Technical Aspects

WHERE SHOULD YOUR FOOTAGE AND IMAGERY COME FROM?

All footage and imagery should come from the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS). Footage and/or imagery found from stock websites or anywhere else besides DVIDS will not be accepted due to licensing.

Video Quality

+ The most common settings for a project is AVCHD. AVCHD is a recording format developed for recording high-definition video to media such as recordable DVD media, hard disk drives, and memory cards. Depending on the media, you will be using either 24 fps or 30 fps for your sequence settings. Ratio should always be 16:9 unless creating a video for social media.

+ Regarding bitrate, all footage should be recorded at the highest possible bitrate. When exporting a draft to Microsoft Teams, keep the bitrate below 10 megabytes.

+ All action should be within the action safe area. This is marked by the yellow highlighted box in the example above. Action safe is 90% of the screen. Title safe will be covered during lower thirds.

Color Correction & Effects

+ Final videos should be graded to natural colors.

+ Use the color picker to select something ‘white’ within your frame. The white balance adjusts all the colors to what you have chosen as white. This helps fix shots that are a little yellow or blue based on the camera settings and lighting when filming.

+ Video effects can be as simple as sharpening a selected piece of footage or including Mogrt files to enhance a video project. All effects, nonetheless, should be tasteful and used with discretion.

Audio Quality

Good audio is critical to making a professional video piece. All imported audio will be set at 0.0 dB, but it is important to listen and edit that video as you go. Main audio (i.e. narration or speaker) should be set to a maximum peak of -3.0 dB to avoid distortion or the audio being clipped but can generally be set to -6.0 dB. Background music should be subtle and not overlap the main audio. This range should be limited to between -12.0 dB to -18.0 dB.