Michael Collier

I have found great success bouncing lowell tota lights off the roof. If there the room has a suspended grid system you dont even need much rigging. They have clips that clip to the roof, run cables under the grid and point the tota at the roof (make sure to use a grip head on these to lower the totas, stock they would sit about 2" from paper tiles...yeah unless you like fire. also with the grip heads you have the option to soften or harden the light by adjusting how far away the lights are.) If there is a portion of the ceiling you need to see, remove the lights in that part of the roof and angle the lights so the hot point lands just a few feet short of the frameline. Then skirt the frameline so the roof isnt too hot. The idea is sorta like billiards. Aim to bounce them back into the right portion and naturally the light will fill the area, there wont be any shadows (practically speaking of course) and the light will be very soft. Then add maybe a bit of backlighting as needed/practicle. This will bring the light to about the same color as those tiles. if this is not the color you are looking for, cover or replace the tiles with white paper or foamcore.

I used it a bit during some testing I was doing. It really helps out those cameras that look nice, but photographically speaking they are challenging. with 1/3" DOF its really hard to get good photography (if selective focus is important to you) so its a nice help. Also with most of those cameras I put some glimmerglass or promist or something to soften it up and give a reason for the highlights being so bad, this addaptor basicly replaces any lens softening filters I would use. I have been told that zoom lenses are not recomended. You might be able to get away with light lenses, but eventually it will be too much and break the mount. check with the rental companies. Some let you, others wont. With a still lens you can zoom, but dont expect a rocker switch. You will have to do it manually. With cine lenses you can get zoom motors and folow focus for it. My opinion is they are expensive, but a DVX-100 or HD-100 with a mini-35 will give pictures that rival an SDX-900 type (if you actually use DOF in your photography)

sorry, most of my work is digital (even film originated finds a digital end in my work) so I refer to the telecine as a macine that does the scan, modest color correction and the pulldown. I refer to everything else as just a scan. It is a telecine technically though, your correct. I scan it all on one setting and have the post house put the data on a hard drive. Then I do color work to fit the color into the NTSC range and add a pulldown (the routine that makes 6 extra frames every second) Yeah, there were some outrageous claims made back then. In my opinion mini-DV is substandard to Betacam SP, another format that is going the way of the dinosaurs. 4:1:1 is not adequate to call proffessional. It looks ok, and I do shoot mini-DV, but for SD television delivery that requires either mobility or low cost or both. Even DVCAM at 4:2:2 isnt really enough, with the cosine compression they utilize. I think Beta SX is probably the lowest format I would call professional these days. I just want to warn people before they spend hundreds of dollars an hour to get everything a telecine can do, when they just need the film scanned and transfered to hard drive. The other thing that made me suggest this workflow is it seems like he wants to edit the film in an NLE, not telecine the finnished cut. If a full telecine were to be done including pulldown, you then have to remove that pulldown before editting to get back to the original 24frames, otherwise everytime you cut you will interupt the pulldown cadence. Some people may not see it, but it can be distracting, and its unnessicary to have a trunticated pulldown cadence. a scan on best light and a robust codec will give you the ability to spend time color correcting for NTSC and the pulldown can be done later.

I would take it a step farther and have them put it frame for frame onto a DNxHD codec. You could even go farther and make it an uncompressed raw transfer. You dont want a real telecine, those extra frames are a pain and you can do the telecine later (when it makes sense so you dont have jumping cadence) in software. Premeire, after effects and avid all do pulldowns and dont take anything more than a night or two to render long copies. If you shoot 24fps, then get a codec that can handle that. If you need a tape you can put it to HDCAM-SR or DVCPRO HD, but those will still loose quality. 16mm is expensive so you should push every pixel out of it possible. If you push it directly to a hard drive then the post house can simply record it to hard drive and you wont have to worry about loosing any more quality. When you get the copy home of the DNxHD, put that into your avid and make a conform clip, probably in DV so you can edit effeciently. Once editting is done conform the EDL to the DNx codec and boom. Instant HD movie in full quality. Hell, you can even call it a DI if you put it back onto film. You also have the option of dubbing to HD tapes at a much better price. If saving money is important, do as was mentioned above. get the first print in mini-DV (make sure frame numbers will be relatable later) cut your movie and get just what is needed recaptured in the DNx. then conform as normal and you have your HD movie. bottom line, the only point I am trying to make is if all you want is 4:2:2 comression (or 4:1:1 for DV25) in standard definition, then shoot video. You dont really get a great advantage in picture quality compared to a DVX-100A or similar camera. The only economy in shooting film is for projects where HD or large-screen blowups are possible, good news is now adays you dont need post houses for much, if you spent more than 4K on your edit machine.

