First XH-A1 test footage [feedback appreciated]

hey, good work. i really liked it. u had some nicely composed shots and good exposure. i really liked the sunglass shot -- it was money! nice music choice, the video had a music video feel to it so it flowed nicely and seemed like you put some thought into the edit. i digged the vignetting as well, definitely added to the piece.

joe
 
Very good candy there. I liked it a lot. I wasn't as big of a fan of the vignetting. It worked for some shots, others I didn't like it.
 
Do you have a 35mm adapter on your a1? Liked many of the shots, I agree that the vignet doesn't work on every shot. But the colors looked great. I wish it wasn't so dull here in Nebraska so my test footage wasn't so boring
 
good job. I especially liked the sunglasses too. Good job of keeping the camera semi- steady there. Did you use the image stabilization setting?
 
I will never understand asking for 'critiques' on test footage..

plants.. brick walls... a person here and there... no context what so ever...

why should we go easy on you cause you have no tripod? This is TEST footage. Nothing wrong with handheld.

Good use of selecting the proper aperture setting I guess.. not sure what else to say.

Well.. at least it isn't footage of a pool in your backyard.

/rant

I rant because I care. You do have some nice footage in there.
 
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I do have a tip that might help you in the future, instead of makeing your vignette black around the edges, there might be a better way to do it. Doing it the way you do it makes it seem like you are almost using binoculars on some shots. Try this.

Pick out the clips you think would look better with the vignette effect. Take the individual clip into after effects. Create an adjustment layer above your footage. and double click the eliptical mask tool to creat an eliptical mask that scales to your footage. Put a curves effect of the adjustment layer and bring down your rbgs to your liking. feather your mask and change it to subtract instead of add. That way your footage will vignette the colors around the edges to darker shades, instead of just black. Ill post an example in a bit.
 
Here is the image with no vignette


Here is the vignette with the black mask around the edges


Here is the vignette with curves applied to the colors.


Hope this helps in any way.
 
I'm considering Pinnacl Studio Plus version 11 that supports HD , any comments before proceed ?

Yes, don't get it. For PCs I have heard that Premiere and Vegas are both better. I personally use FCP.
 
At my work we use Avid, which is good in some cases, but terrible for exporting. I think that vegas is best for exporting personally. I wish I had FCP but I have a PC and can't find a torrent :(
 
I'm considering Pinnacl Studio Plus version 11 that supports HD , any comments before proceed ?

Don't buy Pinnacle, pay a little more and get Vegas. it work perfect with 24f
I use Vegas 8 and it work very good, easy to use too. I was trying the Adobe Premiere CS3, it work good too, but is a little more complicate than vegas.

The only thing I like about Premiere is to convert from 60i to 24P, it work really good, for everything else I use Vegas. :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
 
The only thing I would mention is, watch the horizon line when shooting at the beach. The water meeting the sky very clearly shows any tilt in the camera, and the A1 seems especially prone to tilt given the poor balance it has when hand-held.
 
I have an A-1, and I definitely do not get as good a footage as that. What did you do to edit it in FCP? Did you use any presets or anything on the camera? It was great footage!
 
Vegas rocks!! It accepts just about any media format on the timeline regardless of frame or sampling rate and renders it all out to the codec of your choice no problems :)
 
Speedy playback on the XH-A1

Speedy playback on the XH-A1

Hi,

Don't know if this is the right place to post this but can anyone here direct me to a forum where I can ask about problems with the XH-A1? I have noticed speedy playback on footage after shooting at 24f and capturing at 29.97. Any possible reasons for this? I was given to understand that I need not do a pulldown with 24f because it is not real 24p footage. Thanks for any help.

P
 
Hi,

Don't know if this is the right place to post this but can anyone here direct me to a forum where I can ask about problems with the XH-A1? I have noticed speedy playback on footage after shooting at 24f and capturing at 29.97. Any possible reasons for this? I was given to understand that I need not do a pulldown with 24f because it is not real 24p footage. Thanks for any help.

P

Try capturing at HDV 24. 24f is true progressive, its just captured on interlaced ccds. Make sure you are also editing on a 24 fps timeline.
 
I do have a tip that might help you in the future, instead of makeing your vignette black around the edges, there might be a better way to do it. Doing it the way you do it makes it seem like you are almost using binoculars on some shots. Try this.

Pick out the clips you think would look better with the vignette effect. Take the individual clip into after effects. Create an adjustment layer above your footage. and double click the eliptical mask tool to creat an eliptical mask that scales to your footage. Put a curves effect of the adjustment layer and bring down your rbgs to your liking. feather your mask and change it to subtract instead of add. That way your footage will vignette the colors around the edges to darker shades, instead of just black. Ill post an example in a bit.

You can do this in Motion as well.
 
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