{"id":561,"date":"2011-07-15T04:11:57","date_gmt":"2011-07-15T03:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/?page_id=561"},"modified":"2013-11-15T14:51:15","modified_gmt":"2013-11-15T13:51:15","slug":"optimize2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/?page_id=561","title":{"rendered":"Video Tips"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What can you do to optimize your project\u2019s content?<\/span><\/h5>\n

Photos<\/span><\/strong>: Scan paper photos<\/strong>\u00a0at the highest resolution possible. \u00a0Import\u00a0digital photos<\/strong>\u00a0into your project exactly as they came from your camera. You can crop or otherwise alter them later in your video editing program. \u00a0Resizing or otherwise altering photos prior to importing them into your video project will reduce quality – and you may want to preserve quality to view your finished video on a screen larger than that of your computer. Take care that any programs you use to import photos from your camera don\u2019t automatically reduce their size. 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, so try and find the original if possible. You should expect each photo to be anywhere from 1.5 Megabytes in size or larger.<\/p>\n

Video<\/strong><\/span>:<\/strong> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Equipment<\/strong>: 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\u2019ll definitely notice quality issues. Some of this can be enhanced with your editing software – but typically this is limited to lightening and darkening, enhancing colors and other enhancements. If the video is blurry, your editing software can\u2019t 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\u2019t need an expensive camera. If you\u2019re 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. \u00a0Camcorders 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 during the rendering process, to the format of your final video. 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. \u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

One other point about video: if your camera records in high definition, but you don’t have a super-fast computer, you may want to consider setting your camera to record in standard definition. \u00a0<\/span><\/span>Many computers are simply not capable of effectively processing the high resolution video available in many cameras today. \u00a0If you try editing a video and your computer crashes during the process or takes more than 4-5 hours to produce a 30-minute video, this may be your problem.<\/p>\n

Technique:<\/strong> 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\u2019t 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\u2019t involve moving lenses – it\u2019s kind of a software \u201ctrick\u201d that makes an image look closer, but actually just stretches it, reducing your image resolution.<\/p>\n

Sound<\/span>:<\/strong> Sound can be frustrating. You\u2019re 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 this is typically out of reach for most home users. \u00a0The best way to optimize your sound is to maintain awareness of your surroundings – we tend to filter out extraneous noises if we\u2019re 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. You can adjust sound later with your software, but the better the sound we start with, the better the outcome will be.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Music<\/strong><\/span>: <\/strong>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. \u00a0You may also know a friend that’s a musician – often you don’t need a full orchestra to create the right mood. Check out this post for places you can get royalty-free music,<\/a>\u00a0or if you get really desperate, feel free to use some free music I put together.<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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What can you do to optimize your project\u2019s content? Photos: Scan paper photos\u00a0at the highest resolution possible. \u00a0Import\u00a0digital photos\u00a0into your project exactly as they came from your camera. You can crop or otherwise alter them later in your video editing program. \u00a0Resizing or otherwise altering photos prior to importing them into your video project will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-561","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=561"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2422,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/561\/revisions\/2422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}