School me on what I need to shoot and edit tourist Video in tropical water, please

[beanojones]

It has been a while since I did any serious editing. All my experience was with miniDV. And my shooting was with whatever I was handed at least u/w.

Do the new formats require a PC (as opposed to a Mac) for any reasons? Obviously rendering time is computer dependent, but what sort of minimum time would be necessary to shoot, mix in stock footage, and burn to a format for tourists? Assuming a 30 min video with 10 minutes of unique content with the other twenty minutes already rendered? Is next day even possible?

I am starting from nothing. And I have a budget of $5000 roughly all included. (Camera (x2?), housing, PC, plus whatever I do not know about).

The video will all be shot at rec depths, in 100 ft visibility (Think Palau, Yap, Truk). Also take into account that since I will be at the far ends of the earth, reliabilty, and recoverability are at a premium. In other words, being able to rinse out the housing and throw a new camera in, in the case of a flood, are things to think about.

If anyone has any thoughts about the feasability of next day turn around to deliver a disk, please advise. Are there any laptops that could handle the 30 minutes rendering time reasonably enough that doing this when traveling are possible (assuming that I will not have the stock footage when I am traveling?) Can I buy royalty free stock footage from Palau Yap Truk, and other parts of Micronesia that I could mix in with my unique footage?

Any info at all would help.

 

[diversteve]

Some comments:

Do the new formats require a PC (as opposed to a Mac) for any reasons?

No, a lot of people are editing using Final Cut Pro on a Mac.

Obviously rendering time is computer dependent, but what sort of minimum time would be necessary to shoot, mix in stock footage, and burn to a format for tourists? Assuming a 30 min video with 10 minutes of unique content with the other twenty minutes already rendered? Is next day even possible?

It somewhat depends on the output desired. Shooting and editing in SD, it's as little as an hour on a fast computer. Rendering in HD will very much depend on the processor/memory in the editing computer as there are minimum requirements for capturing HDV/AVCHD.

For example, we did a shark dive with Anthony's Key in Roatan. The videographer shot a full hour of SD footage and edited it down to about 20mins. Using a Mac desktop - not sure which one but it looked fairly new. By the time we'd cleaned up and visited the giftshop - I'd say no more than an hour, I was able to pickup the finished DVD.

I am starting from nothing. And I have a budget of $5000 roughly all included. (Camera (x2?), housing, PC, plus whatever I do not know about). The video will all be shot at rec depths, in 100 ft visibility (Think Palau, Yap, Truk). Also take into account that since I will be at the far ends of the earth, reliabilty, and recoverability are at a premium. In other words, being able to rinse out the housing and throw a new camera in, in the case of a flood, are things to think about.

Consider the Gates HC7/HC9 housing. They're pretty bullet-proof and have mechanical controls so if you flood it, you could probably just rinse it well and change cameras if necessary. Good optics, it has a viewport so you can see the camera's LCD without needing an external monitor, and an optional Manual White Balance control - you want this so you don't have to fix the "blues" while editing - and should you need to, it's depth rated to 450'. Sells for $2125 U.S. with a standard port - double that if you want a great Fathom wide-angle port to go with it. The HDR-HC9 Sony camera is sub-$900 - B&H has it for $839 currently.

The only limitation is that currently Gates only lists a housing for tape-based Sony camcorders, either the HC7 or HC9. So you'd be limited to an hour of recording time. Since it uses mechanical controls, they're model specific.

Amphibico and Light & Motion are electronic housing mfr's who house more of the Sony HDD and SSD (solid-state) based Sony models - with one of them you'd have the option to tape hours of footage. They all use AVCHD compression which requires more computing power to edit in HD.

But of all the Amphibico and L&M models, only the L&M Bluefin has Manual White Balance and it's $3800 just for the housing. It does however house the Sony SR11/SR12 with either 60 or 120GB hard drives so your recording time would be between 14 to 29 hours in Hi-Def with the SR12 depending on compression chosen. The SR12 is about $1100 retail. With any other housing/camera combo, since there's no MWB, you'd have to color-correct for blue while editing - which again takes longer.

If anyone has any thoughts about the feasability of next day turn around to deliver a disk, please advise. Are there any laptops that could handle the 30 minutes rendering time reasonably enough that doing this when traveling are possible (assuming that I will not have the stock footage when I am traveling?)

Depending on the desired output format - HD or SD, there are laptops that would work. I have a couple year old VAIO laptop, editing and rendering an SD DVD takes 2-4 hrs. - depending on complexity - but I can't burn HD DVD's.

If your customers would also want HD (Blu-Ray) DVD's then the rendering time requirements are longer. Sony sells a high-end VAIO notebook (9500 series) for just under $3K that has a 2.5Ghz Core Duo processor and a Blu-Ray burner - you could likely render Blu-Ray DVD's in hours with that one - I can't even guess how long it would take though. Otoh, all of the Blu-Ray home players I've seen in the U.S. upconvert SD to HD so it might not be a factor for most people.

Look at Sony's Vegas or Adobe's Premiere websites, they list the performance requirements to render in HD. I'm sure Final Cut Pro has a similar list on the Apple site. Buying better versions of the software will likely be the rest of your budget.

Can I buy royalty free stock footage from Palau Yap Truk, and other parts of Micronesia that I could mix in with my unique footage?

Ask Mike Veitch?

