EphraimP

48 minutes ago, Mako Sports said:

Thanks, I always shoot on a tripod. I deliver B-roll style highlight mixes after the game.

I plan to make some videos about how I shoot, although the Covid19 outbreak has put a halt on sports stuff I can shoot. 

I look forward to seeing them once things go back to normal. I've always used cheap fluid heads for basic pans and tilts, of course. Just recently, I bought my first pro-level, fully adjustable fluid head and it has really opened up a whole new level of locked down movement now that I can balance the camera and adjust tension levels correctly to get the most out of the head.

22 minutes ago, Mako Sports said:

Currently in the honeymoon phase with my FS5. I bought mine mid summer last year and it took a couple of months to get the images I wanted from it. Here's a mix of games I shot a few weeks ago.

10 bit 422 240fps in 1080p with no crop has been amazing. 

Variable ND filter is a game changer as well. 

FS7 dropping in price is tempting ngl, but the FS5 is so much smaller and easier to travel with. 

FX9 inside of an FS5 body (which is definitly possible) is my dream camera.

Great DR, class leading cine cam autofocus, class leading cine cam lowlight performance with dual native iso, variable ND, great mic preamps, and a rugged body. 😵

Those are some great images. I'd love to know more about your technique. Are you shooting locked down on a tripod? Are you delivering real-time game footage or just b-roll style highlight packages? Stuff like that. Just curious. 

Ugh, my nascent video production company just took a real hit. Two weeks ago I pitched a substantial video project to a consultant in the nonprofit world I've worked with, and he has very eager and asked me to send him a proposal. I just did and he immediately replied that he's getting out of the business because he fears a major recession is coming. That job would have really set me up to launch my new company. Luckily I haven't quit my day job.... 

On 3/12/2020 at 2:03 PM, FranciscoB said:

Lol, you seriously believe this?  The only country? You americans trully live in another world.

Your president just had dinner with an infected minister from Brazil. Good luck.

On 3/12/2020 at 9:46 PM, IronFilm said:

Got some bad news for you buddy I'm afraid!

New Zealand (First Place!) ranks higher than the USA (15th) when it comes to freedom! 

https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index-new

Here is another different list put together by a different organisation:

https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

Uh oh, sorry, New Zealand (3rd) is once again ranked ahead of the USA! (12th)

Once the USA has solved their coronavirus problem, feel free to come over and visit New Zealand to enjoy some freedom 😉

On 3/13/2020 at 1:41 AM, Snowfun said:

I was going to comment but not being American I’m not sure I’m allowed to...

3 hours ago, Mokara said:

What American scientists are saying it will go away in 2 months? None that I am aware of (Trump is not a scientist, no matter how much he thinks otherwise). Most pandemics last well over a year. We will still be dealing with covid-19 in 2021.

Unlike the flu, no one has partial immunity from earlier viral strains and no one has been vaccinated. Probably about 70% of the population will eventually get infected before it is done if steps are not taken. We have only just gotten started. Right now the mortality rate world wide in closed cases is 7.07%. In the US there have been 91 closed cases so far, 50 of which have resulted in death. That is a mortality rate of 55%. That will go down as more active cases close as recovered, but you will still see significantly more deaths than the flu. In China, the mortality rate has leveled out at 4.6%. A smaller discrete data set where the exact number of people infected is known with certainty is the Diamond Princess cruise ship, and the mortality rate there is ~2% among those infected. In spite of attempts to quarantine people on board the ship, about 19% of the people on board got infected. Unlike China, we can be sure that all those folk received the best medical care, so that is the sort of number you are going to see in the US . Do the math, if there are ~350 million people in the US, and 70% get infected in a worst case scenario with a 2% overall mortality rate (the flu is 0.1%, or 20x less) then it is not out of the question that we could see as many as 4-5 million dead in the US if the outbreak is not contained.

That is why everyone is so scared. You should be too.

 As for America "getting it right", their track record to date is not promising, all we have seen so far is a lot of bungling and incompetence. Take the tests for example, frankly it is just shocking that something as basic as that was not in place at least a month ago. They are going to have to get their act together and do it fast if they want to avoid that math playing out.

