kye
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Posts posted by kye
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On 08/01/2018 at 12:48 PM, IronFilm said:
Interesting set up here that Kai is being filmed with.
Is a GH5 with a GoPro mounted on top, with then the latest Rode VideoMic on top of that!! But weirdest of all, the microphone is pointed AWAY from Kai!! :-o
Wonder why? Very curious.That caught my eye in the video too when I was watching it, so I messaged Tim on Instagram and he said it was for a vlog that he's recording for his channel while he's shooting with Kai.
I studied the screenshots as I have created a similar setup, but what I couldn't see was where Kai's lav mic was going - it's not going into the GoPro or into the GH5, so I suspect it's an outboard recorder of some kind tucked in a pocket and synced manually. This makes sense as occasionally Kai will be a long distance from the camera but still audible.
When you vlog you want something wide angle that will focus reliably, the GoPro seems pretty well suited for that. My setup for home videos is a Rode VMP+ pointing forwards going into my XC10, and my old GoPro Hero 3 with a Rode VideoMicro pointing backwards at me. The GoPro will be used in 2.7k Wide mode with Protune for a semi-flat profile, and also for timelapses of things like sunsets, where because it's recording photos and not video, it gets a very high bitrate UHD output and can use slower shutter speeds so its poor ISO performance will only come into play when it gets much darker than for video. I'm still working out the kinks with this setup but for the first time I might actually appear in the videos I make!
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I am interested in your thoughts on the different shots in this video I put together.
https://www.sugarsync.com/pf/D8480669_08693060_421075 (100Mb 40s)
It has eight shots in it. I am interested in your subjective impressions - what is good about certain shots, what's bad, etc.
It's not a scientific test. It contains multiple cameras, lenses, codecs, bitrates, frame rates, resolutions, and profiles. All the shots were scaled to a 1080 H.264 timeline from their native resolutions. It's of my fishtank, so no skin tones, but the lighting is consistent and I don't have a model handy. Differences are visible regardless. I picked the nicest image and attempted to grade the other shots to match, but did a relatively mediocre job and someone with more skill than me could get them much closer. I'm definitely not the best person to extract the best IQ from any of this equipment, so it shouldn't be viewed as a camera test either.
Once people have had a chance to discuss for a bit I'll share the technical details of each shot, after which point I'm sure the conversation will quickly turn to tech and away from aesthetics!
I'm hoping peoples feedback will not only teach me to 'see' more, but it will also reveal a bit about what other people value and perhaps why.
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Who does everyone think they're shooting for? ie, is this just for fun, or is it for a specific audience?
Personally, I've worked out that the audience for my home videos of family and friends is my extended family, the kids (more so when they're grown than now as teens/tweens), the grandkids, and future ancestors. I look at this in the sense of a family heirloom - if my grandparents or great-grandparents had shot vlogs or home videos they would be very interesting I think. In this sense although as @dbp points out that video editing is a bit of a slog, it's worth it for me because of the long-term benefit that I see coming from my work. If I was just posting for Instagram or for amusement then I think it would be quite different.
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@Matthew Hartman I believe you have a point and that I'm not quite understanding it. I do agree that vertical vs horizontal composition will of course have artistic and psychological connotations / implications.
Could you elaborate on what the subliminal messages are for vertical compositions? I'm keen to learn more.
Personally, I wouldn't output a vertical format for anything except social media posts where a single person is talking to camera. From that point of view, the goal is to show their face and hands, which if you do it vertically fills the whole screen, if you do it horizontally the person is barely the size of a postage stamp, and square aspect will be somewhere in-between.
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I chose ISO, which even surprised me!
I should probably have chosen price, because who buys something they can't afford because it's good at everything else.. I'd own a Lamborghini, Red Raven, Sony A7RIII, and a render farm!My rationale for ISO is that I shoot run-and-gun in available light, which means interiors feature heavily. If ISO performance is bad, then resolution dies, AF stops working, etc.
During the process to buy my current camera I looked at quite a number of options, and eliminated most of them based on sub-par performance in a particular aspect despite them being brilliant at almost everything else, so I ended up with a camera that doesn't excel at anything, but doesn't really have any fatal flaws that I need to work around either.
