Production | Glenn Ward

Creating a Mac for Video production – Your software requirements

I’ll quickly touch on Hardware as i have had various builds with quite different results. I have 3 different builds on 4 machines, 2 MacPros with 1TB hard drives and 2 x Quad-Core Intel Xeon 2.8 GHz, 10 GB of RAM. Another MacPro with a HD and a 1TB raided, this is an extremely efficient machine as the software is running on the system drive and the video projects running from from the raid. Then 4th and currently my edit suite is a 2.26 GHz, Dual Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 16 GB of RAM with a 500GB hard drive, faster access speed to the drive and I have never had any issues while editing, although the sometimes windows in the VMware runs a bit slow and the HD sounds like its going wild but that could be the configuration.

Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut pro? That is the question. I shall be honest, I was always a Final Cut person up until my latest role. The main reason we switched to Adobe was for better integration with the designer who already existed in the company. In the early stages there were problems, mainly with the quality of exports but that has greatly improved. If you could export to WMV on the Mac version that would be great! The workflow of Premiere is very efficient but I have not used Final Cut Pro for a while. You decide!

First things first, get Firefox web browser installed. I’ve not had too much experience with other browsers and video but firefox plugins seem to be a bit more readily available. Once installed and you’ve punched through your proxy (if you have one) install Video DownloadHelper. I’m often asked to download videos from various site such as YouTube for use in presentations and this plugin makes it real simple! If there’s something on the page that you can download the icon lights up and its a couple of clips to download.

Upgrade your QuickTime to QuickTime Pro, it’s essential and despite my opinion that it is not as good as it used to be, you won’t get away without it.

Get some codecs installed, Perian is my first choice and makes sure you can open many awkward video files. If your source files come from all over the place then get the MPEG-2 plugin for QuickTime installed, people still bring me mpg files and it’s not worth the time or effort sourcing another software (should come as standard) Get Flip4Mac on there, go all out and get the HD version you’re only going to upgrade it later otherwise. I’ve never had any playback issues in QuickTime and the output options are very flexible and unlike a few years ago WMVs are pretty good quality and a small file size.

I always have VLC installed, it allows us to view back .mts files shot on our camera kits without the need to bring them ink the edit, great for logging and an area QuickTime falls short. Get to grips with the export options, sometimes gets you out of a scrape when files don’t play on other players.

I use Handbrake for ripping DVDs into an editable format, despite trying to single handily educate the world of focus group facilities with the understanding that DVD recordings are output and they should get up to speed with recording techniques, I still get footage from all over the world as a DVD. We have however built our own viewing facility that can record direct to drive with VoIP access to the respondent area.

I also install DivX and DivX converter for playback and conversion, some recorders record in divx so it’s quite handy. Also allows you to open in QuickTime, do a quick save as and drag and drop the file into your edit.

I recently added the free Mpeg Streamclip when I had some files from Japan that I could not open in QuickTime this saved my bacon, there’s loads of nifty little programs like this and the recent addition of the Apple App store for your desktop makes it a lot easier to browse apps that the old website.

As I mentioned, I have had 2 edit suites hard drives die beyond recovery recently which resulted in a loss of work despite having Back up solution. Make sure you have a good backup solution in place, preferably with support.

Digitizing your DVD / Film collection, software, settings, exports, codecs, file size etc

The other day a colleague, Ryan Garner! you may have heard him on Simon Mayos drive talking about iPad sales (tech expert) no big deal! said he was thinking about digitizing his DVD collection. It got me thinking, it’s about that time that hard drives are so big and compression routines so efficient that we all should start to think about having our films as files. I have a few DVDs as digital downloads and a few I have converted for my iPhone but with 160gb of ps3 hard drive sitting there doing nothing why haven’t I taken the iPod mentality with my DVDs and got them all on a hard drive. So it’s testing time.

I started by looking at the old iPod exports I had done a few years ago but I was after something that wouldn’t look to degraded on a 40″ TV. I remembered having a download available with my x-men origins DVD I bought recently and so download it to look at the file. It was slightly bigger at 8 x but still what would this look like on a 1080 tv, I was optimistic as it looked pretty good in full screen on the MacBook. So the next step was to play it from the PlayStation. No transfer need, see Media Streaming from an Apple computer to a PS3 using MediaLink…. No worries, here to help!

So, next to look at some software, exports settings and codecs. My preferred DVD ripping software is Handbrake on the mac but have a search on Softpedia or Download.com if you are using a PC for alternatives. Handbrake has a few export presets so I tried a few to compare results. When these exports are played back on laptop there isn’t much in the quality although the files sizes can differ dramatically. I exported another targeting the file size to around 700 mb, this produces a very low bitrate and a noticeable reduction in quality. I next produced an export with a targeted bitrate. Many video files on my laptop had a bitrate of around 1500 so I thought it would be interesting to see what file size this produced. The results were a medium size file, approximate 2 gig and a good quality. The test would be though which files I could play through the TV and still be happy with the quality. My opinion is that if you are after DVD quality videos you need to target the 4 to 5 gig file size with minimum compression. If you are happy to notice slight pixelation in your image and funnily enough this occurs on the flat chunks of colour then go-ahead and start reducing the bitrate.

