I had a beautiful blue spruce in the backyard that was about 20 feet tall - the prefect Christmas tree to hang lights on. But about a month ago the tree starting turning brown fast. We had a tree expert come out to take a look and he said the IPS Beatle got to it and it needed to be removed ASAP.

So I removed the tree myself and placed it in the front yard, then started to dig the tree stump up with a shovel. After about an hour of digging, I could tell this was going to take a very long time! And the hole in the ground was going to need to be a lot bigger!

So I gave up and had the tree expert come out and remove the stump and the tree for $150. If I was to do the stump myself I am sure it would have taken 6 to 8 hours to remove it with a shovel, so the $150 was worth it. I was amazed how large those roots were.

The tree expert used a neat tool called a Vermeer SC252 which is much smaller than a skid steer loader and a track excavator back-hoe. A small hack-hoe would have caused much more stress to the grass. I am sure you can rent this type of equipment at a local rental store. As you can see in the video you grind away the stump just a little at a time. The whole process takes about an hour.

What is so great about this method verse digging it out with a hack-hoe is it leaves you with great mulch for the next tree you plant in its place.

So skip the shovel and use the right rental equipment.

Below is the new tree we replaced it with after the stump was removed.

I own a Sony HDR-SR7 and have been using it for about 6 months.

Well the hard drive is getting full.

What I would like to do is transfer the AVCHD files (.mt2 extentsion) to a computer near my HD TV and play them back.

The only problem is even with a super fast computer and a super fast video card, playing back AVCHD does not work well.

Why can’t Sony or a video card manufacturer place the small AVCHD playback chip that is in my Sony HD camcorder on a video card?

Or why doesn’t Sony make a hard drive AVCHD playback device (similar to a TIVO).

Update: Looks like they do build a card for this now, see comment below!

To better understand how Eric Franks does his read on the Tech Know Show and how Charlie Burket does the editing, I thought I would remake the beginning of Tech Know show 304.

Note: I am missing the audio bed and sound effects, I still have not purchased the Digital Juice products yet. I also have not tweaked the audio yet either.

I learned a ton of stuff from both Eric and Charlie. I gotta say Charlie has the more time consuming process of the two. Editing that 50 second spot took hours! I am sure Charlie could hammer it out much faster than I can.

This started out as a test to see how well my laptop teleprompter using free software would work. I think it appears I am looking into the lens when I am actually looking at the laptop right below the lens. Does this look like it to you?

I am 6′ 3″ so I couldn’t use my tripod to get the camera to my eye level so I used the shelves and put the camera and laptop on blocks.

I learned:

• Smiling more than you think you should is a good thing
• Reading it a little slow and hitting the words you want the viewer to take in is a good thing
• Squinting to see the teleprompter is not a good thing.
• It is a good thing to get the read just right and then edit around the timing of the complete audio track (thanks to Charlie for this).
• I was a little out of focus on my last test I published (thanks Charlie for this)
• Bouncing my head up and down is not a good thing - nervous habit?
• Charlie loves to have movement is all b-roll no matter what it is!

I need to learn:

• Keyboard shortcuts on Vegas to make my editing life better.
• I have to play with the smoothness parameter on the event pan and zoom, but I think it looks pretty good in this test.
• I need a better preview window on Vegas, working with the AVCHD files suck because you have to put it in draft mode to get the audio to sync and when you do that the preview window looks like crap! Anyone have any suggestions on this? I have a very fast computer that is 5 months old with dual graphics cards in tandem.
• I placed all the b-roll on the top “Text” layer, I am sure that is not right - but it worked. I need to know what is correct.

I am looking for comments on how to improve my editing skills, any comments are welcome.

Please keep in mind that I have spent $2,000 on creating these videos, I still need to buy stuff from DJ too so I can’t spend too much more $.

So I am thinking of using the same jump back intro and audio bed for my new show, I just need to figure out how much it is going to cost.

