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Issue 2 - December 1999 Magazine Articles.
WEDDINGS!! - Laurie Joyce
There was a family wedding in Ireland at the end of July. Could Laurie
please bring his camera asked the bride to be? Yes of
course he would love to - said my other half [Marion is
pretty good at protecting me from such requests but when it's family,
what can you say?].
My constant companion, my faithful old Sony V800e which had taken hundreds of hours of excellent footage, and tirelessly hunted for clips as the source player over the past 8 years, was showing signs of wear. So rather earlier than I had planned, I decided to go digital and buy the Sony DVL900. An excellent camera - wonderful picture quality, small and neat too! The wedding went more or less to plan, although the audio side of things was a nightmare. Churches tend to be problematic because there are so many hard surfaces. So before the ceremony I carefully tested and matched sound levels for the quietly spoken vows and normal speech. I was taken by surprise therefore when the priest suddenly switched on his personal radio mic linked to the public address system, the soprano decided to sing Ave Maria at about 5000 decibels, whilst the bride and groom whispered their vows. Trying to operate the camera with one hand, an eye on the view finder, plus operating the menu screen system to manually adjust the changing sound levels was - well tricky to say the least! Yes I did try the on board automatic gain system but the sound was awful! Altogether I took two and a half hours of footage. The catholic ceremony took an hour, and then there was the reception, the speeches plus the dancing, which went on until 3am the following morning! The bride wanted it all!! Including the sequence when all the wedding guests shook hands with the bride and groom as they left the church. This took 15 minutes alone. So back home I decided to get started and get the dreaded wedding video out of the way. First problem. Do I have enough SVHS tape for the master?? Yes - there should be enough on this one - I thought. So I get started. Eight hours of editing later, and about 20 minutes before the end of the edit the master tape runs out. Bum!! Its a Sunday morning where can I buy some SVHS video tape to start again? I could get ordinary VHS tape from Tescos but the super variety? I doubt it. A quick ring to Peter and Bruce. Have you got 2 - 3 hours of SVHS tape to spare I ask. They ring back confirm they can help. Wonderful! I am in business. I spend the rest of the Sunday reconstructing and completing the 2nd mastertape. Next weekend all I have to do is audio dub the sound. The following Saturday I start on the sound. However on looking at the edited tape afresh, I notice that the picture quality is not what I think it should be. Especially when considering it was shot in digital and transferred to SVHS. Why? Was it the monitor settings, the cable or something else? Suddenly the awful truth dawns on me. The VCR has no SVHS light showing! This means the mastertape had been recorded in ordinary VHS not SVHS. 250 lines resolution instead of around 400 line, and a serious drop from the original 500 lines of digital. How had this come about? A careful check of the VCR revealed a small button on the control panel had been moved from SVHS to VHS. How? I have no idea because it is always left in the SVHS position. What do I do? Carry on and audio dub the VHS master resulting in an even worse copy, or start all over again? There was really no choice. Personal pride in quality demanded I start over again for the 3rd time. So with grim resolution I started again. By the end of the following day the now SVHS master copy was complete. Next weekend I will do the audio dub. Just before putting things away I decided to have one last look at the result of all my labours. Just before the opening sequence I noticed a small glitch. Are 1 thought I will just insert edit that away. Without a moments hesitation I quickly did it, but instead of pushing the insert edit button I automatically pushed the record button. The same button I had been pushing for the whole weekend. Those experienced in these things will understand the disastrous consequences of this. It meant that I had now inserted an erased section of video noise, and right at the very start. There is nothing you can do to remove it other than start all over again or copy and lose a generation. I did not sleep very well that night! The next weekend I faced the problem. What was I to do? Well I felt I could not face a 4th mastertape, so I decided to go ahead with the audio dub and then overcome the problem when producing the copies. The audio dub was not without its problems either. All the music requirements were carefully timed and recorded in sequence. The master tape sound was looped back and mixed with the music and carefully manually monitored to ensure a smooth mix. However 1 hour into the tape a vital 3 minutes background music to cover a dinner menu insert did not appear on cue! Panic!! Everything else was perfect, but I was left with a silent gap. Even worse the sound had broken up on the start because of the erased section. Bum bum!! Things go from bad to worse. What now? Another sleepless night. Next weekend I copied the master tape to VHS fading in the picture plus sound to cover the erased section and mixing in new sound to fill the silent section. It was tricky and very time consuming [1.5 hours per copy] but it works. I now know the ceremony so well I think I could get a job as a marriage priest. Trouble is the video is so popular I keep getting asked for more copies. Lessons to be learned??
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