There Is other software and codecs that do the same sort of job, DIVX has a very good compression routine and produces small file sizes in high quality, just make sure you check what file extensions your devices can playback before you compress your entire collection.

Using Video in Market Research, Reporting and Presentations

I have written a guest post on the GfK Techtalk blog on the many ways in which we are using video in a Market Research and what the future might hold. obviously not given away all the juicy bits but hopefully its a good read.
p style=text-align: left;a title=Innovations in video improve business decision making href=http://www.gfktechtalk.com/2010/08/26/innovations-in-video-improve-business-decision-making/ target=_blankRead it here/a/p
p style=text-align: center;
object classid=clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000 width=480 height=385 codebase=http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0param name=allowFullScreen value=true /param name=allowscriptaccess value=always /param name=src value=http://www.youtube.com/v/jH5fmL3sJrg?fs=1hl=en_GB /param name=allowfullscreen value=true /embed type=application/x-shockwave-flash width=480 height=385 src=http://www.youtube.com/v/jH5fmL3sJrg?fs=1hl=en_GB allowscriptaccess=always allowfullscreen=true/embed/object

p style=text-align: left;Also see the a title=GfK FilmWorks Youtube Channel href=http://www.youtube.com/user/GfKFilmWorks target=_blankGfK FilmWorks YouTube Channel/a/p
p style=text-align: center;code /code/p

The 3 causes of the white square during video playback in powerpoint

Probably the most common problem I am faced with week in week out is video failing to play in a PowerPoint presentation. Here are a few of the checks to perform to get things working.

Firstly, PowerPoint does not physically bring the video file into your presentation as it does an image. Hit save after embedding and notice the PowerPoint file does not grow in memory size. Therefore the presentation always needs to know where the video is relative to the document. Always keep the video file in the same place as the PowerPoint file and get into the habit of moving the parent folder around as you move the presentation from computer to computer.

Secondly, there is a bug in PowerPoint, if you see the white square when you play the video there is a good chance this is caused by there being too many characters in the video file name, I did read somewhere that over 128 characters but I find this differs from machine to machine. If you ate one of those people who put your videos in a folder named movies or something then include this parent folder in this rule.

Lastly, I sometimes get problems when a presentation is built on a company network and again this differs from machine to machine. If the above doesn’t work try moving the presentation to your desktop or local folder and re embedding the video.

That should do it!

Also see Creating Video for Powerpoint and inserting video into Microsoft Powerpoint

AVCHD Video Recording Time / File Size testing

AVCHD – MPEG4 – AVC/H.264

XP AVC – High Quality
VBR, avaerage of 17Mbps
The manual says,
Approximate recording time 900 minutes on a 120GB HD
My test 10 minute file = 1.28 GB on disk

SP AVC – Normal Quality
VBR, avaerage of 12Mbps
The manual says,
Approximate recording time 1260 minutes on a 120GB HD
My test 10 minute file = 892.1 MB on disk

EP AVC – Long Recording
VBR, avaerage of 5Mbps
The manual says,
Approximate recording time 3000 minutes on a 120GB HD
My test 10 minute file = 348.8 MB on disk

Apple Quicktime removes the Mpeg2 playback component

Apple, what are you doin to me? QuickTime.. the one program I thought I could trust in the world of video. The program that I thought I could make play most videos has slowly been getting worse as apple moves their programs more towards the consumer market than the professional but this takes the buiscuit.

Why have you removed the MPEG2 playback component? I have hundreds of videos produced by the company and external agencies which now apparently are not movie files and it really messes up the playback of .tod files which up until a couple of weeks ago I played fine with the JVC Everio plugin.

Their is a solution! Apple will sell the MPeg2 playback component back to you for a bargain $19.99 but why? Who made this ridiculous decision to reduce the power of Apple programs! Come on let’s not turn into windows media player! Come to think of it, Powerpoint supports mpeg2 and no other mpeg codec.

Please ReTweet until someone at apple reads this.

Understanding the difference between Interlaced and Progressive scan video

When purchasing a video camera or choosing your project settings in your editing software you may come across the dimensions followed by an i or a p for example 1080i or 1080p. This stands for interlaced and progressive scan.

The difference between the two are as follows. If you imagine you video is built like a brick wall, in layers known as fields. In an interlaced video each field is offset not dissimilar to the brick wall. You have probably noticed this during moments of fast motion where you see lines like a comb at the edge of the moving subject.

Interlaced video should be deinterlaced for your final product. In Final Cut this is done by applying a deinterlace effect, in premiere pro it can be done as your send your media to Adobe Media Encoder.

Progressive scan video already has the fields aligned resulting in a much crisper image and less things to think about at edit. Be sure if you are working with progressive video not to deinterlace your video when you export it. It will reduce the quality.

If you wish your final video to be displayed on a computer monitor then always deinterlace your video or use Progressive.

You can also De interlace video in Quicktime Pro, Window > Show Movie Properties > Video Track > Deinterlace

Understanding Resolution and Frame Dimensions – Video, Web and Print

Resolution seems to be a subject that baffles a lot of people with different platforms (TVs, monitors, mobiles) different mediums (video, print, web) and also different pixels per inch which effects the overall size and quality of your image.

