Anaconda_

I've recently been wondering what the GH5 has over the BMPC 4k.

Now that it's a few years old and has been discontinued for a while, you can get fantastic deals on the BMPC, even fully kitted out with SSD included, and a whole rig, for quite a lot less than a GH5, yet the GH5 seems to be a favourite here and almost everywhere. As far as I can see, the only advantage of a GH5 is 4k50p output and a rotating screen... Am I missing something?

Is it simply that the BMPC is old news, and all the excitement is on page 400 of this forum, while the GH5 is still new and dominating the front pages? From what I've seen, even now, I'd sooner by the BMPC 4K over GH5, but fear I might be missing something somewhere. Please enlighten me!

2 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

Yeah I THINK only the Blackmagic Video Assist versions will give you a .mxf wrapper. Never used one, but the specs say it might do it. It is Avid friendly. Yeah MOV. will be quicker because of less data usage. So yes you can get your wrapper. BM makes some damn nice stuff for a damn nice price. I Need to support them more often. We all do.

we have the 4K Video Assist as our inhouse recorder, which I guess is why I assumed the Assassin would create those .mxfs. I have an Assassin that's my own, and I use more because I have more experience with it. I can use the Video Assist when I need to, but prefer the Atomos if it's there with me. I don't think it's worth getting the BM just for .mxf, but if they introduce 4K50p - that'll be worth the upgrade for other projects.

@Mmmbeats - I guess you're right, it just doesn't seem to have any benefits to the workflow right now. Can't hurt to stick with it though I suppose.

After shooting some tests, I found shooting DNxHD on the Assassin gives me .MOV files anyway, so I might as well stick with ProRes and encode to our .mxf format. At least that way I can review them in quick look on my laptop after a shoot. Thanks for the advice @webrunner5

11 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Plus if a person can afford it, and that is a BIG if LoL, Avid is the way to go for Broadcast and Movie content. It's the standard of both industry's. Way out of my affordability. 

Oh man, tell me about it, I'd much rather be on Avid, but like you said, affordability to having running on 50+ suits. 

Then you also need to train those editors on it since most of them at my place have come from an FCP (not X) background. Premiere is basically the same, but Avid is a different kind of animal.

We shoot tonnes. But it's also for broadcast where 1080i is the standard and we try to get the correct colour in camera, so don't need much more than what LT provides. 

We're cutting in Premiere, so the projects need to be able to be opened on both Windows and Mac. .mxf is to get away from quicktime I guess.

Hey all,

At work, we recently added a whole load of Windows edit suits and in order to have files play nicely on both Windows and Apple we're switching from shooting everything in ProRes to DNxHR where possible. Otherwise encoding is ok, but time consuming. 

I shoot with an Atomos Assassin and realised when switching that I'm totally unfamiliar with the codec. I almost always shoot 4K internal for archive, and ProRes LT 1080i on the Assassin for a quick turn around. What's the closest alternative? Ideally ending up with something in an .mxf wrapper.

My options for 1080i are: DNxHR 220x, 220, 145, 36 - I'm assuming the 145 is the best option/match?

22 minutes ago, kye said:

What kind of setup would people use this in?  I thought that by the time you add an external recorder (and likely a cage of some kind to connect the camera and recorder) that the benefit of having an action camera was lost and you may as well have a larger camera.

Not criticising - I'm interested to hear how it would be used

Stick the camera on your head, have an HDMI cable running over your shoulder and into a bag on your back, monitor in the bag inside some kind of padded box to protect it? It might get a little warm I suppose, but it would work.

It also depends what you use an action camera for. If it's to film inside a car, then you can put the recorder in a number of places to keep it safe and out the way. If it's for surfing, then... don't do this.

No worries, glad it helps. and yes, having someone to organise all the material is indeed what makes everything work so well on these tight schedules. That's where having a voice over comes in handy. I, personally, don't like the voice over and would rather let the artists speak for themselves, but any information that can't be presented through the interviews can be slipped into the VO to push the story forward  

9 hours ago, Matthew Hartman said:

You follow a scripted format correct? Is it pretty much a template at this point?

How do you peronally handle drives full of footage that needs sorted? What's your process?

