Oly 5050 video clip - playing with a Remora

[Genesis]

they have two different brands; I also picked up a Maha charger.

Nice stuff.

Everready (yes, really) now has 2100 mah batts too, and they are also of good quality.

I have a number of 1800 sets and have yet to have trouble with them either, but they're not my primary cam batteries any more, now that the 2100s are available.

 

[Dee]

This is where I get my Power EX 2200's. They carry several brands but these are my favorites for holding power.

 

[Genesis]

I got mine from.

Get the Maha charger too, if you don't have a good one. The independant channel charging is a BIG DEAL - more so than the battery brand, in fact, as it is very important to insure that all batteries are fully charged in a pack, or you will eventually destroy the weakest one(s).

 

[Dee]

I have the MAHA 204 charger and it's great.

One of the hardest things for me to get used to with rechargeable batteries is timming their use. You can't charge them all and put them in the camera bag to have when you need them. They'll be dead when you get to them!

 

[Laser]

Genesis once bubbled...
Scott, I can cut down the size fairly seriously, but the quality REALLY suffers. I wanted to post this clip so people can see how it looks when it comes right out of the camera. Besides, I don't get charged for transfers on my web host - its on a private line in Chicago, on a computer I have admin priv's to....

Dee, you have a number of options. For VCDs I do the following:

1. Export it to DV format from Quicktime. This converts it to 30fps (necessary for display on a NTSC TV) and also fixes the encoder problems that would otherwise be present. Be warned that this makes the clip HUGE - that clip is about 80MB (!) in that format. If you try to get cute with the export to save disk space while assembling the project you will lose SIGNIFICANT amounts of image quality! Don't!

2. Use Roxio to assemble the VCD of clip(s). You can also rip out and replace audio tracks either in Quicktime or Roxio; I typically do exactly that, and replace the audio with music. Actually, most of the time when I shoot video I have the mic turned off on the camera; I screwed up this time and left it on. Oh well. (Beware distributing your movies with someone else's music on them though, especially with the RIAA on the warpath as they are these days....)

3. Roxio then burns the VCD to disk. That disk will play in MOST DVD players (but not all!) Quality is NOT up to DVD standards, but is a bit better than a S-VHS video tape, and WAY better than a normal VHS video tape. There is no "dot crawl" at all; I personally think it looks better than my Hi-8 camcorder on my HDTV system.

I made up a VCD of four Remora clips all assembled (this is one of the 4), a couple of others, and a ~10 minute movie of another dive (which I have in DV format - WAY huge native) all onto one VCD with a menu and all; it consumed about 1/3rd of a CD-R, and runs about 13 minutes.

I played with the various export options and assembled and burned about a dozen disks before I hit on the "magic" combination that gave me the quality I'm getting now. The raw files off the camera are what you see here - the trick is getting them onto a VCD without ruining them.

No, its not DVD quality, but its darn good for a camera intended for stills. The other footage of the other dive I have was shot with a VERY high-end, government-owned 3ccd DV handheld, and while that video quality is noticably better, that's also a $3,000 camera! The real shortcoming in terms of video quality is that there is quite a bit of noticable bleed-through of colors - common in single-CCD imaging sensors, and noise level is higher than I'd like, but that's low light for you.

The shocker is the white-balance capabilty and ability to shoot productively with nothing more than ambient light at depth. To be able to get real, honest-to-god reds to show up at 80' without ANY external lighting is amazing to me. The $3,000 camera didn't do nearly as well, even with a red filter on it - I was shooting with no filters at all, just calibrating the white balance when I got to the bottom. BTW, if you do that make sure you recal if you want to shoot on the way up the line, or you'll get a REAL red image!

A 256MB CF card will hold about 12 minutes of video, a 1GB card about 45 minutes (!) of continuous shooting. Both hold a bit more with sound turned off than turned on. If the sound is off you can zoom with the camera rolling; if its turned on then the zoom position is locked when filming.

I have a 256MB card in there now, and just ordered a 1GB card to complement it, as this is WAY cool and with a 1GB card I can shoot damn near an entire dive and have room for a few dozen stills all at once.

As far as I can tell the only limit on the continuous shooting capability is the card's size - there is no internal memory buffer issue, at least not with reasonably fast CF cards; I've run the entire 12 minutes on my current CF card in one clip.

As a "combination" video and still camera this thing ROCKS!

So if I get Roxio I'll be able to do all this?? I don't need anything else?

 

[Genesis]

You need EITHER:

1. Quicktime Pro ($30 for the download) AND Roxio's Full version 6 ($59 or so)

OR

2. Video Studio 7 from Ulead ($89 if you download it, $100 if you buy the boxed copy)

Either does the job. Roxio ALONE does not, because it cannot upconvert the QT format into something usable for a VCD.

 

[SM Diver]

It should be mentioned that for those small market segment people who have Macs, you need none of this. I don't say this to beat my chest or start a debate, only to avoid confusion as several photographers opt for a MAC.

Quicktime format was designed and is owned by Apple. All of their FREE products are designed to work with Quicktime. Open movie in iMovie, and you have a very powerful and free video editor. Export (one key stroke) to iDVD, and you have a great dvd authoring tool. Or, export from iMovie to a more compressed format to display on web. If you're a hard core editior, open right into Final Cut Pro and make your movie into an actual layer (just like photoshop or fireworks), where you can perform amazing special effects.


CAUTION: This is NOT intended to advise you to scrap your PC and Buy a MAC. This is just a hopefully useful tip for someone who already has a Mac, or might be thinking of getting one anyway. If you feel compelled to make a decision from reading this post, the author will not be liable for any claimed economic or non-economic (emotional distress) damages claimed. You agree to hold tampascott harmless from any and all claims by your act of reading this note.

 

[Dee]

Thanks, Scott. I wish I had known more about this when I bought my laptop. It was purchased mainly for use with my photography, for storage, viewing, burning CD's, etc. rather than a replacement for my PC. If I had known how much easier alot of the photography stuff was, I would have bought a MAC laptop. Well, I would have seriously considered one...they are kind of pricey!

Hopefully your info will help someone trying to make that PC or MAC decision.

 

[ScubaSky]

 

[Dee]

I like to know what folks are using because we share methods of manipulationg and tweaking our photos as well as burning CD's, saving movie clips, etc. Procedures to do those things are sometimes different between the programs used with PC's and MAC's ans well as what is built into the OS from one to the other.

Other than that I couldn't care less what kind of computer people prefer and use.