wedding 'hells' bells

lakewud · Post by **lakewud** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 9:56 pm

So - have been given 2 and a bit hours of tape footage from a recent wedding. A friend has asked me to edit this down to around 2hours!! Yes, l know, less is more etc...bit apparently need to keep the speech intact etc etc..

Bit of creative advice needed here please, have looked on various wedding sites, just to get a flavour of the intro, spice things up etc...sadly, all look the same really..suppose theres only so much you can do...with the footage i have, not even a shot of the church etc...so in a bit of pickle...still cant make mircles outta nothing..but saying that would like to give it a good go, and make a decent job of it all.

Question(s) is, hours on a single dvd..possible...not really worth the risk?..he wants about 12 copies! for a start....i have VS10 + ( and havent used it since doing various projects on VS9 9 - which is now stratched - so little nervous and outta touch, learning things from new again, menus etc...

Anyway, any 'creative' thoughts, on starting a video, or websites please feel free to let me know.

Clevo · Post by **Clevo** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 10:39 pm

I'm not in any way experienced at editing weddings and I reckon you'll be in for a horrid ride.

You have some scenes missing by the sounds of it cause no wedding video will be acceptable without the service shots.

So I reckon you will need to incorporate some stills if you can.

Try and identify as many of the people as you can and make sure everyone is included somewhwere in the video. Even if you have to "freeze" frame someone who's only in it for a second otherwise. The last thing you want is for a guest to get a video they are only in it for a second.

As for the technical stuff I think you'll find trying to squeeze 2 hours onto a single DVD will be reducing the quality too much. It's possible though.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 1:54 am

Do a two in one approach.

Have on your DVD a short film - brief and to the point and not boring
and a second file "The extended version" so that anyone who wants to sit through hours of dribble can do so if they wish.

For both versions prepare a script on paper before even viewing any of the material you have available. You have to create a story board.

Here you would split this up into

Arrival at Church. - Just include the arrival of the important players
Bride, Groom, Best Man, Bridesmaids, Page Boys, Parents of the couple. don't include all of the guests - it will get boring.
Ceremony. Bride coming down the aisle and then the wedding vows is enough.
After the ceremony Perhaps a pan across the congregation of visitors just so they can see themselves in your video. Throw in a slideshow of Still Pictures.

The Reception.
Similar to "Arrival at Church", arrival of the important participants of the event.
The Bride and Groom taking their places at the table.

A short clip mid meal of the guests (from a distance) eating - keep it short 10 seconds is more than enough.

After the dinner
Perhaps the speeches by the Best man, Bride and Groom - depends upon how long the speeches last!
Perhaps this can then be rounded off with the compulsory "Come Dancing" competition that seems to follow these events.
O almost forget - the bride and groom leaving for their honeymoon.

What we have done here is to draw up a script and then matched our video footage to the script

scotty · Post by **scotty** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 12:55 pm

Lakewud, I think others have stated similar to what I will
but as I have just finished a wedding video I feel I should contribute!

Mine was a different scenario, both myself and mother in law had taken our own video.
It was only after the event that the couple said they would like a video (they had not hired someone!)
Had this been known before I feel I would of taken more video however I have managed to combine the two videos into a 35 min presentation so not too long.
Fortunately there was only one 5 min speech and the ceremony was relatively short in the town hall (it was in France so a bit different format).

That said two things really have made the video more watchable,
1) Photos, my wife had taken stills but if you can get other peoples as well it all helps (pan and zoom option really helps here)
2) Music! It helps scenes to get lots of people on the box, as stated earlier they will get upset if they aren't in it,
and makes what would be lots of "boring" shots a very lot more watchable. It makes pan and zoom photos almost as good as video.

At the end I added a compliation of best bits slowed down to 50 or even 25% speed with sloppy music seemed to go down a treat!

Good luck!

skier-hughes · Post by **skier-hughes** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 3:44 pm

I do a 10-12 minute short and snappy highlights.
Thena full version including all that the couple want. I've just done two from women from the same company and one was filmed in South Africa, by a professional and the other was a home video. The sound on the pro's was good, but the video shots awful, whereas the home video was good with only poor to average audio. One wanted all the speeches in, wow.... they lasted 1hr 10 mins and went on one dvd, the rest of the wedding lasted just over an hour and went on another dvd with the highlights.

See if you can get some stills of the church etc to use as your intro section, or pick a nice still frame and do some pan and zoom or something to add a bit of flavour, but as you said, remember less is more.

lakewud · Post by **lakewud** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 6:56 pm

Thanks for all your replies. And yes had thought about the 2 in 1 approach. As soon as he said it, keep all the speechs etc...and make 15copies...my heart sank! So yes, a short version and a longer version - more work..and all before xmas ideally.

One of those things, had i taken the footage - although useless with the getting into the crowds shots..too shy....but i would of had nice long stills so to speak of things like the rings and even the church.

Even the photographers photos wont be ready in time.

Anyway, must go and get started...cant wait!

lakewud · Post by **lakewud** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 9:21 pm

Appologies for dragging this thread out, and really not wanting to go down the road of answer me this answer me that...however, pretty important thang to get right..from the start.

Audio....audio and im using VS10+.

Inside the church, the songs are sung and often a ..techno babble noise is heard in the background...and also the sound jumps...or rather goes in and out..lossy so to speak.