Don't worry, not all Americans, as I've said on another thread, have drunk so much of the Trump Cool Aid that they believe this garbage. We know we're not exceptional in this regard (getting through this pandemic via some cockamamie pseudo-scientific "American" miracle) or many others. We're shutting down our events and schools, working from home if possible, maintaining social distance, and BUYING ALL THE  FUCKING TOILET PAPER IN THE WORLD!!! Also, we know our health care system isn't great and the magical free market won't fix it, hasn't so far. 

At the same time, it is a pretty damn nice place to live. So there's that.

8 hours ago, Geoff_L said:

Yeah right ! 
Louis Pasteur, Edward Jenner, Hiro & Tasaka, Von Behring, Shibasaburo Kitasato, Albert Calmette, Camille Guerin, Charles Nicolle, Vieusseux, Guy Henry Faget, Jules Bordet,  Octave Gengou, Michiaki Takahashi... those good ol' Yankees from Merica !

Don't worry, not all of us 'mericans are drinking the oddly orange colored Kool Aid currently being served up by the Cheeto in Chief, along with his usual sides of confusion, baseless self-aggrandizement, ruthless politicizing and swindling the gullible. But those who are drinking it... well you've read the results of that right here.

I just had an event I was going to film next week postponed. It's small potatoes for a nonprofit I support, so no big deal. The nonprofit I work for at my day job just had to postpone a major two-day conference at the local university next month.  It's going to be an interesting spring (but not for those who get ill, of course).

5 minutes ago, Wonder X Man said:

But rumor has it it won't shoot 6K at all. I saw this sensor data sheet on weibo, too.

My question is: if this isn't a data sheet for the about to be announced Fuji, where did it come from? Did someone go though all the trouble to create it just to mess with people. Or, is it a data sheet for a proposed camera or in the earlier stage of development? I know a lot of folks want to insist that the forthcoming T4 with IBIS will be a defacto merger of the T and H lines, but the FujiRumors guy keeps insisting that an XH-2 is still planned for the future. 

Just something to think about.

59 minutes ago, scotchtape said:

Wtf, "everyone" shoots 60p and drops it into 23.976 timeline for slomo and it works fine... I do it all the time, and I'm pretty sure everyone else does too... 

Im using 1 ssd for os and programs, 1 nvme for scratch, and 2 more nvme for source footage.

When I built this machine (original threadripper, 64gb ram) I thought it would be smooth sailing for editing. I used the good stuff too. Nope. 4k thumbnails still take time to load and playback is not always smooth in resolve.  I don't know where the bottle neck is but IMO if nothing has changed, the premium for nvme is not worth it over ssd.  The only thing good about nvme is the number of drives I can have.  I have 8 drives currently mounted. 3 ssd, 3 nvme, 2 HDD.

Interesting. What ram speed and what GPU are you using? 

5 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

Why would you do that though?

Seriously? To be able to slow down pans, tilts and other camera movements so they are smoother. Also, if I want a slow-motion look to make things appear dreamier. It's a super common technique.

4 hours ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

I've done it on other lights. I plan on doing it on my Godox 200 tho

Let us know how that turns out. Better yet, make a demo video.

4 hours ago, KnightsFan said:

@EphraimP Sounds like it'll be a great build, that's probably what I would go for if I had the budget (and projects to work on--my day job is keeping me too busy these days!) Make sure to get a quality power supply if you don't already have one. No point risking damage to high quality components by cheaping out on a power supply, which is relatively inexpensive for even high end models.

I'd love to hear what you settle on for MoBo and RAM. I'm still eyeing an upgrade to Ryzen 3600 and haven't settled on those yet myself. I'm not in a hurry, so I may wait a few months and see if the B550 rumors materialize.

I'm sure your tech will know this, but keeping your cables out of the way of airflow does magic for thermal performance.

Yeah, I'm definitely cognizant of the benefits of airflow. On the bonus side, the reviews indicate that the 3950X runs a lot cooler than expected.

For the MoBo, I'm most likely going to go for the X570 AORUS ULTRA. Puget used the board for their test build.  For ram, I'm looking for 3600 mhz with low latency because the chip specs support ram speed that high and sounds like it's pretty tune-able for those who want to mess with it.

