hd2o.tv wrote:

Firstly I will say some very good advice, BUT, that's fine for a professional company that can afford to travel with good lighting and a camera that has Manual White Balance.

I have only just bought a video camera with MWB, I couldn't afford it before and had to use filters as best as I could. Most digital stills cameras will not shoot video with a MWB, they will take stills with MWB. Filters can assist the still cameras MWB as long as they have enough light coming in.

I once travelled to Thailand with my old video setup with the lights (Greenforce). The whole lot with my diving gear weighed my total allowance including hand luggage, no room for clothes or anything else. I managed to persuade my non diving mate to take the lights and chargers in his suitcase so I could take some clothes and bring some junk back.

My new video camera and housing should make it easier but I still won't be taking the lighting on holiday, costs too much in extra luggage.

I try to use Manual White Balance with my stills camera but I also back that up with regular reference shots with a white card. I can then use this to set reference white balance settings for other images in that location. Normally the white balance is pretty consistent if you stay at the same depth.

For video I use a Canon HV20 without lights. This does have MWB, but it is just about impossible to use underwater. To compensate I use the reference white card at the start and end of each sequence. Back on my computer I use Final Cut Pro and each clip can be balanced by using the reference card using the 3 way colour correction filter.

Some sample videos:



These were taken in depths varying from 5m to 18m in Carlisle Bay, Barbados.

MyBottomTime wrote:

Is that any good at editing HD video? I need some new software and have been looking around at various ones. I need something that can edit full HD 60fps video and output as HD. My current software doesn't edit HD!

Both Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express will edit a number of different HD formats. With Final Cut Pro I use 1080 24p or 30p depending on the camera I use. You can also ingest and edit at 50/60fps. There are codecs for 422 and I believe for 444 (For Red cams).

Both programs are non-destructive and you can set the editing sequence to low res for quick editing then re-ingest at full resolution for final processing.

Again output can vary dependant on the target you want to create. I use 1080 for my WD HD Media player, but downsize to 720p for You-Tube, for web use you can output to m4v at various frame sizes and bitrates.

Final Cut Pro also comes with a suite of applications for titling, 3d animations and compositing, and a Compressor to produce the final output products.

I have been playing with Adobe Premiere Element 8.0. I find it very easy to use and it does HD Movies.