San Antonio's Best Wedding Videographer

OurWeddingVideo.com spent about 3 weeks researching our next generation video camera. It’s been four years sense we starting using the Sony HDV cameras and they have been great but fours is like 20 years in camera life, times have changed, chips have changed and there are new and better codecs producing great images at low compressions.

A caveat to this entree, we have been very selective on who we told about our new cameras, because we did want the competition to know. But I had a bride contact me recently and was determined to know. I tried be polite she was determined to know and rightly so. A friend had told her what he thought was a good camera applying all the old school thoughts about what makes a good camera, and he was sort of right but he never shoots weddings so it’s little like a dentist giving a heart surgeon advice, manufactures make dozens of models for a reason because there are different needs for different types of projects. Well needless to say we didn’t get the booking but I started thinking about all the misinformation and decided to start blogging about it.

So we realized that there are 3 real important things needed in a wedding video camera, having shot weddings for 20 years I have used a few camera, Sony beta cam SP, Panasonic SuperCAM and DVCpro, JVC DV500, JVC HD10 and Sony Z1U, I think thats all. We decided on three important criteria for the new cameras,

Image quality: This is the most important feature for me, color,sharpness and detail, all a must.

Functionality: I shoot in a very unique way and I require a camera that is easy to use handheld.

Cost: There are cameras out there that cost half a million dollars not practical for wedding videos.

There are probably a million or more camera models on the market, we compared four top of the line cameras shooting HD, made by Canon, Sony and Panasonic. JVC makes nice cameras as well but at this time I only looked at these 3 manufactures.

The one camera we choose, I love, I love, it meets ever criteria we looked at, the others came close but not in every category.

The four cameras are the Canon XL H1A, Sony HDR FX 1000, Panasonic AG HVX200 ( there several variation to these models but each have the same chip set and pixel count) and of course the one we choose the S100. All very good cameras but once we compared the 3 criteria we realized a clear favorite.

I’ll start with image, they all look great but looking at pixel count the first three cameras record on tape in HDV 1440 X 1080 @ 19Mbs, Panasonic can record in DVCPro on P2 cards as well but this is not very practical for wedding video because of cost of the P2 cards. The S100 shoots in Full HD 1980 X 1080 @ 24Mbs, on SDHC cards using AVCHD codec. S100 a clear winner here as the higher resolution and bit rate creates a more rich and detailed image that holds up better in post production.

The first three are 3 chip cameras and back in the day that was a must for wedding videos, three chips are supposed to help a camera separate the primary colors better and allow more light on the images. But if you look at the chip size of these cameras they are all 1/3 inch with an effective pixel count of 1.3 megapixel on average, 3 X 1.3 = 3.9 megapixel. The S100 uses a 1/2.6 CMOS chip with 8 megapixel backed with another processing chip. Clearly the S100 wins again, a bigger chip with more pixels is always a good thing.

So image quality goes to the S100, all cameras shoot good video but the S100 has a clear advantage in the image processing area.

Next we looked at functionality. Now what one operator needs maybe different from another. I like a easy to handle camera that I can shoot with one hand and have easy access to settings and zoom control. My old Sony Z1U kind of had that, like the other three it was heavy and unbalanced at the handle but I made it work.

Well the S100 is small and light, has all manual functions placed in the LCD screen, this of course saves money on manufacturing but it is also very convent for me because now I can look at the LCD screen and adjust the image without having to search on the side of the camera like I would have to do with the other three, This is a big help in a fast passed wedding shoot.

Zebra control, capture, iris control, audio control and shutter speed are access thru the LCD screen.

But the really sweet features that I have found invaluable is face detection and pre-recording. These two feature are so cool, face detection allows the camera to lock on a face and set iris, white balance and focus for a perfect image, perfect for weddings. Pre-record allows me to catch an image 3 seconds before I press the record button, no more missing kisses or silly things that happen on the spur of the moment in a wedding, the other cameras take up to 1 second to start recording.

The S100 wins again.

Additionally the S100 uses AVCHD codec while the others use HDV, a lot has been said about AVCHD but what we have found is the in work flow AVCHD saves us about 20 hours of edit time, I’ll go into that in more detail in my next blog.

Last cost, well this is was a no brainer S100 is a bad ass camera that cost less than half of the other three camera an still out performs them in my tests. For a comparison look at Madhuri Retrospective shot with the S100 and look at Blaire’s Retro shot with the Sony Z1U. Please email me your comments on which is a better image. The S100 brings OurWeddingVideo.com in to the next generation of HD wedding videos and we can’t be more satisfied, please let me know what you think.

Well if you ever wondered what we go thru sometimes to make on time to the wedding day take a look at these photo’s. Yes were hit T-bond with another driver who ran the red light, air bags deployed, children in the car, it was a mess. Luckily no one was seriously hurt, thank God, a moment sooner and he would have T-boned us and I don’t think I would have made it to the wedding. But I’m glad I did, Shannon was beautiful and the wedding was a blast. Laura stayed home with the kids and all’s well as we now have a new family member our new Sequoia, which I love like it was my own son.