I made a cheap dolly with 8 roller skate wheels some angle iron and PVC. If you drill holes in the Angle iron and put bolts through to hold wheels on they form a V. have 4 groups of at least 2, 3 is better, but have those mounted to two peices of angle iron bolted to some partcle board. Then run that on 1" PVC. I made one for under 30 bucks and perfomed as well as a doorway dolly. Check online there are great resorces. Moving the camera should not be expensive. I did a news story once and was shooting inside a bagle shop. They had glass table tops on every table. I set my betacam (with 2 small flat metal bottoms, where the tripod plate normaly engages) and pushed the beta accross the table. It took a few takes to get a smooth one, but by the end I set a wine list in front of the start of the dolly and had the subject reveal and combined a slow zoom out to sell it. Great shot that looks like I spent hours, and it was for local spot news. Be creative. Move the camera when it should, not because it can.

The problem is you are trusting a machine to do your job. At my office if a coworker comes back with hot video, or video shot with the auto iris they get made fun of, and with good reason. When you turn auto features on your no longer a photographer. Your a courier to get the camera in the right place and hit record. As I recall a lot of sonys shoot hot with autoiris, maybe because they assume most shots are hevily backlit, im not sure, but what is for sure is that auto iris will kill your chances at work. I will not put shots on air that have auto iris if I can avoid it because it doesnt give me any confidence in the video. Practice the rules of B-roll. Patience and speed are both required. Find your shot, get a spec composition, set iris and shutter if that is on, and finalize your composition. then roll up. As for the windowing, that refers to the portion it looks to to set its mark, and so there is no one corner of the camera you should be exposing to. It will change constantly and changing that window everytime will take much longer than using the dial exposure. If you are shooting news then your bar is set low already. The quality of footage we get out of national is crap. Like they dont even care if the shot is right, as long as its somehow on tape and halfway recognizable. You have a chance to set yourself apart. or not.

yeah those ZU1s are beautiful looking, though they do loose a lot in the shadows naturally before you add the cine-look, I found the same thing shooting Beekeepers. It seems like the cineframe is 25p (probably pulled from 25i) and interlaced with a lame pulldown (two interlaced frames for every 4th frame or so) I am thinking its possible to pull it back out to the 25p and then do a better pulldown on the video. Maybe even slow the 25p to 24p and pitch-shift the audio. I dont think that would slow the video too much, and we can get to an even cadence with the pulldown. I dont know. things to think about. you said your shooting 30i or p though? Great shot on the crying scene though. And the ND grad isnt bad, It may be a bit to dense for how bright the sky probably was, but I think the same shot without the ND wouldnt be quite as nice.

Why would you pay a telecine rate for HDV footage (or any digital footage really?) 1500 bucks and you get some of the most powerful editing software in the world. A good Avid or Premiere system can do anything a telecine can do. Shoot 24p telecine out to a 29.97i with pulldown, pitchshift the audio and you get watchable copy that can go to any other format. HDV is limited and really is only for people who want the resolution of HD, and the quality/price of DV. It really is a huge step....over DV. nobody ever claimed DV was a great format, just practicle for low level work. Now HDV is picking up the low level indie work. Once you have the footage in the computer and it has been cut in HDV its time to transfer anyways right? Unless you get that HDV-DVD player from JVC you can't play it as is from anything but another camera or a deck. The film I am working on in HDV we are going to do color correction in after effects and once that is done we will export it (probably in uncompressed, I dont think AE p1.5 can handle a good quality HD codec.) after the raw export it will go into avid for telecine and render to a printable tape format. So it will probably be put to the DNxHD codec and put on an external Hard Drive. That gets shipped out and dupped to those expensive HDCAM-SR tapes for film festival distrabution. Seriously any editor worth his weight should be able to do the telecine no problem. Its not a technical thing, or an artistic thing, its clicking one button when you go to render. I cant believe people will send it to a post house thinking they are going to do anymore than make the interlaced frames and pitch-shift the audio. Save your money for a varicam or cinealta instead.

with the same camera I got great shots in a small room with two tota lights. I put them about 1-2 feet from the roof. (watch those pesky sprinkler heads.) Then take about 4 feet of 48"wide blackwrap and make skirts and pin them with push pins so the light doesnt spill onto the walls (you want the skirt about 100-180 degrees around the light). The light is soft as can be (I was working comedy, so that was good.) and just by general position you can adequetly adjust ratios if you want.

