IAC DISCUSSION FORUMS

Just to say that the aspect ratio has no bearing on how steady your footage looks on screen Ned. Just thought I'd clear that one up.

You're obviously not a writer, Ian.

The current writers' strike probably has some leaning towards the correction of just such a situation Ned. Of course they both need each other and in my view it's a 50:50 split. But up to now - as you say - the writer's credit at the end has been far smaller than it should have been.

I think renting a camcorder makes sense only if you keep renting the same make and model. A camera takes many hours to learn and more hours to practice and even more hours to master. Renting by the day or weekend is not the way in my view.

Sounds like it may be worth your while going on a handwriting course for a couple of hours, Dave. :D I have a wonderful set of Staedtler Lumocolor permanent 0.4 mm S marker pens. Eight colours, they write on anything - glass, CDs, labels, you name it. Strange that a paragraph in my latest Positive I...

You can also download the free Windows Media Encoder and this will let you compress your film as much or as little as you like. The trouble is (I find) that YouTube recompresses whatever you send them, reducing the quality still further.

tom.

I'm right with Dave, and I'd go further: films are NEVER too long. If the filmmaker decides on a certain length of film then so be it - it's his film and the judges views on that are immaterial. Of course, PR departments may deem films too long for theatrical release (precluding a second audience si...

You 'think' it's a grey import, Mike? Shouldn't make any difference as I hear Sony UK are happy to do warranty work on any of their cams that find their way over here. But the low cost could be due to the fact that the FX1 has long since ceased production and the price consequentially took a nose-di...

I see quite a lot of amateur movies and my biggest complaint is over the staggingly large font most people seem to want to use. Maybe it's because their editing monitor is small, but up on a big screen O U R C A T P I D D L E S is shouted at us at 110 decibels.

tom.

It does sound like a head wear problem to me, or possibly an alignment one. I wonder if the XM2 has has a lot of wear and tear, or if it's been dropped. This may have missaligned guide rollers but I think it would have been damage that the owner would have commeneted on in his post. Sounds like a jo...

One of my wedding films shot a few years ago offended the bride, and very much so. My opening scene was of the first guests arriving - unfortunatley this included 'the other woman' (spit) and I had to re-edit her out of the entire movie. I do feel it would have been polite to inform me up front.

You're right Billy - make your films to suit the client. Which is why all mine are 16:9 these days. The film you describe marked 'widescreen' was in fact made 4:3 but with 25% of it masked off to make it look 16:9. This is handy for club projectionists as one setting of the projector's aspect ratio ...

I'm thinking that people who spend £540 on a hi-def camcorder probably aren't too interested in editing anway, and are simply happy to plug it into their wall-mounted plasma / LCD and gasp in amazement at the picture quality. The other 'feature' that will have them snatching this camcorder out of th...

For £539 (Purelygadgets) you can buy the Sunday Times' best buy in HiDef camcorders, the palm-sized Panasonic HDC-SD5. This camera records full 1920 x 1080 hi-def video onto SD flash memory cards, so no tapes, HDDs, Mini DVD and whatnot. Sounds good, but the downsize is the AVCHD compression that's ...

Dave, what's with this, 'force our viewers to suffer the black bars' talk? With the lights down low to see the best CRT picture, my 4:3 Trinitron shows 16:9 just as if it was a 16:9 set, and no 'black bars' are visible simply because that part of the screen is unlit by electrons. Maybe you mean duri...