Tips on making a video

[Foxx]

There has been a lot of debate on making videos, I figured i could post some quick pointers. After all, ive done a lot of work in this area. Ive pulled some of this off the BSoD Forums:

Good audio is key!! Make sure your audio levels are decent, and they dont flux too much. Bitrate and microphone quality is important. Most headset mics are good enough. The letter P and B are called explosive letters. They have a strong burst of air when you use them, and it causes high bass popping, use a mic filter (the foam crap) to eliminate it. This isnt too hard, just do a few tests before you begin.

Do not try to demux (split) the audio from the video to fix it. Its just easier to fix it in post production. If your audio is out of sync, then poop for you... there is no way I can fix it. There is no magic app that can sync it for you. The main reason it goes out of sync is that the hard drive is working too hard and cant keep up. Increase the compression of your audio and video codecs, but realize this will require more CPU power. Most computers these days will work just fine.

Try not to jump from bright to dark. This is what i call a "transition shock". Human eyes will tune to the brightness levels. If you suddenly jump from dark or bright or vice-versa, it tends to be an annoyance. Try not to jump from console capture to screen capture without a basic fade transition. Even Windows Movie maker can do it, so try and use it so people dont gripe about it.

Use Cam Studio for screencaps. BSoD episode 1 has a good tutorial on using it. You may run your desktop at some insane resoloution, but you only really need 640*480 or 800*600. Camstudio has the ability to capture a specific area, or a range, Play with its settings, its what I use and is very flexable.

Most game consoles can output in a 4:3 ratio, try to keep your screencaptures the same. Typcaly 640*480 is best to use. If you downscale the screencaptures, that is use a resoloution thats higher than the export format, it will throw the pixels off and cause it to blur or become unreadable. Try to keep your screencaptures the same as your export.

Windows Movie maker may be the choice editor. Nothing worng with it, its great for basics. Unfortunately it doesnt have many export profile options. There is a way to make any kind of profile you want, I will add a link to that later.

Not all USB Capture Boxes work with Windows Movie maker. A lot of the PCI cards, even the cheap ones do. But either way, make sure your capture card works with Windows movie maker! if it doesnt, make sure it can export MPEG-2 video, since thats a common file format damn near any video editor can use. The files will be big, but it will be easy to work with. Some USB and PCI capture cards will capture in divx, or other locked/proprotary format that wont work with other editors. Be sure to look out for that, many of my friends and I have been screwed over because the OEM didnt mention the fact that it works with no other software.

Some camcorders (most if not all Sony) can accept a video input, letting you use it as a type of capture box. Check your camcorders user manual for the function.

If you are holding a cam up to a screen, get the exposure correct. Turn off the light to the room, and for the love of GOD use a tripod... If not a tripod a stack of stable books. CRT screens have scanlines which are picked up by the camera, try to use an LCD if you can. There is a lot of nastyness with holding a cam to the screen. It rarely looks good, but if you play with your camera settings, kill ambient lights, have a proper screen (LCD or HD CRT) its possible, but not very desirable.

There is a lot more to be said, but I will say it another day. Here is some linkage:

CamStudio for Screencaps
MediaCoder - For converting media formats to anything, from anything.
BSoD Forums on Editng
BSoD Episode 1

Oh, and for the record, if you do a tutorial, youtube isnt the best hosting. They will downscale the video and make screencaps look like crap. I had the same issues with ******* Sons of Dial-Up (BSoD). Find another service like ViMo, or Google Video. If you want to release it through BSoD im more than happy to make a BSoD style intro for your video and host it on our servers. Just collaborate with me about it.

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask questions, ill try to help.

[smk]

I have a question actually.

I just discovered that my camcorder does in fact have video out and can record from the TV (going by what the manual says). However, my set up is quite awkward and I need some help on how I would go about to record game stuff.

Okay, my problem is this: My Wii is hooked up to the VCR AV ports and it has its own separate output. Meaning that, I have to turn the VCR on and set it to LINE 2 (which is what plays the Wii). Now, I also have AV ports on the side of my TV, those ports work for Video 1 when the VCR is off. If I plug the AV cables my camcorder uses into those ports, will it still record the Wii game footage even though it's not on Video 1? And if not, how would I go about doing it so it does? I've always wanted to get a decent quality video going and I haven't been able to for months (having to resort to the use of a digital camera is not fun). So, with that said, if I just hook it up to the AV ports on the side of the TV (not the VCR my Wii is hooked up to) will it record the stuff shown on screen, or no?

That's what I mostly need help with ... so I know if I need to buy anything extra before trying this.

[Foxx]

Hummm, your best bet is to hook the Wii into the Cam directly with some RCA Female Couplers. They look something like this:



Common hookup cables are called RCA, or Phono type. Since the camera more than likely has male connectors, as does the Wii, you need a female coupler. These arent expensive. Here in my area we have something called "The Dollar Store" where everything is about $1. You can spend $2 (plus tax) and get two packs that have 2 each. You need 3, One for Video (Yellow) and two for audio, Red (right channel) and White (left channel). If you have a radio shack, best buy, circuit city, etc, you can buy them there as well, but expect to be ripped off.