I, like every wedding videographer, have prayed for a better way to capture and load images into the old hard drive for editing. I remember back in the stone age using Betacam SP 30 minute tapes and a Targa 2000 board to load images. Can you image 30 minute tapes for a Hindu wedding, you’d be finished by the time the bride made it to the Huppa, not to mention the cost of tapes.

Well than came DV and DVCPRO tapes, the “pros” scoffed at DV as consumer grade, not worthy of professional work. Yet DV has become the tape standard for what 20 years or so, used as a low def and Hi Def medium, they are small cheap and can hold a 1 hour or more of video. Along with that came Firewire and the world of videography has never been the same, everyone could rock out projects on their home computer and make a living doing it, much to the dismay of AVID editors. But we still had the same work follow issue, having to wait for the taped images to be captured in the hard drive. Capture 5 hours of video, it could take you 6 or more to capture those images before you could start on your next masterpiece. Plus the storage issue of tapes, drop outs, breaks and uneven recordings, these are rare but they happen. Some guys started using little hard drives connected to the camera via Firewire cable, I never used them because I was a afraid of the cable disconnecting without me knowing plus what happens if I run out of hard drive space, back to tape and back to the same work flow issues. Hard drive capture never really took hold like DV with manufactures, don’t know why probably because if you drop the drive you could loose everything. Today there is a new tapeless codes called AVCHD created by Panasonic and Sony it is a tapeless codec that records images to a solid state medium such as Hard drive or SD cards. Our new cameras have no moving parts, no need for tape cassette space or drum heads, all info is placed on SD cards, no drop outs, that’s another beauty to this. Our cameras are smaller now because all the wasted space for tape is not need, I now have a Full HD 1920 x 1080i 24MBs bottle rocket that takes better images than anything I’ve owned before.

There has been some misinformation about AVCHD as to work flow and file size, but I have a secret, none of that is true, except the file size, that is large but here are the tips to make AVCHD save you time and money in the edit room

I edit on a iMac or a Mac BookPro, FCP of course, 1.5 TB raid drive,1 TB archive drive.

Pretty simple, I like the Mac Book because I travel for weddings.

AVCHD is not native QuickTime, it has to be transferred to a QT form I use Apple Pro Res. I could use Adobe Premiere Pro to edit AVCHD native but this would require A Quad core Mac and that doesn’t work for me so I use FinalCut Pro to log and transfer. Some would say this is the down fall for AVCHD but wait a minute, what I have found is a significant time saving between HDV tape capture and AVCHD transfer. Almost everyone uses HDV, I had 3 Sony Z1’s, loved them but capture the images from the tape was a drag.

4 hours of tape took 4.5 hours.

Final make movie of a 1 hour wedding video in HDV with color correction pre rendered, 7 hours or more to process. total down time 11.5 hours basically two workdays lost, and if I found an error another 7 hours to make movie.

The reason is as we all know HDV is not native QT either, it has to be re-encoded to QuickTime, AVCHD has already been transferred to QuickTime.

While AVCHD transfers the clips to Apple Pro Res I can edit, I don’t have to wait to capture footage, it works in the background.

Final make movie with color correction pre rendered on all footage about 30 minutes.

If I had to redo the project well here is the real time savings The AVCHD files reside on a archive Hard Drive, each clip is listed so I need to do is pick the clip to add. No more spinning through tape that may become corrupt due to overuse, it’s a no brainer.

Once your done with your master piece save everything, work project music links, AVCHD folder but the QT files to your archive Drive, if you need the images again just transfer the AVCHD files again. This makes for a smaller folder witch means you can archive more project on one hard drive and there’s no tapes to log or store.

Your Comments please.

Did a fun little project for Incarnate Word Sky Room for the Wedding Fair and they liked it so much they sent a nice “thank you” note signed by all of the crew that attended. I don’t think I ever got a thank you card from a commercial client, I like it.

If your looking for a great venue site with free parking and a spectacular view of downtown clink on their website at

http://www.uiw.edu/skyroom/ ask for Taylor Rhoades.

We spent 4 days 12 hours a day, in Chicago judging video entries for the WEVA Excellence Awards and in recognition of our hard work WEVA awarded us this plaque At the EXPO in Florida.

Here is a short video of that week.

This popped in my email by surprise. Voted the best wedding videographer in San Antonio by the readers of The Knot. Wow we don’t even advertise in The Knot or anywhere for that matter and yet the word has gotten around that we offer a great service to our clients. I find this to be a great honor. Thank you for your support.

Look at this guy. Having fun at a wedding with David Sixt, www.davidsixt.com. I was walking in front of his shot of the bride and I did a pretty good job of it because you can’t see the bride behind me. That’s not a cane, just my Glidecam and a couple of camera lens.