sp-350

[Charlie59]

Yikes. Now I will have to figure out how to use my sp-350 to take videos!

There is just too much to learn. Still fighting with manual mode.

 

[sunkarm]

torrey, can u pm me your video clip? thanks.

 

[torrey]

Very cool Torry, who knew it could so that well. How much play time did you get on the 1gig card and how many cards edited did it take to make that video.

Seems we are both newbies with this camera.

If I remember correctly, I believe I did all video clips at 640x480 @ 30 frames per second. I turned off the sound since all you would hear is bubbles in order to save some room on the card. Surprisingly, it didn't eat up that much memory. The only problem was that it would only take video in 20 second increments, even though I had plenty of memory. I'm not sure why, but it didn't bother me too much because I knew I was going to be splicing them all together anyway. I think if you put it on a lower setting, it will take longer videos. If anybody figures out a way to keep it on the high setting and take longer videos, I'd like to know. Going back and looking on my computer, I took 32 videos and each one took up about 35mb on the card, so technically, I should be able to get about 30 of the 20-second videos on a 1 gig card at the highest resolution with no sound.

Nice video torry! I havn't used the video function on the camera yet but seeing this I will have to try it next dive.

How did you splice together the various takes to make the one video? (I know nothing about video editing software)

Ditto whats the best way to distribute a video so I can be veiwed by other SB members?

Cheers,
Rohan.

I was using Ulead VideoStudio 10...it makes it really simple. You open each video and select how much of it you want to use, drag it down to your video pallette, then you can select what kind of transitioning effects you want, what music you want (if any) and then decide what format you want it to output. You can also rotate the video, color correct (sorry, no whitebalance correction that I saw) and edit the videos in a lot of other ways.

As far as distributing, a friend pointed me to a site where AMD has teamed up with Streamload offering online storage. They will give you 25gb with 1gb of transfers free. For a small price, you can get up to a terabyte of storage space. I'm going with the free one for now. http://amd.streamload.com/ As far as I can tell, they don't compress your videos like youtube and maybe some others do, so no loss in quality.

ALSO, just so everybody knows...I believe the whitebalance function works with the video. I didn't realize this until I got home, but if you notice the color of the scene with the large green moray under the reef, I believe I had set my whitebalance for a photo just prior to that. The scenes where it is really blue, I was most likely using flash for still shots, and did not set the whitebalance when I started taking video. I'll remember this next time.

 

[torrey]

torrey, can u pm me your video clip? thanks.

Do you mean a link to the video? It's at http://amd.streamload.com/tweaver/Hosted/Coz-WMV320x240-30fps.wmv. You can either right-click and do a save-as, or left-click and play it directly.

 

[LindaBluedolphin]

Thanks Torrey

 

[torrey]

Thanks Torrey

No problem. I guess at 640x480 and no sound, you're looking at about 10 minutes of total footage on a 1gb card.

 

[liberato]

Torrey, great job on that video! I had no idea. it would come out so well in a natural light situation. I had also read somewhere that the videos were limited to something like 30 seconds which is about what you discovered.

 

[shark.byte.usa]

Not so...only the highest resolution max FPS (640x480 30FPS) is limited (20sec. clip), all other settings don't have a time limit.

 

[shark.byte.usa]

I've played around with the video a couple of times. Not as nice as Torrey's.

1st attempt:
http://www.getbentscuba.com/blog/2006/07/dive-65-66.php
Setting: 640x480 15FPS [Default], Manual White-Balance, ISO400
Notes: I had the resolution too high and FPS too low, accounting for the grainy appearance. Youtube compressed the video even further.

2nd attempt:
http://www.getbentscuba.com/blog/2006/08/new-scorpion-bay-video.php
Setting: 320x240 30FPS, Auto White-Balance [Cloudy], ISO100-200
Notes: Forgot to set the white-balance and video turned out green. ISO could have been a little higher, I think this would have helped autofocus problems

My conclusions:
Settings best for web distribution [Youtube, Google Video, etc]
320x240
30 FPS
Manual White-Balance
ISO 200-400, Depending on natural light.
No sound, waste of space

I used the Ulead VideoStudio 30 day trial for editing.

-Garrett

 

[torrey]

I like those, Garrett...especially the bass in the first one. My Cozumel trip last month was the first time I had my SP-350 in water other than a pool, so I was working hard on trying to learn the camera and get good photos and would just turn it over to video to play around since I wasn't seeing alot of photo opportunity's. I never realized the video was adjustable at all...I didn't even think to use the video stabilization mode. I wish I would have known all of this before I got home.

VideoStudion is nice, isn't it? I may go back and make another version with titles, still photos, some different transition effects and different music. I think I've found a new love in video editing, hehe.