Posted by Mark on 02/04/06 19:56

Hi,

We are in a university department, and want to produce some good video
of rats performing a task - good enough for the media.

We are planning on using a mini-dv camera (that's the format they want).

There are a number of concerns:

* I know that lighting is critical, particularly when there is only
artificial light available. Since this will be a one-off, we don't want
to buy lights. What would the best lights be to use that we have hanging
around. Are incandescent lights okay? What about fluros? Perhaps a
combination of both? I think the lab is lit with fluros, but we can
probably supplement this with globes. Are there particular incandescent
globes that give good light for video?

* We are thinking of using a PAL camera, and then converting to NTSC.
Does software conversion do this okay? We do currently have Adobe
Premiere. Does that do it with good results? Any recommendations for
other software, hopefully free?

* The camera can record in both interlaced and progressive scan. Should
we use interlaced given that the footage might be broadcast? Or do the
tv networks now prefer progressive?

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