kye

2 hours ago, Mattias Burling said:

Many volgers however use the punch in to make jump cuts when they are blabbing to long or get side tracked. And for that HD is fine imo.

My partner is starting her own business and part of her duties is public speaking, so I'm learning a bit about editing those videos.  When you're going to smaller events they only film them with one camera (if they film them at all) so if you want to edit the speech down for length or to take out awkward moments then I've found punching in to be very useful.

As much as I think people look down on YT and vloggers I have learned a lot about low budget film-making from watching how the best of them handle difficult situations.  Partly because their publishing schedule is too fast to allow endless re-takes of things, and partly because they often talk about filming, or walk past mirrors, etc so you get to see a bit of behind-the-scenes as well.
I particularly benefit from the fact that they have little to no planning, shoot under uncontrolled conditions and then have to make the best of it in the edit room, as that's also what my run-and-gun shooting is like with family holidays etc.  

1 hour ago, IronFilm said:

Many vloggers use a LOT of punch ins, so higher resolution is very handy for that. 

59 minutes ago, Mattias Burling said:

True, depending on how much one wants to peep, you can punch in on HD for youtube and no one would ever know.
I know plenty that have done it for years including myself (I believe in 99% of all my videos), no complaints so far.

It depends on why you are punching in.  In a true example of story > IQ I see many vloggers digital zoom in to 5x or 10x if there's something funny going on (especially of faces that people make in the background when they say something noteworthy).  If they only do it for maybe a quarter of a second then the blurry and noisy quality is almost a filter that says "I punched in to this funny thing'.

Part of my choice of the XC10 was that between the higher bitrate 4K and the lens IS the lens IS takes care of blur during the exposures of each frame and then I can punch-in or stabilise in post to smooth or eliminate macro-sized movement, meaning I don't have all the downsides of owning a gimbal.  Obviously it's not quite the same, but it's a lot better than you'd think, especially if you're only rendering to 1080.

12 hours ago, Don Kotlos said:

If you don't care about 4K while blogging then the M50 looks a very decent camera (I never understood the need to see a babbling face in 4K  )

In 4K other than the crop and lack of dual focus, there is massive rolling shutter that would make it useless for blogging anyways. Good thing is that you still have the 4K option for deep DoF static shots/interviews etc... 

I agree with the above, but would add that 4K can be nice for talking head stuff for people whose channels are higher quality and more like they're the presenter of a show rather than someone recording inane verbal diarrhoea to amuse themselves while in-transit to somewhere unimportant (which - let's be honest - is most vlogs).  This camera could easily do the presenter style videos because those people shoot under controlled conditions (essentially in a studio set) and so manual focus and a chair with a backrest would work well in these instances.  RS doesn't matter as much if the camera is on a tripod and it's just a person talking.

If they had to make compromises (it's Canon, so we'll let the ML team determine if they were necessary) then they're not so bad for vlogging I think.

9 hours ago, Matthew Hartman said:

54 pages on this freaking camera. (Or any) Why is this particular camera so controversial here? I feel bad for the people that actually bought and like this camera, I'm sure they came to this thread to enjoy talking about it with others that like it too.

THIS.

I was that guy - I did my research, bought the XC10 and then read the 50+ page XC10 thread on this board to try and learn how to get the most out of it.  The purchase was one of the top 10 most expensive things I've bought in my life and the result of much research and conversations with my significant other to get financial approval, and by the end of the thread I thought that I'd f*cked it up, both for buying the wrong camera and also not realising it was only worth about a third of new price on the second-hand market.

Now I know that not only had most of the critical people in that thread never even seen the camera in real life, but that many criticisms were factually incorrect (ie, they hadn't even read the spec sheet), they don't actually know much about film-making, and are just aggressive ass-hats.  

But I didn't know that at the time.

In terms of what that means for this forum - I registered to every other film-making forum before joining this one.  I read all threads on this board with the assumption that every second person can't read, can't make films, and is unpleasant.  I don't have that mindset on any of the other forums I'm on - it may not be related but they're all industry forums where almost every single person is courteous, respectful, and tries not to talk out of their a**es.

