Dance recital; low light, and P2 card shortage

Let me work through this in summary:

The OP has a preference for Intra HD over SD for a bunch of his own reasons. And due to a whole raft of rationalization, has determined for himself that it will work out for the best based mostly on his assumption that resolution is king. He is going to shoot locked down with a racehorse of a HD rig, at a relatively wide angle. This pretty much defeats the benefit of HD. He is short of memory and maybe batteries for a 5 hour shoot.

Apparently his customer wants this type of locked down look, but it will be boring with a capital B BORING. His clients just won't know that until they slog through it and nod off after 20 minutes. Maybe they will wake up when little Suzie is tapping her shoes, and will then go and clean their fish tank.

The OP is sure he needs Intra for the resolution and a cam that is very sharp but only so-so for the potentially low light. HD cams need light and lots of it.. Without it, you will have NOISE with a capital N. Maybe this is a non issue, but it doesn't sound like the OP knows what the conditions will be.

Audio hasn't even been brought up??

Here are a couple of opinions, some of which have been scattered about here already:

You will be better of shooting this one in SD to tape. How about 2-3 DVX100b. Better in low light, more forgiving to focus, better for long form, and though you won't get HD out of it, it can produce excellent DVD output. Read this again, despite your misgivings about SD, DV output can be very good, and is much more forgiving of all the issues you will face shooting HD.

Having more than one cam can bring your production to life and help CYA when you are changing batteries or media in your lock down cam. I would debate the wisdom of even locking this cam down.

If you must do HD, how about a couple of HPX170s shooting 720pn to make the P2 cards go as far as possible. This will mean shooting in DVCproHD which is a great codec. There is just nothing wrong with this format. Cheaper to rent, great cam.

+1 to Nedcams comments about a live shoot. Though I'm not so sure about trusting some schlep from Craigslist. It is exciting and terrifying to shoot something which will happen only once. Maybe on this first shoot, you should undersell the product as a trial run. If you succeed, then you will be the hero. If you flop, no one will have high expectations.

Grant
 
Soundfx4 said:
Well yeah, the video never looked that great, but the big complaint that I always hear about is from the dancers themselves. The dancers want to see the entire dance.

It's not likely that the parents would complain about not being able to see their kid the entire time because with SD detail...well you can see which one is your kid, but you can't actually see your kid unless you get a tighter shot. It's more likely that the parents would complain about the camera never moving in close enough to actually be able to see there kid. But if it's HD they shouldn't (but probably will) have anything to complain about.

You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time I guess :\
Click to expand...

Soundfx... good, listen to your customers... sometimes folks here are a little too focused on creative/narrative/documentary shooting rather than event shooting!

While a great creative production will have a variety of distances and angles, event coverage of certain types of performances indeed demands coverage of "all the action, all the time", especially if it will be used pedagogically. Stage directors and choreographers will almost always prefer a fixed wide shot to your idea what's important. As for parents... they want a lot of footage of their kid; and if you can't make a separate product for each one, that's gonna be wider than you'd often prefer - there are also issues of fairness that rise up in productions like this, and you don't want to discourage some kids by having them be never or rarely focused on while others are.

That said, for a production like this, its often best to have two cameras as has been suggested, one locked down in a wide shot and one moving and closer. This way, you can make sure to capture all the action, all the entrances, and the "gestalt" whenever needed with the wide cam, and try for some interesting shots with the other one. When all motion is by a small group or in one area of the stage, you can focus in on that without worrying that you'll miss an entrance on the other side of the stage, etc; you can set up slow pans across the group.. and you can offer the director/choreographer and anyone else interested a "wide-only" version if they prefer....

While the idea of panning/zooming in post is indeed useful to some extent, don't expect that an SD-sized window into the HD image will look good.... I'd say you can probably use a window only as small as 2/3 the width/height of the HD image (subsequently downrezzed to SD) to not have noticeable image degradation in SD. This assumes you shoot progressive; it's a lot worse for interlaced.

Which brings me to: shoot progressive! It looks better, especially in stills and freeze-frames which is important, and can be reframed/up/downrezzed in post with much cleaner results. If you're using an HMC and lower bitrates, use my "pseudo-progressive" trick, which works great: set the shutter to 1/30 and you'll get true progressive footage and better compression quality in HA, HG, and HE mode... and the boost in exposure helps in low-light theatrical situations, too!

Cheers,
Barry
 
ullanta said:
Soundfx... good, listen to your customers... sometimes folks here are a little too focused on creative/narrative/documentary shooting rather than event shooting!

