lauren, seach "DOF" or "depth of field" What you need to do is leave the aperture wide open and make the lens longer by standing back and zooming in. This will narrow the DOF. It is much harder to do this with a 1/3" CCD camera but it can be done. Check out some grabs from a documentary I am wrapping up. All these are raw interlaced grabs with natural light. They are from an XL1s (shot before the XL2 was released).


ash =o)

http://members.aol.com/ashvid/Grabs/

Thanks Ash! That was so easy! I love it when that happens. My shoot starts today for a short I'm doing, so thanks for the quick reply.

-Lauren

There's a little slide show on DOF here:

http://dvcreators.net/shooting/

(look under "tiplets")

(it is a little out of date)

Wow great video, got my cam yesterday and feel really comfortable with it today thanks to the tutorial. BTW, one question, any chance of sharing that "custom low-light" preset you guys used with the girl in front of the candle? SUPERB!

Miguel

Hi Miguel, thanks for your comments.

We just crushed the blacks in that one, the candle did all the work as far as the coloring...

video was great. Content was right on and did not drag out. As well it started quick for me.

Excellent video. It bears multiple viewings.

Don't waste your time using the QT7 player. Use VLC for Mac or PC. It's better and it's free.

Occasionally we switch out the links on our home page, so for anyone who would like to bookmark the XL2 Feature Tour on our website, click here and save the url as a bookmark:

http://dvcreators.net/media/demos/xl...aturetour.html

Thanks for all of your feedback so far!

Can't make better quality stuff for my website
 

Great demo Josh! I see you posted a little info about how you encoded it, but I tried the same encode with a ten second 30p clip and can't reproduce the quality. Can you give us the full detail about how it was encoded?

Please check out movie 4 on my website. It was done on a XL2 and encoded through Compressor 800kbps 480x270
I want to make a larger image without the image degrading.

http://web.mac.com/j411/iWeb/MICHAEL...N/Welcome.html

Michael

Funny you should ask!

That movie was encoded with the same clumsy, obsolete tools we all had to use... until now!

There is a new video encoding/publishing software tool that just came out, that is my favorite I've ever used. (It should be, I designed it to work exactly the way I've always wanted!) Right now it is Mac OS X only, and just came out, so it is undergoing a lot of revisions.

I was going to post news of it once a few more features were added, but since you asked :-)

The video you posted looks great, to estimate what your bitrate limitations should be, use the Bitrate Budget Calculator:
http://dvcreatorslabs.com/dvccast/fe...get-calculator

Then use SampleLab to find your TOQ:
http://dvcreatorslabs.com/dvccast/features/samplelab

Also, if you're in LA, I'm doing a free seminar in Santa Monica this Saturday:
http://www.dvcreators.net/events/fre...ution-seminar/