1 hour ago, kidzrevil said:

Agreed. I really want to learn about the camera but its hard finding the info I need digging through this thread. Especially with all the anti fuji hate an occasional aggression by some of our respected members

That's why I had a look here today.  I literally thought "I'll have a look in that thread - let's see if there's any chance that there's usable info there - I'll read the last page and if not then I won't bother reading any further".

2 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

I'd also suggest considering the later. Appreciating another's opinion, if not their actual taste in a film, is a way to get turned onto cinema you might never otherwise see.

True..  I rarely watch movies these days actually, mostly watching TV shows (mostly ones where there is no episode-only plot lines - so they're more like a movie delivered in chunks) and youtube videos / documentaries.

I do understand there's an art to introducing characters, pummelling the crap out of them and then wrapping it all up, and having it fit into 75-120 minutes, but mostly that constraint doesn't seem to have any intrinsic value to me and if there's enough story in the story (so to speak) then making a TV show out of it and having 6 hours (UK) or 10-17 hours (US) to tell the story makes it a better experience because there's more time to develop characters and story etc.  Obviously though, if there isn't enough story in the story then longer is much worse than shorter (eg, Sherlock vs Elementary where the UK told the story in 6 hours and the US version had the same 6 hours of story but also about 12 hours of filler).

10 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

In defense of critics:  Real ones don't really exist much anymore, so let's not throw the whole profession under the bus because the internet content machine has diluted the craft. 

A good critic is always going to be subjective, of course, but they do offer legitimate wisdom and insight regardless of their personal preferences.  For instance, I loved reading Roger Ebert's criticisms about film, but thought his taste about certain filmmaking was way too generous.

I'm definitely not an expert, but I've followed a few critics for long enough to understand their tastes, and eventually I understood them well enough to reduce their recommendations down to a 1:1 relationship - ie, if X critic likes it then I will too.  I did this with both Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton (very famous critics here in Australia) as well as the reviewers from Future Music magazine (magazine about technology-based music creation).

I guess maybe there's a difference between getting recommendations from a critic and getting enjoyment and learning from what they say about a film.  I am pretty much only interested in the former because I don't make narrative pieces.

If you're able to add an external screen instead of the flippable LCD then there are very cheap options available - 

We've all been playing this game for a long time..  well, with the exception of the LCD problem for those of us who don't film ourselves.

It was above my (low) expectations.  I only watched it because everyone else in the family had, by some minor miracle, agreed to watch the same movie at the same time on the same day!

My beef with it was that it was very likely a predictable formula-follower, and my cinematic tastes have been broadened by excellent western and foreign films such that the formula has all the appeal of McDonalds - you eat it because it's convenient and maybe it wasn't as bad as you thought it would be but then you're disappointed anyway.  It was a formula-follower, but had some interesting fight scenes, gave me a laugh, and provided a family moment.

My kids (14 and 12) have short attention spans and like talking during films, and considering their tastes are very western, it's quite commonplace for them to accurately predict (out loud) the whole plot in first few scenes of a movie.  I think they like the formula because it's predictable and I suspect they'll grow out of it at some point, but it's a little stale for me at this point.

In terms of what critics think, it's just a matter of taste and perspective - their verdicts are based on taste but their perspective is that they somehow know something we don't..

Installed crop_rec but that didn't help me either, I looked in the 3x3 crop mode and used the 720/60fps canon mode but no joy there either.

any help would be greatly appreciated!

This is probably a stupid question, but I can't work out how to select some of the resolutions people talk about.

When I go into RAW video (MLV) --> Resolution I can only choose from 640, 960, 1280, 1600, etc.  People talk a lot about 1344 and other modes but I can't find them.  Changing the aspect ratio only changes the vertical resolution, not horizontal.  I saw instructions in the EOS-M thread to enable crop_rec module, but that's not in the build I have.

I'm using 700D with the 10/12 bit RAW Video experimental build 700D115 (released Jan 31 2018).

What am I missing?  I must admit that I find ML confusing as hell, even though I have a computer science degree!

hang on, are you guys using the crop_rec module?  that would make more sense...

