Benjamin Hilton

Shane Hurlbut ASC is giving away his illumination experience for free right now, his stuff is like gold in the area of lighting, should answer a lot of your questions:

https://www.hurlbutacademy.com/illumination-experience-workshop/?mc_cid=cc66b59990&mc_eid=d730f5a46a

I was with the founder of our organization one time and he wanted to grab a quick statement with a VIP he had with him. I swung up my camera and pushed record I thought and did the statement. When I pushed stop the record light came one...somehow I had missed it. It was quite embarrassing to ask him to do it again, had a technical difficulty;-)

I thought I would start this thread for anyone to share any crazy/embarrassing/funny stories they might have from film shoots, things we would all be interested in. Whatever it is, I'm sure we can all relate. I have quite a few, but I'll start with one. 

A couple of years ago, I was filming an interview with someone in a remote location. I had light stands holding diffusion and negative fill, and the light stands were weighted down with rocks. I was filming with a couple of GH5s and Leica lenses while another guy was conducting the interview. One of the stands started to sway a bit, so I quietly inched my way over to fix it before it fell over, trying not to distract from the interview. I moved one of the heavy rocks from one stand to another, and when I went to set it down, caught my finger between the rock and the stand. It crushed the fingernail, really badly. It was everything I could do to keep quiet and blood was dripping everywhere. I managed to kind of turn around to hide it, and make it back to the cameras, I then grabbed some leaves off of the tree behind me to hold on them as blood was dripping all over the ground. I didn't want to stop interrupt a good interview with, "excuse me, I just crushed my finger and blood is gushing everywhere."

Somehow I managed to keep it from everyone else and the interview went flawlessly. The talent never knew...:-) It was so bad the fingernail ended up completely falling off a few days later, but the video turned out amazing! 

What are your stories?

This has happened to me quite a bit too, pretty annoying when you get in to edit and find out you have all the wrong shots

On 1/28/2020 at 2:23 PM, mercer said:

After watching a lot of Netflix's original programming, I have a growing fondness for that modern, Red look and redcode color science. So, yes that is a great compliment and makes the GH5 a little bit more appealing to me... maybe @Sage can create a GHred workflow in the future. In my opinion, this seems more appealing than making an Alex version for every camera on the market.

Can you share the video you showed the director from the TV station?

Here it is:

On 1/28/2020 at 12:10 AM, billdoubleu said:

@Benjamin Hilton, this looks great! What lenses and/ or filters did you use?

Leica photo primes and an nd filter for the interviews 

From a promo I did recently with the GHA color on the interviews, you have to skip in a bit to see them:

Funny thing, I was in a meeting a little while back with the Director of a really big TV station in the States and was showing him a video I did using the GHA color, while watching it he turning to me and asked under his breath, "you shoot on Red, right?" I took it as a really big compliment I must say😉

@Sage might have better info on this, but from my experience, the 1080 out of camera vs 4K downscaled to 1080 in post are nearly identical, something very rarely found. I shoot 4K for most projects still as I have the processing capabilities and want to future proof. But if you aren't concerned about it, 1080 is very wonderful out of the GH5. On the advantage side, 1080 out of the GH5 gives 60p in 10 bit, and a more bang for your buck bitrate. I've been using this GHAlex process for quite some time now, and couldn't be happier with it. I feel like it gave the GH5 the soul it was missing.

20 hours ago, rawshooter said:

The choice of codec and the preset makes no difference for the resulting file size. 

You simply use a tool like this one:
https://www.dr-lex.be/info-stuff/videocalc.html (Video Bitrate Calculator)

...which calculates the video and audio bitrate for you, then you use Handbrake/ffmpeg, specify the same two bitrates for the encoding, and choose 2-pass (possibly with "turbo first pass" option) encoding for the highest accuracy of your video matching the desired file size.

 

That's right, the bitrate will always determine your file size, no matter what codec you use. The codec just decides how efficient the bitrate you use is for the video, meaning 10mb/sec will look much better in h.265 as compared to h.264 as it is more efficient. 

On 1/22/2020 at 11:49 AM, Mark Romero 2 said:

Thanks so much for the response and the information.

Thanks so much for the elaboration.

I have one client that NEEDS the final video file to be under 500MB (as in, 499MB is fine, but 500MB is too big). It can be either h.264 or h.265 codec, and off the top of my head, the wrapper doesn't matter so much, so I think either .mov or .mp4 is fine.

The problem is, I can't "predict" how big the final video file is going to be before rendering it. So using the slow encoding presets means I have to spend an hour or so to render a three minute video file, only to find out it is over 500MB and too big for the client.

So is there a way either with ffmpeg or with one of the GUI for ffmpeg to "preview" what the final size is before rendering? Or to even limit the file by size?

Ideally, I would love for the software to just figure out what the best quality settings should be automatically while still keeping it at under 500MB final file size.

Don't know if that exists in the command line ffmpeg options or in a particular GUI.

You should be able to set a maximum bit-rate and calculate the size based on the video length. Meaning a 500MB = 4000mb = 22mb/sec for a 3 minute video

On 1/21/2020 at 4:25 PM, KnightsFan said:

I always use ffmpeg from the command line. Like @rawshooter said, all the free converters use ffmpeg under the hood but may expose different options. If you put some time into learning it, running ffmpeg commands yourself offers the most flexibility, for free. You can really dial in the quality/encoding time/size compromises to just where you want it, and if you can take advantage of hardware acceleration then it's lightning fast.