Let’s start with pixels per inch and keep it basic. Pixels per inch is the amount of small dots of color per square inch. As a rule 300 pixels per inch is the bare minimum for print while 72 pixels per inch is suffice for web based output, admittedly as PC monitors resolution has increased over the past few years I often find myself producing an image with a 150 px per inch in order to produce the better results. It all depends on your intended output. For video output I did a few tests in order to confidently advise you for best results. I created two identical images in Photoshop with the same physical dimensions, I used the Film and Video presets found after hitting new. I produced one at 72px and the other at 300px and saved them out as a png, I then brought the two images into Adobe Premiere Pro in separate time lines, I exported them using the same full quality DV setting and then oped them up side by side and played them. I asked my colleagues which they thought was produced with the higher res images and they consistently couldn’t identify it. In this case it seems that the resolution of the input file does not noticeably effect output.

See (URL Coming Soon)… for more information on export settings using Adobe Media Encoder and other such programs.

Print Resolution
With print resolution as mentioned earlier, 300 px is the minimum px per inch for a decent quality. When setting up your workspace you should be concerned with the physical size of the output, for example A4 is 210 mm x 297 mm with 300 px. Photoshop has presets for most print outputs so have a look and familiarise yourself with these.

Web Resolution
When I began studying my Design for Digital Media Minor, the standard size to construct a website was around the 800 px wide. The resolution of computer now vary and this size meaning that the websites began to look very small in the browser. By analysing google analytics user traffic it soon became obvious to design you site to a greater width. Today popular website width sizes are above 1000 px wide although many more dynamic CSS driven layouts will be sized based on a percentage of the browser window for consistency. As mentioned before you graphics should have a pixel resolution of 72 px per inch and above.

Screen Dimensions
640 x 480
800 x 600
1024 x 768
1280 x 800
1280 x 960
1600 x 1000
1680 x 1050
1920 x 1080

Video Resolution and Dimensions
There are two aspects to take into account here. The production of graphics for your video projects and the resolution you wish to output your video for the intended viewing platform. The production of graphics I touched upon earlier so let’s get to know video dimensions. The landscape has changed recently with the emergence of multiple mobile platforms alongside the popularity of High Definition on the consumer market.

Television Dimensions
There are 3 main television dimensions you should be aware of, there are variations but combinations i.e. widescreen (also see …) but use these as a starting point.
DV Pal, 720 x 576
Consumer HD, 1280 x 720
Pro HD, 1920 x 1080

Blu Ray and HDTV Dimensions
720 x 576
1280 x 720
1440 x 1080
1920 x 1080

Other Device Dimensions
There are many other devices now on the market that are all geared up to display video so often we might want to output at a format suitable for these.
Mobile Phones (3GPP)
128 x 96
176 x 144
320 x 240
640 x 480

iPhone
450 x 360
600 x 480

iPod
640 x 480 Large
320 x 240 Small

Sony PSP
320 x 240
368 x 208 High Quality

Other mobile frame dimensions, 176 x 208, 176 x 220, 208 x 320, 240 x 320 and 352 x 416.

Web Video Dimensions
Youtube
SD 640 x 480
Widescreen HD 1280 x 720
Widescreen SD 640 x 360

Myspace Video
320 x 240

Yahoo Video
320 x 240

(Dimensions may vary slightly)

Aspect Ratio
At this stage I just want to distinguish between what i mean by dimensions and how it differs to aspect ratio. All the dimensions I have touched upon up until now have referred to a 4:3 aspect ratio, this means for every 4 vertical pixels there are 3 vertical pixels. Most will have come across widescreen by now in their digital lifes and this has an aspect ratio of 16:9.

Using iDVD to quickly output your videos with professional Chaptering and Menus

Often you will not have time to create DVD menus, chaptering, fancy graphics etc but you do need some that looks good, plays like a DVD and serves a purpose.

I personally wouldn’t use iDVD for professional output to client although it can often provide a quick solution.

Open iDVD, choose New Project and you will be faced with the default template of your current version. On the right hand side you will see a panel where you will be able to scroll through all the templates, be sure to switch through the dropdown at the top as this will show more templates from pat versions of iDVD. More templates are available on the Internet.

Choose your template and be sure the aspect ratio still matches that of your original movies. You should of by now exported all the movies you require for each chapters as separate movies (usually full quality DV or HD) and iDVD will encode them as it creates the DVD. iDVD does support chapter markers but more on that in another post.

Once you have all your movies neatly in a folder you are ready to bring them into your project. You can simply drag and drop each movie to the menu frame and a chapter menu button will be automatically created. This button is customisable.

You are almost ready for authoring. Just turn off the Apple branding in the bottom right hand corner of the screen by clicking iDVD > Preferences > Show Apple logo watermark

Hit the burn button. It will become ready and prompt you to put in a blank DVD. Do so and press burn. Your DVD will now be created. For multiple copies keep adding DVDs after each burn, this will reduce the disc creation time as the multiplexing and encoding only needs to be done once at this stage.