Sigma 18-35mm 1.8 purchased!  Fast SD card purchased!

I'm planning to use ML, either in the 3x Quality mode, or in RAW.  I've got the 10 + 12bit experimental build installed and am converting to CinemaDNG with the excellent MLV App and then into Resolve Studio for editing, colour, and export.

I'm still trying to figure out sound - I had sound recording in the nightly build with 14-bit video but haven't seen it since.  I'll keep testing.  

I'll also have to work out grading the footage too.  The author of the MLV App took out the gamma conversion function due to technical issues, and I don't think it did colour conversion, so might not have been a drop-in format anyway.

Who can tell me the easiest way to grade ML RAW, once I've converted it to CinemaDNGs that is??
My preference would be to convert them into an industry standard log and then I can use the Colour Space Transform to convert it to Rec709 where I know what I am doing!

If I can't work out how to get nice colours then I might have to default to 3x Quality mode.

11 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Nothing else on the market can match its specs 

I've heard that.  What about that certain X-factor that some lenses have?  How does it look in an aesthetic / cinematic sense?

I've seen some nice videos shot with it, but you've lived with it so understand it...

I think I'm sold on the Sigma 18-35 for my Canon 700D.  

I fired up ML on the 700D and with the quality setting at 3x (the max) managed to write a file that averaged about 125Mbps where the 1x setting only managed 52Mbps, so higher quality encoding is at least possible.  So with that hurdle down I watched some videos shot with the Sigma and wow - it looked very nice at times, very very nice indeed.  I was surprised that the best moments were during the day rather than the bokeh lights at night style shots - the daytime shots looked bright and clean and had that nice mix of detail with the softness of out-of-focus areas.  It also responds wonderfully when pointed towards bright lights / the sun, with on-or-off-screen flares that are quite pleasing aesthetically.

I've never really had a wide-aperture lens before (except the 50mm 1.8 which is too long for main usage) so I am probably going to go overboard for a bit until I work out how much to use and when etc.

8 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

You're going to be waiting a very looooooooooooong time before Canon puts IBIS into a cheap camera!
 

The G80 is already very cheap, and the likes of a Panasonic 25mm f1.7 lens on sale is only US$99

Skip IBIS and you can get a secondhand Panasonic G7 for dirt dirt cheap! (skip 4K and you can get a G6 for a song!)

I won't be waiting for a cheap IBIS Canon camera - that's for sure..

G80 + 25mm is interesting, I'll research it a bit more.

6 minutes ago, Yurolov said:

Lens IS and digital IS should be enough for his purposes, although maybe not - only he can judge.

Lens IS is probably fine (I handhold the XC10 at 280mm equivalent and can sometimes get motionless shots, other times they sway a little but it's fine).

Considering that I'm looking at the wide end, maybe I don't need IS at all?

2 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

The Sigma 18-35mm f1.8 is a very affordable lens for what it is.  Of course there are YouTubers who can afford it. 

And you can use it on almost ANYTHING! (that isn't FF35)

I have my Sigma in NIkon F mount and I've used it on:

BMPCC, D5200, D90, G6, F3, GH1, etc... and those are just my cameras! Also taken it out and had it used on shoots on other cameras too such as a Panasonic EVA1 and many others. 

 

Good to hear, and yes, I know it's a bargain for what it is.  Does this lens have the magic the internet says it does?

If so, I might just grab one of these and take a risk that it's wide enough not to need IS, and that the Canon with ML tweaking can give me a bump in IQ.  If not it'll still be great for stills when my brain remembers I also like taking photographs and in a few years can be an option for XC20 / 1DC / 1DX, or just sell it.

2 hours ago, IronFilm said:

He was also on the cover of the video issue of Popular Mechanics last October.

Anyone with YT Red want to do a quick review of his videos to see which are sponsored?  IIRC it indicates which ones are.

That kind of attention must be a sponsorship of some kind - Casey has good commercial instincts and isn't afraid to ask for money..   There was a video back when he was raising money for Beme, and Casey told the story that his mentor said something like 'make a list of all the people you can ask for money and then call them all and ask' and Casey made the calls and got some investment, and on the back of the fact he actually called people and got investors his mentor also invested..  IIRC - I do a bit of stuff with start-ups so the respect for action caught my attention.