This is really good to know

One feature I found really useful with Adobe Audition is the retime feature for music, where the software takes a look at the track and cuts it down to the desired length using AI I think. I've used it for years and had really good results with it.  

I'm in the process of switching our post over to Final Cut instead of Adobe and am wondering if anyone has found a feature like this in any other software that works usably? I don't think I can justify keeping a monthly subscription for Audition just for this one feature...

Thanks for the suggestions. I tried Handbrake and it is definitely slower than Media Encoder, but great final output! Might just work for me...

Hey all,

I'm in the process of switching editing software for our company from Premiere Pro to FCPX. I really liked Premiere, it has the bases of our workflow for many years now. Our main issue was stability, just so many issues over and over again with no sign of improvement. I've cut two projects in FCPX over the last couple of weeks and really enjoyed it! I feel like my editing speed has gone up due to the flawless performance of the software and I really get this feeling like FCPX just gets out of the way of my editing...revolutionary I know. 

My main question is what conversion software do you guys use? I am used to the abundance of options available in Premiere Pro for rendering that are lacking in Final Cut.  I could drop the $50 for compressor, but just wondering if that is the best option. Anything better/cheaper for encoding/conversion etc.?

Great work, this is such a fun idea. I wanted to enter so badly, just couldn't make it work time wise right now with my job. Hopefully if we do a round 2 at some point I can find the time to enter. 

16 hours ago, Avenger 2.0 said:

The Canon 24-105mm f/4.0 L lens just isn't a sharp lens. Bought my first one second hand and thought it was just too used because at 100% the image most of the time looked slight out of focus. Sold it and bought a new 24-105mm f/4.0 ii L and this one is even worse. Bought the Sigma 24-105mm f/4.0 and it is way sharper. The only good thing about the Canon is that it's weather proof when needed. Maybe for video still good, but for photography not sharp enough for professional use.

I think the score for the mk ii was less sharp than the original in official chart tests 

That's a valid point. With having the GH5 as an A cam right now though, these lenses really don't do me much good without a speedbooster, meaning I'm really only interested in seeing how they perform in combo with a speedbooster and GH5. Lenses look very different depending on which sensor you pair them with.

So I've been curious recently. I've been shooting with the GH4/5 Canon L 24-105 Metabones speedbooster for a good couple of years now, and have been pretty happy with the usability, color etc.

One problem though, I don't think my images are as detailed as they could be. Digital sharpness is there, kind of native to the GH processing, but the detail seems lacking. I've always put this down to the compression of my final render output, but I think there is something else going on. I assumed the 24-105 would be tack sharp, even at F4 as I've never seen anything amiss with DSLR photos and this lens combo. 

So, I did this quick test yesterday, comparing different focal lengths of the Canon to some Leica Primes, and also the Helios 56mm I believe it is. Nothing too scientific, just a quick cycle through apertures pointing at the same background. The focus point is the same double checked for each lens, and the exposure was just eyeballed using shutter speed to keep ND out of the equation. The Helios isn't too helpful for comparison as it couldn't focus far enough to match the other lenses, so take that one as you might. 

To add even more confusion, I labeled the Canon by the F number on the back of the GH5 screen (after the speed booster stop gain) and the Prime lenses are labeled by what was marked on the lens. So the F2.8 on the Leica would really be closer to a F1.9 after the speed booster, as compared to the Canon F2.5.

Anyone have any experience with these lenses or thoughts on the test or sharpness in general? 

That would explain your two in every three frames then, must have been 60fps.  

what frame rate were you shooting? It sounds like you were shooting at 48fps and it that were the case the duplicated frames would be because the shutter is opening at a slower pace than your sensor is capturing frames; thus duplication. 

The first Cine Like D profile should work great, good all arounder.  The only adjustment I would say is to maybe bring the saturation down to -2, helps prevent color clipping, especially in the red channel. 

Another good profile for day usage is:
Natural, contrast -2, sharpness -5, NR -5, Saturation -1, and a +1 on the shadow curve. 

It is pretty much the same dynamic range as Cine like D, but with better color and highlight roll off.  Just DON'T use it in low light, Natural applies some kind of weird noise reduction even with NR all the way down. 

Great options, I'll check them out.

Money to burn is relative to the project you are working on? .  Not for hobby work.

Hey all,

I DP a lot of shorts and documentary work and mainly use LEDs and old tungsten lights for most of what I do.  I own an assortment of LED lights including the Aperture Light Storm and some custom built rigs that I use quite a bit on films.  My main problem is the lack of brightness punch that these lights give.  I understand they are not really meant to replace HMIs, but my problem is that I work overseas a lot in places that I can't rent HMIs very often. 

My main question.  Are there LEDs on the market that pack enough punch to take the lead role in lighting short films?  Something that could replace, (or get close to replacing), a 1200W HMI?  Even a 650W?  I understand I'm not going to find an LED 18K equivalent yet...maybe one day?  Just something bright enough for indoor daylight keys, bounced off of muslin or something. 

Or, any other ideas as to high-output lighting without HMIs?

Brilliant! 

Agreed!

Although we did have a sound professional on set... just didn't have cameras that supported timecode in.  The joys of DSLRs