Being forced to choose is quite a revealing thing.
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3 hours ago, Matthew Hartman said:
I could show you, and then get ready for the impending lawsuits coming from a big tech company that has a boardroom full of lawyers.?
I shoot home videos for family and friends, and when I shoot there is an expectation of discretion, especially around the kids. I suspect if I posted something that between my fiancé and teenage daughter it would be similar to what you describe Matthew!
I don't need a public showreel to get work, but I'm now trying to learn my new camera and push my skills and am having to shoot test videos so that I can post online and get feedback so I can learn.
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Stills photographers started having this conversation years ago when the first wedding got shot on an iPhone.
For film-makers it will be the DSLR revolution conversation all over again. This is nothing new.
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In a sense, going from one medium into another is taking another step forward into seeing the beauty in everything.
I remember years ago when I was working on a music project with a friend and we were writing abstract minimal electronic music, we got to the point where everything had artistic value. We were auditioning a song and quite by chance one of my neighbours unlocked their car, and the beep from that coincided spectacularly with the track. Everything is about context, and so if you can change your brain to be open in the right ways then everything is art.
Moving from one medium into another is learning to see and appreciate things we hadn't before.
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8 hours ago, kidzrevil said:
I am interested in this as well ! How would you set up your sequence and export it ?
I do everything in Resolve.
I imported the footage into Resolve onto a 1080x1920 timeline, and then the first thing required is to rotate it so it's the right way up. I'm not sure if the camera doesn't support orientation sensing in video or if Resolve doesn't support it or if I tilted the camera the wrong way, but it's a simple fix.
Editing and colouring were as you would expect, just with a vertical image. One amusing thing is that the thumbnails shown in the nodes in the Colour page are tipped on their side
The export process was as normal too. I haven't uploaded a vertical video yet so that part I can't speak to. I expect that the codec bitrate and compression challenges are all the same as for normal aspect ratios, but in a sense they're less important if you're aiming at smartphones because the phone is less revealing as a display device and the nature of these videos is different.
In terms of it being different, I didn't see any difficulties, or at least not yet!
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43 minutes ago, JBraddock said:
Apparently, square videos generate more engagements according to this experiment.
Interesting article - thanks.
Pity they didn't include vertical video too!
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On 20/02/2018 at 10:49 PM, UncleBobsPhotography said:
The advantage with vertical shooting is that people's expectations are much lower and it's much easier to stand out among other vertical videos. I have shot some vertical videos (with a proper camera) for facebook, and I would definitely recommend it for short facebook content.
I suspect you're right about expectations, and even straight-out of camera it sure looks pretty nice when you look at it on the phone.
18 hours ago, IronFilm said:Also shot this on the side, so as to squeeze a little more resolution from the BMPCC for VFX:
Cool - that's lateral thinking at its best!
7 hours ago, Matthew Hartman said:I would be careful shooting vertical merely to fit a social media platform.
It's not about a social media platform, more that people don't rotate their phones unless the content is deliberately cinematic (eg, Netflix). In terms of longevity, these are PR videos that are designed to be part of a larger narrative, and thus have a very short shelf-life.
I've heard some of the leaders in social media marketing saying that telling your personal story on social media about how you're trying to build your business (or whatever project) is on average likely to be worth more because of the social following you're likely to attract is worth a certain amount, whereas the average business fails miserably.
I've also heard that some large proportion of videos on social media are consumed without sound(!) presumably because the person can't untangle their headphones from the ball of cable that their pocket or handbag turns them into.
It's a brave new world - social media creators are shooting basically disposable content on real budgets, sometimes RED cameras, with pro sound, lighting, the works!
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Considering it's a new-camera internet tradition and no-one else has said it, I'll go first...
I wouldn't buy this camera unless it has:
- 4k 60p from the whole sensor with no pixel binning
- IBIS
- C-Log
- 422 400Mbit/s intraframe codec...nope, I just can't keep typing!
- RAW!!
..ok, I'll stop now!
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Surely if we were to attempt a grade, it would be helpful to know what kind of movie it is? Rom-com vs psychological thriller might attract a different look surely!
