One of my aims this year, as a culmination of my professional development, is to produce a careers dvd for secondary school students that showcases businesses in the digital media industries and the pathways to these careers.
Finding businesses willing to give up their precious time to be interviewed has taken a large amount of my time - emails back and forth and initial meetings have been taking place since May. My initial contacts to businesses in Napier, Gisborne and Wellington were not successful.
However, a number of businesses in Palmerston North agreed to be my guinea pigs - and guinea pigs they were!
The start of July saw me head back to Palmerston North for my filming debut. After much deliberation and research I had purchased a new Sanyo camcorder with capabilities to save to hard-drive and DVD. I had my tripod and my external microphone. I read the manual, practiced with the dials and buttons. My appointment times were set.
And then, on the Sunday prior to my two interviews on Monday I decided I would have a wee play at downloading some footage and editing it in imovie.
Disaster!
My Macbook Pro did not recognise the camera. To cut a long story short, after hours on the internet and various forums I discovered many disgruntled mac users in similar positions to me. Being an amateur, I did not know the right questions to ask when purchasing and just assumed (because Mac is the 'leader' in multi-media) that all cameras and video files would seamlessly download to imovie. How wrong I was!
Muxed Files!
I now know that mini-DVD and HD options on a camcorder are primarily for viewing, not editing. They write in MPEG-2 which is a heavily compressed file with inferior video quality. When files are muxed (multi-plexed) they contain interleaved audio and video tracks. They are mixed together instead of stored on separate tracks. Because of this imovie cannot support them. ( http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1372)
Other forums advised 'favour mini DV over mini DVD or HD options as mini-DV tapes are best archiving medium and better video quality and best when editing is needed'.
Outpost Digital Media
To make matters worse, my first appointment was with video production experts at Outpost Digital Media (http://www.outpost.co.nz/old-index.html).
My sincere thanks goes to Chris Murray who took pity on me. He spent 3 hours with me, taught me heaps and provided me with a mini-DV camera - even allowing me to take this away for my afternoon's shoot!
Thankyou Chris - I appreciate your time and patience.
Kevin and Sarah
By the time I reached UCOL to film students, staff and surrounds I felt a little less amateurish but with a great load or respect for those who do this for a living. My next step is to meet with Shobita Jones in Wellington who is filming and editing. She is willing to help me with the
editing of my raw footage.
I continue to be amazed by the generosity of people and ... the journey continues!
