A video tour is a full motion video of a real estate property. The objective is to show the property as true and life-like as possible. A professionally produced video tour is as if you were walking through a location. Using a video camera and a stabilizer, the location is filmed while moving from room to room or around the outside of the property. Video tours **film the continuous movement usually done at a normal walking speed.
**We use the word film when the actual process is digital imaging. Cameras now use a digital sensor and the picture data is written to a solid state memory device.
Video on the internet has become a leading medium for website visitors to interact with. As mentioned before video cameras are used to pan and walk-through for sale homes or rental properties. What viewers like about this method is that the point of view is constantly changing throughout a pan or tilts.
The same experience is achieved as though the viewer actually walked through the property. Also the fact that a video tour is guided allows the viewer to see the flow of the property.
Capturing high-quality video and then editing it in post production requires significantly more computer and software skill and equipment than taking just digital still pictures. Editing HD digital video requires advanced skills with video editing software and computer hardware is more complex. Properly preparing video for efficient display over the internet requires knowledge of compression software. Narration and music have to be done in post production also, which means the person has to have some basic sound mixing skills. So because of these complexities, the task of creating video tours is primarily left to professional video tour production companies.
The key two components of the actual video tour shoot are the camera and the stabilizing device for the camera. The most popular cameras in use today DSLRs (Digital Single Lens Reflex), which is effectively your standard camera with a digital sensor instead of film, plus the ability to shoot frames continuously, which is really video or movie.
The most common camera used for professional commercial video tours for real estate properties is the Canon Rebel T2i (T3i, T4i) family of cameras.
One very pouplar stabilizing device is the smaller versions of the Steadicam units. Steadicam is a name brand of camera stabilizing device for motion picture/DSLR cameras, the device mechanically isolates the camera from the operator's movement and automatically levels the camera. It provides a smooth shot, even when moving quickly over an uneven surface or walking over stairs. Steadicam is registered trademark of Tiffen.
As we now know the first step is to acquire a DSLR camera and stabilizing device.