I am doing online training videos for property related web sites. My target audience is real estate agents and property managers to better improve their sites. Just like DJTV I will be pushing my property templates that they can use to get their sites looking more professional.

I am using SnagIt 8 for the screen captures. I think I have it set to 15fps and I am not sure how to change that to 30fps.

Some of you might be wondering what is up with the solar blog. Well this is my play site and not where the training videos are going, I could find another place for it so I stuck these posts here.

Here is the video below, just click anywhere to play it:

When I want to doing something really well I find out who is doing it the best, copy them down to the smallest detail and then after I have that perfected I then get creative and do my own thing. I always learn a ton this way.

First off I am not a “video guy” I am an “audio guy” so this is all new for me. The web site I own I have been wanting to create some top notch training videos for property web site owners. So I was studying Blip.tv and luckily found Digital Juice TV (an amazing site!). The site has fantastic training videos on how to make you videos better. The one I really like is Eric Frank’s Tech Know so I have been copying it and learning along the way.

I first built my video studio in the basement on a very cheap budget, I think I spent $45 on the green screen and $150 on the halogen lights. I then purchased the Sony HDR-SR7 HD camera for around $1,000. The camera produces AVCHD files on its hard drive so then I needed to find a NLE editor that could edit those files. It came down to Pinnacle Studio 11 and Sony Vegas 8 Movie Studio Platinum Edition $120. After trying them both, I went with Vegas because Studio 11 seemed to crash too many times while trying to do the advance render for the preview window. Pinnacle did not have a free download trial, I had to buy it to test it out which was OK, but I had the hardest time trying to contact them for a RMA # (that really upset me).

I have spent a lot of time experimenting in manual mode on the camera which has been a large learning curve for me. I think I have settled on the following after setting the white balance:

• 1/60th of a second (can’t control)
• F2.0 (I control using the exposure level adjustment)
• Focus 2.4 meters (manual mode)
• Gain at 0dB
• AVC HD 15M (XP) mode

To white balance I placed a piece of white paper on a stand where I would be standing, zoom in on the white paper and then set the white balance. I am not sure if I am doing this right or if I should be doing it to the white sheet in the background?

After tons of experiments with my green screen I gave up and went to a simple white sheet (I tried paper like on Tech Know but I couldn’t tape it together well enough). The white sheet has been very easy to key out and also was so much easier to get the exposure where I thought it needed to be.

I set up my Vegas project file as follows using the native video format on import (I had screwed up before and used the native format which has an aspect ratio of 4:3, so I reduced the frame height to achieve the 16:9:

Within Sony Vegas I added three filter effects to the video, Chroma Key, Chroma Blur and Color Correction.

I first do the Chroma Key as shown below:

I then did the Chroma Blur - I turned this off because Charlie at DJ said I didn’t need it.

“Chroma blur is not needed if your backdrop is free of imperfections (no visible seams, deviations in surface) or if your Zebras are reading 100% on the background. This essentially wipes out detail due to the overexposing.”

And then I play with the Color Correction, I tried to do what Charlie recommended:

“In your color correction, click on the eyedropper to the right of HIGH to set a value in your frame of what you want the computer to consider as “white” Try adjusting the LOW Magnitude value down until your blacks seem nice and dark. This is regarded as “Crushing the Blacks” and makes things look better (IMHO). Same with the Black level ( maybe the darkest part of your suit).”

But in the end I just kept playing with it until I felt I had the best look.

After I am done editing I render to an AVI file as follows:

Then I use Sorenson Squeeze 4.5 ($249) to create the FLV file that I upload to blip.tv so Blip.tv won’t re-transcode over what I have already done using the following settings:

Now I realize that I have spent less than $2,000 on everything and I am never going to get to the level that DJTV has, but if I can get 95% there then I am happy. I am looking for advice to bring it up another notch.

I am trying to figure why I do not look in focus like Eric does, my image seems too soft.