 

[beanojones]

(Your post makes me think $5000 may not cover it.... Also thanks for the other posts about basic info I have been reading.)

So the advantage of the mechanical is "can handle flooding", but you need that specific camera model to make it work. For whatever reason, I did not put that together until you mentioned that.

It sounds like it might be cheaper (and easier for the future) to get a LANC(?), and just have two housings and cameras. I will be at the ends of the earth so getting a specific replacement camera model would be much harder than it would be being on the mainland....

Am I thinking about that right?

 

[beanojones]

Two other questions that just came to mind:

1. Is the standard connection still FireWire 400?

2. Since you do not have to dwonload the tape to disk, wouldn't a disk based camera be better for quick turn around?

 

[diversteve]

(Your post makes me think $5000 may not cover it.... Also thanks for the other posts about basic info I have been reading.)

Understand that what I quoted was best in class in terms of durability or computer processing speed. There are less expensive housing options from Ikelite/Equinox (mechanical) or TopDawg/Ocean Images(electronic) You give up some optic quality, durability (poly instead of metal - except the TopDawg) but with reasonable care they are alternatives. I know of one dive operator that rents Ikelite housings. For a computer alternative see this post.

So the advantage of the mechanical is "can handle flooding", but you need that specific camera model to make it work. For whatever reason, I did not put that together until you mentioned that.

To a large extent, a mechanical housing will typically only work with the camera it's designed for and very close siblings. Any time a camera mfr'. makes a change in control positioning, you need a new mechanical housing. I believe Ikelite does do some re-fitting - or did at one time. As an example, notice that the Gates fits the HC7/9, yet the HC3 - the previous generation of the same camcorder - requires it's own housing.

It sounds like it might be cheaper (and easier for the future) to get a LANC(?), and just have two housings and cameras. I will be at the ends of the earth so getting a specific replacement camera model would be much harder than it would be being on the mainland....

That would be true with some of the more universal electronic housings. Look at the compatibility list for the new TopDawg or the L&M Stingray HD. It's pretty much every recent Sony model sold using their universal camera tray option. Or look at all the Amphibico EVO's, I'm not even sure there's a difference between any of them - my 4 yr. old EVO looks identical - except for the monitor back.

Two other questions that just came to mind:

1. Is the standard connection still FireWire 400?

I think it's Firewire 800 now but I'm not sure. It only applies to tape models, the AVCHD cameras use USB 2.0. Or with the removable media models, a compatible media reader on your computer. My guess is they're faster as the device shows up instantly on your desktop when plugged-in.

2. Since you do not have to download the tape to disk, wouldn't a disk based camera be better for quick turn around?

Probably. But may require more initial computing power to import/edit AVCHD format files. I really have no comparison to offer for tape import vs. USB2.0 speed as all I've ever used is tape - except that just today I transferred a full DVD's worth of footage from a Canon AVCHD camera via USB 2.0 - no editing, just select video segments and copy. It took about 1/2 hr. - faster than I was expecting.

 

[beanojones]

Oh so you still have to transfer the footage over to the computer with the hard disk based cameras? I was thinking it would be nice to use the inboard disk for rough cuts. But maybe you can do that?

From doing what little reading I can find about AVCHD, it seems it is not a frame by frame compression, but a key frame based compression (don't know if the terminology is correct). What I liked about MiniDV editing is that it was frame by frame cuts that were possible.

Is HDV (tape based) the way to go if I want that same sort of frame by frame accuracy?

I guess part of me is just confused about what the different formats are for. I want to make the analogy that AVCHD is like Direct to DVD cameras, and HDV is like MiniDV, with AVCHD and HDV just being the Hi-Def versions.

 

[diversteve]

Oh so you still have to transfer the footage over to the computer with the hard disk based cameras? I was thinking it would be nice to use the inboard disk for rough cuts. But maybe you can do that?

I don't really know. Theoretically it would seem reasonable since it's just a USB 2.0 drive so hooking the camera to the laptop would allow you to edit the footage. I don't know if/what that would do to the camera's internal indexing system though. I have read about someone on a liveaboard who went through some of his footage while the camera was still in the housing during an SI. But I don't know if he was editing or just deleting segments to free up space.

From doing what little reading I can find about AVCHD, it seems it is not a frame by frame compression, but a key frame based compression (don't know if the terminology is correct). What I liked about MiniDV editing is that it was frame by frame cuts that were possible.

Is HDV (tape based) the way to go if I want that same sort of frame by frame accuracy?

I have no idea...

I guess part of me is just confused about what the different formats are for. I want to make the analogy that AVCHD is like Direct to DVD cameras, and HDV is like MiniDV, with AVCHD and HDV just being the Hi-Def versions.

Pretty much. Any format except tape is going to use AVCHD compression. Originally it was considered to be of slightly inferior quality but Canon (and others?) have recently introduced 24MBPS AVCHD cameras so that's no longer the case.

btw, I shoot HDV onto Sony Mini-DV tapes. It works great and is quite a bit cheaper.

 

[beanojones]

btw, I shoot HDV onto Sony Mini-DV tapes. It works great and is quite a bit cheaper.

What do you use for editing?

 

[diversteve]

Sony's Vegas Movie Studio Platinum. The Platinum version has HDV/AVCHD support. Around $80-100 U.S.

 

[beanojones]

What do you burn to? Regular DVD?