Strobist overclocking
Posted by will | Filed under Links, Locations, Make, Nice, Photography
In case you missed it, John and I were in Charlotte last weekend for the Southern Short Course, while there we had a little fun overclocking some SB-800s go check out David’s post here.
Dead or Alive Video
Posted by will | Filed under Christianity, Creativity, Make, Tips, Video
There have been quite a few questions about how we did the Dead or Alive video (below, but with added live footage) for the Unleash conference. If you were in the Production Breakout at Unleash you will recall Ken talking how sometimes we pitch video ideas to Perry and our senior management team and sometimes Perry will come to us with a clearly defined idea of what he wants. In the case of the Dead or Alive video he came to us with a fairly complete idea of what he wanted.
See the first notes mainly Shane, our creative arts pastor and my notes (warning legibility is questionable and I started taking notes from the second ideas on the first). Later after talking to Perry a little more, Shane came back with mainly the same ideas, but a few new things.
Lee gave me a reference click of him strumming the guitar and singing the words along with a metronome beat that we send to the in-ear monitors that the band wears while playing in order to keep them on tempo.
I used Handbrake and Mpeg Streamclip to rip the Passion DVD footage into a .mov file. I then took the DVD footage into Final Cut Pro and began to lay down the pieces that Perry had asked for. After getting the key pieces Perry wanted in place, I started finding and laying in the other scenes that were needed in order to convey the overall message that Perry needed. In addition to the Passion footage, I added in the dirt road footage because of the feel and meaning that it added to the piece.
Next, I showed the firest cut to Perry to get his feedback. He was fine with everything except for when the beating started and how long it lasted. Those two things did not fit with the vision that God had given him for this piece. Personally, I liked the first version just fine, but God did not give me the message to preach at Unleash, and therefore I did not know what the video should look like to support that message. As I blogged about previously, it is not about my personal preference it is about reaching people for Jesus and I know that Perry knows that it is not about his personal preference, it is about what God wants. I trust Perry’s leadership and know that if he needs a video a certain way in order to make the point that God has told him to make, then I will create the video in such a manner.
After getting that feedback, I then changed that part of the video, tightened some stuff up and added in the scripture passages that were composited by the talented Ben Coleman.
As a side note, I love the comradery that we have as a staff, if you don’t believe it, check out this snipit out of the reference click from Lee, I was rolling on the ground when I caught that part.
Hopefully, this helps explains how we make a video that Perry has a direct vision for happen. Let me know if you have any further questions.
Sunday service to web
Posted by will | Filed under Make, Technology, Tips
Yesterday I got a call from two guys at Barefoot Community Church asking about how our process of putting the service on the web. I had been planning on writing this post for awhile, but one thing after another kept pushing it to the back burner.
Let me start out by stating that this is not the only way to this, there are certainly infinitely more ways to go about taking a service and putting it on the web, this is simply the way that we are doing it at this time and it works for us. Yes, capturing to DVDs is not the highest quality nor the most reliable way, but for the sole purpose of rendering out a streaming flash file to post on the web it is a much cheaper alternative to buying 5 Mac Pros or 5 tape decks to capture to. Please note that the settings that I use may not work for you depending on your editing software and your streaming video host’s player settings, so adjust accordingly.
Equipment list:
-Cameras: Sony DXC-D50WS w/ CCU-TX50
-Switcher: Ross Synergy 100
-DVD Recorders: Panasonic DMR-ES15
-Edit Computer: Apple G5
-Software: MPEG Streamclip, Final Cut Pro, Adobe CS3 Design Premium
-Streaming Video Hosting- Lightcast Media
For other gear download our Production FAQs(.pdf).
Process:
The feeds from our 4 cameras are sent to both the Ross switcher as well as each feed is sent to a separate DVD recorder. In addition to the 4 DVD recorders for the cameras we have one more DVD recorder that recieves our program feed- the same thing that is shown on the screens in the auditorium (it has any kind of DSKs (down stream keys), videos or motionbacks played off the DVRs and any full screen graphics). At the end of Sunday Perry lets me know which message he thought the preaching was best in and Justin lets me know which one he thought the worship was best during. I am glad that I don’t have to make that call because Perry and the band deliver with excellence each and every service.
I then take the program feed DVD(s) from that(those) service(s) and rip the video back off of them using MPEG Streamclip to convert it to a .mov. Here is a screenshot of the settings that I use. This takes on average about 45 minutes per disc and the resulting .mov is usually between 15-20GB. I then take the .movs into Final Cut to edit them, removing anything that needs to be taken out such as transitions that may seem overly long for people not in viewing the service in person. E.g. if Lee has to switch from guitar to piano- if you are in the auditorium even though the lights are down, you can still see him putting down the guitar and moving to the piano, but on the internet you would not be able to tell anything, all you would see is a black screen and may think that the video is over.
Once the video has been edited I then export the service using the Quicktime Conversion option in Final Cut to a .flv using the Flash CS3 encoder. Here is a screenshot of the settings that I use. The final .flv takes about 7 hours to export and is usually between 300-350MB. This is then uploaded to LightCast via their web upload interface.
If you have any questions feel free to contact me either via comment here or via email will.rodes@newspring.cc.
I love Jesus, I love my 
