Home Movie Editing

Applying a few basic techniques can make any home video look more professional and make life much easier when you get to the editing stage. Here are my top ten tips for capturing good video.

1. Keep It Steady

The most telling sign of an amateur movie is shaky footage. This can be fixed in some editing software, but this will always lead to lower quality video, as the techniques involved actually crop and zoom the picture.

Ideally, you could shoot with your camera mounted on a tripod, but this is rarely practical in most family situations.

Wherever possible, hold the camera with both hands. Make sure the hand strap is as tight as possible on your right hand. Keep your elbows tight to your body to provide support, and stand with your feet slightly apart.

If you are using your zoom in telephoto mode (zoomed in) then it is even more important to keep the camera steady. Try to lean against a solid object like a wall or post.

2. Film More

Avoid the temptation of filming for the edit. Allow the camera to roll for a few seconds before and after the action. This will give you room to be flexible when you come to editing.

When putting your final piece together, you will be using probably a fraction of the footage you film, but to have plenty of footage to work with is a good thing.

3. Use Your Ears

It's surprising the things you hear when you play your footage back which you didn't spot when you were filming. Try to listen to the surrounding noise when you are filming. Some noises are unavoidable, but you should avoid excessive ambient noise if possible.

4. Avoid The Zoom

Try to avoid zooming in and out while the camera is rolling. If you do zoom, use a slow zoom. This may need some practising, especially if your camera has a small and sensitive zoom rocker.

5. Pan Slowly

Panning across a scene too quickly will not look good on your final video, and could cause your audience some disorientation. Try to pan slowly - around 20 seconds to pan across the scene in front of you will provide an acceptable scene. If you are filming a wide pan, avoid moving your feet and create the movement by swivelling the top half of your body, keeping the camera steady by supporting your elbows at the side of your body.

6. Don't Speak

Providing dialogue from behind the camera will make your final film look amateurish. Add any commentary by recording it separately and adding it at the editing stage.

7.Get Your Basic Camera Settings Right

Often, DV camcorders come with two audio settings, 32kHz and 48kHz. The 32kHz setting enables you to record two separate audio streams onto the same section of tape. The second stream is for a voiceover which can be added at a later date.

If you don't plan to do this, or you will be recording a narration at a later date, set the audio capture on your camera to 48kHz.

One feature found on most cameras which is virtually useless is the digital zoom. Using this feature will lead to severe quality loss in your video. Switch this feature off completely, and stick to the optical zoom. You will also find that any zoom over 10x will be very difficult to keep steady.

8. Try Different Angles

Rather than shooting everything at eye level, try some different angles. Try angling the screen upwards and filming with the camera at waist level. If you are filming kids, try getting down to a lower level to get the action.

9. Take Some Stills

Many camcorders feature a stills mode. If you see an opportunity for a good photo, take it. Still photos are really useful for artwork for titles, intro sequences and dvd cover artwork, and you will get better results from still photos rather than from taking still frames from video, even if your stills mode is not the highest resolution ever.

10. Film Some Extras

Think about making your editing easier by capturing some extra material as well as the main action. These shots, often referred to as 'cut aways' allow you to add some variety to your movie. You can also cut to these scenes and just use the extra video without the audio to cover up glitches in your main footage.