Please, if replying, dont get hung on the techno bable in the background...though it is a mystery.....can i clean up the audio...a little? a lot?....without wanting to download, like have done in the past, another program and copying the audio into there etc etc..what a nightmare that was!!..No, dont have time, want a mess free solution....any thoughts? feel free.

thanks for your time.

skier-hughes · Post by **skier-hughes** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 9:58 pm

Audio, no quick fix, I'd leave it as is. ANy messing will no doubt make it worse, unless you're a whizz with the likes of Audition.

Edit a wedding and get 15 copies before Xmas..... what would you do if you videoed one wedding every saturday?

The photographer won't have pictures ready by Xmas??????????? I wouldn't expect the paid photographer would let you use any of his pics, best off asking if any guests used a digital camera.

Clevo · Post by **Clevo** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 10:44 pm

I agree not to mess with the audio.

With the experiences I read about weddding video's if you accidently leave "Aunt Edna" out you could be asking for trouble down the track.

So, the idea of a short one and a long version sounds ideal.

lakewud · Post by **lakewud** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 9:41 pm

Any help please with this one...

Wanting to take 'stills' off the captuered wedding footage. The ideally, place these stills into photoimpact to doctor a little then bringing them back into VS10+ to either add to make up some sort of title and/or a menu for the dvd.

Now, obviously its easy enough to do, and have done it before with sucess...the quality on the surface at least - and considering im probably going to blacknwhite the images anyhow seems ok.

Please tell me though, the best way of going about this. A the moment ive captuered the wanted footage, went into multi-trim scene, and literally found the exact picture i wanted to make the still of. Then got this 'scene' and 'pressed the save as still image button'....which i then opened up in PI.

Now, is there a better way of doing this? Im happy to keep going along this route, so long as the quality of what im saving etc isnt going to deteriate? Any thoughts, please let me know asap.

etech6355 · Post by **etech6355** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 3:44 am

i think your doing good.
Read what Steve and Skier-Hughes posted.
It's important to get a project done and not be a perfectionist (depends).
Some projects can take weeks to finish.

Mark the In/Out sections of those important events.
Then render each section out to a separate mpeg2 video file.
Do a video with the highlights first and get it complete, done.
Make a DVD, then give it to them and work on an extended version.

There's a good chance after you give them the 1st dvd, then call them back in a week to see if they liked it they may say "We haven't viewed it yet".
Get the point.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 4:22 am

When you come to save as a still image then in your project preferences you have an option to save as BMP or as JPG.

Because you intend to edit and return the edited still to the video then you need to use the BMP format because it will be a sharper image and should retain better quality when editing. It is termed a lossless format - this is reflected in its large file size on your hard drive.

The JPG format is termed a lossy format and has a much smaller file size.
When you edit a JPG file you will lose some quality, perhaps you will not notice at first but any subsequent edits/saves will soon start to show up.

As a small quick experiment try this:
Take a JPG image and save it to a temporary directory.
Close then re-open the new image. Save it again under another name
Perhaps like this
myimage01.jpg
myimage02.jpg
keep doing this - closing the image and then re-opening it and saving undr a new name - you will start to notice how the JPG will deteriorate.

If you do the same test with a BMP image then you will notice that it retains high quality even after dozens of re-saves.

Whilst I echo the good advice of etech6355 - don't overdo it with the amount of time taken on a single project - but at the same time have a bit of fun and try a few things out (such as the BMP -v- JPG thing) because this is how we all learn. Every new project I do brings with it new challenges and opportunities to experiment. This is the fun part of video editing.

lakewud · Post by **lakewud** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 8:35 am

once again, thanks for the kind advice. Certainly treating the project as a bit of fun, and if all else fails he would be happy with the entire project placed on a dvd with only his 'feet' etc cut out. Thing is, i wont be happy with that and plan to make the best of a bad job so to speak...hence grabbng the photos etc.

The saving as bmp...take it once you 'grab' your photos from the running film in VS - you cant choose the jpeg / bmp there and then...your talking about once ive got it and placed it in PI and then saved as BMP and then bring it back into VS right?

So, in a nutshell, although plan to mess about a little with the advice given. Can i get away with having a dozen or so photos done this way, used for a little title sequence and then possibly for the menu as well and then in the create disk i copy this thing 15x or so....and the quality remains.

I ask because, and i know ETECH mentioned about saving project file, rendering them etc...but in the past when i did it the official way so to speak although it cut down on the hours it took to create the disk..the quality noticably suffered......can i continue to create a disk with the completed saved file time and time again even though YES it means having to create a new menu and scene selections for every time i want to copy a disk..which is the long way around things i know, but feel comfortable doing it this way...so long as im not losing quality?

Just to add, not that im there yet...but when i worked with VS9 just could not have the words on my main menu, SCENE SELECTIONS, I had to have a little fingernail box which i then worded scene selections which took you too another screen. SO, now with VS10+ could someone please tell me, can i just have the words scene selection? easy enough to do?

thanks again.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 9:09 am

To create multiple copies of the same disc then burn to either
1. A hard drive folder
2. An Image file

You can then burn off as many copies as you wish.

etech6355 · Post by **etech6355** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 4:50 pm

I ask because, and i know ETECH mentioned about saving project file, rendering them etc...but in the past when i did it the official way so to speak although it cut down on the hours it took to create the disk..the quality noticably suffered...

Interesting, I've had the same results encoding avchd/h264, my timeline exports quality of the files are not as good as when they are converted in the burning module.

I did not notice a difference with high definition mpeg2 files and have done some long standard definition conversions from the timeline.
The burning module may very well be using different dll's to encode the video(s).
This is hard to verify without knowing your exact stanard definition encoding parameters.