Documentary Film Guys Camera Guide

Can some of you give me some recommendations to a good HD camera for interviews / doc style work? Not sure if I should go with tape, hard drive or card. I'd like to have:
1) good quality
2) portability
3) easy loading to Mac/FCP
4) great audio
I'd like to spend $1000 or less.

I don't know how professional you need the quality to be. I've worked with the Canon GL2 extensively and think it's a great camera for the price. It's not HD, but very good quality. If you really want HD, I would suggest the Canon AH1. If you really want to stay under $1000, I'd suggest Canon and Panasonic brands. Look for a camera with 3CCD, a good size LCD screen and viewfinder, a good zoom (20x optical), 30p recording option, external mic connection, and easy white-balance controls.
As for format, it depends on how quickly you need the raw footage transferred to the computer for editing. Tape is excellent quality, but has to be imported in real-time. Hard drives are great, but sometimes record video in non-FCP friendly formats. Some are auto-converted by FCP, but then take up a lot more space than video that doesn't need conversion. I would recommend you stay away from card because they don't offer much recording time.
Other accessories I'd recommend:
Bogen Manfrotto tripod
Kata soft camera case
Shure brand microphones
Places to shop:
for cameras: www.jandr.com
for accessories: www.bhphotovideo.com

Similar Messages

Making documentary films

I would like to start making some simple, very short documentary films. Just shorts as part of an anti-stigma campaign. Wondering if iMovie would be suitable for this (versus the Final Cut products). Mostly these will be posted on my iWeb site. Also, can anyone recommend an easy to use, prosumer camera for such. I'll soon be upgrading to a new MacBook Pro.
Thanks so much.

iMovie 11 is a great way to go if you want to spend most of your time thinking about your message and filming the footage. iMovie is very fast and ideal for this.
As long as your movies are five to 20 minutes long,
You will be very happy with iMovie.
If over time you decide to make feature length documentaries, it is time to invest in the Final Cut products.
If you go to the iMovie Support page on the Apple website you can find a list of supported cameras.
My recommendation would be to choose a camera from Panasonic, Sony, or Canon that shoots AVCHD and records onto an SDHC card. But many other formats will also work.

Premiere Pro CC 2014 Crashing and Bogging Down on Documentary Film Project

We have been working in Premiere on this documentary film for months.
As we reach completion it is beginning to really bog down and crash a lot.
Equipment is
iMac 27 inch 3.5 GHz Intel Core i7 Late 2013 Model
Apple Cinema HD Display
32 GB 1600 Mhz DDR3 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4096 MB Graphics Card
1TB internal SSD Drive
We are running Premiere Pro CC 2014.0.1 and have remained there because we don't want to upgrade the software in the middle of the project.
The media is all on the external drive. It's a USB 3.0 connection. There is quite a lot of footage that we are working with.
We do have some After Effects comps that are linked in the project and we have exported the ones that are complete as QuickTimes to try to stop that from bogging us down.
Any advice on how we can manage this crashing and freezing problem would be much appreciated.
We don't have the cash to upgrade the computer and it has been working pretty well for us so far.
Here are things we have done:
Made a smaller timeline because we were working on one that was the entire movie.
Turned off the secondary monitor and unplugged it.
We are looking at moving the render cache off the external drive to a thunderbolt drive, but I'm concerned that this may take a long time.
Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Splitting up the read/write items is rather a key to getting smoother operation out of PrPro. Either that or putting things on a large RAID-0/5, this sort of thing is covered over on the
Tweaker's Page ...
http://ppbm7.com/index.php/tweakers-page
And I highly recommend you take a look. Their info isn't just "we think ... " ... but the results of many many carefully crafted test sequences run on many machines with all sorts of hardware bits & pieces. You can also register, download the PBM test and run it on your own machine. It takes only a little while to do so, and with the logger app that's included and posting the results back to them, you can get a very good breakdown on where your machine is doing ok ... and where any choke points are occurring.
I think this would be good for you right now ... you need to get stuff done, not guess & try things.
Neil

