New Music Video: "This One Won't Drown&

[Burnt_Scroll]

Here's a link for my latest music video: "This One Won't Drown" by artist Collin Obremski.
https://engineering.purdue.edu/people/carl.r.obremski.1/Drown.wmv
I shot it with the DVX100 at 24PA, post with Vegas 4.0. I thought some of you guys might like to see it.

Sincerely,
Carl Obremski
Burnt Scroll Productions
www.burntscroll.com

[MichaelP]

Thanks for posting. An "editing" tip would be to hold just a bit after you "rack focus." The first two I saw, we can see the focus shift, but the person barely gets into focus and there is a cut. If the cut was a clise up of where the rack focus was going, it would be seen as a cool "lead the eye" to where you want it to go, but in this case, it does not.

I would also suggest a "letterbox" to give it more of the film look. Just a brain trick to make us think it is...

Michael

[24Peter]

Hey Carl - nice job!

Question: did you have any issues in Vegas keeping the audio and video in sync. I assume the artist lipsynched to playback while you were videotaping. I recently shot a music video where the artist lipsynched along to a CD on a boom box. I then imported the track from the CD directly into Vegas but had a tough time getting it to match. Some on the Vegas forum suggested that the fact that the audio on the DVX is sampled at 48Khz vs. 44.1Khz for the track off the CD might have been the problem. But I never got a definitive answer. Anyone have any ideas?

[Norm_Li]

Hey Peter,

I recently shot 3 music videos for a local Chinese restaurant owner here.

For one of the videos, he was in the kitchen. He also played back a tape in the background while trying to sing along to it. Often, he would either start too early, end to early, or sometimes hitting the right beat perfectly... but all one one video layer. Because of this inconsistency, I had a HELL of a hard time syncing it back up in post. If I synced it up in one section, it would shift the other section out of sync...and if I synced that other section back in place, the original would be out of sync again. This occured with almost the entire song. I never shot music videos before so I thought he would just sing along to the music and then it would be super easy to just match it back up in post... nope!

I wonder how the experienced music video directors shoot their videos for MuchMusic and MTV to make it perfectttt?!

[Norm_Li]

Hey Carl,

I guess I could add a few comments on your music video. It was good but obviously everything needs improvement. I guess I will just give a few words of advice. As a previous post stated, a letterbox would have been nice just to enhance the asthetic feel to it. Also, a few more fancy transitions would have been cool. I think most importantly though, was that your video, although shot on the revolutionary DVX100, still looked somewhat like "home video" style. If you didn't tell us it was shot on a DVX, I would have thought it was shot on any camera...even hi8! Not trying to flame, just giving my personal opinion. Not trying to be a Simon from American Idol! lol

It lacked the saturated colors, editing, and variety of angles. You will improve as you keep producing more of these so don't worry! Each video was an experience. I went and still go through the same learning process but you will learn from your mistakes from each video and create new ideas and effects for future ones.

[MichaelP]

Professional music videos are shot with a tiemcode playback of the song. This timecode is used as the common timecode for all cameras later in post for multicamera syncing.

The other issue here is that the sync seems to drift once it is synced. This is due to a playback somewhere in the process not being locked or have a true speed playback. CD have no reference and boom boxes, CD players have no genlock input.

The song is usually masters to a 48kHz DAT master locked to blackburst and timecode. The same refernce is used during production in order to gaurantee sync playback across multiple playback and cameras.

I would try differnce playback devices when shooting to find one that is the most consistent. I would first import the song into your NLE at 48kHz, and then export as WAV or audio file format of your choice. Try playing back a sigital version of the song instead of off a CD to see if that maintains sync any better. AT least by going through the NLE, it the file will already have whatever anomoloes the NLE may have applied during a sample rate conversion, but a 44.1 to 48 should not change overall duration.

Michael

[Zoomforce]

I recently shot 3 music videos for a local Chinese restaurant owner here.

.. am I missing something here? lol.. I have some bad karaoke *
images dancing around in my head :)

[24Peter]

MichaelP - thanks for the reply but I am a little confused... Let's say there's only one camera (so I don't have to worry syncing multiple cameras) and the only version I have of the song available for playback is the copy off the CD (presumably sampled at 44.1Khz like most audio CD's). How can I best ensure accurate sync with my camera (DVX 100) and NLE (Vegas)?

[MichaelP]

You need a playback device that is gauranteed to be repeatable each time... I do not think that consumer CD players qualify. I suggested as a potential workaorund that you import the song first, convert it to a 48kHz file then export as WAV or other digital media format that you can play from a hard drive. That may prove to be more repeatable in tempo. I haven't tried it, but I am putting forth a theory that needs to be proven. If yo want to give it a shot, go for it! I wouldn't think the sync issues would be worse than what you have now.

