It isn't going to win any focus contest that is for sure. Why Panasonic has to be the only dumb bastards that hate Phase Detection is beyond me. Well Canon, but at least DPAF actually works really well.
I have noticed that there seems to be a world of subtle timing with editing and the edit points themselves.
All edits have a rhythm and pace of their own, music or no music. Try clapping your hands to an edit, any edit, and you may be able to "find" that pace.
So, edit points can happen on the beat, slightly before/after it, deliberately off the beat (either on the off-beat or intentionally nowhere near any beat and therefore unexpected). When there is music then there is a time signature involved and there will be bars, where the first beat in that bar is more important than the other beats and may be emphasised. So then you can have edits aligned to the first beat in a bar, or the third beat in a bar, etc.
So much variation.... but it's hard to really "see" them, because our hearing is much more time sensitive than our vision.
Here's a super niche trick to 'hear' the edits in Resolve.
start with an edit with separate clips. use the Scene Cut Detect if you need to
get a sound file with a short sound and put it in a bin on its own (a short beep sound is good)
duplicate the audio part of all the clips in your edit to another track
highlight them all and disable the Conform Lock Enabled option on them (and ensure it's on for all other clips)
right-click on your timeline and select Timelines -> Reconform from Bins
on the Conform Bins, unselect all bins except the one with your beep sound in it
in the Conform Options, select only Codec (that's the only setting I found that works)
hit ok
every clip that you disabled the Conform Lock on in your timeline should now be your beep sound, and if you've trimmed it right then you will now have a track that beeps every time there's an edit point
adjust volume on the track to be something sensible
watch your footage and be able to 'hear' the edits
Let me know if you actually do this and what you find. I'm currently looking at Mustafa Bhagats work on Parts Unknown and he has a fantastic sense of rhythm and timing (being a musician in addition to an editor probably helps with this) so I'm hoping to learn from these.
I think the GH6 is a camera too late. Most people have moved on from M4/3. I guess if you are big into Anamorphic I can see buying it but ProRes and Raw, all of that is already in a lot of FF stuff now.
And hardly anyone uses big long lenses for video work. Mostly wide angle stuff. So that is off the table.
As I gradually get more serious about learning the art of editing, I've discovered it's a very under-represented topic on social media. There are definitely some good resources, but compared to cinematography or colour grading, it's much more difficult to find resources, especially if your interest isn't purely narrative film-making.
A good strategy is to search for editors by name, as often the good stuff is just called "<name> presents at <event>" and no mention of editing or even film at all. However, you can search for editor after editor and find nothing useful at all.
As such, I've now started analysing other people's edits directly, hoping to glean interesting things from their work.
My process is this.
Step 1: Download the video in a format that Resolve can read
I use 4K Video Downloader for Mac, but there's tonnes of options. You're probably violating terms of service by doing this, so beware.
Step 2: Use the Scene Cut Detection feature in Resolve
Resolve has this amazing function that not many people know about. It analyses the video frame-by-frame and tries to guess where the cut points are by how visually different one frame is from the previous one. It's designed for colourists to be able to chop up shots when given a single file with the shots all back-to-back.
This isn't a tutorial on how to use it (the manual is excellent for this) but even this tool shows useful things.
Once it has analysed the video, it gives you the window to review and edit the cut points. Here's a window showing a travel video from Matteo Bertoli:
What we can see here is that the video has very clear cuts (the taller the line the more change between frames) and they occur at very regular intervals (he's editing to the music), but that there are periods where the timing is different.
Let's contrast that with the trailer for Mindhunter:
We can see that there's more variation in pacing, and more gradual transitions between faster and slower cutting. Also, there are these bursts, which indicate fading in and out, which is used throughout the trailer. These require some work to clean up before importing the shots to the project.
Lastly, this is the RED Komodo promo video with Jason Momoa and the bikers:
There are obviously a lot of clean edits, but the bursts in this case are shots with lots of movement, as this trailer has some action-filled and dynamic camera work.
I find this tool very useful to see pace and timing and overall structure of a video. I haven't used it yet on things longer than 10 minutes, so not sure how it would go in those instances, but you can zoom in and scroll in this view, so presumably you could find a useful scale and scroll through, seeing what you see.
This tool creates a list of shots, and gives a magic button...
Then you get the individual shots in your media pool.
Step 3: "Recreation" of the timeline
From there you can pull those shots into the timeline, which looks like this:
However, this wouldn't have been how they would have edited it, and for educational purposes we can do better.
I like to start by manually chopping up the audio independently from the video (the Scene Cut Detection tool is visual-only after all). For this you would pull in sections of music, maybe sections of interviews, speeches, or ambient soundscapes as individual clips. If there are speeches overlapping with music then you could duplicate these, with one track showing the music and another showing the speeches.
