So much tape to edit, so little time!

Hi Everyone!

I've been scanning through various search results here for a few days, and I think you have a very good forum!

FCPX is a program I enjoy very much, using it for all the video I take of family life. The camera I'm using at the moment is Sony's HDR PJ780, which I've been happy with - its light sensitivity and the optical steady shot, and the microphone are all a nice improvement over my earlier video cams. I like the small size, and that nobody becomes camera-shy or self-conscious at seeing it in operation.

Our family lives near Oslo, Norway, and we have 5 kids who are now all teenaged+. Before we had kids I used to do some photo/video of sailing and skiing (my own activities), and now I do more football and bandy (my kids activities). You may not have heard of Bandy, it is a very fast outdoor sport on skates, on an ice-field 100x50meters. Quite difficult to capture well in winter darkness especially. I'd say it is one of the most film and TV-unfriendly sports you can find. But it has become a minor obsession of mine to capture some of the speed and excitement of that sport better. Zoomed in fast-moving shots in weak light!

It is a peculiar obsession, I know. Lol. Football (soccer) is quite a lot easier, the play is slower, the ball is much larger, the light is better, and you don't have to freeze your ass off while filming.

This winter I'm going to tackle something which I've left sitting on the back burner for too long. I have locked away maybe 30 hours of Hi8-, and 80 hours of DV recordings and it all needs to be loaded on discs and edited.

I'm looking forward to going through it, since I've many times been amazed at what I've forgotten about and how wonderful it was. The years during which I made these tapes seem now to have passed quickly, though at the time we were all happily oblivious to that.

And now a few days later, I've had a chance to look through a few of those old tapes.

I must say that I'm delighted to have found out about NEAT, here on the forum. It is a great enhancement for the Hi8 and DV recordings I've got, many of which were in low light (our long dark winter reduced the amount of recording I then did, but didn't stop it entirely). I'm really amazed how NEAT can transform those grainy/noisy low-light recordings into something often beautiful.

So now I wish I'd actually taken more video in poor light, back then!

I've found that my Hi8 tapes look much better played on machines less ancient than what I used at the time (a late-80's Nikon VN9500) - I've borrowed a SonyTRV110 (late 90's?) which gets a sharper and less contrasty image from the tape. I had read that Hi8 tapes looked best when played on the machines used to record them, but that doesn't apply to mine.

Yeah Neat Video can be magic.

I sometimes miss the tape format; so much easier to catalogue and store at the end of the day, than trying to maintain boxes of hard drives!

Also, I often found that when I used to capture (digitise!) tapes onto the computer I would take the time to sit down and watch the whole tape and actually see all the footage. These days after importing I skim through half of it without actually watching it all.

^^^

I was anxious that tapes might have been degraded after lying undisturbed (but well stored) for so many years, but all my Hi8 stuff has played well now, and I'm a little less anxious with regard to the DV stuff. Getting these bags of tapes onto a little hardisk has its conveniences.

Long day today, this morning one of my boys woke me up at 4am so we could go out and record the lunar eclipse. I wouldn't have bothered to try doing that back in the days of Hi8, lol. The entirely darkened moon against the black sky showed up well, however, and also trying the 'nightshot' I found that worked better than I had expected.

Gosh, I'm delighted that my old Hi8 tapes, which I'd never imagined could look so good, are looking so good.

I'm delighted with my computer (a 2012 MacPro, the oldest of the 5 in the house, ordered more RAM last week), I'm delighted with the software FCPX and Neat.

Forced me to read some of the User Manuals, that's how different it was! Lol...
getting a better handle on how color balance and Neat are meant to be applied.

I did a lot of writing long ago, and my first Mac laptop was a huge thing for me. I'd earlier edited a school paper (16-20 pages broadsheet twice a week) and now I could write and print anything I wished with an ease which was inconceivable 10 years earlier. It was a great pleasure and I did many good newsletters for a while.

I'd also done a lot of photography since high school, and my first iMac, plus Photoshop, was a fascinating new way of being able to do things impossible in the old darkrooms.

But now I'd say this capacity to go back and revive faulty old video must be ~ the most wondrous thing of all ~ during these years.