3 hours ago, Yurolov said:

Wait for next iteration of canon or get a a7iii or xh1 or gh5 as none of the cameras you listed meet your requirements. 

I wasn't sure if any of them did - the last time I bought a camera I was looking for high-bitrate 4k (and wound up with the XC10) and the time before that I didn't think about video and ended up with the 700D.

1 hour ago, IronFilm said:

Sounds like the Panasonic G80/G85 is the camera for you, and you could pair it with a couple of lenses such as say a Panasonic 25mm f1.7 & Panasonic 42.5mm f/1.7 

Looks capable, if a little more expensive than I was hoping.

12 hours ago, sam said:

if that's too big, you could try vid-atlantic filters and a .50x wide angle adapter to get wide.  

I missed this reply - sorry @sam !  I don't know that those filters are to my tastes, but the wide angle adapter is a thought I'd had before.  I think the Canon one was something like $250?

Do you know what these do to the speed of a lens?  ie, does it keep the same T-stop?  and what about the depth of field?

I bought a cheap one as a proof of concept and it was meant to be 0.45x but was actually about 0.75x and was so blurry it makes vintage lenses look like scientific instruments!

41 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

sam finds you a cheap ass solution and you want a XC20, Oh My God!! You have been talking to Mercer haven't you?

Lol, I want my cake and to eat it too.  I don't think Mercer is the only source of this type of sentiment

Is now the right time to tell you about what cars I'd like to buy? 

33 minutes ago, Yurolov said:

On second thought I agree with this. But I'd be more inclined to wait for the canons because of color science. 

Yeah, we could be waiting a while.

I'm surprised no-one has come up with an obvious suggestion - whenever I was reading about the Sigma 18-55 f1.8 lens everyone said it was the 'YouTubers favourite lens' but I can't find any info on what they pair it with that makes any sense..  The only combinations I've seen are the 18-35, metabones, and a6000 line cameras, but I can't imagine that the vast swathes of youtubers can afford such a thing, and whenever I see vloggers / travel filmmakers go to events I see most people have Canon/Sony FF/APSC, pocket cameras like RX100, or phones.  Maybe it's their favourite lens that they'd like to buy, but can't afford?  Or the few people that have it talk about it a lot?

I think I want to buy the 18-35 f1.8, but can't get past the lack of IS and mediocre bitrate.

Wow.. that's not what I was expecting!  That thing is HUGE!!  There is no way I'll be able to get that into carnivals, speech nights at the kids school, or use it at parties and picnics!  People will think I'm about to zap them with my ray-gun!  Imagine taking that thing through border security.. :O

The M50 / 22mm f2 combo is interesting - I was thinking I'd get better value by going for better but older second-hand options but it's something to keep in mind, the form factor is great though.

I was expecting recommendations like:
- Sony a3000 / a5000 and a manual lens
- 100D with ML and a wide manual lens
- early model RX100 (?)
- Ricoh GR (?)
- or that it's much easier to hand-hold an 18mm than a 50mm so don't worry about IS and to buy the Sigma 18-35 f1.8 and run ML on my 700D with a higher quality mode for the 1080 (which actually sounds like a potential option, assuming I can get it to write a stream higher than the 56Mbps file it gave me when I tried it on 3x quality)

...or something even more esoteric like an old DSLR film-makers kit from an obsolete lens system but a body with clean HDMI output and an Atomos Ninja Star.

I recorded a test video with the 700D and 50mm 1.8 and it was almost passable in terms of IQ (softness and low-light performance at f1.8), but just wasn't a practical focal length.  If only Canon had a "Plenty Twenty" 20mm f1.8 lens for $200 and a HQ video mode that did 100Mbps!!  (Yeah, I know, it's Canon we're talking about....)

I probably just want an XC20.

I shoot handheld run-and-gun home videos / personal projects and my XC10 does this very well, but the one thing it can't do is BOKEH!

...and I can't get it out of my head!!!