Remember, this timeline doesn't have to play perfectly, it's for studying the edit they made by trying to replicate the relevant details.
This travel video had one music track and no foley, so I'd just represent it like this:
I've expanded the height of the audio track as with this type of music-driven edit, the swells of the music are a significant structural component to the edit.
It's immediately obvious, even in such a basic deconstruction, that the pace of editing changes each time the music picks up in intensity, that once it's at its highest the pace of editing stays relatively stable and regular, and then at the end the pace gradually slows down. Even just visually we can see the structure of the story and journey that the video takes through its edit.
But, we can do more. Wouldn't it be great to be able to see where certain techniques were used? Framing, subject matter, scenes, etc etc?
We can represent these visually, through layers and colour coding and other techniques.
Here is my breakdown of another Matteo video:
Here's what I've done:
V6 are the "hero" shots of the edit. Shots in orange are where either Matteo or his wife (the heroes of the travel video) are the subject of the video, and pink are close-ups of them
V5 is where either Matteo or his wife are in the shot, but it doesn't feature them so prominently. IIRC these examples are closeup shots of Matteo's wife holding her phone, or one of them featured non-prominently in the frame, perhaps not even facing camera
V4 and below do not feature our heroes...
V4 either features random people (it's a travel video so people are an important subject) prominently enough to distinguish individuals, or features very significant inanimate objects
V3 features people at a significant enough distance to not really notice individuals, or interesting inanimate objects (buildings etc)
V2 are super-wide shots with no details of people (wides of the city skyline, water reflections on a river, etc)
V1 is where I've put in dummy clips to categorise "scenes", and in this case Green is travel sections shot in transport or of transport, and Blue is shots at a location
V2-V6 are my current working theory of how to edit a travel film, and represents a sort of ranking where closeups of your heroes are the most interesting and anonymous b-roll is the least interesting. You should adapt this to be whatever you're interested in. You could categorise shots based on composition, which characters are in the shot, which lens was used, if there was movement in the shot, if there was dialogue from the person in-shot or dialog from the person not-in-shot or no dialog at all, etc etc. Remember you can sort between tracks, you can colour code, and probably other things I haven't yet tried. NLEs have lots of visual features so go nuts.
Step 4: Understand what the editor has done
Really this depends on what you're interested in learning, but I recommend the following approach:
Make a list of questions or themes to pay attention to
Focus on just one question / theme and review the whole timeline just looking at this one consideration
I find that it's easy to review an edit and every time you look at the start you notice one thing (eg, pacing), and then in the next section you notice another (eg, compositions), and then at the end you notice a third (eg, camera movement). The problem with this is that every time you review the video you're only going to think of those things at those times, which means that although you've seen the pacing at the start you're not going to be noticing the compositions and camera movement at the start, or other factors at other times. This is why focusing on one question or one theme at a time is so powerful, it forces you to notice things that aren't the most obvious.
Step 5: Look for patterns
We have all likely read about how in many films different characters have different music - their "theme". Star Wars is the classic one, of course, with Darth Vaders theme being iconic. This is just using a certain song for a certain character. There are an almost infinite number of other potential relationships that an editor could be paying attention to, but because we can't just ask them, we have to try and notice them for ourselves.
Does the editor tend to use a certain pacing for a certain subject? Colour grade for locations (almost definitely, but study them and see what you can learn)? Combinations of shots?
What about the edit points themselves? If it's a narrative, does the editor cut some characters off, cutting to another shot while they're still talking, or immediately after they've stopped speaking, rather than lingering on them for longer? Do certain characters get a lot of J cuts? Do certain characters get more than their fair share of reaction shots (typically the main characters would as we care more about what main characters think than what secondary characters feel while they're talking).
On certain pivotal scenes or moments, watch the footage back very slowly and see what you can see. Even stepping through frame-by-frame can be revealing and potentially illuminate invisible cuts or other small tweaks. Changing the timing of an edit point by even a single frame can make a non-trivial aesthetic difference.
Step 6: Optional - Change the edit
Change the timing of edits and see what happens. In Resolve the Scene Cut Detection doesn't include any extra frames, so you can't slide edit points the way you normally would be able to when working with the real source footage, but if you pull in the whole video into a track underneath the individual clips you can sometimes rearrange clips to leave gaps and they're not that noticeable. This obviously won't create a publishable re-edit, but for the purposes of learning about the edit it can be useful. You can change the order of the existing clips, you can shorten clips and change the timing, etc. You could even re-mix the whole edit if you wanted to, working within the context of a severely limited set of "source footage" of course, but considering that the purpose of this is to learn and understand, it's worth considering.