Workflow Documentary Film

I am currently setting up a documentary film with about 100 hours of footage so far. The footage is mainly shot on Canon 5D, T4i, and C300. There is also some footage from iPad, iPhone and we will be adding news clips of various formats.
One of the reasons I love Premiere is that you can edit in various formats and importing is a piece of cake. However, I am concerned that down the line if we have to work with a production house on the audio and color correction of the movie, if we will have problems. The post houses that we have talked with often have an Avid workflow and then use DaVinci for color correction.
I suppose the big question is, if I start editing natively in the formats in which we shot, is it going to be very difficult in the end when a post house wants to take the timeline into Da Vinci and are there other considerations I haven't even thought of.
I know this is kind of a loaded question, but if it can't be answered here, I'd love to be directed to a resource for this information. I am recommending we user Premiere on this project because I love working with it and I think it is more advanced than anything out there. But I don't want to end up wrong at the end when we have to bend over backwards to "online" it or color correct it.
Thanks in advance.

yeah, that's pretty loaded up question... and you'll get many different answers. I don't know anyone who's done that mix of footage for eventual move to outside color grade and so on.
Many will say edit native no matter what it is , simply ( as you know ) " it can be done ". I don't personally like that mental state myself but I am not experienced or pro at this. Like, if your 5d stuff is mov h264 you edit that native , and if you're on pc OS don't to to cineform or something.. or on mac to pro res ...I have no clue what you got to work with ( version of adobe or platform )
I'm shooting nikon d800 which on cards is mov h264 but got a little ninja to get avid 422 out of HDMI.. if I didn't do THAT I'd probably go to cineform for my pc using cs6.
So you got a lot going on ...mixing all that stuff etc... and the edits you do and effects etc have something to do with the overall quality of your renders ( if you do any ) and your export ( if you do or dont use renders )
I'd be interested in what you find out and hope to follow this thread to learn what YOU learn...
I guess you have to work backwards a little bit.. like, what will the ultimate export be for the davinci and then the delivery ?.. and whether you suddenly find out some bug nobody discovered before you got crazy !

Bonjour, j'utilise adobe pro CS4 sur Windows 7. L'exportation du film sur caméra canon MV750i

Bonjour, j'utilise adobe Pro CS4 sur Windows7. l'exportation d'un film sur caméra canonMV750i, met en route le mécanisme, enregist s'affiche en rouge , le film ne s'inscritpas

Bonjour.
Pas de souci de mon coté (Mac OS).
Je n'ai jamais eu connaissance de ce problème, y compris durant le cycle de beta-test.

Film van camera downloaden

Hoe moet ik een filmpje dat ik met mijn camera heb gemaakt op mijn I-pad zetten.
Als ik mijn SD kaart erin heb, kan ik alleen op foto's klikken en gaat het programma niet automatisch naar de filmpjes die op de camera staan.
Hoe werkt dat?

Rough translation.
How am I a movie that I've taken with my camera on my I-pad up.
If my SD card in it, I can just click on photos and the program does not automatically go to the movies on the camera.
How does it work?
Are you asking how to transfer movies from your camera to the iPad? With some cameras, movies don't transfer when you connect the camera to the iPad. Plug your camera's SD card into the camera connection kit. Then you should be able to transfer pictures and movies.
If that doesn't work, you can use a USB flash drive & the camera connection kit.
Plug the USB flash drive into your computer & create a new folder titled DCIM. Then put your movie file into the folder. The movie file must have a filename with exactly 8 characters long (no spaces) plus the file extension (i.e., my-movie.mov). Now plug the flash drive into the iPad using the camera connection kit. Open the Photos app, the movie file should appear & you can import.
 Cheers, Tom
Bent u op om te vragen hoe films overbrengen van uw camera naar de iPad? Bij sommige camera's, doe films niet overdragen wanneer u de camera aansluit op de iPad. Sluit uw camera's SD-kaart in de Camera Connection Kit. Dan moet u in staat zijn om foto's en filmpjes te brengen.
Als dat niet werkt, kunt u gebruik maken van een USB flash drive en de Camera Connection Kit.
Steek de USB-flash-schijf in uw computer en maak een nieuwe map met de naam DCIM. Dan je film bestand op te slaan in de map. Het filmbestand moet een bestandsnaam met exact 8 tekens lang zijn (zonder spaties) plus de bestandsextensie (dat wil zeggen, mijn-movie.mov).
Nu sluit u de stick in de iPad via de Camera Connection Kit. Open de foto's app, moet het filmbestand worden weergegeven en u kunt importeren.