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I shot my first proper vertical video on the weekend - getting setup to film PR videos for my fiancé's new business in the social services sector.
The videos are targeted for FB and my fiancé informs me that people don't tilt their phones for these type of videos, so vertical is the way to go.
The setup we got to after about 5 iterations was Canon 700D tilted 90 degrees so the flip-out screen was above the camera where the talent could see it, tungsten key light, practical fill from ceiling light and white bounce, and two small LED kicker / hair lights positioned off to the sides and slightly behind the talent.
When you white balance to the tungsten the LEDs go a bit blue creating some colour contrast and the colours straight out of the Canon are very pleasant. 9:16 looks very tall and narrow and looks very strange in Resolve, but fills the screen of the iPhone, so I'm informed that it's the right aspect ratio.
I'm still yet to work out how to make lower third titles look half-decent though.
Anyone else shooting vertically?
[Edit: forgot to mention the Canon 50mm f1.8 lens, which on APSC is 80mm equiv. I had it set to f1.8, but after seeing how much the codec obscures detail I might back it off to make focusing easier]
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15 hours ago, Matthew Hartman said:
Unfortunately Samsung is hell bent on increasing the prices for their flagship year over year. The S9/+ is rumored to have a price tag of $820-$960.
Still below the iPhone X 256Gb!
There's a principle I've heard of where you apply the 80/20 rule to product pricing, and it basically says that if you have X customers willing to pay $Y for something, then X/10 of them will be willing to pay $(Y x 10) for something else that's better. I've been continually surprised that billionaires buy the same phones that the Apple store employees can afford because no-one has designed something way more expensive for them.
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I started with stills, after I discovered that my memories of holidays gradually conformed to the photographs I took and the rest of it is mostly forgotten.
Shooting stills on holiday pushed me through multiple cameras into DSLRs and into street photography (the best analog for holiday shooting I've found) in order to practice and improve in-between holidays. Through multiple holidays I got into editing (shot selection), processing (Lightroom, photoshop) and retouching.
I then started taking video but realised I didn't know what to do with it (and neither did anyone else - someone showing you that 'funny moment' from their trip is normally you watching them look for it for 30 minutes through all the clips they shot) so I decided to teach myself video editing. This lead onto colour correction and grading.
I then realised that when you're recording video you're missing out on stills, and vice versa. I also realised that 2MP is enough for printing 5x7s and 5MP is enough for 8x10s (assuming they're for family and friends), that 1080 is 2MP and 4K is 8MP, and that video is continuous burst mode, and that pulling a still from a video would enable you to choose the perfect moment 'peak smile'. This pushed me into professional video cameras (for the high bitrate, and high dynamic range) and of course I chose a 4K camera.
I'm still stuck in video and haven't come up for air yet to try and pull still images from the footage I'm recording, but I'm editing and grading and all that good stuff.
You can't hang a video on the wall (yet) and you can't see how people move and act and laugh in photographs. They're just different.
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On 15/02/2018 at 1:14 PM, IronFilm said:
Heck, even with their current high prices, here is this High Schooler who purchased a Scarlet-W (although yes, we can't call him an amateur, as he worked hard for it!):
Seeing him talking about the RED while running B-roll of the a6000 made me think "Wow - those cameras aren't as large as I thought..... oh, wait a minute!"
In terms of RED getting into the high-end smartphone game, that's an interesting concept.
Apple has been trying to strangle the market by keeping their entry-level offerings about the same price while simultaneously adding products at the top end:
I haven't heard of many examples of smartphones coming in above Apples flagship phone, but if someone was going to do it, having a RED branded camera in it would sure be a decent strategy.
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2 hours ago, markr041 said:
Its here: Sony FS5, Sony FS7 have as an option built in auto variable electronic ND continuous smooth. Does exactly what you want - set shutter, aperture, ISO, and exposure is set automatically. Choose your DOF and not worry about lighting conditions. Great for run and gun, doc, eng. No need for clickless aperture lenses.
Excellent - thanks for letting me know. In my case it's not the fact it's in the FS5 and FS7 which are both too large and expensive for me, but that it's been done and there's hope for trickle-down.