Its just the administration (from what I can tell) Americans are put in a position when Cheney says your for wire taps or your for terrorism. Its ludicris, but in the emotional state people are in, I can see a lot of people not caring about taps and mail, because they arent terrorist. Eventually it will cause a problem, but for now its mostly a topic people dont like to debate. Thank god there are senetors pushing for independant investigation (even prominent republicans, so you know they will eventually have them) scandal just takes longer in America when it concerns the president. Cheney says he is for expanding presidential powers to near-dictator level. Obviously a court will have to step in and limit them at some point. In the end in 2008 a democrat will be elected and most of the changes we have seen over the last 8 years will be rolled back. Its bad now, but things will get better. Hopefully in the future we will not elect such a poorly qualified person as president. Forget credentials and school and intelect, the guy was a coke-fiend, drug addict, alcoholic short tempered individual. Mix that with a born again christian attitude, which when the appiphany to be reborn comes out of drug and alcohol addiction, and an altamatum from your wife to clean up or get out, and you get a person who quickly follows ideals and hypotheticals, and never really seeks to address problems with understanding of the actuallities. anyway 2 years

ok, my ears are peaked. what new features? (which new features that actually matter i mean) Hahaha. When I was 16 I had a cracked version of Avid DV Xpress 3.5 and by the time I was 17 I had a paid version (please dont sue avid, I just wanted to learn). Funny thing is my editting was just about equal to my premiere editting. funny. I am currently cutting a feature movie and the director insists on using Pinnicle of all things. I am pleading with him to use Avid, because after the rough cut I have to go back and do audio correction, color correction, and export it to a standard format so a post house can put the HDV onto HDCAM for playback (I dont want to push it to HDV tape and have them recompress it, I want to do the compress work before I send it out) He has 7 years on pinnicle and its hard for him to get out of that habbit. In the end I convinced him to cut 4 more scenes in premiere, otherwise I have to hand conform the whole movie from pinnicle.

I like the new premiere pro. I feel more at home on it. And yes I do have an Avid background, but started on premiere. I think the 1.5 gives you all the same user goodies (a few missing, but I'm getting used to the new workflow quickly) but this edition also has many professional features availible. The waveform/vectroscope options are awsome, they really help with the color correction. Which by the way they did a great job of improving. Much closer to After Effects. In the end editting relys on 2 things. Software package and codec. If your cutting DV codec is set (and their HDV codec is better than pinnicle, which I suspect avid uses in their newest offering) but software doesnt affect the image quality very much (not as much as codec selection will) so the question is which piece of software is easier for you to use. Thats it. I have cut Avid, Premiere, FCP and pinnicle and hands down for the price I would choose Premiere. Now if funds were unlimited I would go with Avid, but partly because the avid interface gives clients a nice warm feeling when they wonder where their money went.

I was wondering what the difference in look was between kodak and fuji film. I have heard that fuji favors greens and blues and kodak favors yellows and oranges. Any truth to this, or is color reproduction basicly the same. Are there any differences in gama or grain? Also are there any major US films that have been shot on fuji in the last 5 years that I can watch and judge for myself? (David, I know you know the answer to that one. and if you dont, I'm sure your wife knows. the two of you are like IMDB.com on steriods.) Oh, and a quick one, is fuji any cheaper to shoot on in the US?

Use a program designed for DV. DV uses compression and has limited chroma sampling, so software must take this into account when pulling the key. I have heard great things about DV garage. Key software designed for HDcam footage will not work as well as something whos creators were thinking DV when writting the code.

40% is best. for all situations. (I will hear no naysayers) haha jk. 40% has always been my favorite for dramatic slowmo but there is room to play. I would do the video thing. I started my career editting snowboarding videos, so I have found I have a good grasp of how slow is slow, but it takes experience. I cant give you a number and tell you thats the way you should go, but test things out. premiere and some motion clips are all you will need. Premiere registers in percent of original speed, so do some math to figure out the frame rate (ie 1 / 0.40 (%) = 2.5 (slowmo factor) x 24(normal framerate) = 60 frames/sec =40%) but like David said its very subjective so test until you find that sweetspot that sells it for you.

