the viewer know thatthis is NOT a
natural cut.

I started editing video two days ago. As you guys are knowledgeable about video, how about some critique?? I appreciate all suggestions.
Here are the links:
http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/21407/cat/500/page/1
http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/21213/cat/500/page/1
http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/21210/cat/500/page/1


I'm using Ulead. My laptop slows way down when I'm editing. Do I need to build a new computer just for editing?

How do you guys close video segments?

Thanks,
Jamie

 

[ChrisA]

I'm using Ulead. My laptop slows way down when I'm editing. Do I need to build a new computer just for editing?

Jamie

Depends on your budget and how much video you edit. Some of the high-end editing packages make use of what they cal a "render farm" this is a stack of PCs, usually rack mounted that do processing in the background, not many home users can afford a stack of 6 or 8 dual CPU boxes on the network just for video editing and then there are the file servers with their arrays of SCSI disks. OK that's overkill. The other end of the scale is usig a small notebook PC. You might want to find a practical compromise with two or four GB RAM and some fast disks.

If you do things like color correction, or cropping (possibly with a moving box to eliminate camera movment) and a few laayers of audio the computer will _really_ slow down and that's when peole start thingking abut a fully loaded dual G5 power Mac.

 

[JeffG]

I guess I'm just drawn to diving with abnormal divers. The bubbles continually escaping from the neck seal is a problem. No more Cuban joints before the dive. We'll have to stick to something more American, like Denny's

Ack.....there goes another keyboard