Question about a video camera (Panasonic AG DVX100)

[Saga]

Hey guys, not sure if anyone's familiar with this camera: Panasonic AG-DVX100 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

but I'm shooting a couple things for RA training tonight, wanted to know two things:

1) Is there any setting on the camera to shoot either in nightvision, black and white, or in a grainy setting? Someone told me to shoot on the 24P setting for a more grainy look.

2) If there aren't any of those modes on the camera, is there a way to make the footage black and white in FCP? Just started using FCP so I can really only cut clips, do J cuts (I think they're J cuts -- L cuts, maybe?) and make credits or something. I can't freeze the last line of the credits in the center like I want to, but that's a minor detail.

Your help is appreciated, thanks gang.

[Blabj]

Even if there is an option to shoot in B&W on the camera I wouldn't use it. It's better (in my experience) to shoot in colour then grade the footage later in post. If you have FCP Studio version, it comes bundled with Colour and Motion, which are both great for grading and doing other post effects. FCP does have inbuilt colour and saturation tools, you'll find them in the video filters section, though they aren't as powerful as Colour's, they'll get the job done if you're just looking for a simple effect.

I find a cheap and easy way of doing credit rolls is to make a static text of all the names of cast/crew etc., then tween it's position from below the viewable area to above. This way you can control the rate by adjusting the length of the clip (therefore slowing down the animation) as well as setting points where the animation pauses, by keyframing the position at a certain point in the animation.

If you want I can post a quick guide or something to keyframing elements like position in FCP, but a quick google will find you plenty of other write ups if you don't fancy waiting for me to type it out

Also, after effects is another program you might wanna look at for grading and doing a rough post (though generally AE is more useful for compositing work, it does have powerful colour grading tools as it's essentially a moving image version of Photoshop)

[Blabj]

Sorry just to add, I would shoot the video on 24p anyway. I'm assuming looking at the camera you'll be recording to tape, which is probably a good thing, I've had problems in the past with FCP not capturing from hard drive cameras. Lots of faffing around going through compressor, which just adds unnnecessary time to the capturing process.

[Rockstaru]

I can't freeze the last line of the credits in the center like I want to, but that's a minor detail.

One way I know of to do this would be to scroll to the end of your credits clip in the timeline, take it frame by frame and find which one is centered, then copy that frame to the clipboard (I'm not sure if FCP has an option to do this - I know Vegas does), save it as a jpeg, then split the credits clip at that exact point, delete whatever is left after that frame, and then just drop the jpeg you made into the timeline at that point. Then you should be able to stretch that jpeg "clip" for as long as you want that last line to stay. I did the same thing with the DVD of a show my school's theatre department did last spring.

[Rockstaru]

Even if there is an option to shoot in B&W on the camera I wouldn't use it. It's better (in my experience) to shoot in colour then grade the footage later in post.

This. Even if you're aiming for B&W in the final product, it's easy to do that in post, and you might want the color footage for some other purpose. It'll look virtually the same if you make it B&W in post as opposed to just filming it in B&W, and it's exponentially easier to take information out of a picture (in this case, color) than it is to put it back in.

[Rockstaru]

Here's the easiest way to get a little grain onto your image. In the Viewer, click on the button on the bottom right with the little "A" on it. Select Render, then Noise. In the Viewer you'll see what looks like TV static. Put this on a video track above the video you want to give the grain effect to. Lower the opacity to about 3 or 4 and you'll get a nice film grain effect.

To get the video to look more like film, take your original video clip, make a copy of it and place it on a video track directly above it. Lower the opacity to 50%. Deinterlace the top clip upper field first and deinterlace the bottom clip lower field first. Add a gaussian blur filter to both clips at about .7 to soften the hard video edges. Apply the film grain technique from above and the results look pretty good.

Film look plugins like Nattress and Cinelook and Magic Bullet do a very good job, but if they're beyond your current budget this free technique will get you by.

Creative COW

For B&W, look for a Hue, Saturation, and Luminance plugin (HSL) for Final Cut Pro, and take saturation down to 0. This should remove all color from the clip you apply it to.

[archibaldcrane]

I own this camera (the DVX100b), and the advice you're getting is correct. Shoot 24P sure - but don't do any in-camera effects. Do everything in FCP and Color afterwards.

[Saga]

Perfect, exactly what I needed, thanks a ton for the advice everyone.