Video Production - Any Experts Around Here?

[Prophet]

I have a couple of total newbie questions regarding video production and figured maybe some people around here might be into that sort of thing. I literally know nothing at all, except for having some small photography background and good basic computer skills.

1) Can you suggest a good site with active forums on the subject of video production?

2) Can you give me some rough idea of what would be needed (hardware & software) to create a short video (maybe 2 - 3 minutes) where live actor(s) are superimposed over 3D computer graphics and seem to be moving quickly & realistically through the world?

3) Is such an effect still in the realm of pros only, or can one person do something like that at home these days?

Thanks.

 

[aaron11193]

Start with a "blue screen". You should be able to find a good second hand one on eBay.

Then you will need a good video editor and a decent computer to work on, Macs are teh pwnage for multimedia IMO, and Final Cut Pro is a pretty good editor.

Finally, if you don't already have the 3D world organised, you could use something like blender3D or 3DS Max.

Hope it helps.

Aaron.

 

[Prophet]

Thanks, that at least gives me some things to look into and google.

 

[mrsnature]

3) Is such an effect still in the realm of pros only, or can one person do something like that at home these days?

Umm one person could do it at home but unless you know what you're doing it'll look crap

Depends what you mean by 'realistic' !

 

[plupp]

For chroma-keying it is not necessary that the background is blue, modern software can handle any color, however bright green or bright blue are most common since these colors rarely appear in clothing and are relatively simple to filter out.

I have personally done chroma keying with ikea sheets, so you can basically do it with any mono-chromatic cloth as a background as long as the color is sufficiently bright.

Good lighting and a high resolution camera are also important. You get much better results with a HD camera even if you are going for web-sized clips. You do not have to go for a red one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_One#Red_One), any better quality HD consumer camera will produce adequate results. Lower resolution cameras will create shimmering and unclean borders.

 

[hessiess]

If you can find a camera that shoots in progressive, in the modern age of digital displays interlacing is useless, and only reduces the quality.

To get a clean key you want the footage to be compressed as little as passable, DV/HDV/miniDVD are all chroma sub sampled, so often produce pixalated edges. If you can afford it, go with a 3 CCD camera.

Software wise you could easily complete the whole thing just using Blender, as it has very solid moddaling tools, a good multi-pass internal render engine, a decent non-liner strip video editor and a fuly featured nodal compositor. Blender is also incredibly fast because its almost completely controlled with the keyboard. If you do chose to use Max/ Maya etc(assuming you can actually afford them), you will also need an external video editor and compositor, as they don't have one built in.

If the camera is stationery, you should be OK with just that, but if its moving you will also need a camera tracker, outherwise you will have a very hard time trying to match the CG and live action footage.

You will also need some lights and a green screen(obviously), it is batter to use green, as most cameras are more sensitive to green light, and to get a good key you want as much colour information as possible.

The lighting on your green screen *NEEDS* to be even, if you have a gradient covering a large range of shades it is hard to key out the screen without loosing parts of what you want. Cresses should be smoothed out as best as passable.

Hearers something I made. I know that the report sucks, It was written the day before it was filmed, (it was made as part of a collage corce). It was filmed using a single CCD DV camera against a heavily creased screen, with terrible lighting, there was a heavy gradient on the screen between the top and bottom, Because of this it was a absolute nightmare to key, and I doubt it would have come out even half as good without Blenders nodal compositor. Anouther problem with it is there are a few de-interlacing errors(look at the edges)

And generally speckling, the larger the environment, the longer its going to take to model/light/texture. If you have never done any 3D before, its going to take you at-least 6 months to a year to produce anything even remotely realistic.

 

[Mutilator]

ive used final cut pro and i can say its well worth it if ur looking to make professional looking videos. apple did have loads of videos on their webby that showed how to do diferent effects etc. which i think is part of the package you get. maybe a mac user here can clarify this

 

[alterdimension]

ive used final cut pro and i can say its well worth it if ur looking to make professional looking videos. apple did have loads of videos on their webby that showed how to do diferent effects etc. which i think is part of the package you get. maybe a mac user here can clarify this

What you need is a green screen(green if you can) Then you need hardware such as dazzle to process the raw video and edit. Dazzle opens the video up so you can add spectial effects and transitions. For the noob, try dazzle, but you will need a capture card which aren't that expensive. Just install the capture card into the computer and you can use a firewire specially made for dazzle devices. Then, (and the best editor)is adobe after effects so you can add even better special effects and change backgrounds from your green screen. With after effects, you can make 3d or 2d depending on your knowledge and skill. After you've have made the movie as mpg mpeg avi vcd, you can choose between them on dazzle, take the mpeg (mpeg)is the best since it has the best graphics and compresses better than avi.
avi is the best quality by far, but is very expinsive megabyte wise. You then take the video you got from dazzle, and open it up in the after effects. After effects makes great movies, but is a little tough at first but you will get the hang of it in time. Ive made six movies.

 

[sam fisher]

avi is just a container format....

 

[Prophet]

Lots of good info - thanks everyone!

 

[(naw)mcx]

Add one we bit in, me and my friends manged to do green screen using loads of peices of A4 green paper.


It work surrpringly well!

Next thing I knew I had a box that would go right through me!