Our Switch to HD

For many of us small videographers the switch to HD was like a death sentence. I drug my feet for as long as possible. Why; because the economy had just tanked and we all had to pinch to stay afloat. I noticed a huge drop in the competition in Columbus, Ohio. People couldn’t financially make the leap; I probably would have been among them, but for one of us attaining full-time employment. Think about it, people had just settled from the switch from analog (VHS and Beta) to digital equipment. If you have three cameras that equals three cameras that you have to replace. That was my problem, I had realized that two cameras were good, three better, and four awesome. I wasn’t working with the most high end equipment, so I decided to stay in a similar range for my first HD camera. I loved the 3 chip cameras and I thought that was the way to go for the future. It was not. It was my first and last JVC because it was ridiculously complicated. To capture the footage in HD you had to use proprietary software that could then compress it to be usable in an editor. If you used Premiere (or any NLE of choice) the footage was not HD. This was fine when I was using it with other standard definition footage, but when I wanted the clarity of HD it just didn’t deliver. Not long into the life of the camera it stopped taking a charge and is now a paper weight. The other caveat with the switch to HD was a shift from tape to hard drive and card formats. At first there were a few cameras with HDDV tapes, but that didn’t seem to last in anything but the professional market. The librarian/archivist in me cried a little with the loss of a permanent storage medium. Tape was nice and linear and recorded on the spot. Sure, there were instances in which you could lose a whole tape; please don’t play with magnets around tapes, but things were recorded as they happened. This is not the case with HD formats – files are written in chunks or blocks of data; one bad chunk could ruin the whole set of data. In fact we had an early nightmarish lesson in how the HD cameras handle data. We had decided to take afore mentioned JVC as a backup camera on a documentary shoot, with a borrowed Panasonic AG-HMC150 as the main shooter. The HMC150 had a beautiful image and seemed great until I had to turn off the camera and change the battery. I turned the camera back on and the card was unreadable – hours of footage, gone. We’re down to one card and not sure why. Hours later, we’re shooting the most important part of the documentary and the battery is running low. Stop. Plug in. Restart. No card. The problem was that the camera needed to write a lead out before it turned off, but it didn’t have a fail-safe if the battery died. If the camera was stopped while writing that lead out then it rendered the card useless and you lost everything on it. This meant that we had a documentary with no footage from the main camera, no cards to record more on, nothing. It was an interesting learning experience, one that I test for when I’ve purchased a new camera. I’d rather replace an empty card that errored than to not have the footage I set out to shoot. I finally decided to take a more serious leap into HD video, despite my experience with the HMC150. All the cool kids were hoping the DSLR train – beautiful image, interchangeable lenses, more control than a camcorder; what more could you want? The downfall is a time limit – depending on the camera it can range from 10-30 minutes. And lenses, oh the cost of lenses, yet like Pokemon you need them all. I had Nikon lenses and Nikon had just released the d5100 with the flip out screen and the impressive (at the time) 20 minute time limit. The time limit made events all but impossible and after about a year I was able to pick up a second. Still, staggering the stop/start times seemed daunting from across the room. I missed having a wide shot capturing the whole event. I recently added the Panasonic G5 to our arsenal. The G5 has no limit on the duration of a shot (when using AVCHD) and, with adaptors, will use my Nikon lenses if I really need it to. My only concern was mixing brands, which was previously a no-no, because they used to be hard to match color and contrast. DSLRs seem to match better than old camcorders did and as long as my white balance is set to match the difference is unnoticeable. I am certainly happy to be able to offer a three camera HD camera set-up – and just in time for 3D or 4k to take us all on a new ridiculous path.

Home Work

You wake up in your footie pj’s and you don’t have to exchange them for the good ol’ business casual. You can shuffle across the hardwood floors in your hot pink argyle socks, who cares that you’ve paired them with mint colored shorts? Don’t lie you even have Risky Business moments when your spouse is at work. Every day you save the planet by sparing the world from yet another commuter. Yep, these are the joys of working from home. You are a motivated self-starter; you have to be to get everything done to be able to pay the bills. Yet, there are always pit falls, you leave the house less than your peers. If you want an extra job outside of the house you’re always questioned about your ability to integrate back into society; as if staying in your house means that you have checked out of civilization and signed up for the hermit club. Ok, ok so you socialize and you know it, your income relies on it. But the rest of the world doesn’t believe it. There’s another problem; you live where you work and you work where you live, you have to either learn to turn off the job or you’ll find yourself working 24 hours a day. You know what it takes to balance life and work. I’ve been working at home for 4 years now, all that time in a small 700 sq ft house. There are comforts here, there are draw backs here, and some days I flee the space. My Netflix, Pandora, Spotify, and Openlibrary keep me company when social interactions are lacking. I can work on the floor, I can work in the hall, and when I’m sick – I can work from bed. My fridge is full-sized and holds a variety of choices for my lunch. My coffee pot is my friend, and when it stops being faithful I can end its contract. Most of all, my dog has constant company (because it is all about him), although I think he ignores me from 9-5. I’ve read about shared spaces, but I need solid internet and a customizable desk/chair setup. I need a powerful desktop because a laptop doesn’t always work for video. I’d be adding an extra expenditure for the space in addition to the commute and thus I’d contribute to the planet’s destruction. Now this isn’t to say that I’d avoid the commute if an office job found me. I mean, the stability of the 9-5 or comfortable warmth of lovely, lovely argyle socks… what’s a girl supposed to do?

August Columbus Digital Meeting

Columbus Digital meeting tonight 6-9 PM at Brothers Drake. 3D in After Effects & Setting Yourself Up For Success in Editing...

Summertime, Funtime

Summertime, Funtime

I know, I know we’ve been awol from our weekly blogging for a while now. I’m sorry, but it is summer and with summer comes all kinds of fun. Our fun began with volunteering to document ComFest. While I, personally, did not get to spend as much time at ComFest, Matt did spend three days running from stage to stage. In addition to the whole day at documenting, our CMIAR screenings have been added to the shelter house shows. This adds community exposure to some of the artists that have exhibited over the past year.

After ComFest we begin shifting our gears toward the Columbus International Film Festival. For the past three years we ‘ve been chairing the judging of the student division. And so now it begins – watching hours of films and rating them for the festival. This proves to be hours of fun, getting together with the jurors and spending hours enjoying snacks, discussion, and films.
During all these extra curriculur activities we have to keep up on our work for clients as well as our personal art work. While we’ve been a little lax in the latter this year, we did submit to the Ohio State Fair Fine Arts Film division. We both were awarded the Greater Columbus Arts Council (GCAC) Awards for our avant garde work. Matt, for his piece City Lights and me for my multi-screen version of my City Walks, which included New Orleans, Cedar Rapids, Columbus, and Allentown.
A busy summer of exciting things – and it’s only half over. Maybe we’ll be able to throw in a few City Walks and some other new work, find some more cool experiences, and maybe catch a summertime drive-in or two.