Crusty Quinns: the video

Ever since Mik first joined JAW for trailbike riding Miks video camera was sometimes found out there recording what is now Crusty Quinns. The camera was available only when a 4WD was in accompaniment - carrying a videocam on yer bike is a bit risky not to mention big & heavy.

Footage was taken of the lads riding around, doing pretty much nothing special aside the occasional stack caught on tape. However the amount of footage available was growing.

Late 2000 JAW builds a new PC and puts in a nice ASUS V7700 GTS Deluxe video card, capable of both video capture and TV out. The "big-block" PIII 850MHz & 256Mb memory with 20Gb of ATA100 harddisk should be plenty enough to embark on a home grown video.

You can make web pages filled with pictures and stories but for a true multimedia eye/ear fest video is the way to go. However: in 2 hours it's possible to write up a nice trail report -OR- about 20 seconds of video. She's a long process, video.

Mission - Crusty Quinns Video

Trail bike video concepts are standard and have been done many times. You have clips of guys on bikes doing stuff with a heavy soundtrack. Basically out of the 6-7 hours of footage available cut out the "best clips" and put them together. Keep it all original of course; original footage and original soundtrack.

JAW planned the whole video on paper up front. Serious stuff ;)

Part 1 - Intro

The concept of the intro was to build up some tension of what was to come in the video. To capture the audiences attention.

This was attempted by flashing some of the old still photos taken by the digital camera at the viewer and build up a drum beat until "CRUSTY QUINNS" was shown in big over-the-top letters; with some frame by frame animation of electricity moving across the text.

The drum beat was fairly easy. Cooledit Pro was used to multitrack some drum beat samples acquired from the net. Starting softer, getting louder, more drums added until the climax of a lightning strike/thunder clap also acquired from the net. Thanks to samplers everywhere for their "donation to the community".

The beat was based on a 300msec crotchet (seconds per beat if you like) and the photos flash past. Ulead Videostudio which came with the video card easily sequenced the jpegs at 150msec, ie they flash at you two to the beat. The speed is so that you get a hint of the action without getting a decent look at it. Why? because it's just not very good! It builds anticipation nonetheless.

Drum beat alone was sounding a bit anemic. Out with the guitar. Play a power chord E and let it ring for 20-30 secs. CoolEdit some distortion and reverse the waveform. This gave a nice distorted guitar sound that builds louder and louder until the reverse strum is reached - where the thunderclap took place. Much better.

Using the favourite bitmap editor a big "CRUSTY QUINNS" is laid down as a bitmap file. Using the airbrush set for blue low pressure some "lectrickey" was drawn - with a white pencil to carve lines on top. Save the frame. Now add some more "sparks" to the frame and save it as the next frame. Slowly add to the leading spark side and slowly detele from the trailing side. Make it flow across the text and then fade out. Big Tip! ensure you use a locator if you paste semi opaque originals on the current frame in progress. If you don't when you sequence the frames there will be a bit of jerkiness where you missed the paste by a pixel or two... ;)

Capture the footage

The video is broken up into each persons "action". How was this action captured?

Firsty the audio&video signal is piped into the PC. The video card came with a nice little ap that will capture raw AVI stream. Sadly the manual says "If you use windows 2000 you will not be able to capture at full PAL resolution." They are right.

With the capture settings set at 1/2 pal 25fps the card would not drop a single frame and could run all night doing that. However at full PAL frames would be dropped. At 1/2 PAL 30fps frames are dropped.

Now you might think that 25fps is reasonable rate but it actually looks a bit jerky compared to raw VHS (I estimate about 50fps). However 25fps seems to be a "standard" and hey, it works. Opinion: It is better to have a constant slower frame rate than a faster frame rate that drops the odd frame - much more noticeable.

1/2 PAL (352x288) is not too bad as far as pixellation goes on a TV screen but you will pick it at full screen on a monitor. Full PAL (720x576) just consumes heaps of disk space and takes ages to process even though it is a bit better. Since 1/2 PAL 25fps was okay with the PC, it was okay with me.

So you pick a bit of footage, hit capture, let the footage pass and stop the capture. Cool. Hopefully your video cameraman was not frantically trying to follow the action (a big no-no) and just held the videocam and let people pass by/etc. Think car racing footage on TV - the camera AT MOST will zoom in a bit, out a bit and maybe pan as the car/bike passes by. There is nothing more dizzying than trying to follow what is happening on a heavily zoomed in camera attempting to chase the action. Keep It Steady Stupid (KISS)

Fortunately Mik, JAW and Larry had half a clue and some reasonable AVI clips ensued. About 60 were captured and collated.

To greater increase the action each clip was AVI hacked using a wonderful little Pommie program called EditStudio. It has the ability to splice and alter rates. Most jumps by the players were small and over very quickly. However by splicing the video at the point they leave the ground and slowing the film rate to 70% and then returning to 100% when they hit the ground gives the illusion that the jumps are more significant than they really are. heh.

