TAZM PICTURES

What can you do to optimize the project’s content?

Photos: For your treasured paper photos, the best thing to do is to scan them, or have them scanned, at the highest resolution possible. While there are ways to minimize having them lost in the mail, and you can certainly trust me to care for them and return them safely, scanning them yourself minimizes any unnecessary wear and tear. For electronic photos, the best thing to do is to upload them exactly as they came from your camera. If there are parts of photographs you would like to keep out of the project, they can be cropped. However, I recommend against resizing or otherwise altering photos, as this will inevitably reduce quality. Take care that any programs you use to import photos from your camera don’t automatically reduce their size, for example, to make them e-mailable. Photos uploaded to popular photo sharing sites and social networking sites will invariably have been reduced in this way, because the resolution needed to view them is much lower. You should expect each photo to be anywhere from 1.5 Megabytes in size or larger; but if they’re smaller this won’t be an obstacle. Finally, there is no need to enhance your photos by reducing redeye or enhancing colors, as this is included in the service provided by TAZM Pictures.

Video:

Equipment: Obviously, the better your camera, the better your video. Still cameras, cell phones and webcams all take video that looks OK on a computer screen – but when they go on a DVD and end up on your TV screen, you’ll definitely notice quality issues. Some of this can be enhanced with our software – but typically this is limited to lightening and darkening, enhancing colors and other enhancements. If the video is blurry, we can’t fix that. Still, depending on the purpose of your project, this may not be an issue – a video for your web site, for example, doesn’t need an expensive camera. If you’re using a camcorder, the best option is a camera that records directly to an internal hard drive or flash media. This type of video can be directly transferred to your computer and uploaded without any kind of conversion, or loss of information. Video that is recorded on magnetic tape also works well. At this time, TAZM Pictures can accept VHS, 8mm or Hi8 tapes directly. If you use MiniDV, you will need to transfer it to your computer (we can help with that) and send it electronically. Finally, camcorders that record to DVDs that can be watched in a DVD player are convenient, but have significant disadvantages when it comes to editing. These kinds of cameras typically record in one format, and then convert it to a DVD format with a .vob extension. To edit them, they need to be converted back to .mpeg or .avi format. The final video then gets converted again into the format you are requesting. Each time video gets converted, information is lost or interpreted by software; the more you can reduce the number of times your video is converted, the better the final product will be.

Technique: A number of simple considerations will help optimize the quality of your video. The most important thing you can do is to use a tripod. If you don’t have a tripod, try minimizing camera movement as much as possible, for example by keeping your elbows close to your sides or leaning your camera on a solid object. Avoid working in dim lighting conditions, and take care to avoid backlighting – filming with a window in the background, or bright sunlight behind your subject. For best results, keep the strongest light source behind you. And finally, take care when operating your zoom function. Zooming in and out quickly can be disorienting for the viewer – keep it slow and smooth. It can always be speeded up with editing software. And if your camera has optical and digital zoom, take care to avoid using the digital zoom function too much. Digital zoom doesn’t involve moving lenses – it’s kind of a software “trick” that makes an image look closer, but actually just stretches it, reducing your image resolution.

Sound: Sound can be frustrating. You’re filming in a slight breeze and everything seems fine, but when you watch your video the breeze becomes a loud roar in your microphone. Obviously the best solution is to use one of those fancy mikes with the fuzzy cover and the overhead boom, but if you had that, you probably wouldn’t need help from us, right? The best way to optimize your sound is to maintain awareness of your surroundings – we tend to filter out extraneous noises if we’re not paying close attention – and to get as close to your subject as possible. If your camera has a jack for headphones, that can help as well. We can adjust sound with our software, but the better the sound we start with, the better the outcome will be.

Music: When you add your favorite music to your home videos for in-home use, the copyright police are not likely to come after you. There are a number of video editing services that not only offer to put commercial music on your videos for you, they even advertise examples of such products on their web sites. Such use is most likely illegal, as the costs to license music for such uses are likely to be prohibitively expensive. However, depending on what you intend to use your video for, there are a number of low-cost or free options for music out there that we can explore, and as a musician myself I can offer some options as well. All of the videos on our web site use royalty-free music, or music I have written and created myself. I am exploring “music generation software,” as there are a number of options in this field, but apparently few of them really provide what we need. Finally, in terms of sound effects and other background sounds, as well as voice-over work, we are likely to be able to provide what you need.