I feel like im in the carabean. good lighting. One thing I try to avoid when shooting so warm is white walls. It really highlights the color of the light, if it were a dark warm color it would blend in nicely. overall nice look.

Sounds like this is your first time shooting anything other than consumer grade camcorders? Read a lot before you shoot the first spool. read some more. get kris malkiewicz' CINEMATOGRAPHY. very technical, lots of good information. Dont just thumb through it like a novel, you must try to understand a lot of foriegn concepts, so pay attention and think about how to apply that information. Read these forums. I recomend the 'in production' section. There you can read reports about how other people attack their job. Anything by David Mullen is good. The first time you load your camera, dont worry about doing it in the dark. Take 50ft of stock (if it has to be cut from a larger stock, do this part in the dark) and practice loading it in the light. Once that becomes natural close your eyes and repeat until you can do it easily, you will loose that practice stock, but it will end up saving more than the price of that 50 feet. After enough practice, try it in the dark with stock you plan on shooting. Get some cheap lights for your first projects. If you dont have money for lowell totas or omnis (about 300 each with stand, barn doors and umbrella reflector) then get some aluminum bell reflectors at home depot. They have a clamp on one side and take normal household lights. Also get some halogens while at home depot. I think they are like 30 bucks each, put out 500w of light on each of the two heads and comes on a stand. Bounce these off walls and foamcore to reduce harsh shadows these put off. And dont stop reading. You can get results from the first roll (with luck) but professional results takes time and a lot of reading. Art will take longer to develop, and will take lifelong dedication (if this is a career or hobby you plan to pursue) Oh by the way. Read more. Complete understanding the physics of the camera, of film stock, and of lights will make it easier for you to control the image, and shape it to your vision. Watch as many movies as you can and watch closely to how it is shot. Note what you like and dont like.

Why do people think the digital gain is for anything other than to add another notch to the feature list? Its worthless for anything other than ENG use, when news happens, and light is lacking. Its incomprehensible that people actually use this feature. I want to see the footage though. I will keep an open mind, im a proponent of digital aquisition (not a big proponent of spelling properly) I am sort of turned off of this whole 'TV regurgitated on film' idea (starsky and hutch, dukes, charlies angels, etc, all were lame.) If box office is down, shouldnt we come up with original ideas?

Its actually very nice in the summer (May-Sept) it stays around 70-80 degrees. Doesnt dip below 60, doesnt get hotter than 85. Most places are totally free from snow, including all visible mountains in anchorage. Of course we do have boarderline camp, a snowboarding camp in Girdwood (20mins from anch) and about midway up the mountain there will be snow most of the year. The camp is in Aug! Your actors can wear anything (70 feels much warmer for some reason in AK than in CA) and no, you wont be seeing any breath in the summer months. Whoever made the comment that you cant replicate the quality of light in the winter said it right. Now adays we get light (enough to shoot with) from 10a-4p (its 4:30 and a bit to dark to shoot, though day for night would work) In the winter it stays around 10-20 degrees. (extreme lows touch -10, but dont last) We also get long periods of time when the sun is just after sunset where the sky is litterally on fire. I have never seen colors like them anywhere. Another advantage is break up, its warm enough to wear shorts and bikinis and whatever you need your charecter in, but the snow is the ugliest dirtiest thing ever. Everything is brown and looks like the whole world is rotting (this lasts 2-3weeks) Not your typical idea of beauty, but for scenes that need that grit and ugly, its definatley attractive-ugly. The daylight studio is a great idea. I just dont know much about them, could someone give me some info on them? I assume they have some kind of clear walls to let light in, but what about support structer? do those give off shadows? Are they soundproof? as for cali wimps, well in the summer most of our tourists are frail old people. These are the wimpiest of the wimps in terms of cold handling. Asside from a light wind jacket they do just fine. I should peice together a demoreel of AK beauty shots, combine that with a reporter track describing photographic advantage to shooting up here and see if I can get a list from maybe the ASC or an orginazation like that. I figure If I get this in the hands of respected DP's and Directors and make them fall for alaska, producers will pony up the cash to make their prize director happy. In the end this is totally selfish thing. I love alaska and dont want to leave. In a year I am going to move to california, try and establish a name over 10 or 20 years of hard work so I can move back to alaska and have people fly me down to shoot their films. (kind of roundabout, but I love film and alaska and I dont wanna choose between them) I think if any DP or director is into fishing, then the sale would be easy.

