GunZ n Butter Productions

Panasonic DVX100 for Internet Videos

gnbprod — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:05:20 +0000

Panasonic DVX100

So I just realized I have yet to discuss this great piece of equipment and how it holds up today, in a world of internet video, tapeless recording, and high definition.

First of all, the Panasonic DVX100 has been the modest budget, go-to camera for years. It was one of the first prosumer cameras released that records in a progressive frame rate. Mine offers both 24p, 24p-advanced and 30p, as well as interlaced versions of 24 and 30 frames-per-second.

The colors it captures consistently outdoes many prosumer HD cameras on the market right now. Depending on how you shoot, it is very easy to get a true-to-life and a slightly surreal, oversaturated look.

This camera is also very good in low-light conditions, especially with a little gamma adjustment in post-production. I will show you examples of everything I am talking about below.

So, in the age of HD video largely planned for internet distribution, how does the old classic fare?

So far in my experiences, this camera outdoes a lot of the newer cameras on the market today.

PROS: Progressive recording is almost crucial for professional looking videos viewed on a computer. A good Standard Definition camera recording with a progressive frame rate can look even better online than a lot of prosumer HD footage. The files you capture to your computer are significantly smaller than HD, so editing is a lot easier and faster. The 3CCD chip color-capturing technology outdoes the common/cheaper CMOS and 3CMOS technology being implemented by many prosumer HD cameras today.

CONS: Inherent in using tapes to record, there are glitches and other artifacts that can show up in your footage. Built-in hard drive cameras and ones with memory cards usually don’t have these problems since the mechanical aspects of tape heads are taken out.

Here is an example of a video I shot in 24p and prepared for the internet:

Here is another in 30p:

Here is a video I shot in very low light and then used gamma correction:

In short, many people have asked me how I get such great-looking footage from these videos. And I tell them … I shoot with a tried-and-true, classic camera. No HD needed, but it would still be nice if it were tapeless .

P.S. For YouTube to recognize this footage as HD even though it isn’t, I simply convert the resolution when I export the final video files. Can you see the difference? Please comment!

CMOS update, ROLLING SHUTTER EFFECT

gnbprod — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:33:32 +0000

Ahh. So I just noticed a new problem with my Canon HG10. The CMOS technology has a very, very obvious artifact I had overlooked/accredited to other issues of shooting in high definition. The rolling shutter effect. Here’s a good starting point:

http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=blog&blog_id=1700000170&blog_post_id=1520016552

Cans Film Festival CALL FOR ENTRIES

gnbprod — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 17:00:17 +0000

Hey all you I-Can’t-Believe-It Fabios,

Get ready for THIS pigeon in your face!!

GunZ n Butter Productions is currently working with Rachael’s Cafe in Bloomington, Indiana to bring you the CANS INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM AND VIDEO FESTIVAL.

If you haven’t already heard, we are currently looking for your/your friend(s)’s submission(s). How’s that (s)ound?

If you, or anyone you know makes short movies, etc … please direct your attention to http://www.myspace.com/cansatrachaels for more information.

THE DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES IS AUGUST 1st, 2008!!

Here is the PDF entry form, which can also be found on our myspace page: http://www.gnbprod.com/cans/entryPDF.pdf

This event doubles as a canned food drive.

So, on behalf of GunZ n Butter Productions, all are cordially invited to the CANS FILM FESTIVAL, running September 11th-13th at Rachael’s Cafe.

As always … SPREAD THE BUTTER!!

Nicholas

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Cans International Short Film and Video Festival

http://www.myspace.com/cansatrachaels

cansfilmfest@gmail.com

Rachael’s Cafe
300 E 3rd St
Bloomington, IN 47401

Official entry form with rules, etc

http://www.gnbprod.com/cans/entryPDF.pdf

Carry the News shot on 16 mm film

gnbprod — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:30:13 +0000

Carry the News from Nicholas Peters on Vimeo.

Sony DSR-VX2100 and 3CCD vs CMOS

gnbprod — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 21:13:55 +0000

This was the camera I used for the three-shot in the video in my previous post, Rachael’s Cafe [pt. 4 of 5]. This was a pretty nice camera to get to use. However, they are somewhat “out of date.” One of them randomly died on me, so that might be true. It just stopped being able to turn on. At least I didn’t have to pay for it. The camera felt nice and steady most of the time. For the grand opening of Rachael’s Cafe [pt. 5 of 5] I had to shoot in a cramped environment [packed in with a lot of mingling people drinking alcohol], and had to look through the eyehole to save the battery power. So accept for sticking out so far in front of you, it was really nice to use for all of that. Here is another video I shot with it on a sunny day, hopefully showing you more about its image quality and how it captures light and color:

Bone Marrow and Muscle Fibers from Nicholas Peters on Vimeo.

–Also noteable, is that this was recorded using the built-in microphone on the top of the camera. We were at a festival of sorts, with music being played over a PA behind us, and Alex Arnold wasn’t singing very loudly, so I just got as close to him as I could. I think it sounds really good considering the environmental conditions.–

The two different technologies employed for capturing color in most digital video cameras these days are called CCD and CMOS. The Sony DSR-VX2100 has a 3 CCD system, one CCD for each of the RGB sections of the color spectrum.

Here is a very practical, simplified comparison of CCD and CMOS imagers

and

Here is a more detailed, technical comparison (pdf).

