PRACTICAL DV FILMMAKING

Practical DV FilmMaking

• Overview
• Inside video
• Films and how they work
• Pre-production
• Production tools
• Production aesthetics
• Post-production tools
• Post-production aesthetics
• Careers and distribution
• Mapping the industry
• Glossary of film and video terms

4 modem to the motorway that is ADSL. This format supports best the H.263, MPEG-4 and Intel's Indeo codecs such as Netshow. Netshow servers are designed to maintain speed of data delivery even if demand increases - what is known as true streaming. But it does so by reducing the quality of the images seen by the user, first visuals and then audio.

QuickTime - flexible, highly rated, free

This format is seen with an '.mov' or '.qt' after its files and is Apple Computer's answer to the format race. It is a flexible format, ideal as much for CD-ROMs as for DVDs or the Internet. Unlike earlier Windows formats, this also performs on Macs and best supports Sorenson, Indeo, Cinepak and MPEG-1. QuickTime uses RTSP, or Real Time Streaming Protocol, which means that it delivers the movie in real time, as does RealG2 and Netshow.

RealPlayer - free and very widely used

Real Networks Real Media (with an '.rm' at the end of the file) format is by far the most popular on the market and has earned this degree of use by being accessible - it's free to download, as is QuickTime - but mostly by being able to alter its streaming level to suit the machine it is being viewed on. This means you don't have to create multiple versions of a movie for the user to choose from.

RealPlayer is a flexible format that copes well with content streamed live as part of a webcast or through a progressive download. The only negative point is that on low bit rates the film can start to look decidedly blurry and featureless, but compressing to this degree is to be avoided anyway.

Figure 2.6 How video streaming works.

DIY compression

Most filmmakers who use the web regularly for showing movies tend to customize their compression set­tings. Co-ordinators of online movie cinemas will compress what they show themselves so that they can apply the right codec for the movie. As we have seen above, certain codecs are better for some movies than others. It is clear that a filmed interview with someone talking to the camera will have different com­pression needs to a sports film where there is constant movement, but where sound is less crucial. Customizing your movie yourself is not as difficult as it sounds, and there are software programs that will use the popular 'wizard' process to take you slowly through the decisions you need to make.

Decisions