quote:

She was travelling with her daughter and was determined that hubby wasn't going to miss out on anything! Poor chap!

HAHA! That was quite funny the way you put it.

Like Tangata I have been through a variety of still cameras, movie cameras and video cameras to the stage where I currently only have 4 left. These comprise 1 digital still camera, 1* 35mm SLR and 2 digital video cameras (one with high powered optical zoom but poor quality stills and one with only 12 times optical but 3.2 megapixel stills).

These days I hardly ever use the SLR or the 250/800 zoom video camera although I do take both video cameras with me when traveling by car.

Modern technology with digital video cameras has made the quality of the videos excellent and the weight and size has come down with many camcorders now being smaller and lighter than a digital SLR.

I certainly DO take a video camera with me when touring and, in addition to the 3 megapixel stills from the video camera, I also have a small compact digital still camera in my pocket on most occasions.

In my view a properly edited video is more interesting to look at than a photo album but it has to be well edited. By well edited I mean you must be prepared to trash the non essential, it should be spliced together to tell a story with appropriate, but not extreme use of, dissolves, fades, captions, voice-overs and background music. Occasionally but hopefully not often, it may even be necessary to improve some scenes by varying the gamma, intensity, contrast, etc of a particular shot. As a general rule the video that I take is for our own memories and not for showing to other people. There have been some exceptions to this but only after specific requests have been made for viewings.

On 2 recent tours (just over 4 weeks) I took about 6 hours of raw video in total. I have been editing that for the past week and am now about half way through. I can spend anything from 4 to 8 hours to finish with a one hour video DVD. I have 2 types of editing styles and video purely for my own purpose will probably retain about 80% of the semi-final cut after all poor or non relevant shots have been removed. I would be far more savage if editing for someone else to view the result. For example I once took 12 hours of video during 7 weeks of touring and when people I worked with asked to see a video of our trip I made a special DVD for them that ran for 18 minutes. That’s 12 hours of raw video with an end result of 18 minutes on a DVD.

Personally I wouldn’t even dream of showing anyone raw footage and would cringe at the thought of even watching such myself.

For me, a properly edited and structured video is far more desirable than a collection of stills and I converted long ago.

By the way, I too get irritated by people walking around with their video camera and giving commentary while they are filming. I have even had to edit the sound tracks on my video to remove bits of their carry-over commentaries. : (

Like Megs, I have never seen a TV program of still photos and I would much prefer to go to the theatre and watch a “movie” rather than sit through the show as a series of slide

quote:

Originally posted by dragons:

Like Megs, I have never seen a TV program of still photos and I would much prefer to go to the theatre and watch a “movie” rather than sit through the show as a series of slide

Have to agree with Meggs & Puff - both still & video have their place - but in a lot of cases (IMO) the depth a video adds just can't be beaten.

Have to agree with you and that is why my husband is saying he needs a new video camera. He did a good job with his video of Thailand when we went there, and he put together a DVD using the pinnacle system.

quote:

Originally posted by dragons:
I can spend anything from 4 to 8 hours to finish with a one hour video DVD. I have 2 types of editing styles and video purely for my own purpose will probably retain about 80% of the semi-final cut after all poor or non relevant shots have been removed.

Gee you are much better than me as I can't get anything near that recovery rate obviously you're more economical with what you shoot. I would spend 8 hours editing for 15 min of DVD. A lot of the time would be viewing on a TV and finding something wasn't right and then back to the project to clean up the bit I missed. I rarely ever use the video sound, I add voice over and background music

My mind is now made up I'm taking the video with me!

Pinnacle Systems make an excelent video editing product Jenno and Studio Plus 11 is due out soon and they are taking pre orders for it now.

Hi Meggs. Yes I do try to be a bit selective with what I shoot and always try to think about its composition, relativity and continuity to what I want as an end product. It doesn't always work of course but it does help in the long run.

I took my video but never used it on the tour I just used the still camera. I did use the video to take a family one of my nice in Edinburgh for her parents

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Pinnacle Systems make an excelent video editing product Jenno and Studio Plus 11 is due out soon and they are taking pre orders for it now

Thanks for that dragons. Just told Mr jenno and he sounds interested. He has no.9 at the moment. He is wondering what the difference is with his, and no.11.

Be careful with Pinnacle as I have V9 and upgraded to V10 and it was a dog so I went back to V9. It kept crashing. Look closely at the Pinnacle Forums before you go any further as Pinnacle seem to release a new upgrade and watch the forums then some time later come out with a fix however that doesn't help to poor user.

How many times have you seen if you buy the next version all the problems are fixed only to be confronted with a new and different problem.

quote:

Originally posted by jenno:
[Thanks for that dragons. Just told Mr jenno and he sounds interested. He has no.9 at the moment. He is wondering what the difference is with his, and no.11.

Hi Jenno

Here is a link to Pinnacle version 11 comparison chart and if you print out the info your husband can compare the features to the Pinnacle v9 that you said he has.

Meggs mentioned problems with Pinnacle and I must say that I have been using Pinnacle since version 2 and in all those years have only ever once had a problem. That problem was with an update to the version 10 that Megs mentioned and when Pinnacle support were unable to fix the problem with the update I had installed they sent me a complimentary copy of version 11 which I have been very happy with.

Thanks very much Dragons. I will give Mr. Jenno the information when he gets home from playing tennis. He will be able to get an idea what is different in version 11.