If unhooking the Wii from the VCR is too much work (tangled mess of hell) take the output of the VCR to the camera. Some TVs have "Monitor out" which is a video output so you can hook into that as well. The thing is, the more devices you go through, the more unclean your signal will become. You can pick up fuzz, noise and static. DO NOT USE VIDEO CABLE SPLITTERS! That will ruin the signal and cut the brightness in half by 50%.

Your VCR has 2 outputs? One can go to the TV, and one to the camcorder. Remember, ports are not bi-directional. TV / VCR inputs cant be used as outputs. Take a signal output, and plug it into an input. You cant break anything with this. Worse case scenario  you spend a good part of the weekend rewiring things. Every time i get a new game console my maze of hookup cables and switch boxes gets worse and worse.

Good luck, hope this works out for you. Im glad someone took my camcorder-capture box idea and can use it.

IM HELPING!  *makes noises like a retarted whale*

[smk]

Haha, thanks for helping, although I don't need to rewire anything because all I have hooked up to the VCR is my Wii. I tried a couple of things and yeah, I will need RCA Female Couplers... I'll have to buy three today I suppose. So, I'd then hook up the Wii to the female couplers and then the camcorder to the end of those couplers... how does the Wii get projected onto the TV then? I'm having a hard time picturing the set up. If you could tell me how I would set it up so it's also on the TV screen then that'd be great!

I fail so hard at technical stuff with TVs XD.

Edit: W00T! It works! Haha, it's awesome quality too!

[Foxx]

I fail so hard at technical stuff with TVs XD.

Edit: W00T! It works! Haha, it's awesome quality too!

I guess you didnt fail as hard as you thought! Guess you arent that dim after all, eh? Glad it works out for you, now you get to dive face first into the joys of video editing! YAY! :/

What camera are you using, for the record?

[smk]

What camera are you using, for the record?

A Sony DCR-TRV6/TRV11/TRV20 Camcorder, the next thing I need to do is find the right quality to export it in with iMovie... the way I've been doing it before is exporting it to .mov (default CD-ROM compression) because of how quick it normally is for me. Though, I don't know if that's the best thing to go with if I want better.

[Foxx]

I do all my work in 5Mbit MPEG-2 then use MediaCoder to turn it into a 800k xvid, or 1.2Mb xVid. I have a sony trv-21, the next model up from yours. Mine just has a bigger LCD screen, thats about it. When you dump the DV footage to the computer, look for the option to deinterlace the video. Since its a DV camera, it will interlace each frame. Most video editors, even the crap ones like Pinicale with do it for you, or at least have the option. Check out this if you dont understand what video interlacing is and why it makes videos look like crap.

Im not familiar with iMovie, or video editing on a OSX, so I cant give you any tips there. iMovie should support MPEG-4 formats, just try to keep the video bitrare above 800k. a 3Mbit xvid is near DVD quality. MP4 and WMV, and DivX are also MPEG-4, but I dont like them because they are closed source and not as smooth to work with. Some devices dont support them because of the propritary MPEG-4 formatting. Example... my PDA out of the box wont play .MP4 because its owned by apple, and its a microsoft OS. My Ipod wont play WMV because its an apple product with a Microsoft Codec... Lots of politics that makes things harder for the end user.

Im expecting a nice video from you now. You have the hardware, you have it hooked up, now time for some capture and editing magic, lets see what you can come up with smk. ;}

[smk]

Seems that I've found the right compression settings, iMovie gets rid of the interlacing (it has its own deinterlace selection I just check off for the exporting settings). It came out quite good and so now all I will need to do is upload it to where I normally do and see how it turns out. It came out to 155 MB total (it's four SSBB matches), which isn't a terrible size because I have 11 GB on this comp and an external drive.

Thanks for the help, Foxx, I appreciate it. ^_^

[Foxx]

No problem, glad I can help out. Thats why I am here.

[Nuke]

excellent thread. Stickied.

[Foxx]

Awesome, thanks Nuke.

[hetoan2]

great tutorial, hopefully it will stop noobs from making videos w/ $20 webcams ... no offense if you have one 0.o

[TheDuck]

Nice Tutorial!    Foxx, what is the best decent and cheap capture card you know of? I don't need it to be USB or a PCI card, either is fine!

[Nuke]

I just bought a sony DCR-HC35E i'm pleased with it so far, i've yet to dump any DV yet or editing, but going to get my hands dirty with your awesome info and software you posted.

thanks again foxx

[Foxx]

You can scour www.NewEgg.com for PCI Capture card. I got an ADS brand capture card that does a very good job for $20 total, including shipping. Try and stay away from USB Capture boxes if you can, they tend to be locked down and only allow the proprietary software to access it. No movie make, premiere, or iMovie... shitty. Just do your homework before you commit to a buy, get a lot of user reviws and ignore the stupid ones that complain the product sucks because they didnt know how to use it.