I am wondering if there's a cheap setup that can get bokeh, can run-and-gun for home videos with decent results, and produces a half-decent image after dark.  The smaller the better, so no old cine cameras.

I've tried my Canon 700D with 50mm f1.8, but 80mm equivalent is way too long, the lack of IS makes everything shaky, and the Canon IQ is lacklustre.

Therefore the criteria is:
- BOKEH!! (f2.8 equivalent or faster)
- nice image (better than my 700D 1080p ~56mbps codec)
- not too shaky image while hand-held (I record while walking - image stabilisation probably required?)
- can either autofocus or has a lens with ok manual focus ring (ie, not a quarter-turn for the whole focal range)
- wide enough to be useful indoors (shorter than 50mm equivalent - a short zoom would be useful)
- as I live in Australia - it cannot have overheating problems (I've had my iphone overheat while recording video - our weather is no joke!)

I can either get a sub-$600 lens for my Canon 700D:
- the Sigma 18-35 f1.8 looks great, but lacks IS - will it be wide enough to hand-hold?  80mm handheld was impossible!
- Canon EF 24mm f2.8 IS USM - not wide enough for indoors?

Or I can sell the 700D and lenses, then I'd have ~$1000 for a camera/lens combo.  What might that be?

I'm ok with ML or firmware hacks as long as they're reliable, purchasing second-hand is assumed.

Is this possible?  Or has wide-angle shallow depth-of-field just not come down in price enough yet?

That settles it.  I'm only shooting in ARRIRAW 3.4K from now on!

I have the Dell UP3216Q 31.5" UHD panel.  I'm not a pro so I'm not sure if I can answer all your questions, but happy to try.  I run Resolve Studio on it, connected to my MacBook Pro laptop.

49 minutes ago, Rodolfo Fernandes said:

I personally don't find that accurate, if you want something done right, photo or video, its hard to make. For some people getting a good video out is easy if its hard for you or me it does not make it a hard thing, good content no matter what format it is is hard to create period.

Good content for talking head vlogs is in the writing.  Or, if you're a good communicator, in the ideas.

As they say, content is king

35 minutes ago, Geoff CB said:

This video is absolutely wonderful, completely changes how I edit LOG from now on. Thanks!

Did you watch his other videos?  He's obviously a pro, and his attitude in the Linny LUT video is hilarious - giving the LUT creators crap while casually explaining advanced colour concepts like they're something that is taught in primary school is a very entertaining mix.  I can't wait for more.  

What stood out especially in the Log grading video above is that part about grading in Arri LogC and how you should use the Offset, Contrast and Pivot controls instead of Lift Gamma and Gain - I can almost feel how much I'm going to learn when he explains that!

19 hours ago, mkabi said:

when in fact those rain drops are SFX/CGI add-on

I did have that thought when I was watching it.  I watched a few tutorials on twixtor when I discovered Resolve basically has it built-in, and it was obvious that optical-flow time-stretching (what twixtor uses) is great for things that move proportionally, but absolutely awful when things move in front of other things.

I guess embracing the softness of the effect and using it to your advantage is kind of like the Zen of film-making!

In a sense that film has certain luxuries in run-and-gun film-making that other formats don't have - that's the ability to just select the good stuff in post and only use what works in the edit suite.  If you're a wedding film-maker it wouldn't go down too well to not include key moments in the video, although now people are making 'highlight reels' there is more latitude for removing bad bits if there were technical issues.

@User What a wonderful video - I hadn't seen that one, thank you.  Here's a similar one that I've seen that is also imperfect in quite pleasant ways:

And to add to the Operator vs Camera theme of the thread - the above was shot in an iPhone5, so I don't think anyone will be rushing out to buy this magical hardware to get the look above!

6 hours ago, Parker said:

For me, "mojo" is that certain je ne sais quoi present only in certain images, or with certain lenses. I agree with Matthias, it's more easily seen in stills than it is in motion. In my own images, I remember the first time I really felt its presence was after I got the Sigma 18-35, especially with stills. There was just this... gloss... to the images: how the glass rendered things, the focus fall-off, the quality of the light — that I found to be simply incredible. Even the most mundane, ordinary object — like an empty chair, sitting in the sun — can take on this transformative, seemingly magical quality when you're staring at it through the right lens. 

