Seminar Workflow
Equipment
Video
- Two Pana AF100
- Two 32GB formatted SD cards
- Two Manfrotto tripods
- Two plates
- Two batteries
- One Canon Lens Mount Adapter for the Medium / Closeup Pana.
- One 24-70mm (set to f/8.0 using a 5D or 7D)
- One Panasonic Lumix 20mm pancake lens for the Wide Pana.
- Two Q3HD flipcams
- Two 32GB formatted SD cards
- Two tiny tripods
- The front is actually as a backup audio for the speaker. However, video may come in handy.
- 4 AA batteries
Audio
- Star wireless mic transceiver/receiver
- 4 AA batteries
- The receiver gets mounted on the wide angle Pana
- X and Square handheld wireless mics
- 4 AA batteries
- X and Square wireless receivers
- 4 AA batteries
- These receivers get mounted on the front medium/close angle Pana
Shoot
- Wide Angle Pana with 20mm pancake
- White Balance: Point to the white ceiling and do automatic white balance. Every time. This will make your life much easier. You don’t want to white balance in the post using FCPX.
- Always stay on the speaker. Always. Minimize movement.
- Monitor the speaker’s audio.
- Try not to go below f/3.2, but do use the exposure meter. The screen will lie to you but the meter works well.
- Frame rate shouldn’t be changed: 24fps. IMPORTANT: Do not use the variable frame rate. It disables audio.
- Turn on User 1 option for awesome peaking. Red means focused. You want the speaker’s eyes to be red like a devil.
- Side/Close/Medium Pana with the 24-70mm EF lens
- Usually, you should stay on the speaker, but the primary goal for this one is to get the audience’s questions. Also the big screen should be captured if you can. NEED TO IMPROVE: You should find a way to capture just the screen with its own (could be crappy) audio recording at the same time on a separate camera. It’ll be much easier for multicam editing. Audio is necessary for syncing later on.
- It helps if you get a sturdy tripod that can go high. People’s heads are always in the way.
- Back Q3HD Flipcam
- This is Hui Soo cam. He ususally sits in the back around from the view of the audience cam, so angle it to point in that direction. You’ll figure out what I mean.
- Front Q3HD Flipcam
- As mentioned above, this is a backup of the speaker’s audio. Don’t even need it if the speaker audio is fine on the Wide Pana footage.
Multicam Editing
If Plural Eyes 3 works for you in syncing and creating a multicam clip in Premiere, go ahead and use it. Otherwise…
- In FCPX, import the contents of 4 SD cards
- Bring up the inspector window (in View or Window or something like that)
- Change their Camera Names (not Camera Angles, as it should have been named… thanks FCPX… for nothing.) so FCPX will know which clip belongs with which camera angle, e.g. CAM_SD (automatic name for Pana footage) may be changed to Wide, and the other CAM_SD to Medium, and so on.
- In the event window, highlight the all of the footage from the shoot
- Right click then create a new multicam clip. Name of the clip can be today’s seminar multicam.
- When a new multicam clip is created, double click on the clip to open it in a timeline to double check. IMPORTANT: This is not your editing timeline. Any changes will only be reflected in the clip itself.
- Click on the bottom left button to go back to the project list window
- Create a new project
- Drag the multicam clip into the project. This is your editing timeline.
- Choose “Show the Angle Viewer” from the menu bar. It’s either View or Window menu option. The keyboard shortcut is Shift + Command + 7.
- In Preferences for FCPX, choose Play, and choose Proxy setting. Multicam editing takes too much memory and it will be too taxing for the computer otherwise.
- Multicam editing tutorial on Lynda.com is here I think it’s 8th lesson.
- Edit edit edit. Also, the audio waveform lies when using Multicam. Monitor the audio with the Audio Meter while editing. ”Show Audio Meter” is in View or Window or something like that.
- When finished with the timeline, insert the ending (Just a ‘large’ white EdLab logo with the black/clear background)
- Insert the intro template **(This may be what we have now a.k.a. the Hockey Stick Intro, or whatever Daniel makes)
- Insert the Pointer List text for the speaker’s name, organization, and the date (This may not be necessary if Daniel finishes his seminar intro template).
- Drag the intro music and fade out when the speaker is being introduced.
Exporting / Compressing / Publishing
- Go back to the preference and change the Play setting back to “Better Performance” and let FCPX render completely. Otherwise it comes out as crap.
- iPhone-esque Share button is in the middle right of the screen between the Event top half and the Project bottom half. Click on it.
- Choose the Master File export option or something to that effect. Make sure the setting is in Source – ProRes. Otherwise it comes out as crap.
- Compress, using your choice of tool to upload to Vialogues.
- When compressed, play it, and get a screenshot for the video’s thumbnail.
- If Vialogues still needs 4:3 thumbnail, create one using Photoshop.
- Create a Vialogue on Chrome or your favorite one.
- Open up a different browser, e.g. Firefox, sign in as Luke in Vialogues, and find the place holder seminar Vialogue.
- Luke -> Admin -> Switcheroo
- Email Luke, Joann, Daniel, and Brian with the link to the original Vialogue which has your new video. Good job. Repeat x100.
