Home Video-Take One!

You don't have to have an advanced degree in cinematography to attach a video camera to a video cassette recorder (VCR) and make like Cecil B. De Mille. But after several sessions of lights, cameras and plenty of action (we won't ask what kind), you may be tempted to shelve your beret and megaphone and leave the directing to Steven Spielberg. Think again, C.B. The current crop of video cameras and VCRs goes a long way to close the gap between Hollywood and home town. You can now equip yourself with a video camera that can capture the image of a speeding object, such as a race car, on tape instead of just reproducing a blur, or one that operates in low-light situations slicker than Errol Flynn ever did. Cassette recorders have also become leaner and trimmer, some weighing as little as five pounds. They lightest models, in fact, call for a mini video tape that snaps into an adapter for playback on your tabletop receiver. And color processors and eiditing equipment designed for the home market have finally become available so that you can now assemble your miscellaneous tapes into a major video opus. To further put you in the director's chair, we've taken ten ordinary home-video problems and have examined them in light of the (continued on page 176)Home Video(continued from page 115) latest equipment on the market. And while your early efforts may not gross $6,000,000 at the box office during the first three days, be comforted by the fact that you're starting your career a step ahead of where most big-time directors started theirs.

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Let's say you're a racing fan. You buy a portable VCR and a video camera to tape the custom-car heats at the local track. But when you replay your first recording at home, the coupes are nothing more than loops of light purling around one another. The problem is "streaking" (or "lag"), a function of the way the great majority of video cameras record images. That is, they use tubes, rather than solid-state devices, to translate light into electronic impulses. The frequent result is a blurring of fastmoving objects or a related problem, "burn-in," in which strong light sources within the camera's field of view remain visible on tape long after the camera has turned away from them. At presstime, only five of the more than 50 video cameras available in the U.S. use solid-state pickups: Hitachi's VKC-2000 ($1900) and VKC-3400 with auto focus ($1995), Minolta's K-2000S ($2150), NEC Home Electronics (U.S.A.)'s TC-100E C.C.D. ($2000) and Sears's 5389 ($989.95). What many consider the next best thing, Saticon tubes, are in Akai America's VC-X2 ($1195), Hitachi's VKC-850 ($1395) and VKC-870 (S1125), Hitachi Denshi/Everex' GP-61M ($1295) and GP-61A with auto focus (S1395), JVC of America's GZ-S3 ($895), Minolta's K-700S ($1150), Pentax' PC-K030A ($1099), RCA's CC012 (about $795), Sanyo's VSC530 ($699.95) and Sony's HVC-2800 ($1350), among others.

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The two of you find yourselves rolling around on top of the dinner table, and it's not because dinner was especially good. So you roll your way into the media room to see how you might look together on video tape. She dims the lights. You flip on the VCR, with the camera on a tripod. Later, when you play the tape, it's all black snow--an anticlimax.

She should never have dimmed the lights, right? Actually, in technical terms, a low level of ambient light should rarely inhibit video taping--if you use the proper camera. When you're choosing a model, the feature to consider is minimum illumination, a spec usually given in luxes. Look for a figure no higher than 20 or 30 luxes if you want to do any shooting in low light. (The average spec for current consumer cameras is around 45 luxes, with some models rated as high as 75 to 100 luxes.) Among the cameras available today, rated at ten luxes, that could have saved that romantic recording in the media room: Curtis Mathes' JC768 ($1299), General Electric's ICVC4035E (about $1400), Magnavox' VR8280 ($1399.95), Panasonic's PK-957 ($1250), Quasar's VK747WE ($1300) and Sylvania's VCC120 ($1000).

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You want to hike the Adirondack Trail and shoot a video tape about it. Since you bought a good, small, portable VHS recorder--the Pentax PV-R020A ($1064), for example--your equipment fits neatly into your old kit pack. But there's no room left for food. So you have to turn back early, and the last piece of nature you shot was Exit 87 of the New Jersey Turnpike.

There's a smaller, related format called VHS-C (for VHS-compact), an unusual kind of miniature equipment that uses tiny tapes compatible with conventional VHS gear through the use of a special adapter-cassette. A VHS-C recorder is about the size and the weight of a James Michener novel. So far, there are only two VHS-C models: JVC of America's HR-C3U ($850) and Sharp's VC-220 ($999.95). JVC also has a camera designed to snap onto its VHS-C recorder on a shoulder mount: the GZ-S3 mentioned above. Not incidentally, Sony offers a Beta-format recorder that's practically as small as the VHS-C but doesn't require the use of any special adapters or additional equipment. Highly recommended: the SL-2000 ($700).

