BACK TO PROJECTS
Status: Completed 11th July 2004
Info:
Yet another installment in the Uni Video collection. As the first two Uni Videos were only available on VHS, I decided it was time for an update. The footage is being transferred to computer at this time and will be edited soon.
This installment will combine the first two Uni Videos, but trim off all the fat which had to be left in as the first two videos were edited using the rather "old school" method of REC/Pause 'edit in one go' process.
Now, in a much more succinct and stylish manner, we can all witness how the Uni Video saga began in one video!
As the first two Uni Videos were edited using the old REC/Pause method, which was rather frantic and rather scrappy to say the least (mind you, it still got the basic job done); I figured it was a good idea to capture them into a digital format. But I got thinking and saw potential for a simple re-edit, employing better editing and a new soundtrack which was clear stereo rather than muffled mono.
Of course, it was time for some rare use of a VCR � nowadays with it all being DVDs and downloads I hardly ever use my old VHS tapes (which are still in very good quality considering their potential for breakdown and such like) and as I watch a lot less TV nowadays as well, I barely record anything off the TV either! So anyway, as my VCR had decided to die on me for no apparent reason (I was gutted as it was a rather decent Sony VCR), I got myself a nice cheap Naiko video recorder. But I was to be further gutted as it being both capable of playing PAL and NTSC (European and American) tapes, there was some confusion along the line somewhere, and when importing footage from VCR to computer, it ended up being black and white � I put up with it for Uni Video Rewound, but not this time. I figured it would be wise to use the oldest VCR at my disposal, a rather old school Saisho (I think that company died years ago for starters!) which was all about the mono sound and manual tracking via a dial on the actual VCR, the luxury of a remote was still rather basic too! But hazah � I was able to import colour VHS footage into my computer!
At first I captured using my usual editing software which allows me to wade through mountains of footage quickly and effectively, giving me a decent final product as long as I �keep it simple stupid� and steer clear of anything that looks amateur (something I do as a matter of course anyway). However, this software has a hissy fit with the bane of my life that is audio/visual synchronicity. By the end of a 70 minute long capture session (totalling a controllable 3-something gigs of data), the synchronicity eventually tore apart to be at least 15 seconds out of synch. This comes down to all the edit points along the way, little blips like this gradually split the audio/visual synchronicity � hell, sometimes it just goes mental for the sake of it!
This is when I turned to Adobe Premier to see if I could capture analogue material through this (I�ve been having trouble getting into Avid with such stuff), and I was indeed able to. The synchronicity was perfect throughout (despite some dropped frames because of screwy bits of VHS tape), but the size of the actual files was ridiculous � I am still (at the time of writing this anyway) trying to play with all the various settings to bring the file size down. But I found a way around that - by importing the massive data files into my quick and easy software whereby I converted it into MPEGs that had hugely reduced file sizes, therefore when it came to editing, I wouldn�t get slowed down due to the chunk of data that was chewing up my hard-drive (which is two 80gig drives, but I like to keep it as clear as possible).
Anyway, thanks to Adobe, I was to have synchronicity for the remainder of the edit (the opening titles were done before I used Premier). Taking two Uni Videos � the first was a meaty 70 minutes while the second was a more respectable 45-ish � I cut out all the fat, everything that was left in there because my previous VCR method meant that editing wasn�t exactly the tightest of things to achieve � and trimmed everything down (that�s almost 2 hours) into a hilarious video clocking in at around the 45 minute mark � �tasty� as I would say.
The Uni Video: VHS Redux is a nice roundup of the best of the first year at Uni (well, 2 out of 3 semesters anyway, I never had the camera around for the first semester as not knowing what everyone would be like, I was afraid it�d get pinched or something � back in the days when my door would always be locked, by the end of the semester it would always be open and now my door is forever open, or ajar anyway � simply because I can�t shut the damned thing!). Damn, that was a long bracketed paragraph!
Finally, doing this edit I got to try out a couple of ideas, such as putting in photographs of the moment the flash goes off on screen � but in this instance it just looked absolutely shit, so I decided against it. But otherwise, it�s �toight � toight like a toigah� � if you don�t get that reference�forshame!