Michael

[Zoomforce]

use audiograbber, its a great program to rip the song off CD into various rates.

[24Peter]

Thanks guys.

[Burnt_Scroll]

Thanks for all the comments, guys!

24Peter:

Yes, I had him sing to the music while it was playing. But in Vegas, I physically lined up the live audio recorded on the DVX100 with a track of the recorded music. Then I synced the waveforms by hand as close as I could get them. I played them together to make sure the lips were synced; then I muted the live track and voila; music video lip sync!

Norm_LI:

What exactly do you mean by saturated colors? I tried to boost those way up in post for a bright, shiny look to it... Must have needed more. Maybe the saturation is lost somehow in the streaming video format process. How would you get a more saturated look?

As for editing, my client wanted more of a short film style approach. He's not big into the "assault your senses" type of music video. Plus, I didn't have pro actors...maybe that's what added to the amateurness of it. In your professional opinion, do you think it makes it look more like home video to do a slower paced video?

Did it need a steadicam or something?

Also, I don't really understand the whole letterbox issue. It kind of leaves me scratching my head Most films shot on 35mm film are telecined to television which is 4:3. So my intuition leads me to filling up the whole TV screen rather than barring valuable television real estate. A majority of the general population I speak to don't understand the whole letterbox thing either, unless they somehow have a 16:9 television, yet resolution is still lost...

Never mind the storytelling aspect:
I'm starting to wonder if this is a director's forum or a DP forum ;D ;D ;D

Carl

[Burnt_Scroll]

By the way,

I'm an Electrical Engeineer in training. (Signals and Systems specialist)

The frequencies of the capture don't really matter if Vegas de-samples and resamples during render, which I believe it does. *Therefore, you can just splice the files together in the NLE, and the timecode matching in the software should handle the rest.

FYI:
Sampling rates like 44.1Khz and 48kHz have to do with something called the Nyquist criterion. *In audio, you must sample double the highest frequency you want to capture in order to register it digitally. *Human hearing generally caps at about 20 kHZ; therefore, you have to sample at about 40kHz in order to accurately capture that signal. *Sampling ultrasonics with 48 kHz equipment won't get you anywhere. *You'd have to go 96kHz. *
Why double? *Because in the digital world, signals take on a value from -1 to 1. *In the "real" world, sound is in a wave shape which mean it has a crest (top) and trough (bottom), constituting an entire period. *Therefore, you need at least two samples to register an entire period. *So, if you want to record a high frequency like 20Khz but have a sampling rate of only 20Khz, probability theory shows that you will likely sample a "0" instead of a +1-1 combination, which means the frequency will not register in the A/D converter and will be cut off in your audio...

I love this stuff.

Carl

[24Peter]

Carl - I basically used your method but had a lot of problems with the artisit's lips syncing up properly. Did you use a CD boombox for playback while you were recording the video? And did you use Vegas to import the CD track ("extract audio from CD...)? I know a little about the whole digital sampling thing (BTW - thanks for your technical explanation) and didn't think that was the issue.

[Burnt_Scroll]

Yes, I used a boombox. If you did the same thing and your artist was far away from the boombox, there might be a shift merely because of two physical factors:

1) *The time it takes the audio to reach the artist may play a part. *If the artist was far away from the audio, the audio could be off sync by as much as (# of feet / 1100 ft * 24 fps)

2) *The time it takes the artist to react to the music being played. *If this is consistent, it's just a matter of frame tweaking. *If it's not consistent, you might have to tweak the video velocity to get them to sync perfectly. *Or cut around it. *Or smile and hope no one notices.

Carl

[booggerg]

Some honest reaction to your music video. The shots in the parking lot with the guy and girl and the money exchange looked very home video-ish. *The shot looked like you just stood in front of the talents with the camera held out with your hands and recorded away. *However the last scene in the church looked pretty good. Also, I think another reason I wasn't partial to this video was because the song got onto my nerves very soon into it. But that's besides the point here since we're trying to judge your video only.

[Zoomforce]

leave it to booggerg to once again shoot some honest critism that will hopefully help you.

The only thing I would suggest is when you are shooting outdoors you gotta use reflectors to light up your talent.. they just look to flat. maybe lower the detail level on the DVX as well.

The church is good, but did you use an on camera light? the shift between the guys sitting is a little wierd lighting wise.

Also, your pull focus is nice, and well done, but there may be too many? nice work on them though.

[Burnt_Scroll]

Thanks all for your opinions. Your high pick-it-apart standards are helping me become more deft at bedazzling the common viewer. I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to be working with you!

God bless you all!
Sincerely,
Carl O.