Thursday, August 12, 2010

Two Events, Same Room


    

In December 2009, I was commissioned by the Grissoms to shoot an HD wedding.  Of course this was around Christmas time, as illustrated by the picture above, left.  It was a lovely ceremony and any piece of HD video benefits by LOTS of lovely Christmas lights.
This is at the Grand Marquise Ballroom in Garner, NC.

Later, in May of this year, I was commissioned to do the Jilani reception.  This was a reception event only as the wedding happened months ago.  This event was as big as a wedding with food, speeches, prayers and performances.  This time in the Islamic faith.  Other than the room being the same, and having catered food as all these events do it was very different, and also very pretty.

As always when I do a wedding-type event for a client the idea is to get the event at the time it happens and then make it as memorable when editing it all together.  The result is something everybody will remember, and that is the fulfilling part for me; even when someday the grandkids will pull out that old Blu-ray of the grandparents' wedding!

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Did we REALLY need tapes that small?

MicroMV, MiniDV and 8mm/Digital 8 videocassettes
I get a lot of various consumer tape formats to dub off for people,
and I get a lot of MiniDV type tapes and even MORE 8mm/Digital 8 tapes
from camcorders....

...but in 2001 or so, after it was small enough with MiniDV  (the tape cassette pictured in the middle above) Sony had to get smaller with MicroMV cassettes.  For techies, they record 12 Mbits of MPEG SD video and MPEG compressed audio at 384 Kbits.  The format's data is a lot more similar to HDV than DV or anything else; HDV is a form of MPEG as is what is on MicroMV.  MiniDV is DV compressed data.

OK but other than all that tech stuff...did we really need a tape that small?  The camera that these worked with is very cute but in the end what was the point?  This format was pretty much done by 2007.  You can't buy new MicroMV tapes anymore.

So the lesson is: Not every obsolete videotape format is OLD like VHS!
...and did we REALLY need tapes that small???