Final thoughts
Is this a lot of work? Yes. But learning anything is hard work - the brain is lazy that way. Also, this might be the only way to learn certain things about certain editors, as it seems that editors are much less public people than other roles in film-making.
One experiment I tried was instead of taking the time to chop up and categorise a film, I just watched it on repeat for the same amount of time. I watched a 3.5 minute travel film on repeat for about 45 minutes - something like a dozen times. I started watching it just taking it in and paying attention to what I noticed, then I started paying attention to how I felt in response to each shot, then to the timing of the shots (I clapped along to the music paying attention to the timing of edits - I was literally repeating out loud "cut - two - three - four"), I paid attention to the composition, to the subject, etc etc.. But, I realised that by the time I had watched a minute of footage I'd sort-of forgotten what happened 30 shots ago, so getting the big-picture wasn't so easy, and when I chopped that film up, although I'd noticed some things, there were other things that stood out almost immediately that I hadn't noticed the dozen times I watched it, despite really paying attention.
Hopefully this is useful.
After having tried this exiting lens and having tested three of them, I am impressed. First lens has a faulty aperture, which does not close when mounted to the camera. Second one has two deep scratches. Number three is almost like new. What a marvel to hold and operate. No 1 and 3 have great center sharpness wide open throughout the zoom range. The one with the scratches is sharp at 2.8 but has a glow and is uber hard to get things in focus with when wide open.
Thanks to @Rinad Amir
who pointed this lens out to us on this forum among the Zeiss 40-120 2.8 if i remember correctly.
Anyway, even though this lens is impressive and a of 35 to 100mm range at 2.8 is a treat, this lens is not without challenges or should I say even moreso. Its varifocal construction means the focus marks are changing through the focussing range. One of my three lenses also has focal lengths changing when lens pointed 90 degrees up or down.
@BTM_Pix I have to repeat and cite myself. So here i go:) "Great to see some love for the 135mm focal length. Beautiful shots. Would love to see a video of that. What codec and resolution did you choose?"😊
It's Canada in late November. I'm not sure what you're expecting from that shot... I suppose he could've made it look unrealistic?
I'd be more critical of his shot choice than his grading of Alberta when everything is gray and muted.
Sensor is based on IMX610 from α1, but with 16 SLVS-EC 4.6Gbps lanes, intead of 8. The sensor itself cosumes over 5W power.
There's no DRAM. ADC operates at 14bit at 1/250s readout at all times (meaning 4ms rolling shutter in all recording modes).
Later paid firmware updates may unlock 8.6K 3:2 open gate up to 72fps, 8.6K 2.39:1 up to 120fps.
DJI is still pushing the boundaries but is beginning to take the piss with its pricing. How come its 'upgraded' smart controller has gone from US$650 to US$1100?
But my biggest beef (and quite frankly it isnt just DJI) is the 'this drone has a bunch of fantastic features but you will have to wait for a firmware update in January for them to work.'
It really is a huge 'pass' to claim a product does this or that when some future update arrives. And to be honest it makes a total mockery of all the youtube reviews if instead of reviewing a product they are actually reviewing what DJI envisions the product will become at some future date.
'These problems will be sorted out in a future firmware update' should read 'this product was not ready for release'....
DJI Mavic 3 Prices
Chinese prices were leaked via OsitaLV today
¥13,888 for Mavic 3
¥17,688 for fly-more combo
¥32,888 for Mavic 3 Cine
At 6.41 Yuan to the dollar, the rough US equivalents are:
$2299USD for Mavic 3
$2799USD for fly-more combo
$5199USD for Mavic 3 Cine
All video spec leaked in full:
https://winfuture.de/news,126006.html
20MP 4/3" 24mm f/2.8 main camera
12MP 1/2" 160mm f/4.4 telephoto camera
5280x3956 stills resolution
5120x2880 up to 50P
4K up to 120P
1080 up to 200P
4K up to 30P on telephoto camera
HEVC codec bitrate up to 200Mbps
ProRes HQ support on the Cine model on main camera
These guys pretend they don't get "paid" by Sony. But they get all the gear they want from them, newly released gear to review, lenses to test/sample, in exchange for positive reviews. They might not be told to write a positive review, but good luck getting more gear if you trash them.
Sony knows who to send gear to, because they know these youtubers are desperate to continue to receive gear to review.
Sony gear videos get higher views on youtube so its the brand they want to continue to pimp.
So yes they might not be "paid" by sony, but by getting all this gear to test and review from sony for free, it saves the reviewers thousands of dollars. Youtubers are the new age used car salesman.
Rinad Amir got a reaction from webrunner5 in Former GH5 videographers, what did you upgrade to afterwards?
Rinad Amir got a reaction from Vision in internal zoom lens option for full frame sony E?
Rinad Amir got a reaction from PannySVHS in The end of EOSHD