I made a cheap student film when I was 15 that included one gunshot in the peice. Just as David said (damn, this guy is smart. my idol.) I took 'The usual suspects' and took a few screenshots of the scene where they are storming the boat. I cliped a few muzzel shots from when McMannis (Steven Baldwin) is running around with the semi-auto. Choose a clip where the muzzel flash is against black. You can put this into after effects and do a luma map so it fethers off into your scene naturally. (much easier than anyother method.) One thing you want to think about is the flash. After my first experience with this techniqe, i tried it again, this time canobolizing some old kodak disposables. I took the zenon flash out, put it in the barrel and rigged the switch (which if charged those wire WILL give you a good zap if you touch them) to the trigger. when the actors pulled the trigger, it let a 1 frame flash go through the set, and the point source is where it should be. add the muzzle flash and its seamless

I am on a lifelong quest to bring filmmaking to Alaska. I have been shooting up here since I was 14 and I can tell you its a beautiful place. My question is weather any of you as DP's would argue to shoot up here, and if not what would keep you. Our cost of living is about 5-10% higher than california, so it would cost a bit more for certain things. Here is where I think alaska really shines (bad pun intended.) In the summer in anchorage we get aproxamatley 20-22 hours of daylight a day. Most of the midafternoon sun is low in the sky. It has all the color and intensity of a californian mid-afternoon, Its just low in the sky. Later on at night (around 7-8pm) we get into 'magic hour' type sun. this last about 4 hours then goes to a dusk (perfect for day for night) and lasts another 4 hours then goes back to dawn magic hour. I am thinking if you were to shoot all exteriors in anchorage and stage the rest in cali, would the light save you on renting light? Would the extra magic hour time add attraction to shooting up here by reducing days? What do yall think. I want to talk to the mayor and get him to start a serious film location marketing campaign (big oil windfall, its great for our gas to go from 20/barrel to 60/barrel) I would love to see serious films and a serious film community start up here.

Get the 'gone in 60 seconds' DVD. In the behind the scenes feature they show a PA doing just that. Chinese lantern on a boom. It was about 4ft forward of the actor and at least 10ft overhead. (the farther you place the lantern, the more leway you have in its placement reletive to the actor, what I mean is that the farther it is the less noticable light movement is. a 2 ft. drop from 10ft. will not raise levels on the face as much as if it started 3ft over his head and droped to 1ft. I have done this before as well. Its a pain in the ass to actually do, (heavy lights on long poles, plus lot of cord to be pulled) so make sure you have a few extra people to work just that light.

I would not use the HDV. I looked into shooting a doc with a mini-35, but in my tests with HDV I found that while it is HD and it is very very beautiful, its still a $5,000 camera. With a budget of 400k I would not trust a $5k camera. Have you looked at Grass Valley Infinity? That is a camera you can own. they are about 20k and record to rev pro disks (45mins, 35GB, $75 each) get a few disks and carry lots of firewire drives with you so you can offload the footage without buying costly rev media. The varicams are quite beautiful as well. along with the cinealtas from sony. Basicly if you get a 50k-100k package, you are going to get your moneys worth. But consider other factors. Post production requirements? With varicam or cinealta you need a costly HD deck to playback. with the Grass Valley rev-disk readers are about 300 bucks. keep that in mind. as for owning versus renting, that all depends on a few things. First choose a camera that you want to shoot with. Find the best rate you can rent it at (varicams go for about 1000 a day, you can probably get it for under 2000 a week with as long as you will need it.) Also factor in rental insurance. This can get quite costly and price depends on the underwriter and the logistics of the shoot. If this total for rental totals more than 75% of the purchase price, I would outright buy it. Just keep in mind buying a camera doesnt make it free. Just like a car it needs to be serviced, and if your doing big dollar docs you will need your cam running top notch every day of the year, so add at least 200-500 in regular service. (this figure can grow if something major were to break, that just represents general maintenence.)