1 hour ago, IronFilm said:Note that some people feel variable NDs tend to harm the image more than high quality NDs would.
I think I recall watching an interview at an expo after the FS5 came out, with an engineer explaining how it wasn't an easy feat and the struggles they had.I suspected this. I once bought a cheap variable ND from eBay and when I got it it worked well at minor attenuation, but when you started to really make it dark it got these strange banding interference patterns, which I suspected were due to imperfections in the alignment of the two coatings. To get this to a level that is below what a 4k 16bit RAW (or higher) sensor can resolve would be no mean feat, so I was anticipating that the tech would likely be done some other way (LCD perhaps) but that it would be difficult to get up to quality standards.
Thanks guys, that answers my question
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For me the important thing isn't that lots of people make films on tight budgets, it's that people CAN make films on tight budgets. The more accessible it is for people to get their feet wet the less of the talented people will 'bounce off' the industry and we'll never see what they might have created.
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Interesting @DBounce I hadn't seen that. If there are patents involved then maybe that's the reason.
None of these are AUTO electronic variable ND.. maybe I should have put that in the thread title.
We have AUTO shutter speed (in aperture priority or P-mode), we have AUTO aperture (in shutter priority or P-mode), we have AUTO ISO..... why no AUTO ND?
I can understand why camera don't have a dual ISO, I would imagine that costs more to implement, but cameras already have built-in NDs, so why Canon doesn't just buy Aputure and install them (or license the tech) doesn't make sense. In terms of manufacturing, both solutions require optical-quality tinted glass, room between the lens and the sensor, a motor, and some kind of control mechanism, and being able to say "Built-in auto variable ND" even seems like better marketing than "Built-In ND Filters with Manual Controls".
I'm guessing that eventually we'll have a camera that uses AI to recognise skin tones in various lighting situations using a combination of face detect and clever keying, will do some analysis on the dynamic range of those skin tones, and will then adjust exposure to keep the normalised mean skin tone exposure at a set exposure level (and if you're lucky it will be user-specified in IRE), but why we have to wait for Artificial Intelligence to get AUTO ND seems completely stupid to me.
I want a camera that I can set to 1/50, f2.8 and auto exposure and then go point it at people running around in full sun, point it at the sun during sunset, point it at people watching the sunset with golden hour exploding all over their faces, and then point it at people sitting around having wine and talking through blue hour and into night with practicals and candlelight, AND HAVE THE CAMERA DO AUTO EXPOSURE THAT WHOLE TIME. This is what I need for my home videos of friends and family etc, but I'm sure that the run-and-gun doc filmmakers working in sketchy situations in the jungle, or war-torn cities would also appreciate one less thing they need to worry about.
The less time I'm thinking about exposure, the more time I'm thinking about composition, camera angle, zoom vs distance to subject, the psychology of directing people (and trying not to make people uncomfortable), shot selection and how it will end up being used in the edit, and balancing the need to get good footage vs being on time for dinner.
In summary, GRRRR.
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Most cameras can be set to 1/50th shutter, a desirable aperture, and automatic ISO, which means that if the scene gets a little darker the camera compensates. This is what machines are for.
Why haven't we got the same thing when we are at base ISO and it gets a little brighter? Even if purely electronic variable NDs aren't up to optical standards, why isn't there a high quality variable ND in there with a little motor to wind it back and forwards?
Shutter speed and aperture are artistic controls and should be in the hands of the operator, ISO and ND filters are not creative, therefore they should be automated.
It doesn't seem like an insurmountable technical problem to me - what's the deal?
(or if it is, why don't we have dual-ISO cameras where the second ISO is something like 5?)
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2 hours ago, mercer said:
Thanks but no. I had the camera last year. I really liked the camera, though but eventually moved onto the 5D3 and Raw Video.
How do you like it? I’m hoping the rumor that the XC20 will have an interchangeable lens mount is true.
I'm still making friends with it, working out settings and getting it setup with ND filters etc, and have only really shot one project with it, but it seems relatively intuitive for my run-and-gun style of shooting.
In terms of an XC20, there are only a few things about the XC10 that make me think about other cameras, and I'm not sure how likely it is that an XC20 would fix them.
