Full Motion Video Tours: Creating Quality Video

Full Motion Video Tours© for Real Estate

Using On-Line Video to Sell Real Estate
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Full Motion Video Tours: Creating Quality Video - Avoiding the Shakes

Creating Quality Video - Avoiding the Shakes

Posted by Ray Wood at 2/18/2008 10:45 PM and is filed under Technique,General,Hardware

Modern camcorders are getting better, and smaller, all the time. Today you can buy a high-definition camcorder capable of creating cinema-quality video for less than $1,000. The Canon HV-20 HDV with a street price of $750 is a good example. It will give you breathtaking video in brilliant color and 1080/24P format. If all it took was good technical video quality any of us could make videos like the pros do. But, there’s more to making a professional-looking video than picture quality.

One of the indicators of an amateur video is the absence of the smooth and steady motion you’re accustomed to seeing on TV and in the movie theater. It often seems that the person holding the camcorder has a bad case of the DTs or maybe had one too many cups of coffee before shooting. It just doesn’t look professional. About the only place you don’t mind watching shaky video footage on is on “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

The fact that camcorders are getting lighter and smaller isn’t helping. The smaller and lighter the camcorder the more movement you’ll get and the shakier your video will be. It’s similar to trying to look through a pair of small high-powered binoculars while standing and holding them un-aided. The magnified image seems to jump around unless until you brace yourself on something steady. Even then, it’s not nearly as steady as those big heavy binoculars mounted on a pipe that you put a coin in to use.

The new smaller and lighter camcorders have the same problem. So if you don’t want your video tour to give your prospective viewer/buyer a whiplash injury trying to follow you through a tour, you need to do something about it. You need a stable platform from which to shoot your video tour.

There are two basic approaches to the equipment to do the job, stationary and hand-held. The most common, is a tripod. They’ve been around for years and are used for both still photography and video. We’ll cover them in a later article. Today we’ll talk about hand-held solutions.

Hand-held stabilizing devices fall into two basic types that use different approaches to provide a stable platform.

One type, the brace stabilizer, achieves stability by making the platform longer, wider, heavier with more handles and places to rest it against your body and in your hands. The other category uses a balancing method, typically, with counterweights, we’ll call them balance stabilizers.

Here are two examples of devices designed to make the camcorder/stabilizer unit wider and therefore easier to keep on a level plane. These brace-type stabilizers come in the form of a bar with handles, like the Levelcam and Quad Pod. Another brace-type design, the Manfrotto Fig Rig, looks like an automobile steering wheel.

A third sub-group in the brace-type stabilizers uses a combination of the wide-plane approach with a monopod attached.

This allows the user to rest the rig on the ground when not shooting moving video. An example is the Plume Handi-Pod. It looks sort of like a robotic octopus in operation.

Balance stabilizers range from the diminutive Steadicam Merlin to the more robust, and somewhat larger & heavier Glidecam and Varizoom models.

The least expensive true balancing stabilizer is the Glidecam 2000 Pro at a list price of $299.95. At 2.2 lb plus the camcorder and the counterweights it may be a little on the heavy side for some of us. The total package could easily be 5+ lbs. That may not sound like much until you hold it out in front of your body for 15 or twenty minutes. No problem if you’re a 300-lb ex-linebacker in good shape but it could be challenging for the not-so-fit couch potato.

The Varizoom is similar to the Glidecam in design. The Varizoom VZ sells for $399. For $499 you can get the FlowPod model with a monopod which can be used for stationary shots.

The Steadicam Merlin is the smallest of the balance-type of stabilizers. It weighs in at just 12.8 oz without the counterweights. It also folds up into a nice compact package and fits into the included carrying case. The list price of $799 is a little off-putting if you’re just launching into the video thing but it’s a good product.

The important thing is to obtain quality video footage from the beginning. Thanks to the excellent low-light performance of most camcorders available today, getting the exposure and color balance right is fairly easy. A wide field of view is a snap with a $150 wide-angle lens adapter. Composition and flow will come with experience. And having a steady smooth video is just as important as all of the above. Remember…ya just gotta be stable in this business....

Here are some stabilizer demo videos:

The Steadicam Merlin