While a great creative production will have a variety of distances and angles, event coverage of certain types of performances indeed demands coverage of "all the action, all the time", especially if it will be used pedagogically. Stage directors and choreographers will almost always prefer a fixed wide shot to your idea what's important. As for parents... they want a lot of footage of their kid; and if you can't make a separate product for each one, that's gonna be wider than you'd often prefer - there are also issues of fairness that rise up in productions like this, and you don't want to discourage some kids by having them be never or rarely focused on while others are.

That said, for a production like this, its often best to have two cameras as has been suggested, one locked down in a wide shot and one moving and closer. This way, you can make sure to capture all the action, all the entrances, and the "gestalt" whenever needed with the wide cam, and try for some interesting shots with the other one. When all motion is by a small group or in one area of the stage, you can focus in on that without worrying that you'll miss an entrance on the other side of the stage, etc; you can set up slow pans across the group.. and you can offer the director/choreographer and anyone else interested a "wide-only" version if they prefer....

While the idea of panning/zooming in post is indeed useful to some extent, don't expect that an SD-sized window into the HD image will look good.... I'd say you can probably use a window only as small as 2/3 the width/height of the HD image (subsequently downrezzed to SD) to not have noticeable image degradation in SD. This assumes you shoot progressive; it's a lot worse for interlaced.

Which brings me to: shoot progressive! It looks better, especially in stills and freeze-frames which is important, and can be reframed/up/downrezzed in post with much cleaner results. If you're using an HMC and lower bitrates, use my "pseudo-progressive" trick, which works great: set the shutter to 1/30 and you'll get true progressive footage and better compression quality in HA, HG, and HE mode... and the boost in exposure helps in low-light theatrical situations, too!

Cheers,
Barry
Click to expand...


OOOh you know you have a point there. With image noise and such even though it'll be the proper resolution, it could still be very noticeable. BUT! now that I'm using the more affordable HMC150 I probably can rent another one and have it locked down for closer shots (like you mentioned when there are only a few people in the center of stage). The price for the one dropped to $353 for 3 days haha.

So lets see then, shutter to 1/30 of a second which means that the shutter should be synchronized to the frame rate of 30? Is that what you're getting at? Or did I just misunderstand that completely? :p

and thanks ^.^
 
ggrantly said:
The OP has a preference for Intra HD over SD for a bunch of his own reasons. And due to a whole raft of rationalization, has determined for himself that it will work out for the best based mostly on his assumption that resolution is king. He is going to shoot locked down with a racehorse of a HD rig, at a relatively wide angle. This pretty much defeats the benefit of HD. He is short of memory and maybe batteries for a 5 hour shoot.
Click to expand...

I've seen their dance recitals in SD locked down (DVcam); and while I haven't had the chance to see them in HD locked down yet, saying that it defeats the benefits of HD makes no sense to me. But regardless, I won't be using the 300 anymore because I only had access to 1 16 gig card. It's the HMC150s for me I believe.

Apparently his customer wants this type of locked down look, but it will be boring with a capital B BORING. His clients just won't know that until they slog through it and nod off after 20 minutes. Maybe they will wake up when little Suzie is tapping her shoes, and will then go and clean their fish tank.
Click to expand...
The winter show I did recently was the first actual show, aside from that I have done many of their rehearsals before and they have seen the locked down look, and they like it.




Audio hasn't even been brought up??
Click to expand...

The technical director of the performance hall is taking care of this and feeding mixed audio back into the HMC150 via the two front inputs. (I'll just need to adjust levels a bit I think, but by all means if there's any other concern that's specific to a camera even considering the technical directors involvement, please mention it)



If you must do HD, how about a couple of HPX170s shooting 720pn to make the P2 cards go as far as possible. This will mean shooting in DVCproHD which is a great codec. There is just nothing wrong with this format. Cheaper to rent, great cam.
Click to expand...

DVCProHD is a pretty nice looking codec, but like I did mention a bit ago, I've access to only one 16 gig p2 card so even at 720pn it wouldn't be enough :(

Maybe on this first shoot, you should undersell the product as a trial run. If you succeed, then you will be the hero. If you flop, no one will have high expectations.

Grant
Click to expand...

haha, I love that idea! It's both a good idea, and kind of funny :bath:
 
Regarding audio:

Usually the mix that the audience is listening to is not the one you want to record. The auditorium mix is usually highly colored, and usually you would prefer your recorded audio to be neutral so you have more flexibility in post. In other words, the auditorium mix is not usually well suited to your DVD production.