I have seen this same indefinable image magic with the aforementioned Sigma 18-35, the Nikkor 28mm f/2.8 AIS, and most especially the Contax Zeiss 50mm 1.7, regardless of which cameras I have paired them with (70D, EOS M, NX500, NX1, A7SII, GH4, GH5) so glass definitely matters. It's not about sharpness, either. There's just something there that I think we're all familiar with, that gives some soul to an image. 

Obviously lighting is important. White balance is important. Color is important. Composition is crucial. But I don't think you can really pin down in black and white, pure terms what you can or can't do that necessarily makes one image seem transcendental and special and another one mundane and disappointingly ordinary. 

I have my own personal recipe for what makes an image appealing and I'm sure the rest of you do as well. The fact that all of these recipes probably have different ingredients is what makes playing with cameras so fun, I mean how boring would it be if every movie looked exactly the same?! 

Fascinating - thank you.  Not much has been spoken about lenses in this thread.  I knew the Sigma 18-35 was a favourite but I've not heard it described like this!  I contemplated buying it for my Canon 700D but after doing some tests of IQ I concluded that the codec was just too compressed for the kind of work I wanted to do.  That lens still peaks my attention when it's mentioned, maybe in the future I'll make the decision to buy one and then work out what camera to put on the back of it

I'd be interested in hearing your personal recipe.  Not to copy it (which sounds like it would cost thousands of dollars in lenses!) but to see if there's anything in there I can learn from.  Obviously if this is 'secret sauce' and you'd rather not share then no worries.

On a personal note, I think I've made several strides in the last few days.

Yesterday I found a wonderful combination between C-Log ETTR as recommended by @mercer (thank you again!) and the post workflow described by @Juan Melara in this video here:

I was previously using the custom profile from the XC10 thread that was hammered out in response to finding the ghosting in C-Log from the temporal noise reduction they sneakily add at higher ISOs to bump their lab test scores.  Unfortunately what that meant was that there were no LUTs or camera profiles available for me to use, so I was thrown into the deep end of Log grading in Resolve without a paddle, however shooting in C-Log and then using the above method gets wonderful punchy colours almost effortlessly, but is also flexible enough to correct for my inevitable exposure and white-balance issues.  I've watched my body-weight in YouTube videos from amateurs showing workflows that seemed to work for them but never for me, or pros who did it and made it look easy with test footage shot without the problems that I encounter - none of them had a workflow even remotely like the one Juan uses above.

And on top of that my investigation into YouTube and how to get nice looking video quality out of YouTube has paid off to the point where I now have a workflow without major issues (for the first time since buying the XC and Resolve!) so I'm pretty stoked about that.  Now I think I just need to shoot more and gradually learn what I like

I've made some progress.

On Mac, only Chrome supports VP9 (and therefore 2160p and above).  

Genyoutube supports 2160p, but downloads to webm format files, which is an open source format, that contains the VP9 stream.

I've managed to convert the webm with VP9 into an uncompressed .PNG sequence, which can be loaded into Resolve. (uncompressed TIFFs don't work - not sure why).

In Resolve I compared the original clip to the PNG sequence and there is a small difference, mostly highlights.  I also compared the webm from the 4k YT video where I just uploaded the original MXF file from the camera, and saw the differences.  I then removed the difference that the image sequence conversion created from the difference between the original MXF file and the converted webm file, and significantly boosted the video levels to get the below image.  It should show the areas where the compression is damaging the original file.

In theory I can do this for other uploads and then compare them.  I can't get signal-to-noise ratios as it's not calibrated, but I can get relative values.

Is this something that anyone is interested in?

We have already established that uploading in 4k (or 1440p) is a good idea, even if you only have a 1080p source file, in order to get less harsh compression.  Others suggested that 60fps may also get you VIP privileges during the conversion process.

I'll do it if there's interest, but the analysis is a PITA to do, and I think I've satisfied my own curiosity from a "good enough" perspective.