Writing for Apple’s Hot News Web site area, Joe Cellini recently talked with documentary filmmaker John Brooks, who used advanced digital cameras and a Power Mac to help produce a video documenting the life below the surface of Glacier Bay, Alaska. The info is posted in a new article entitled A High-Definition Dive Into Glacier Bay.
Brooks used a prototype Panasonic AJ-HDC20A DVCPRO HD camera to shoot his raw footage. Brooks elected to go with the new high definition digital camera because it allowed him to film longer sessions than he could with conventional film, and it yielded significantly better quality than other video formats. He said the combination of that and his Mac saved a lot of time, money and effort.
Brooks edited the digital video using a Power Mac G4 configured with Pinnacle Systems’ Cinéwave and Apple’s Final Cut Pro editing software. Cinéwave was used to convert the master tapes to an editing format, which enabled him to edit the project on about $5,000 worth of storage drives, rather than having to rent an editing suite at $700 per hour.
The use of HD instead of film also enabled Brooks to shoot much more footage than he could have afforded to otherwise, which was an important factor — one goal of the documentary was to yield much additional source footage that the park service could later reuse as stock material for other projects.
Much more details are available on Apple’s site, including specific info about how Brooks shot his footage, what he used and how it was edited.