808 camera guide / tips / tricks

Does anyone know where they is a good internet site explaining exactly how to use the 808's camera and all its features?
Its probably me being stupid but i cant seem to get great photos from my 808, infact id say my N8 takes better photos if you havent got 10 minutes to set it up.
Ive tried leaving it in auto mode and also messing around in creative mode but im just not happy with the photos, most seem blurred or out of focus slightly no matter how hard i try to keep the phone still.
Id say i can hold a camera just as still as most people but unless its mounted in a tripod the results are poor, even my mates and family have had a go and it makes no difference, none of use can get sharp photos every time.
I have attached a couple of pics to show what i mean.
And before anyone says did the cat move for pic 2, the answer is no. He is great for taking photos as he just sits there for ages looking at you and not moving at all!!
Picture 1 is me holding the camera above my head (so not very stable at all) to take a photo of my cat on top of the shed roof, the results are quite good considering.
Picture 2 is taken resting the camera on top of a box (so very stable) but seems slightly out of focus and not as good as pic 1.
Attachments:
1.jpg ‏1173 KB
2.jpg ‏391 KB

I mainly shoot in automatic mode, but here are my custom settings:
C1 (landscape): 8Mpix PureView mode, superfine jpeg, vivid colors, sharpness +1, ND filter off for the most part, I only turn it on if its a really bright scene. Don't worry, it will look like its overexposed on screen, but once you take the shot it will be okay.
If you want more color, bring the saturation up. Adjust EV and ISO according to the conditions. If you want a natural looking image, which I prefer, just set the color mode to normal.
C2(sunset/sunrise): 5Mpix PureView mode, superfine jpeg, vivid, everything else on 0. Color tone: cloudy. EV on -.7 .. depending on conditions. ND filter OFF (faster shutter speeds)
C3 (aiming for the most natural image): Full resolution, everything on default except +1 or +2 sharpness, nd filter OFF
At night, if you want to blur motion.. ND filter ON and set the iso @ 50. If you just want to take a shot, you can go up to 800 iso, and the images are still usable.
for HDR, bracketing mode 3 shots: -2, 0, +2 .. set the ISO to 100, ND filter to ON or OFF (not on auto)

Using plastic film that came w/iphone as screen protector

I have been using the plastic film that was on the iphone screen in the box as a screen protector. Everything works the same with it on as off. I just cut the tab on the bottom off. The only problem is it covers the earhole and I just use my headphones or speaker on calls.

It's purely preference whether or not to use a protector, but here is a link to some testing that PC World did that you may find interesting:
http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/06/30/iphone_test/index.php

Film guys: Sample Rates?

Do people work at 48khz in Logic, or work in 44.1 then change rates later?
I'm working in 48khz just now, but it means that importing 44.1khz files is a drag, seems they need to be converted to playback properly. Working at 48 also seems to mean that my 828MkII is 'stuck' in 48khz, so that neither iTunes or Waveburner will playback as long as Logic is running.
Is there a more elegant solution, or just "shut-up and get on with it"? ;o)

Irv,
I'm surprised to hear that you can't get iTunes to playback while Logic is running @ 48KHz. I never have a problem with this. Perhaps it's got something to do with my audio system, tho I'm not sure. One thing I could swear I remember reading is that CoreAudio will do real-time sample rate conversion, which (I guess) explains why I can play an audio CD while my session is @ 48K.
I just did a project where most of the music was originally recorded at 44.1, the mixes and stems ultimately bumped up to 48K. Personally, I'll never do that again if I can help it, for a variety of reasons. One, because it generated too many files with similar names (strings stem 44, strings stem 48, etc.), and Two, because when we had to do tweaks, we had to go back to the 44.1 session, re-print stuff, then redo the sample rate conversions. Real PITA.

Program not in Library -- In ABAP Runtime Analysis SE30.. Plz Guide me guys

Dear all,
I have to execute one report program in SE30 ABAP Runtime Analysis tool.
So I have entered my program name in the SE30 but I have got 1 error " Program ( pgm name ) not in Library ".
Guys plz guide me on this asap.
Edited by: PI User on Nov 26, 2010 11:14 AM
Moderator message: too basic, too much SMS speak, too much "asap", thread locked, points removed.
[Rules of engagement|http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/HOME/RulesofEngagement]
Edited by: Thomas Zloch on Nov 26, 2010 12:33 PM

Hi
The error message is clear: the program you're trying to test by SM30 is not SAP (your SAP system of course)
Now try to check if you can see that program by SE38, but if you think the program is in SAP, prehaps you're running SM30 in another system:
For example:
the program was created in development system and you run SM30 in quality and that program hasn't been transported yet: so the program is in development but not in quality.
Max

OT: So if I wanted to get into non-orchestral music for film...etc

I know there are a few film guys here. Thought you might through some advice my way. Few years ago I did some stuff for the discovery channel. Also worked on some music for a documentary film. Just last week I got handed a job doing the music for a short film. Anyway this recent job made me think this could be fun. So I'm thinking of exploring. But not really sure where to start. All of my previous experiences came through who I knew. And I'm sure who you know is a big part of it, but I don't know that many people so.... Yeah any ideas.