In addition by switching to 130% (or so) when someone is riding it looks like they are going much faster. 70% and 130% is about the cutoff before it becomes very obvious that the footage has been tweaked. Believe nothing you see readers ;)

Part 1 - Tim

Tim was a good starting point because he nearly does interesting stuff (as compared to the others) and some good footage existed. A trick I read with video is to "give the viewer what they want to see", ie build interest and then resolve it. For instance there was a clip of Tim entering the pit. The next logical clip to use is a camera shot from a different spot showing him leaving the pit; resolving the scene, ie showing the viewer what they would want to see next. This was the attempted process for all the sequencing (again done on Ulead video studio).

You can probably guess but nonetheless having only one video camera means that all so-called sequenced clips may actually be many minutes/hours/weeks apart. So what - nobody needs to know - as long as it makes a good sequence.

Ulead video studio offers nice effects to bring one clip into the next. Out of the 50 or so available JAW used "dissolve" almost everytime. Sometimes the dissolve was 100msec, sometimes 2 secs. It depended on what sort of lead-out and lead-in the joining clips had. Dissolve is clean, fluent and adds continuity whereas some of the other effects of wrapping, peeling, rolling, opening etc look a bit contrived if you know what I mean. Some however were used but only to really to make a visual break in the sequence - but even then fade to black was preferred.

Attacking the soundtrack JAW feverishly nailed down a theme song for Crusty Quinns and called it "Sub 2 minute club" (not "Suck you in a club" as commonly misconcieved). Sub 2 minute club refers to a players ability to do the time trial course in less than 2 minutes - quite appropriate.

The soundtrack was just as time consuming as the actual video editing. With the video you spot a scene, you capture it and sequence itThe only choice really was which sequence where. The audio on the other hand was totally up to you.

All motorbike videos have a heavy metal tune so that had to be the case. Heavy metal does not come naturally for JAW so it basically ended up as a very simple riff and a drum beat - all mixed on Cooledit.

Fortunately for a video people are looking more than they are listening - so a lot of repetition of the riff can be tolerated, even by the author.

Part 2 - Mark

The soundtrack switches to a more complicated drum beat to keep from being monotonous - okay we are only 40 secs in so its not really a problem but lets keep it lively.

An excellent piece of footage to introduce Mark was used, it had some people standing around for a second or two and then Mark burst onto the scene and the camera followed gently and zoomed in as he roared off into the distance. A sample of the 2 stroke sound would have been appropriate here - but next time huh ;)

As with all "Parts" the intro includes some text flowing onto the screen, pausing a while and fading out. Ulead does not offer any 3D or outlining effects for text sadly; in future use Editstudio for that. Pure black text even at 60 pixels is not alway easily seen. Nor is white. However any other colour would be even harder to see - we are looking for contrast here.

Again build the viewers expectation and supply them with what they want to see, well, the best you have anyway.

A bit of comedy to finish it off and the beat easing off works nicely; some footage of the kid ungracefully stopping forward, reverse fast, forward fast and back to normal brings a bit of a giggle.

Part 3 - Mik

Mik is a character, he rides a horrible old piece of crap road bike, but rides it very well. It seemed like a good idea to introduce a bit more comedy. The tune turns "humourous" as he pulls a donut and stacks it. The hog (his bike) has an open exhaust and makes an excellent tone so that was mixed into the track, again with Ulead Video Studio.

The music then slowly returns to heavier/serious until he fades out after yet another stack (if we can't pull sick air we may as well show some stacks).

Part 4 - Wolfie and Brad

Had a good clip of Wolfie and Brad pulling monos side by side. Let the clip roll and pause it long enough to read Wolfies name under him on the bottom of the screen. Let the clip roll a bit more then pause it again to read Brads name under him. The clip finishes with Brad pulling the mono too high and stacking it. Cool.

Not much footage existed of Wolfie and Brad so they occupy the same part; Brad up first followed by Wolfie. The both of them as the first clip brough this together quite nicely.

The music has gone back to the same as it was during Tim's section with the addition of the words. The missus has a much more melodic voice than me so I got her to speak into the mic and I tweaked the sound up using Cooledit. Take it easy! Don't blow the levels! Next time it will be a tad more "comphrehensible" and won't clip. sheesh.

Part 5 - JAW

Music back to the same as Marks with the continuing words. JAW was injured when jumps were being filmed so this section largely concentrates on racing the time trial. A bit tedious but is made up for by the fact that Mik caught a nice stack on video.

The music cuts just as he hits the ground and some messy camera work is deleted. Mik raced up to him once he'd stood up and asked some questions at the time and this made for good "live feed", and finished the part off. Again an example of giving the viewer what they want - show the stack, show the aftermath.

Part 6 - The Flannel Years

Larry had taken a fair bit of footage of Mik, JAW & Zak the dog during what Mark describes as "The Flannel Years" - ie, both of us wearing flannel shirts. This made and excellent choice for putting some new music on, something much mellower. The track is "Pre Lullaby 9" which was written by JAW some time ago but seemed to fit well. Featured here is Zak who died about a month before the film was finished. Bit of a tribute to those that knew him, a bit boring maybe for those who didn't. The bike work is very unspectacular, even more so than the rest of the video.

