We decided to take a short break from all of our Anaheim and DCC video footage and just post some video eye candy of trains running through some delightful scenery.

It's a lot less technical - we think it's nice now and then to just sit back and enjoy watching trains!

We hope you like it.

Charlie, your video and modeling are outstanding!

I see at least a dozen potential articles here.  First of which is how does one produce such a video.

I do have one question.  While the prototype pictures show the Alcos with long-hood forward, your handsome models show the opposite.  What's up?

An excellent video.

You need a great layout, the good video equipment and the knowledge. You have all!

I wish I could do this too.

Wolfgang

Great video and modeling.

What?  All that work and no special effects for the smoke or exhaust?!  ;P

I really like the up angle shot on the approach to tunnel 3.

-

S

Nice video, especially the shots from the moving engine and the Doppler effect on the runbys. Using just a couple viewpoints makes it feel like a railfan production.

Thanks everyone for your encouragement!

Mark,

Prototype pictures? There aren't any in this video. The sepias are still shots of the Bear Creek that I stuck under the text to add a little extra interest (pure text being a bit boring).

As to the long hood/short hood issue it's really quite simiple: After the engines came back from the paint shop the DCC decoders were programmed backward. Since these two engines are intended to always run as a pair (two Kato RS2s == the ability to pull all but the longest trains up that 2.8% grade) I didn't want the 'inner' headlights of the pair to be lit. So I did some special directional programming so only the 'fwd' direction headlight would be lit on each unit (when F0 is active). In reverse (for that unit) the headlight is supposed to be off.

As I was shooting the videos I noticed that the 'on' headlight was on the short hood! But I was so caught up with video production that I didn't want to go fight with decoder pro to get these engines reprogrammed. So I just swapped ends and ran them short hood foward for this video. Sigh, I guess I should have done the reprogramming thing instead.

Wolfgang,

The equipment is fairly simple. I have Panasonic PV GS-250 cam-corder (3 ccd but std def) which I used for most shots. This camera has enough manual controls to set focus and exposure. The train-cam is my wife's Canon SD400 ultra compact point and shoot using its 640x480 movie mode (I sat the camera on a flat car). Editing was done with Sony Vegas. Most of the edit features I used would be present in a program such as Adobe Premeire. Vegas may have some better quality rendering engines than the entry level programs (but it might not). One other thing - video needs LOTS of light. Those dual T8 fluorescent fixtures in the ceiling aren't really bright enough. I brought my twin head halogen work light down from the garage and used that  to punch up the lighting. Mixing the 3000K of the halogen and the 4100K of the fluorescents was a concern but some how the cameras seem to have handled it decently (though not perfectly). I did do some color balance adjustments in Vegas for the train-cam shots as they were a bit on the red/yellow side.

I've seen a number of your video efforts Wolfgang and they've been some of my inspiration for doing video (along with Joe Fugate and even Allen Keller). Video is a dangerous thing in the train room - easy to get so caught up with it that very little gets done on the layout!

Joe Fugate did the post production, adding the MRH sequences and the background music and doing the final rendering (thanks Joe!).

Regards,

Charlie

Charlie,

yes, video is a time consuming hobby. As well as photography. And a day has only 24 hours, plus night.

But it's not only enough to own the equipment, you have to know how to use it! And you know it.

Long hood - Short hood

BTW, there were a few railroads with short hood front! I like it.

 Wolfgang

Charlie said "Prototype pictures? There aren't any in this video. The sepias are still shots of the Bear Creek that I stuck under the text to add a little extra interest (pure text being a bit boring)."

Those pictures fooled me!

Mark

Very well done Charlie.  I agree completely with video being very addictive.  I started taking video of the large-scale live steam meets I was involved; pretty soon, I was doing video more often than I was running my equipment.

Check out stationstudios on YouTube for some examples.  Again, I used very basic equipment including a Canon SD750 camera and a Sony camcorder that's at least 6 years old.  I've been using Pinnacle  Studio for video editing.

Once again, well done.

Take care,

Barry