I've been using frame.io for some shorts. I love it. The director can make annotations right on a timeline, which imports right into Premiere as an extension too. 

It's kind of a template yeah, like the layout of the project is set, and I fill it in. So it's half an hour, split up into 4 to 5 minute segments which are different each week. As it's documentary, it's a lot of tying interviews together, making a coherent story about whatever the subject is for that item, and writing a voice over to fill in any gaps to get each story across within the 4 to 5 minutes. This is sometimes super easy, and others quite hard.

We have a local server with all of the footage in (http://axle.ai/), and there's a plugin for Premiere for direct import, working off the server. There's someone here who encodes all the footage into the same format, fills in metadata and renames everything to be easily found later down the line. We make around 10 shows that range in subject matter so each show has it's own code for the footage to be filed under. For example, mine is all about the music industry, and someone else makes one about film. My interviews won't very often be related to their show, so they can search their show code + interview and only get relevant results. or showcode + movie title for a whole list of material relating to the movie they're searching from interviews, to original behind the scenes footage, red carpet events and trailers. or we can refine the search to showcode + movie + actor name for example, to only get footage relating to the movie with that specific person is in.

Since I film, edit and write my show, I guess I'm technically the director too, so make my own notes haha. Once I've finished it to my standards it's sent to a guy in the next studio down who watches it looking for dodgy cuts and checking the audio levels to be extra safe. He then makes the final export which is sent out to our clients. If he finds any errors beyond a really simply fix it gets sent straight back to me with an angry note - so far I've had none haha!

Daym, I was close to buying the E1 last year, but decided against it, but if this is true (and the price is right) it could be a very fun little camera!

I film and edit a weekly 'docutainment' (I hate that word) show for TV broadcast that needs to finished every week on a Tuesday afternoon. It's then checked for any technical faults and sent on to broadcasters who - I assume - have an automated system to get it into their schedule and it hits the airwaves 2 days later for the end audience to enjoy. Since it's a very tight schedule with a hard deadline that simple can't be missed, I 'publish' every single Tuesday just before lunch. 

On top of that, I also live in a different country to my family and have 2 small kids, so I also make short videos of them learning and doing things to upload and share with family. I try to do at least two a month, but that's self imposed and don't put too much stress on it.

Then I also have a few personal projects that are closer to work than the family videos, mini docs and animations about random subjects that take my interest at the time. Those take a lot longer to finish, and publish as they're more time consuming than the family videos, and it's hard to find the time to do them. I treat them more as teaching myself a new skill or testing equipment and don't put any pressure on myself to finish them by a certain time. 

On 3/17/2018 at 11:08 AM, Axel said:

The majority sees very bad image quality. If you liked the film and want to see it a second time, go and buy an HDR DV TV. There are even bright mother-of-pearl / rainbow reflections in the sky and the water that you almost miss in SDR. It's a mystery and a shame that they did such a lousy job.

I disagree. I don't have an HDR TV, nor is it 4K, and while I wasn't watching for clipping and crushing, I did notice and marvel at those reflections. In fact, a lot of the time, I was watching that instead of the people wading through the water. Sure if you do have an HDR TV it'll be better, everything would be, but you definitely don't need one to enjoy those subtleties.

On 21/03/2018 at 2:21 AM, kye said:

In addition to the above, it's worth noting that the larger the wheel diameter the better they deal with any loose objects they have to run over.  ie, a bike can easily ride over a power cable but a skateboard would have issues.

bigger wheels aren't always better though.

That's nothing new though, and I'm sure many of you have seen this before: (wait for the how they did it shot)

I think for that kind of money, I'd sooner get the new Sigma 100-400 and not have to deal with converters etc. From what I've read, it's similar sharpness and quality to Canon's mkii, at a much lower price. After this assignment, if I feel I need to upgrade from whichever I get now, I'm fairly sure that's what I'll get

I also looked at the 120-400 you  posted, in fact that's how I discovered the 150-500. Somehow, the 500 is cheaper around these parts, and I'm going to test it on Monday, with the idea of buying it unless I become dissuaded in the meantime. (Also, the one you posted has scratched glass, and  I'm not diggin that. Haha.)

From the sounds of it though the Sigma beats the Tamron right?

