Good shot selection for video, like golf, is fundamental for success. You may not be a video Tiger Woods, yet, but the more shots you add to your repertoire, the more interesting and effective your videos will be. When I learned to play golf, the really good players seemed to be obsessed with carefu

Digital Switching by Larry Lemm MXProDV Digital Video Mixer ($2,495) Videonics 1370 Dell Ave Campbell, CA 95008 (408) 866-8300 www.videonics.com In response to a world that is quickly going digital, Videonics has introduced the MXProDV, a product targeted at DV videographers who want to edit

For most of us, the operations of everyday electronic devices like televisions, VCRs and camcorders are mysterious. Though many of us may have a vague idea of how a picture gets from lens to tape, most of us just take for granted that a picture appears on the screen when we fire up our camcorders a

Everyone seems to have questions or concerns about the Mini DV and Digital8 formats and consistent answers are sometimes hard to find. In this article we’ll take a look at the four most common concerns people seem to have involving DV. Q: Everywhere I turn I get conflicting information about

Until recently, a typical home computer was not capable of editing video. The power to create television programs has been in the hands of a chosen few. Most people that had access to video editing tools were either employed in the television industry or they were "techies" that configure

You just can’t beat physics, and as Isaac Newton pointed out, resistance to motion is proportional to mass. So today’s featherweight miracles of video are hard to hold still. And the amazing telephotos they put on camcorders today are truly awesome — but they magnify every tiny ji

If you were to teach a complete stranger how to shoot video, you could boil it down to, "point the camera at your subject and press the record button." That’s functionally all it takes. Unfortunately, that simple point-and-shoot approach leads to a rather two-dimensional view of a

Did you ever notice that sometimes the movies that you rent from your local video store don’t play very well on your VCR? Perhaps that ball game that you taped last week has a white fuzzy streak running across the middle of it, or your camcorder munches your tape as you record that once-in-a-l

As a videographer, you get to wear many hats. When you wear the hat of the historian, for example, you record significant events for future reference. The storyteller’s cap, on the other hand, compels you to relate a visual tale, with a beginning, a middle and an end. The artist’s hat,

In 1953, the National Television Systems Committee (NTSC) devised an American standard for the video signal that’s still used today. Understanding this standard offers insight as to how your camcorder records and delivers a video signal. The NTSC standard has served us rather well during a ce

aspect ratio Proportional height and width of a picture on screen. The current NTSC standard for conventional receiver or monitor is four by three (4:3); 16:9 for HDTV. audio dub Recording audio over prerecorded videotape soundtrack, or a portion, without affecting prerecorded video images.

Ever finish shooting video, convinced you recorded great footage only to later discover that your whites weren’t crispy clean? Your colors weren’t vibrant and healthy? That the whole look of your video looked, well, wrong? It’s likely your videos are suffering from bad white balan

Automation is nice. Heat sensing microwaves that can tell how long to heat leftovers, say, are very convenient. But sometimes you need to override the automatic settings to cook things just the way you like them. The same holds true for camcorders. While most camcorders automatically adjust the foc

My friend Bonko, the guitarist in a retro-alternative-grunge band, is adamant: "Digital stinks, and analog rules, dude." He covets his tube transistors and even has a collection of vinyl records. "Analog is, like, the bomb! Check out the difference," he said as he cranked the v

We’ve all sat through video that shook, shimmied and jerked so horribly it should have been preceded by a "viewer discretion advised" graphic. In truth, everyone who has ever held a camcorder has shot shaky video. To realize the benefits, and avoid the pitfalls of using image stabil

Using a telephoto lens is like giving your camcorder a pair of binoculars. The longer the focal length the greater the magnification. The cameraman was nose to nose with the rattler. Its forked tongue flicked in and out as its beady eyes fixed him with an unblinking stare. Instinctively, he pulled

Knowing how to choose a tripod is foundational to the camcorder enthusiast. Why? Because there are so many good things to look for and bad things to avoid, and because you’ll live with your choice for a long, long time. It’s important for shoppers to understand the anatomy of these thre

A Word From Sima The review of the Sima Products ColorWriter Plus (Model SCW-2) in your July issue had a number of positive things to say about our newest titler. Thank you. However, the negative comments were inaccurate and misleading. The reviewer’s main point – "for the price of

A camcorder is an artist’s tool. Just as a canvas and brush are a painter’s implements, a camcorder and tape are what the videographer uses to create art. While painters use paint to create the texture, color and feel of an image, as videographers we use light itself. We increase, decre

The three friends had the go-ahead from the local leased access cable station and were ready to start production on their program. It would be a fairly simple show, a weekly talk show about high school sports that would air Sundays at 5 a.m. To them it was the big time. An experienced videographe