Specification for Video Contributions during Covid-19

Remember – this is just ideal. Don’t stress if you can’t figure this out. Just send the video anyway (contact details at the bottom).

However, these videos can sometimes take quite a long time to put together. I am learning all the time where the bottlenecks tend to be. Every little bit helps, and taken together could save me a lot of time, so please read carefully.

Size and Shape:

The most important thing is to film in 16:9 ratio, landscape. Here’s what happens if you don’t… I now have to work out what to do with all that space either side on the final video!

  • Due to the huge amount of data overall, please try and limit the resolution to 480p. This may be listed as VGA, 800 x 480, 854 x 480, 480p 853.3 or similar.
  • Ideally 30 frames per second (but this seems fairly standard).
  • You should be able to change all the above in the Settings section of your camera or phone. Googling might help too. If not, don’t worry – but the file(s) will be needlessly bigger and might take hours to send.
  • You can record a snippet in 480p first to check you are happy with the quality yourself, before going for a ‘take’.
  • If it really does look terrible at 480p, let me know and I may be able to suggest something. Some phone cameras are not good in low lighting, for example.
  • YouTube is restricting all videos to 480p by default to lessen the worldwide internet load. You can go to the YouTube settings while you’re playing, and change it up higher to SD or HD if you really notice, but chances are, most people won’t have even noticed. So 480p really should be fine.

Sound:

  • Please check the recording for the volume being too loud. If it’s too loud, you can hear the sound breaking up / buzzing in the loud bits. This is distortion, and basically, the mike is being overpowered, and this can’t be fixed. Speak quieter, or move further away. Unlike distortion, excessive quietness is easy for me to fix.
  • Please choose a quiet room at a quiet time of the day. I can edit certain things out, e.g. the odd single dog bark, but not a dog barking all the time!

Filming:

  • Please “leave it rolling” a little between “scenes”, i.e. before you speak and after you have finished. 5 seconds should do it, but more is fine. I’ll cut out what I don’t need, but if you don’t film enough to start with, it can sometimes make it more tricky to change gently from one video to another.
  • It will save me time if you can get a perfect take, but don’t stress too much. If you make a mistake, just make that clear, keep filming, leave a 5 second gap, and restart from a sensible point.
  • With music recordings, it might be easier just to start again, sorry!
  • Please consider filming some short general nice shots, e.g. 10 second close-up of any candles burning, the crucifix, the altar, picture, anything really that people can already see in the zoomed out view. It would be lovely to cut to things like that sometimes. I will mute the volume on these short clips, so don’t worry about that. Or just take photos.
    • Don’t forget – 16:9 LANDSCAPE for these too.
    • Don’t use the built-in zoom – if you need to, just film a bit closer.
    • These shots are great for covering up any edits I have to do!

Sending:

  • The files will be way too big to email, so please send to me using a file transfer service website like WeTransfer (or many others). Other options include a DropBox link, Apple’s iCloud and Gmail/Google Drive.
  • Please send as soon as you can, just to be sure of hitting the deadline. Editing needn’t take long, but it sometimes does, and all sorts can go wrong!
  • Some celebrations, or parts of them, cannot happen (and therefore be filmed) until allowed by the church. This leaves a fairly tight deadline, so having everything else ready to go would be great.
  • Be prepared for the transfer to take a while, another reason for not leaving it too late! Some transfers have taken overnight. It’s hard to tell sometimes, but it probably is sending it if you leave it running.

Finally:

  • To repeat, all this is ideal – but if there are any problems, please just send the videos anyway. I can crop, zoom in, blur the background, change the resolution, frame rate, all sorts! Just let me know if there’s some editing I need to do.
  • Don’t forget to change your camera back to its original settings so that your personal videos are higher definition, if you prefer.
  • I will delete all source videos after the final result is live on YouTube. I will keep them for max. 1 month, or delete them on request.
  • I will do my best to edit it to look nice, but sometimes it might not be how you’d have edited it. Time might be tight and I may just have to make decisions as I think best.

Thank you for being part of this!

Den Miller: info@denmiller.com

Last amended: 27/4/2020