Basic Video without having to colour grade/post process?

[Joe14]

Evening all,

I am a new owner of the Sony A7iv and although stills is my main work, one thing I want to dive into is the world of video.

However I realise now that cameras offer a much wider variety of video settings which I am going to work my way through the learning for, but for now I just want to know what settings I would use if I just wanted to record some simple video in say Full HD or even basic 4K, but without the need of doing any post processing or colour grading and so straight from camera?

I suppose I am looking for the video equivalent of jpeg?

I am also confused with what Colour/picture profiles & Log Profiles are or what they do… does this affect if you have to colour grade or post process the footage?

Thanks you in advance

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

Hey Joe, welcome again.
To choose between HD and 4k, you'll have to go into your settings menu because you are changing the format you are recording (meaning, you can't change this on the fly). Also, unless you intend to do any slow motion, stick to 24 or 30 fps.

A picture profile or log profile is meant to give the editor more dynamic range to work with in post production when they do color correction. I have an a6400, so not as many picture profile choices on my camera, in fact I don't use any of those picture profiles! You can shoot with picture profiles off, and that's probably the "jpeg-like" experience you are asking about. That would be akin to using footage from a gopro, basically you get what you get.

I believe the a7IV has the S Cinetone profile though. I have heard that one doesn't require color correction (unless you choose to) and looks more "cinematic" than with no picture profile. You might want to research that.

Finally the elephant in the room: you can record a video clip and put that straight on storage media or host it on vimeo/youtube, but you really won't get the most fulfilment out of your camera's video capabilities until you get a proper editing program. Maybe you want to do something as simple as trim parts of the clip, or add background music, or add your logo to the intro; for that you will need an editing program. The 3 giants (Final Cut, Adobe Premiere, Davinci) are a bit intimidating at first, but have tons of support and instructional videos online. In some instances, there are simplified versions, like Adobe Premiere Elements, but you get what you pay for and you may find it frustrating to start editing in such a program and then outgrow it when you need to do more (like color correction or sound editing). As much as I hate the subscription model, I loved Adobe Premiere.

There are so many youtubers out there focusing on A7IV video content, one that springs to mind is Jason Morris. I'm not saying he's the best out there, but its a good place to start!

 

[Joe14]

Hey Joe, welcome again.
To choose between HD and 4k, you'll have to go into your settings menu because you are changing the format you are recording (meaning, you can't change this on the fly). Also, unless you intend to do any slow motion, stick to 24 or 30 fps.

A picture profile or log profile is meant to give the editor more dynamic range to work with in post production when they do color correction. I have an a6400, so not as many picture profile choices on my camera, in fact I don't use any of those picture profiles! You can shoot with picture profiles off, and that's probably the "jpeg-like" experience you are asking about. That would be akin to using footage from a gopro, basically you get what you get.

I believe the a7IV has the S Cinetone profile though. I have heard that one doesn't require color correction (unless you choose to) and looks more "cinematic" than with no picture profile. You might want to research that.

Finally the elephant in the room: you can record a video clip and put that straight on storage media or host it on vimeo/youtube, but you really won't get the most fulfilment out of your camera's video capabilities until you get a proper editing program. Maybe you want to do something as simple as trim parts of the clip, or add background music, or add your logo to the intro; for that you will need an editing program. The 3 giants (Final Cut, Adobe Premiere, Davinci) are a bit intimidating at first, but have tons of support and instructional videos online. In some instances, there are simplified versions, like Adobe Premiere Elements, but you get what you pay for and you may find it frustrating to start editing in such a program and then outgrow it when you need to do more (like color correction or sound editing). As much as I hate the subscription model, I loved Adobe Premiere.

There are so many youtubers out there focusing on A7IV video content, one that springs to mind is Jason Morris. I'm not saying he's the best out there, but its a good place to start!

Hello,

Thank you so much for this! Super helpful and really appreciate your help and support.

The tips are brilliant an give me some good direction now of where to start. Also a good point about the software too, as you say although I may not be grading just yet I still may won’t to do some cutting etc.. so yeah I will definitely have a look at that for sure.

I think your right though that my next step is to watch some videos and I suppose just get out there and try/practice

Thank you again thought, really appreciate it

 

[Joe14]

Try Shotcut. It's a totally free open source program. Very well supported. I am not a video shooter but needed a program after digitizing all of our old 8mm movies at home. It was pretty straight forward but powerful. I use it now for the few video clips I do shoot just for joining them together or simple edits. That's not to say the program is only capable of simple edits, it's capable of anything the pay-to-play programs are, it's me that's only capable of simple edits!

Ooooo thank you for this, sounds interesting indeed and something I will definitely have a look at for the time being

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

Hello,

Thank you so much for this! Super helpful and really appreciate your help and support.

The tips are brilliant an give me some good direction now of where to start. Also a good point about the software too, as you say although I may not be grading just yet I still may won’t to do some cutting etc.. so yeah I will definitely have a look at that for sure.

I think your right though that my next step is to watch some videos and I suppose just get out there and try/practice

Thank you again thought, really appreciate it

Joe, here is a sample of 4k footage from my camera with no picture profile or editing:

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

youtu.be

Good luck with the practice.