LOL!!!
Touche mon frere!!!
PS you need a lot of time to set it up properly.
"Christian Jacob - Timelines"
One week to set up the 3 instruments,drums,bass and piano...
4 days to record...
3 days to mix...
1 day to master.
Used a Neve 8048 desk,2" Quantegy GP9 tape at 15ips,with Dobly SR,and hitting at +5dBu.Only EQ'd about half the drumkit.Mainly filtering out the low end from the overheads,and added little "sparkle" on the piano track to compensate for the high end loss inherent in the tape.
Check it out...
http://www.rhapsody.com/christianjacob/timelines
Cheers

Camera Shopping?? Need Help!!

I am a beginning Graphic Designer and I need some help!!
I already purchased my first new 15 inch Apple MacBook Pro computer a couple of months ago.
Now! All I really need!! is a camera for doing professional movies and taking good professional
quality photos.
What type of Cannon camera would be best for me to purchase?? if, I am going to be taking
professional pictures of people for portraits, animals, and objects.
What type of camera should I purchase?? if, I wanted to shoot and make professional documentary films and
also shoot and make professional movies too.
I also need to know what type of camera lens do I need too! for my camera or cameras???

lovinlucy, Welcome to the discussion area!
Please provide more details.
What type of camera? still photo or video?
How are you connecting it to your Mac? USB, FireWire, etc.?
What is the brand and model # of the camera?

24p vs 30p for a documentary

Hi all. So I'm dipping my toe into the documentary film pool and I need to purchase a better camera. I have narrowed it down to the Panisonic AG-DVX100* or Panasonic AG-DVC30. The DVC30 is a hair cheaper but it doesn't have 24p. Two questions.
-How noticeable is the difference between 24p and 30p?
and
-Can FCE actually handle 24p?
I've been searching the discussion board and I'm just a little confused on the matter. I'm sure one of you with some experience could clear it up for me. I want this first film to look good but it doesn't have to be immaculate. From what I understand, FCE can't handle 24p but it can handle 30p (29.97). Am I correct? This will help me in my decision process between the two cameras. Has anyone had experience with the AG-DVC30? I've heard nothing but rave reviews of the DVX100. Thanks in advance.
MacBook Pro 1.83 ghz 2gb Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Last weekend I rented a Panasonic AG-DVX100B. I chose the F5 preset for 24p (not advanced), cine-like, etc.
When I imported it into FCE 3.5 I got 30-interlaced.
I tried re-importing into a fresh, new project in FCE but FCE still shows the imported videos as 30-interlaced. I've double-checked the camera settings and it's definitely recording 24p.
Any idea what might have gone wrong?
TIA,
--Richard
G4/867 Tower Mac OS X (10.4.10)

We had an IT guy mess our company calendar up really bad. All of the iCloud calendars we created are not showing on the sidebar and it's no longer syncing with some of our computers and phones. HELP!!

Our company is currently using iCal of scheduling. It has been working great, however, an IT guy came in to update our server and now the calendar won't show any of the created iCloud calendars at the side, it won't sync on many of our phones and computers, and events won't properly update or sync. Please help.

The warranty entitles you to complimentary phone support for the first 90 days of ownership.

Using a network camera in Skype

So back in the day when I used windows, I was able to take my Foscam IP Camera, use a driver from webcamxp.com and use it like a USB Camera in any application I wanted. It has been over a year now since I moved to a mac and this is the one problem I have not been able to solve. I know there are apps and programs that will connect into the camera, but it has a web browser for that... I need something that makes it show up as a native local webcam. Any suggestions?

Hi,
Back in the day you could use an Add-on called iUSBCam for iChat (and other apps)
This had a camera guide as many people started off using USB cameras rather than the Firewire iSight.
Many linked to Drivers at Macam
The other popular one was the IOXperts site that no longer seems to be there.
I also came across this http://foscam.co.uk/blog/foscamipcameras/installing-foscam-ip-cameras-on-an-appl e-mac-macintosh-solution/
They of course have a Support Page
10:15 pm Sunday; December 22, 2013
 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mavericks 10.9)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad

Documentary Film Guys Camera Guide

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