Grant
 
Soundfx4 said:
OOOh you know you have a point there. With image noise and such even though it'll be the proper resolution, it could still be very noticeable. BUT! now that I'm using the more affordable HMC150 I probably can rent another one and have it locked down for closer shots (like you mentioned when there are only a few people in the center of stage). The price for the one dropped to $353 for 3 days haha.

So lets see then, shutter to 1/30 of a second which means that the shutter should be synchronized to the frame rate of 30? Is that what you're getting at? Or did I just misunderstand that completely? :p

and thanks ^.^
Click to expand...

The HMC150 shoots in a number of modes. PH mode, at 21-24mbps, lets you shoot at 30p (1080 or 720), but you only get about 98 minutes per 16GB card.

The other modes (HA 17mbps, HG 13mbps, and HE 6mbps) are 1080/60i only. But you can trick the camera into producing what is effectively progressive footage by setting the shutter speed to 1/30. I've shot many shows this way... it's indistinguishable from "real" progressive footage, and compresses better than interlaced footage at the same bitrate. And you get 128 or so minutes per card in HA mode, 160 or so in HG, and 360 or so in HE. I find HG to be the sweet spot - have never seen any noticeable compression artifacts in HA; HG is certainly usable if the camera is locked down, but not quite as good, and even HE is not terrible in a pinch (especially if your ultimate product is SD), but certainly not as clean as the others...

Regarding audio, a board feed WON'T get you applause, sounds from the stage, etc. At the very least, record the board feed in mono on one channel, and some ambience/stage sound on the second channel....
 
ggrantly said:
Regarding audio:

Usually the mix that the audience is listening to is not the one you want to record. The auditorium mix is usually highly colored, and usually you would prefer your recorded audio to be neutral so you have more flexibility in post. In other words, the auditorium mix is not usually well suited to your DVD production.

Grant
Click to expand...

Regarding audio, a board feed WON'T get you applause, sounds from the stage, etc. At the very least, record the board feed in mono on one channel, and some ambience/stage sound on the second channel....
Click to expand...

The only sounds that are coming into my camera are the stage sounds. The way they always do it (from what he told me) is they have three mics on the stage to capture the taps during tap dances, and only during tap dances, routes those mics through the mixer with the wave/mp3 file playing. The way he suggested setting it up (so that I can keep the taps and stage sounds etc) is to send the three mics unaltered all the time to my camera mixed into a single line. The second line would be another mic pointed toward the audience to capture applause, laugher, etc. I can sync up the wave/mp3 file later so that the music actually has some depth.

Do you think something like that would work well?
 
ullanta said:
The HMC150 shoots in a number of modes. PH mode, at 21-24mbps, lets you shoot at 30p (1080 or 720), but you only get about 98 minutes per 16GB card.

The other modes (HA 17mbps, HG 13mbps, and HE 6mbps) are 1080/60i only. But you can trick the camera into producing what is effectively progressive footage by setting the shutter speed to 1/30. I've shot many shows this way... it's indistinguishable from "real" progressive footage, and compresses better than interlaced footage at the same bitrate. And you get 128 or so minutes per card in HA mode, 160 or so in HG, and 360 or so in HE. I find HG to be the sweet spot - have never seen any noticeable compression artifacts in HA; HG is certainly usable if the camera is locked down, but not quite as good, and even HE is not terrible in a pinch (especially if your ultimate product is SD), but certainly not as clean as the others...
Click to expand...

what do you think I should do with two 32 gig sdhc cards per camera? The sdhc cards were incredibly cheap to rent, so I have 64 gigs of storage per camera so that I can record in the highest possible quality for the entire 5 hours. Since I have the space, using PH mode shouldn't be an issue, should it?
 
Sounds like a perfect match at 3 hours per 32gb card. If it were me I'd shoot 720/60p for a video look or 1080/30p for a more filmlike image depending on what the client likes.
 
Soundfx4 said:
The only sounds that are coming into my camera are the stage sounds. The way they always do it (from what he told me) is they have three mics on the stage to capture the taps during tap dances, and only during tap dances, routes those mics through the mixer with the wave/mp3 file playing. The way he suggested setting it up (so that I can keep the taps and stage sounds etc) is to send the three mics unaltered all the time to my camera mixed into a single line. The second line would be another mic pointed toward the audience to capture applause, laugher, etc. I can sync up the wave/mp3 file later so that the music actually has some depth.

Do you think something like that would work well?
Click to expand...

Sounds reasonable to me!

And, sure, with all them cards, PH mode is the way to go!
-B
 
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