How To Make A Time-Lapse Video With Your Digital Video Camera

Getting the most out of your digital video camera can mean being able to create some really cool stuff. You just have to step outside the manual a bit and find the cool things you can do with your digital video camera and your editing software.

We have all seen them in a movie or a TV show, those very cool shots where they speed up time and capture a long segment of time and condense it into a very short amount of video. My very favorite example of this technique was an arty movie of many years ago that was called Koyaanisqatsi. (view trailer) In that movie they had some very interesting segments where they did time lapse effects to show driving on a bridge, flowers growing, clouds flying by and so on. Another example is many of the TV news stations nowadays have a camera that captures the day’s weather and then they process it down to a 20 second clip to show the clouds and weather racing by on screen.

Well this technique is not just a tool in the hands of the movie makers or the big TV stations. You can do this with your digital video camera gear too. I will go into two ways that you can accomplish this effect and get some cool results for your next video project. This one is worth playing around with in order to find the right settings to get the most dramatic effect.

Technique number one is to use the camera itself to do the time lapse recording for you. Almost all digital video cameras have the ability to do an interval recording. What this means in a nutshell is that you tell the camera how long you want to record for and how long in between recordings and it will go on autopilot for you for as long as the battery lasts or the tape runs out. This is what those cameras at the convenience store do, they record a few seconds of motion every 30-60 seconds giving the overall view of the traffic in the store over time.

Now if you want to capture some time lapse in your digital video camera you will need to get into your cameras menu and find Interval Recording (or in my case Int Rec, as I use a Sony PD 150 for my camera) When you select this option you will decide how long of an interval between shots you want and how long to record each time. If you are trying to capture something that takes a long time to occur and in which not much happens quickly you will want to set the interval at around a minute and the record time as short as possible on your camera. An example would be if you wanted to record a day in the life of a flower or the clouds rolling by in the sky. Suppose however that you want to capture an event that has lots of action and occurs over a much shorter time frame. Then you would want to shorten the interval between recordings and increase the time of each recording. So in this case you might record every 15-30 seconds and record up to 2-3 seconds of video each time.

I used this technique to capture an afternoon of work being done by a team of carpenters on my house remodeling project. The result was a flurry of activity as workers raced hither and yon nailing boards, carrying equipment and building walls. I have added it to my photo collection of the project. (Hey I had to live through the project so I might as well have a great record of it for posterity!)

Now suppose you have one of the great software video editing packages on your computer to work with your digital video camera. Now you can do it in post as they say in the business. You can record any length of video you want (subject to the limitations of your tape length) and then import it into your editing program.

Sidebar:

I use Adobe Premiere Pro for my editing jobs, but I have also used Avid DV Express, Final Cut Pro, and others in the non linear editing world. These are all great programs and are very powerful products that can create some very professional looking videos. You don’t have to have these products to create your own videos but if you are serious about digital video editing it might be a good idea to take a look at these options.

I digitize my raw video of the scene I am doing time lapse on into my computer (big hard drive, video eats up GB’s of space) and then import the clip into my time line. From th3e timeline you can then select the clip with a right click. From there you will be given a menu with options depending on the software you use. Select the option that says “duration”, “speed” or something similar. Change the speed of the clip so that time will speed up considerably. If you have an hour of video in the clip and want to shorten it to 2 -5 minutes then you need to increase the speed of the clip to 3 or 4 thousand percent of normal. This will require your software to render the clip at the higher speed and may take some time top process depending on the speed of your computer.

Once you have rendered the video clip at the new speed you will want to play it to see if the movie flows evenly or if you will want to readjust the speed setting to make it better. Sometimes you may want to shorten your raw video and adjust the speed down somewhat in order to get a smooth flow of action. Once you have rendered the clip at the new speed you can now cut and splice it as you see fit with the speeded up action intact. There are some things you will record that might only need a slight speed change, take for instance some digital video of your kids playing sports. Double or triple the speed of the clip and show it to them and you might have them rolling on the floor.

You can also use these techniques to capture the growth of a flower or plant over the course of days or weeks. Simply set you camera in exactly the same place at the same time each day and record an interval that works each day fro however long you want to document. May be you get the seedling just breaking soil and follow it all the way through turning into a full grown plant.

Another interesting idea is to capture the path of the moon across the night sky. Set up your camera on a tripod in a spot that can see the path of the moon for several hours. Set the camera to interval record and put the moon on one side of the frame so that it will pass across the frame as the night passes. This one may require some testing in order to get the exposure and framing right as well as the right interval to record at. Most likely you would want to set the interval as long as you can and the record time as short as you can but do a test run first to see what works.

I can’t stress enough that using your digital video camera can be great fun and you can achieve some cool results. Play around and test. You just might find yourself creating some very creative digital video to share with the rest of the world.

