Format Recommendations Please :)

[Riceman]

Hi,

I am an HVX newbie and am sometimes overwhelmed by the plethora of format choices...

I am going on a helicopter shoot around the island on Friday (hopefully), and am thinking of using 1080i30p. I have 2 16GB cards and can offload to my laptop if necessary. My calculations give me about 16 minutes per card.

Is this a good format for stock footage? I am not sure what format future projects will be shot/edited in, but am sure that this footage will be used in projects.

Thanks for any input.

 

[Justyn]

I shot from a helicopter and it was a lot of fun and a great time. Got some footage from it here: http://www.electriccowtheater.com/CCVIDEO/CC/demo.mov


I shot pretty wide angle stuff since I didn't have a gyro and I also shot it all in slow-motion. If you shot in 720 then you'd be able to do that and get about 32 minutes as y ou would in 1080 normal speed. The slowmotion aspect greatly smooths out the motion...


Could of bits of advice. Try to avoid the horizon when you aren't parallel or such... and tend to be wider than more telephoto as that tends to show the movements more. Also communicate with the pilot and have him do some of the camera moves for you.. that's what worked best with me. I held in a spot and told him where to go and it turned out really nice. Be sure to have your stabilizer on and some people have rigged bungie set-ups in the heli or gone out with somekind of stabilizer. I think going handheld up to the viewfinder worked best...


Good luck and show us some footage when you get back. Also, if you can get access to a p2store or something that would be good to. Changing to a laptop can be a bit scary.. I know changing seats and moving about was really un-nerving.. If you can bring along an assistant do that so you don't loose any shooting time. Keep it rolling and also.. just in case, put a mini DV in the camera. I did that and glad I did as I rolled all the way out to the location and all the way back and got some nice DV heli footage too.

 

[Filmbuff28]

I send some of my clips to a stock footage company and their favorite format is 1080 at 24fps. So inherently, all of my non slow motion clips are shot in 1080 24pA. It looks great, has a bit more res than 720, and it's still a progressive frame so you can call it 1080p which is very appealing to buyers. That's my 2 cents.
JP

 

[Riceman]

I shot from a helicopter and it was a lot of fun and a great time. Got some footage from it here: http://www.electriccowtheater.com/CCVIDEO/CC/demo.mov.

Sweet footage, and thanks for the info. I will definetly shoot slo-mo, I am thinking as high as 60fps. Do you recall how many frames per second you shot?


Thanks to all for the tips, If I get lucky enough to go on the shoot I will try and post footage. Its a pro-bono thing and I am not sure if I will get to use the footage in the end...I hope so since I'm doing it for free!