Well, I can get that Sigma for £350, so that's the price to beat right now haha. The newer 100-400 is about €800 and that's too much for now, considering I'm only going to use it on rare occasions. 400 is the minimum requirement. So 350 apparently isn't long enough, but anything over is just an added extra.

FYI: I've ruled out renting because it's a longterm assignment. I figure at €350 for now, I can always upgrade later if I feel the need.

Hey all,

I'm about to be sent on an assignment that requires a lot of telephoto work. From colleagues who've previously filmed at this same event, they've suggested taking nothing short of 400mm with me. I've looked at the newish Sigma 100-400 and Tamron 100-400 but they're a little out of my price range for now. I also looked at a second hand Canon 100-400 pump action (mki), which is apparently a nightmare when you extend it out all the way.

I'm on a bit of a budget, but have seen some pretty good deals on these two lenses, which do you think is going to give me the best results at that 400mm reach? 

Tamron 18-400: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1345956-REG/tamron_afb028n_700_18_400mm_f_3_5_6_3_di_ii.html - In the past I've found Tamrons to be soft at the long end and with this amount of zoom, I'm not too confident, although sample videos seem to look nice.

Sigma 150-500: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/549255-REG/Sigma_737101_150_500mm_f_5_6_3_DG_OS.html - This is quite an 'old' lens, but from what I've seen it looks great, although it's much heavier and bigger than the Tamron. It'll also give me a little extra reach should I need it. I can also get this one €150 cheaper than the newer Tamron.

Any help is greatly appreciated, and of course, if you have other suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

@Alt Shoo - Did you shoot that in Jlog 4K to the Atomos? Would you mind sharing some info about lenses / camera settings etc. ?

13 minutes ago, Sanka said:

the aperture knob on the camera is not precise and not easy to handle.

I get around that by keeping aperture the same and using the ND to go from inside to outside. it's instant, tactile and will give you a good enough results that you can fine tune in post if you're a little over or under once you get outside.

Here's my favourites - Both are 1 man productions. I did sound, lights, camera, editing, writing etc. for these. 1st one is my day job (the only thing I DIDN'T do for this was the voice over because it's for American audiences)

And this one I did while working my day job, as a little hobby and to learn more. The best way to learn is to teach right? This is 100% 1 man show.

It says $499 for me... dang

Along with what others have said, don't do micro-adjustments while shooting. Get it as close to great as you can and leave it. There's nothing worse when editing  than a camera operator who's fiddling with their exposure mid scene. Any minor changes can be done in post.

That was really awesome! My only comment would be the kaleidoscope / flaring effect on the left. It was kind of cool when I first noticed it, but then it became very distracting. That could be because the mask is almost exactly the same the entire time though. Other than that, I thought the camera was a little too shakey when the singer came on, but that didn't last long and kind of added to the intimacy of that section of the song. 

The lighting was awesome though, and as soon as I though 'oh I wish there was more closeups of the orchestra' bam, there it was haha.

Edit: Was the audio recorded there and then too? 

Yes, try the blanket trick, and also try without the garbage can. I'm not sure about the Blue Yeti, but the backside of most mics isn't that responsive anyway, and having open space behind them can sound a lot better. The bin could also act as a trap for certain frequencies. 

To my ears though, the most off putting parts of this sample don't seem to be the room, but more in how the audio's been processed somewhere along the line. It's like digital artefacts, audio moire or something.

That said, it's all about the process of elimination, so start with the blanket haha. 

Well, since no one else is pitching in. Without meaning to be rude, it's pretty bad.

I'm not sure if it's just the compression you've used or maybe there's a denoise/pass filter put on? 

I'm by no means and audio specialist, and don't know any of the terminology, although I'm trying to work on that. With that in mind, I can hear a kind of high pitched garbling sound throughout the recording, the best I can equate this to is what you can sometimes hear on a corrupt mp3. 

Did you do anything in post to the audio other than levelling? If so, maybe provide an untouched recording? Have you treated the garbage can in anyway? 

Check out The Booth Junkie on YouTube, he has some incredible budget voice over booth solutions, and I've been working on building my own. If you like I can send you some examples and a description of my setup later today? Like I said though, I'm far from an expert, just trying to get the best sound I can out of the limited knowledge I have haha.