Exactly. I have one of those pro-600 line veiwfinders on my beta and still have a hard time focusing without the zoom. Backfocus is the key. If you dont keep your lenses in backfocus what good are you as a photographer? Its like a musician playing an instrument out of tune. Backfocus your lens 1 a week and after any major incident (getting bumped, being shipped, carry on on a plane etc) it takes 2 seconds. I dont buy the argument that this was shot on a prosumer camera. Look how far away he is from that backdrop. maybe 4' probably less. With the 1/3" imagers there is one safe thing about focus...if the focus is set too far it will go out of focus easily, but if the focus is near it takes quite a lot of distance for something the be soft. And at the distances the interview was shot (aprox 6' from camera to subj. 4' from sub to background) you would be hard pressed to put something like that out of focus that much. I would guess its a 2/3" chip either with backfocus completely off, or the operator in a rush to save time (and probably used to SD) zoomed and focused either on the backdrop or on the empty chair back before the director arrived for the interview. not realizing that the difference between seatback and eye would be almost 2-3 feet difference (2 feet lower, 1 1/2 feet back). Either way, whoever said that we should forgive this guy.....I had to shoot an interview in my first 2 months doing professional shooting. In the winter in alaska in a bus depot. My viewfinder fogged up and I zoomed in 3 times during the interview because my focus looked off. It wasnt as bad as this one, but I can tell you it wasnt fun explaining why the interview was soft, even though it was the backfocus. In this biz there are no excuses and nobody should be forgiven for mistakes. we all make them, but we should be ultra-detail oriented and hold eachother to the highest standards.(after all, I didnt get into this feild to be a second rate-DP, we should all strive to be the Roger Dekins of the group.)

I would recomend the HD first and then add to your package. That lens for a beginner is key. Its litterally the difference between learning to be a good DP and a being a good wedding photog. (maybe not quite that much, but the improvement of operation is quite significant and very important) If you have any question of how good it looks compared to DV, look at my post in the 'in production' set. Under 'Bee-Keepers, and Alaskan comedy' I have a few screenshots at full resolution (though heavily JPEG compressed) which will give you an idea of the resolution (imagine regular DV to be about 1/6 the resolution) While you can buy the DVX-100 (and dont let me stop you, I shot a movie on it and it looked beautiful) It probably isnt the best camera to learn on. Having a manual Iris, manual focus and servo zoom, is key to the learning proccess. The SSE as its called, or Split Screen Effect refered to earlier doesnt seem to be a huge problem, in my limited experience with the camera. I am told it happens when the internal setup registers a shift in dynamic range, affecting half the screen as 2% brighter. Gain up would highlight this problem, but doesnt cause it from what I know. I have heard that just re-whiteballancing the camera is enough to fix it. Either way watch for it and correct where you see it (I have yet to see it) Now for the complete package, yes you do need a full set, but dont let it limit camera selection. You probably will only buy one camera every 5-6 years. You are already at the lowest price point availible for cameras that deliver anywhere near proffessional level, so you cant cut price on the cam. Since it sounds like you just want to learn and do free projects with friends on weekends, you are in no rush to get the whole package. Buy the camera, then a month or two later buy a 501 tripod for around 400, a month later buy a shotgun and a boompole on ebay for 200-300 (used senhiezer ME-66 or ME-88 are my favorites) and keep adding as you find what you need. Also I would not recomend the ZU1 (sony HDV) I am shooting a feature on it now and find it too compressed. apparently its a non-square resolution. I think the chips maybe close to full HD (1080x1920) but the actual compressed res is 1080x1440. at 60 feilds a second that is a lot of info. Compared to the HD-100 which shoots full HD (720p) at 720x1280 at a true 24p is about half the compression (they both compress to 19.2 Mbs) Theye do not need to be 1080i and their image quality suffers. The DVX-100B and the HD-100U are probably your best bets. I would recomend the HD just for the lens. (although the resolution is BEAUTIFUL on an HD monitor) Definatley go with the HD if you imagine film festivals or anything requiring a screen of greater than 42" ***EDIT*** I have been rushed on my last two posts to address editing, one of your questions. I edit on a newer Dell computer (about 1 year old) it has been upgraded to 2bg ram, though 1 gb was just fine. I think its around a 2.8, 3 ghz pentium 4 (single core) so it isnt the fastest of the bunch but its good. Get adobe premiere 1.5 student (your learning right?) make sure and apply the internet patch and you get full resolution native HDV editing. Compared to the premiere 4.2 system I had when I was 14 (1998) this system is much quicker, even with the added computation time HDV adds. I can scrub (a feature I wasnt sure HDV would give me) and renders are reasonable and only needed for transitions and such. If your computer cant handle the HDV just yet, switch the camera to DV mode and shoot with that until you can handle the HDV.