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As a favor for your roommate, you video-tape his ensemble performing a Bach fugue for the group's use in trying to attract a booking agent. But when they play the tape, all the agencies have the same response: "Sorry, we don't handle punk rock."

Get Bach to where he once belonged--rich in nuances, not noise. With home-video equipment, the way to achieve topflight fidelity--sound virtually as superb as digital audio--is with one of the new Beta hi-fi recorders incorporating audio-frequency-modulating (A.F.M.) circuitry. The single portable in this elite breed is Sanyo's VCR7300 ($999.95). In tabletop models, there are NEC Home Electronics (U.S.A.)'s VC-739 ($1000), Sony's SL-2700 ($1500) and Toshiba America's V-S36 ($1099).

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You're witness to an event that happens only once--such as your friend Sid's finally picking up a dinner check or your sister's second marriage--and you want to get it all on tape. And you have to do it right the first time. There is now an excellent way to evaluate your recording immediately, in the field. That's with the one consumer VCR equipment with a built-in-four-inch monitor for instant playback of recorded tapes (but without a receiver for tuning in TV broadcasts): Hitachi's VT-680M ($1395).

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Intrigued by an advertisement for a video dating service, you decide to give the trial membership a whirl, which requires you to make a video movie about yourself for distribution among the club members of the opposite sex--an auto-record, auto-focus autobiography. The only problem is that after you've covered your background, your talents, your hobbies and your ambitions, your VCR stops. The battery's dead halfway into your life--before you've had time even to mention your humility and your modesty.

Plenty of home-video movies are thwarted by dead VCR batteries, which, on the average, are designed to operate for periods of 60 to 90 minutes. A little-known alternative for power-hungry video tapers is an external battery pack, the likes of which come in several configurations, including backpacks and belts. One of the best is the five-and-a-half-pound 12-volt Model I2BB battery belt from Acme-Lite ($150, including charger and suspenders), meant to operate a portable VCR and a camera for several hours, depending on the recording equipment involved.

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You promised some friends that you would shoot your alma mater's biggest basketball game of the season; you also have a lot of change riding on the N.B.A. play-offs scheduled for the same time on the same night. You don't want to miss either game any more than you want to lose your bet--or your friends.

Obviously, all you have to do is take a TV set with you on your shoot to catch the N.B.A. play-offs at the same time. One of the top models is Panasonic's CT-7711A, a seven-inch 94-channel color portable ($459.95). Not so obvious, though, is the real boon of using this monitor. Since it's color and its screen is seven inches, it's ideal for evaluating tape quality as you shoot the team shooting hoops.

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Although you don't have too much trouble making your own tapes, your new trouble is making too much. It doesn't bother you that you've spent so much time making tapes that you haven't gotten a chance to watch any of them; your problem is somehow organizing all those miles of magnetism.

Whether your problem is one of quantity or of quality, the same unique piece of video equipment should solve it. It's a miniature video-tape editing console meant to enable video-movie makers to insert and erase sequences, dub in background sound tracks and perform other simple editing functions. The first home editors are Canon's VE-10 (about $150) and Quasar's VE582UQ ($169.95). And a handsome monitor to show off the finished product is Toshiba America's 20-inch CZ-2010 model ($949.95).

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Ever since you saw Return of the Jedi, you've seen your life as one special effect. Now you want your video tapes to measure up.

No home movie will look like a segment of Star Wars unless you live in George Lucas' back lot. Still, there is one special product from Sony that can help home-movie makers achieve such slick, big-time-studio effects as montages, super-impositions and titles. The $550 HVS-120K is really more a color processor than a full-fledged special-effects generator, but it can add some pro-style touches of detail and flair to any nonpro production.

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You're of two minds sometimes. You like the freedom and the versatility of a mini portable VCR. Yet the sturdy security of a big tabletop machine also appeals to you.

RCA's high-tech archetype of electronic schizophrenia, the VHS-'format VJP900 portable/tabletop ($1300), is just for you. For live-action shoots, the recorder half of the machine snaps of its TV-tuner twin and functions like any other freewheeling portable. Then, for taping from TV or for other, more mundane taping tasks, the recorder and the tuner snap together (without wires)--and they work and look like any living-room VCR.

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So let there be lights, cameras--and you direct the action. Don't be afraid to go Hollywood. It's never been easier for you to make moving pictures of your life.

"A low level of ambient light should rarely inhibit video taping--if you use the proper camera."