You guys were so helpful with my last question, I have another.

I had read a post from a guy who seemed to be a professional. He was singing the praises of a camera because of it's neutral colors, he was talking about it not being over saturated. He mentioned something about color in post production. This got me thinking about the settings in the camera for "vivid" and "neutral"...and the fuzzy flesh one...or what ever it was called.

What are these? When would I want to use them? I used vivid in England to record the green rolling hills...it came out looking nice...not entirely natural but nice looking just the same. Is that what this is for?

Why would I want to "neutral" the colors? Is it better to mute the color down then increase it post producton?

Thanks in advance.

Lynkon

I would suggest to try the various settings and see if you like the results....
If so, use them
If not, don't

I think what I am asking is...is there a standard video recording methodology? Is it more common to record in neutral and change color post-production? Just as I know I should shoot stills as large and raw as I can then resize later, is there a best-practices for video related to this?

I don't think it makes a difference in post production. The settings in the camcorder such as effects or Color Correction can all be removed or applied during post production. If you are not going to edit your movies and transfer them to PC but keep them as it is in minidv tapes and watch them using your camcorder than settings/effects are very useful otherwise you can do a lot better in post production.

I think there are 2 important things for a consumer camcorder user.

1-Avoiding lowlight: No matter how expensive the camcorder is, all consumer camcorders suck in lowlight situations. There is no way of removing the noise caused by the lowlight during post production.

2-Recording a noise free audio: The only possible solution for this is using an external mic. There is no other way of doing this.

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I want a Red One but I will settle for a Red Scarlett

I don't know if this was in the post that you are referring to, but someone said that using Neutral will yield sharper results than if Vivid is used. I haven't had a chance to try this yet, but it would be interesting to try. It would be nice to know if using Neutral and then boosting saturation is post processing is better than using Vivid for the shoot and leaving that way. Also, would using Vivid to shoot and lowering saturation give as much sharpness as shooting Neutral ?

LOL

These are all good points, and I think that is really what I am asking.

Yes there is a way to remove video noise. AVIsynth + Virtualdub + Convolution3D filter, or NeatVideo. Those are just two of the many available filters to remove video noise. They work and there is no noticeable degradation of detail, as long as you adjust the parameters correctly. I use a small Avisynth script with the Convolution3D and other filters to clean up VHS tapes after capture to digital format.

You probably have it backwards, I am afraid. You aren't "neutralizing" the colors, you are AVOIDING "hyping" the colors. In other words, "neutral" leaves your video untouched, "vivid" changes it with electronic effects in the camera. You had better believe that any decent video editing app can do a better job adjusting the picture than your cameras built-in FX.

However, if you want a little extra hype captured to tape because you dont want to tinker with it later, and you like what the "vivid" setting does for your footage, by all means, use it! I just prefer to start with unprocessed footage.

If am I completely wrong here, and someone can convince me that the "vivid" setting does something optical before it hits the ccd, I am all ears. The thing is, thats not how these cheesy budget gimmicks works. Building extra hardware adds to the cost of the unit. A little saturation boost in software costs nothing.

What it DOES do is clutter up you menus with yet more pointless doo-dads, while at the same time hiding important settings like shutter speed in deeper menus. Ah, you have to love the complete lack of logic excercised by the people who design these things.

PS
To pile on from above, definetely check out noise reduction options... you can do some pretty amazing things with these. It will never be perfect obviously, but at moderate settings you can reduce the noise to a tolerable level.

You are still better off putting the shutter speed way down. Sadly, low light mode uses an auo slow shutter, which speeds up and slows down as needed. this is kinda sorta good I guess, but just being able to manually set the shutter very low would be nicer for consistent motion cadence.

Are these stand alone plugs? Is something to be done in After Effects or Premiere Pro 2?

Avisynth and Virtualdub are wonderful freeware, as are the plugins mentioned. I believe neat video is a commercial product.

Virtual dub is a stand-alone video processing program. It is basically a front end for Avisynth. It's a bit tricky to get set up at first, but once you have it figured out, it's a snap to use.

I highly reccomend downloading them and giving them a try. There are lots of free filters out there.