Hey - memoriabilia for the author; he's allowed to ;)

Part 7 - Windup and Credits

The music now partially reverts to heavy again. JAW hit the guitar and stuck with the mellow tune but put a distorted guitar and heavy drum on top of it. Effectively worked out as a reasonable finishing piece. But musos beware! There is at least one note out of tune! Next time *ensure* your guitar is properly in tune with the piece JAW...

A technique which is still in the build-resolve method was tried - showing the start of a clip, switching to credit information and then completeing the clip. Dissolve to the next clip and then some more credits. Most of this action consisted of two players at the same time, a nice windup.

Those featured in this video shown in yellow, others did not have enough/any footage to go with.

JAW makes sure JAW appears in the credits a lot (so as to keep to character; wouldn't want to suprise anybody) and a nice piece of Mik riding off "into the sunset" (well the 4runner at least) finishes the video. The girls wave as Mik rides up, camerawork a bit jerky sadly, and the film slows to 40% speed as it fades to black. Ah. Be-yew-diful.

Distribution

Now that she's done we enter the world of getting your media to those who want to see it. The final version was MPEG2 720x576 25fps 4000kbps format. Just fine if you own a bloody good PC. So what are the choices? You can make a less power hungry version and CDROM it for PC owners; you can VHS it for the non-computery types and you can cut it to VCD or SVCD for those who are into that sort of stuff.

Two wonderful programs, TMPEGenc and Nero Burning ROM were used to produce the VCD and SVCD versions. TMPEGenc is an excellent MPEG freeware encoder and "understands" both VCD and SVCD. Nero Burning ROM is a CDROM burning program that also understands VCD and SVCD. Put them both together and viola! VCD and SVCDs abound.

Not all dvd standalone players you'll find will understand VCD or SVCD. In fact some just plain don't like CDRs. Nonetheless this is my favourite method of distribution and it will only get better as more people hook up with new more fangled dvd players.

Note: VCD (Video CD) is low quality but has been a standard for quite sometime now and therefore well supported. It is 352x288, fixed bitrate of 1150kbps, 25fps PAL MPEG-1 encoded. A TV set is very forgiving but the monitor shows you encoding chunkiness. SVCD (Super Video CD) is a newer standard, 480x576, Variable bit rate up to 2600kbps, 25fps PAL MPEG-2 encoded. A lot nicer but less supported. Obviously dvd format is much better but a dvd will only understand it when it is on a true dvd disk - not a CDROM. All other formats (such as MPEG4, Real Video, MOV etc) are for PC only.

VHS is pretty easy. TV out of your PC and press record on your VCR. Watch out! Some TV out cards could be used for the purposes of ee-vil (ie copy dvd to video) and alledgedly the TV out signal is dropped to the lowest level that a TV can clearly reproduce but a video won't be able to clearly record. Tricky. But a video signal amplifier can sort that out.

Finally lets not forget that we can simply burn some CDROMs for our fellow PC users. The Crusty Quinns CDROM made for those who wanted it is auto booting into your browser and has links to copies of all the trail reports, the entire photo archive thumbnailed into the browser and of course several versions of the video from super hires good for hi-spec PCs and low res for our slower PC mates.

Conclusion

It simply takes a long time to make a video, you need a lot of persistence. I think a motorbike video makes an excellent beginners video because it is simple. I suddenly have a huge appreciation for all TV - being able to switch scenes and keep the dialog synchronised would be a significant next step. You'd need more than one camera shooting a scene for sure.

With a motorbike video you can get away with one camera, you don't need any sound synchronisation (well I put in a bit) you just slap a music soundtrack over it. Easy in retrospect.

Stuff I'll do different next time

• Learn and use Edit Studio more to its potential. There is stuff in it that allows greater flexibility than Ulead Video Studio.
• Be more careful with the sound levels; not blow them out creating clipping distortion. People have volume knobs, let them use them.
• Not be so finnicky with the music soundtrack - it may sound monotonous to me when I've heard it 50 times but when a viewers brain is 80% absorbed in the video footage they won't notice.
• Not break the video into such "logical parts". Rather, add some scenes that are long and not too intense that allow the viewer to ease off somewhat - to break up the "action".
• Use a fair bit more captured audio. The video is sorely missing the sound of a screaming 2 stroke.
• Not dissolve every scene. It's okay to simply cut from one clip to another.
• Get the players to do something actually worthy of a video... ;)

Stuff I'm pretty happy with

• The two tunes. A "theme" song and a mellow wind out.
• The intro. I like the way it sets the scene of whats to come.
• The combination of a bit of humourous stacking to counteract the fact that we don't do anything that exciting.
• Some of the clips were sequenced nicely insofar as they rolled from one to the next having a tension build then resolve.

intro

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