I'd really like more accurate focus peaking (it's very optimistic about what it in focus), some higher bitrate options for the 1080 modes, and maybe a second ND filter, but that's all I've bumped into so far on it.
In terms of the grass being greener, yeah, an F1.0 lens would be great, but would I sacrifice zoom range to get it, probably not - being able to point the camera at whatever is going on and not having to change lenses all the time sure is liberating. Besides, if you were going to have to swap lenses to get shallow DOF then the logical choice would be the Sigma f1.8 zoom lenses, which don't have image stabilisation, so for me the XC20 would either have to have IBIS or I'd have to put it on a gimbal, which is yet another thing that is heavy, can break, requires batteries / chargers / charging / etc.
And of course, higher frame rates, RAW, makes coffee, etc.. I think it's probably good enough for me to wait for the GH7 or something like that! -
On 08/07/2016 at 11:27 PM, mercer said:
Does anyone have any ungraded C-Log from the XC10... 1080p and 4K?
Still interested in this? If so, what settings and style of shot do you want?
Getting good video quality on YouTube
In: Cameras
Posted
Hi All,
I've decided that I might use unlisted videos on YouTube for distribution of my home videos, but had a couple of attempts and didn't like the quality after YT compressed them, so I've decided to work out the right settings. I've seen various threads on this, but people don't seem to have an answer beyond methods that are the least worst, so I decided to do my own tests. This thread is kind of my public notes on this.
Ok, the tests.
The test video I have used is some "flowers" (weeds) in my backyard. The video is 3.44 seconds (in order to keep the file sizes manageable) UHD 366Mbps.
Bitrates specified below are in Megabits per second, based on the file size divided by the 3.44 second duration.
Upload test #1 - No processing 366Mbps - I uploaded the MXF file straight to YT
Hypothesis #1 - I'm doing something wrong in Resolve exporting.
In the following tests I took the original file into Resolve, put it on a UHD timeline, no edits or grades applied, and exported straight from Resolve in the codec specified.
Upload test #2 Prores 422 HQ 963Mbps
Upload test #3 Prores 422 Proxy 178Mbps
Upload test #4 H 264 20k 92Mbps (20k refers to restricting the Quality to 20000 Kb/s in the export settings)
Upload test #5 H 264 10k 92Mbps (10k refers to restricting the Quality to 10000 Kb/s in the export settings)
Upload test #6 H 264 5k 92Mbps (5k refers to restricting the Quality to 5000 Kb/s in the export settings)
Hypothesis #1 result - The higher quality output files look fine - therefore I'm not fundamentally stuffing things up in exporting from Resolve.
Hypothesis #2 - I'm stuffing up my grades somehow. In order to test this I applied a grade which radically brightened and clipped the highlights (and most of the frame), followed by a node that darkened to compensate, followed by the Sharpen Edges OFX plugin, followed by the Glow OFX plugin which I like.
Upload test #7 H 264 5k with levels glow sharpen 91Mbps
Hypothesis #2 result - also looks fine to me - therefore it's not the Resolve grading engine, or some common OFX plugins I apply.
Hypothesis #3: I have always worked on a 1080 timeline and exported 1080 files - maybe that is the cause?
In order to test this, I exported at 1080.
Upload test #8 H.264 5k with levels glow sharpen 1080 8Mbps (8Mbps! I was very surprised it came out with such a low bitrate - the 5k Quality setting on the UHD version was 92Mbps!)
So I started raising the bitrate again..
Upload test #9 H.264 10k with levels glow sharpen 1080 14Mbps
Upload test #10 H.264 20k with levels glow sharpen 1080 28Mbps
Upload test #11 H.264 40k with levels glow sharpen 1080 54Mbps
Considering that all we care about is quality and file size upload time, a good comparison would be between the 4k ~92Mbps files and the 1080 ~92Mbps files. Therefore:
Upload test #12 H.264 80k with levels glow sharpen 1080 92Mbps
Hypothesis #3 result: Yes, uploading a 1080 file instead of 4k (even with the same file size and duration) yields a worse quality result.
That's where I've gotten to tonight. I have another idea to test, so will likely write a part 2, however, I think that's a result of note.
Lesson - upload in 4k.