Ever lived through this situation? You captured the perfect video. Your daughter’s recital. Your trip to Cancun. Whatever.
You’re so excited that you rush home and show the video to your mom, friends, whomever. You either connect the camera to the tv or make everyone squint and watch it on the camera’s LCD.
You rewind the tape to the part you want to view, put the camera in VCR or play mode, and press play. No problem.
Now you want to use the camera again. You put it in camera or record mode and press record.
No problem, right? Wrong. Didn’t we leave out a step? What about the part where we fast forward the tape to the end of the existing footage before pressing record again?
Without fast forwarding, you are about to record over your existing footage!
Another problem, even if you do fast forward, is something called a timecode break. Digital8, miniDV, and HDV tapes are all digital media. The tapes contain metadata to tell the computer how far into the tape you are located.
This is super handy when you go to capture your footage to computer. You can log the footage to a database on your computer (the subject of a future post) without actually taking up any hard drive space. Then when you want to use the footage in a project, you tell your movie editing software which tape and timecode and it will recapture it for you.
Well that sounds like you only need timecode if you’re a professional editor. Nope, many consumer editing programs will only capture the footage if the timecode metadata is present and intact.
The timecode is in the form hours:minutes:seconds;frames. It looks something like this: 01:01:36;20. That means you are one hour, one minute, 36 seconds, 20 frames into the tape. Digital8, miniDV, and HDV tapes can hold approximately one hour of footage.
The timecode should start at 00:00:00;00 and proceed to approximately 01:02:00:00. This means the end of the tape should be at about 1 hour, 2 minutes of footage.
If you get a break in the code, from things like rewinding and restarting the tape, the code will start over from 00:00:00;00 someplace in the middle of the tape. So, you’ll have two spots on the tape which say 00:00:01;00 etc. Not good. Your computer will have a hard time capturing the tape.
Speaking of how much footage will fit on a tape, you never want to squeeze more video on a tape than what will fit at best quality. If your camera has a setting allowing you to put two hours of video on a one hour tape, don’t do it! Again, your computer may have trouble capturing the video.
Another consideration when videotaping is how your computer will ingest, or capture, the footage. Your computer is going to want to read metadata off the tape prior to capture.
So, you’ll want to have a few seconds of filler material at the start and end of every tape.
You’ll also want that filler material (technical term=handles), if possible, at the start and end of every scene. This will give you some wiggle room when you go to edit the footage.
It’s really not something you need to think about much. Have the camera recording for a second before letting people know to start the action. Keep it recording for a second after the action is done. That’s all.
Now let’s address the issue of how to prevent mystery tapes. You know, that box of unlabeled tapes. You’ll save yourself a lot of time in the future if you label tapes accurately as you use them. At the very least, put the year on them.
If you already have unlabeled tapes, the only recourse is to violate my first rule and play the tapes back a bit on the camera, so you know what’s on them. You can then label and store them. Since they’re already fully used, you shouldn’t run the risk of taping over them. Just make sure to take them out of the camera when you’re done!
Lastly, how do we solve the problem of filming the floor? Simple – set the alarm on your camera. Most cameras have an option for a beep when record is turned on or off. That should at least give you a head’s up that you pressed the button when you are done recording.
If you have a hard drive or flash camera, showing people the footage right on the camera or tv is fine. Each movie clip is a unique file, so you won’t overwrite your footage or mess up the timecode when you press record again.
Comments on this entry are closed.