Truth vs Fiction and Vimeo.com

gnbprod — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:46:26 +0000

First of all, I recently discovered this professional quality video-sharing website. If you haven’t heard of it yet, it is called VIMEO.

It even lets you watch movies in high-definition. It alots users up to 500 megabytes to upload per week, with no regards to the length of the video. The only problems I’ve had so far are 1) A low amount of random views and 2) I can’t seem to embed my video here on wordpress.com. However, it kept the links that appear after the embedded video:

Rachael’s Cafe [pt. 4 of 5] from Nicholas Peters on Vimeo.

This excerpt is the fourth of a total of five vignettes from my documentary Rachael’s Cafe. Much like Jim Jarmuch’s film Coffee and Cigarettes, each vignette is a different group of people meeting/talking over coffee at a table in the cafe. Each conversation reveals something about who the people are, how they relate to the cafe, and just what the cafe is.

A vignette from Jim Jarmusch‘s film Coffee and Cigarettes:

Besides the last vignette of the documentary, subtitled Grand Opening, I have asked the subjects of the scenes to act on some level. However, these scenes serve as interviews in some way, but I thought I could use slight acting as a tool to create a more real and visual truth as one watches the documentary. This is because standard interviews often have a quality where the subject is removed from the environment, commenting on it as a temporary outsider.

My idea to have Rachael interacting in an interview/conversation with herself as she is now and as she was came from a 2001 film by the British filmmaker Nicholas Barker, which similarly blurred the lines of “documentary.” It is called Unmade Beds. In it, Barker made a low-budget documentary interviewing and observing four different New Yorkers who use personal ads regularly in their dating lives. He showed his subjects the documentary he made, then reshot it all on film, this time having them “act” it out. Presumably, they developed themselves as characters and re-acted the whole thing, this time potentially going a step further into whatever character came across in the first edit of Barker’s.

An interview with Nicholas Barker (director of Unmade Beds)

So once you had these live people that you were dealing, how much of them did you write, how were they accommodated or not?

Barker: We filmed the 4 principle character over 7 months on a camcorder first. I made transcripts of everything they said and collated, edited them down to a film script. I would say 95% of what you see and hear was based on words and behavior that I observed. I certainly don’t claim to be objective, this is highly subjective filmmaking, but it was based on the truths that seemed potent to me. And seemed to be the truths that I felt were dominant in the lives that I was observing. So all I was doing was refining and finessing their language and then turning it into a script, so that I would then teach them to act their own story in my version of their lives.

[He emits a brief, kind of sinister laugh.]

My Production Equipment

gnbprod — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 20:52:13 +0000

The following is my current ‘prosumer’ grade production arsenal. I am not employed in any way by any of these companies, and I never have been. I just like to find bargains and drop knowledge.

Shure SM-57 cardiod microphone:
This classic microphone has yet to let me down. Although excellent for recording highly intelligible human speech, one often noted set-back is the size of its diaphram. Because of this, it doesn’t pick up as warm of a sound as the Shure SM-58 would, which is a little larger. Arguably, this can be fixed by a simple EQ adjustment in the 100-300 Hz range, or running it through a tube preamp, such as I often do. I got this microphone barely used, off of ebay. I think you can find perfectly new ones online for as little as 70-80 dollars. Being an “industry standard” and the microphone used on the presidential podium, it is definitely a good first microphone to buy, being versatile and producing a very professional quality sound. However, its overall output signal is somewhat soft, but once again that can be solved with the use of a nice preamp.

Samson R11 hypercardiod microphone:
I really just ended up with this microphone in my possession. I think they cost between 10-20 dollars. It is a cheap imitation of the Shure SM-58. The sound quality isn’t very clean for recording the human voice, but it can be used in a live performance or for recording various other sounds, such as miking an instrument amplifier. This microphone is very cheap, and may be good enough for various implementations. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

Audio Technica ATR-55 shotgun microphone:

I just ordered this. I’ll let you know what I think soon. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

Bluetube Dual Path tube/solid state preamp:
This is a very nice instrument and microphone preamp. One setback, though, is that it does not have a Firewire or USB output. However, it is very successful in helping give your vocals a full, round sound. It has two inputs for XLR as well as 1/4″. There are two outputs for each type as well. It has separate knobs for controlling each channel. Each channel can use the tube preamp or just solid state (gain). The tube converts the signal into heat passing through a vaccum tube. This produces smooth harmonics that are impossible to produce with strictly digital audio technology. It also rounds out and warms sounds quite effectively.

Canon HG10 high definition 40 GB internal harddrive camcorder:
High definition, tapeless camcorder. It has limited control over audio levels for recording, and requires you to install their software to decode their video files. I was told this would record with an mpeg4 codec, but the files are unrecognized types. Manual focus is also a little janky … you have to go through a bunch of menus and use that turning dial on the lcd display screen. It was 630 dollars online though, which seemed to be an offer I couldn’t refuse for a tapeless HD camcorder.

Western Digital My Book Essential 1 Terabyte external harddrive:
This is a huge external harddrive for fairly cheap. I forget how much it cost, but it isn’t Windows and Macintosh compatible at the same time. However, you can divide its memory into separate partitions … one for Windows and one for Macintosh. I just think its horribly lame when things aren’t completely universal and accessible in this day and age. Especially if they cost over one hundred dollars. On the other hand, my friend told me that all the external harddrives that are universal are accident prone for some reason.