Kevin Rockwell worked as a network TV cameraman for 20 years shooting news and sports. Now a devoted fan of digital photography and video he works to gather information, tips and news for digital camera users. Oh and he loves to shoot pictures of cool and interesting things all the time. http://www.great-digital-cameras.com/gdcj.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kevin_Rockwell

By Kevin Rockwell

How To Find A Digital Video Camera Rental

You'd love to have a visual record of the next big family event, not just in still photographs, but in full motion. There's just something special about having a movie of an event with sound if you like, so that you get the full picture of what was going on, and not just the silent split seconds here and there that you can capture on a still camera.

Your digital camera does allow you to choose between an entire memory card full of photos, or a few minutes worth of video. Not much of a choice. But you can’t afford to drop the price of a video camera, no matter how important the upcoming event is. So why not consider a digital video camera rental?

Digital video cameras now produce videos of such high quality that you can make several generations of copies from your original recording, and even the copi4es of the copies of the copies will look and sound as clear as the first. One of the big appeals of the digital video camera rental is that for the price of one rental you can supply all the guests with a treasured memory of the day.

The best way to ensure that your digital video camera rental will provide the best possible copies is to ask the associate at the rental store to demonstrate the resolution with which each camera records, by seeing a sample of recordings done by each of their different digital video camera rentals. Even the weakest of their digital video camera rentals will be light years ahead of your old home movies, but there’s no point in settling for anything less than the best you can get.

Editing Your Video

In order to make copies of your master digital video recording, you’ll need access to a PC on which you can save the master and make copies. If you have the software to do it, you can even edit the digital video recording to delete the less interesting parts and focus on the more entertaining ones. But you should always do your editing on a copy, in case you don’t like the result. Save the master recording as it was when you uploaded it from the digital video camera rental.

The chances of your having the necessary software, because you don’t own a digital video camera, aren’t high. But don’t let that discourage you; there is software available for download at no charge on the Internet and some of it might be perfect for editing your video.

You can also use a personal computer to research your digital video camera rental. You should be able to get a ball park estimate of how much a digital video camera with the features you want rents for, and the location of rental stores in your area that carry them.

Features To Ask For

Make sure you ask for, and get, a digital video camera rental. You most definitely do not want the video cameras which used VHS cassettes to record on. And make sure that your digital video camera rental has the amount of pixilation that you want. 680,000 pixels is the minimum you should settle for, and it really is the minimum. The greater the number of pixels, the clearer your video will be.

And ask about your digital video camera rental’s light measuring devices, or CCDs. These are chips, and you need as many as you can get. The difference between a camera with one CCD chip and three CCD chips is, shall we say, like the difference between light and darkness?

Your digital video camera rental is the tool with which you will be building memories you can treasure for years to come. So do your homework, and make it the best tool you can possibly find!

You can also find more info on Digital Cameras and Compact Digital Camera. Topdigitalcamerareviews.com is a comprehensive resource to know about Digital Cameras.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Faulkner

How to Choose a Digital Video Camera

By Chris Beazer

With so many digital products flooding the market, there has never been a better time to upgrade to a digital video camera. The more products in the market, the cheaper the price, but how do you choose the right digital video camera? Make a budget.

The first step in buying a digital video camera is figuring out how much money you have to spend, and what you plan to use the video camera for. Arming yourself with these ideas will keep you from overspending on a product or features that you don't really need.

Step2. Do your CCD research. Like megapixels are to a digital photography camera, CCDs (charged coupled devices) are to a digital video camera. The more CCDs you have, the sharper and more realistic your image will be. A basic digital camera will have one chip and is a good choice if you are only doing personal video such as home family videos. A more complex choice is a three-chip camera. This is good for a starting documentary or independent film maker and offers a much sharper image for your final product.

Step3. Try out the camera in the store. It will not give you as much accuracy as trying out a camera in the field, but you can get a good idea of the quality of a camera by the test product in your electronics store. Look at things like how the camera looks in dark light or when directly focused at the ceiling lights. Also look at color tone and color accuracy.

Step4. Read the reviews. Once you find a couple cameras that you like at the store, go online and check out what other consumers had to say about the product. Most sites like Amazon or Buy.com will have a good amount of reviews for the products that you are considering.

Step5. Buy the best fit. Once you have done all the research and find a camera that fits you and your budget, look online and see if you can find a great deal on it. If your best deal is similar to what the electronics store is offering, buy it from the store. Even if it costs a little bit more, buy it from a store. With an electronics store, if you have issues, you can go to a person and talk to them face to face, rather than only being able to speak to a rep by phone or email.

There has never been a better time to upgrade to a digital video camera. The more products in the market, the cheaper the price, so this is the way about how to choose the right digital video camera.