Preparing to Shoot Video

Before you start, you’ll want to review the special movie settings first discussed in Chapter 3. To recap, these options are as follows:

• Movie: File Format. This item and the next two, below, are on the Recording 1 menu. Your options are AVCHD (the default), or MP4. Choose AVCHD for full high-definition video recording in the AVCHD format, or choose the somewhat lesser-quality MP4 format, which can be easier to work with on a computer. If you select AVCHD there are no other choices to make, as AVCHD provides only one image size of 1920 X 1080 pixels.

• Movie: Size. If you select MP4, you can choose between 1440 X 1080 (Standard HD, the default) and VGA (640 X 480). Use VGA if you need to save space on your memory card or don’t need the higher quality.

• Movie: Audio Rec. Select On (the default) or Off, depending on whether you want to record sound with your movie. You might want to disable sound if you are certain you don’t want to have any sound recorded, plan to add sound later (say, narration), or if you believe you might be bothered by sounds from the operation of the camera or lens that might be recorded. It doesn’t hurt to leave sound enabled, because you can easily erase a sound track in your movie editing software, and replace it with a new track. You never know when you might want some sounds recorded at the time of movie capture.

• Still/Movie Select. This option, on the Playback 1 menu, lets you select playback of stills or video clips. Choose between Still (the default value) and Movie shooting. Your camera doesn’t allow playing back stills and movies in a single sequence. You always must select one or the other, for normal playback or for Slide Show display. As described in Chapter 3, there are three ways to select between stills and movies for these purposes:

  • Use this menu option as described in Chapter 3, choosing either Still or Movie from the submenu.

  • Use the playback index screen, described in Chapter 1. On that screen, accessed by pushing the Zoom out/Index button during playback mode, use the left direction button to navigate to the far left of the screen, then move up or down with the direction buttons to highlight either the icon for stills at the top of the screen, or the icon for movies at the bottom.

  • Shift the camera into Still or Movie mode for playback by recording a quick still image or movie. In other words, if you want to display movies but don’t want to go through either of the procedures outlined above, you can just press the red Movie button twice, which records a very short movie. This action shifts the camera into Movie mode for purposes of playback, so you can now press the Play button and you will be presented with the index of movies available to be played.