Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

Murphy's Law even
affects you when
you work with
video as Gary
Whitely discovers
the cloys are getting longer and spring
N is once again in the air, I thought I'd
o share a few strange, true and strange
w but true things which tend to happen again and
tagain
in video. Maybe you would be as well to
bear some of them in mind while you're dusting off
h
the video camera and edit suite in preparation for
a
the longer days to come, and this year's video
t productions to get under way.
w Let's start with some of the true (and sometimes
isily)
things which can happen during video editing
and n production. It's always infuriating when you
can't t get an edit suite to do what you want, and
even worse if there are bits of kit which look like
e
they might be potential causes for your problem.
But r more often thon not this 'problem' can be quickly
h traced to one simple thing - your edit videotape
a is protected from recording! This means the
protection s tab in the rape is either missing, broken
off, r or in the wrong position, depending on the
Format e of tape you use. What's even worse is when
you've taped over the missing tab hole and the
l
problem is still there, only to Find later that the tope
has
e
come unstuck or got dimpled so the VCR still
thinks a the video-tape is record protectedl I've seen
these s problems happen on numerous occasion, and
often e to people who should have known better.
d STRIPPING
i
An
t
equally silly situation is the basis for one of my
most embarrassing video moments. I'd been asked
to
s
video an important occasion which had to run to
schedule, i and something appeared to have gone
very c wrong with the video equipment Everyone
was y waiting impatiently as I searched frantically for
the g problem. In the midst of stripping down the
rU-matic
recorder, some wag sarcasticaly suggest-
i
ed that taking the lens cop off might help. Moral -
don't panic. Check all the simple things first before
p
tearing the equipment apart And then check them
, (lain because you're already panicking!
Now for something you might think strange (but
which I think is true). Call me insane, but I believe
video equipment can be adversely affected by the
people who use it. Ten years ago Gavin, the guy
who started me out in video, used to stand by our
Just wha t doom
this '5 0 '2
Ame rica n soldie r
have to do with
vide o? - You'd
hotter ma d on—.
AM U
MURPHY'S LAW
AMIGA COMPUTING
MAY 1996
tIPIATIfft
;_)11
-
]
-
31v7
I
-
A
TJ
noticed, over the years, that there are certain
One of the misunderstandings I often come across is that it's possible to edit direct from and to an edit master
and even do things like fades and dissolves, Well, think about it! How can you possibly read, convert, move,
effect, return, convert and re-record video that fast, even if you could replace it into the exact spot it came
from less than a 50th of a second ago. On a moving tape? Forget it! I've been hearing inexperienced editors
asking why they can't do this, but it never goes away. I guess it will eventually change to "Why con I read
Mpeg from my hard disk, change it, and send it back in real time to where it just came from?" Maybe it might
be possible, but only when time and space become the some thing.
li
VCRs and stroke them when they were misbehaving always blowing, their car breaks down for too often.
or refusing to edit cleanly. Invariably, the edit If this sounds like you, maybe you should just try
would immediately be successful. Since then I've being nicer to your machines?
What about those times when you leave a crucial
people who iust don't seem to 'get on' with video piece of kit somewhere, without which you'd be
equipment, no mailer how good they are at using sunk? Strange but true - we've all probably done it.
it, When they're around, video kit seems to break -Let me tell you about o shoot I was working on
down with on almost unnerving regularity, but for where we went for lunch in a pub half way to our
no apparently logical reason. And there are other next location and took the camera in with us For safe
Folks who have a knack of getting the machines keeping. An hour later we were on our way, only to
working again.
discover we'd left the camera in the publ I We
Being nice to your machine is almost crucial. In hadn't gone far and we soon got the camera back,
Fact, serious research carried out by, amongst others,
the US military has proved a more than significant
link between faults in electro-mechanical
but imagine if we hadn't been so lucky. Our shoot
would have been a disaster!
One of the silliest sights I've witnessed is the
equipment and particular individuals. We all know production crew of a major movie almost grinding
people who are 'jinxed' - their light bulbs ore to a halt because their mobile telephones wouldn't
work in our rugged mountainous location. The local
phone boxes almost gave out under the strain.
Perhaps it couldn't be helped, but it made a change
for a film crew's mobiles to be silent!
CONTACT
POINT
Gary Whiteley can be e-rnailed as
drgarlkix.compulink_co_uk
121