In search of equipment

For my MRP, I've been scavenging around looking for equipment. The distance from home to school has me worried about renting equipment from Ryerson. Those late charges could sure add up if the 401 Eastbound is shut down again any morning I try to bring the equipment back.

I have purchased Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects and and Photoshop software. I have a good working knowledge of the editing program and am a beginner at the other two. For a camera, I bought the Canon Vixia HV40. I tested it out this weekend and it is quite good quality. I shot in HDV and tried to import a 45 second clip into my Apple MacBook Pro. After several attempts to import I finally figure out that the camera setting for playback must be on "DV Locked", and the setting on Premier Pro must be on Canon Alternate 2. When I did capture the clip, the program froze and the swirling pizza ball of hell would not vacate my screen. After shutting down and re-starting, i found the clip in my movie file (I imported it as an .mov). I tried to import it into the project but the swirling pizza ball of hell came back. I decided to check the file size. It was almost half a gig for 45 seconds! That's about 10 megabytes per second. I am going to do some more tests before shooting at the ECOO conference this week. Maybe Standard def in widescreen is the way to go.

I also purchased a little side light which fills in the shadows on faces. it tested pretty well. The Audio Technica mic US1Photo sent doesn't work and will have to be sent back. I did an online purchase for one through B and H Photo and sped up the delivery time. That was Friday and I have to shoot Thursday. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!(received an email later in the day saying they shipped it out today...still keeping my fingers crossed).

Also today, I tested out audio for field use. Mike Murphy gave us a good overview of the different types of mics and some tips for use. It was interesting to learn how the cardiod shotgun condenser mic works. The phasing that happens with the ridges on the sides of the mic to cancel out delayed sound is highly useful for shooting at a conference when you don't want extraneous noise. I took the mic outside and it picked up the helicopter going by above me quite well and when I pointed it down 45 degrees the volume was noticeably lower. Even the ambient noise changed with the position of the mic. This mic required phantom power even though it was battery powered, unless I was using it wrong. I couldn't get a level without the phantom power on.

I then tried out my Shure SM11 lavalier mic. It needed phantom power as well. The levels were quite a bit lower than the shotgun mic. I tested out the sound in the RCC lobby and talked in a regular voice while a girl beside me spoke in a loud voice. It picked her up as well. I can see how important it will be to have that shotgun mic at the conference and I really hope it arrives before my shoot on Thursday. Ryerson won't let me take out the shotgun mic, nor the portable audio mixer because the first and second years are using them this week. I'm starting to see how important it really is to have your own equipment. However, there are other good reasons for this. I know that starting a project with one camera and mic and switching to other equipment can cause differences in audio and video footage in various a/v levels that can leave you with hours of colour correction and matching audio levels and warmth. I'm hoping to save myself some time this way.

I tried out the Marantz USB recorder. I think I'll use this to record my audio separately at the conference and then sync it up afterwards. I recorded .wav at 48kH. About 4 minutes of audio took 46 megabytes. For my MRP I'm expecting about 6 hours of native audio files. 5 seconds takes up 1 mb. That's do-able. I'm looking at recording 6 hours. That's just over 4 gigs.

I did try to plug both the shotgun mic and the lavalier into the Marantz but the levels were so different and there is only one level knob. The Marantz in no way should be used as a mixer! The ease of transfer from the Marantz via USB is a terrific time saver. This may be the next item on my list of things to buy.