14 minutes ago, fuzzynormal said:

Confirmed.  You do not want to be directly accessing media on a big project using a slow hard drive with Premiere.  You can, but it's annoying.  Everything bogs down.  Just reading the media a large project holds can take a half hour with a slow drive.

However, here's the workaround my documentarian wife and I use:  Keep our source 4K footage on a cheap/slow external hard drive, make proxies of our footage, save said proxies to a SSD, and then edit from there.  You can use a 10 year old computer pretty effectively with this method.

My wife typically does rough cuts sitting in her lounge chair with her old laptop.  Edits fast and easy.  I'll do the final drafts, coloring, and rendering on the modestly beefed up PC.  None of our computer equipment is state of the art and we do just fine.

Using proxies is something all editing systems do, but (believe it or not) Premier handles the process more robustly than others.  Resolve, looking at you.

Proxy editing just allows so much more speed during the cutting process.  Just scanning the thumbnails alone makes this workflow worth it for us.  Every once in awhile we do a small project with maybe a few dozen shots and I won't bother with the proxy creation.  It works and is okay, but the speed of editing is diminished and a bit frustrating.

I'm familiar with proxy workflows and have used them. My question here is really about making the best spec choice when building a new system. I'm going with a 500Gb NVMe for my boot/program drive and I could go with either a single 2TB NVMe drive for project files and scratch or, say, two additional 1TB drives (one for project files and one for scratch). I'm trying to find out which is the better choice.

Back to proxies for a second, the problem I have run into with them is working with h.265 4k 60p b-roll files in a 24p timeline. If I create proxies for the 60p files, they work great. But when I toggle proxies of to do renders or export, the in and out points have changed. The work-around I found was to work with the 60p frames in a separate 60p timeline, find my in and out points, color grade the footage and then render and export to a more manageable codec for use in my real project. That's kind of a pain in the ass. Lately I've just been converting my h.265 to ProRes before I add them to a project, which is less hassle but more storage intensive, especially if I keep the original h.265 files on a backup drive.

10 hours ago, heart0less said:

I'm in the market for some key light, as well! (Maybe we should continue our discussion in: Key Light Less Expensive Than Aputure so that we don't hijack this thread here)

 

Re: Godox and their quality - I know that Orie McGiness (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH7DEV5Ys50) has had a chance to work with both Godox SL-150 and a pair of Godox SL-60 simultaneously. He seems like a really nice guy, I guess it wouldn't hurt to ask him about it in the comments.

 

Re: Sokani - Gerald Undone mentions that it's loud, but, unfortunately, he doesn't provide any objective information like he did in a video about Godox SL-60. He says that both these lights suffer from noisy fans, though.

Scott Dumas tried powering the Sokani via V-Mount battery and D-Tap to DC adapter and, supposedly, it works without any issues, so there's hope one could use X-60 on some outside shoots.

 

There is one more light that caught my attention - Jinbei EF-II 60. Looks like a slightly altered Godox SL-60 that features a slot for two Sony NP-F batteries and it's allegedly a bit brighter than Godox. Unluckily, there is almost no info, no reviews about it, so you're buying a pig in a poke.
@Amazeballs happens to be the only person I know that owns it and he's quite happy with it, isn't that right?

6 hours ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

The Godox SL60 used to have a noisy fan but recent versions do not. Also you can replace the fan, its actually really simple. 

The SL60 fan replacement is definitely doable and actually not hard at all. I'm clueless when it comes to electronics and didn't know how to solder before I did my replacement. This step-by-step video was the ticket for teaching me how. The fan was cheap and I picked up a simple soldering iron from the local hardware store for less than 20 bucks and had the new fan installed in a jiff. It's been about six months and I've hauled the light around and set it up in multiple locations without a problem. Funny thing is, it's whisper quite now but I started using a Ninja V, which has a pretty damn noisy fan of it's own. Oh well.

I'd love to know if anyone had replaced the fans on Godox's SL-150 or 200. 

And if you're curious about fan noise comparisons, the same guy from the first video I linked did a shoot-out between the Godox, a Genaray and a Jinbei.

Sorry for joining in the thread hijack. If you can get an X-T3 for under $1,000, I'd say go for it. It's a great little tool for the budget filmmaker.

Specing the build for my next editing machine has been a good exercise in thinking about the editing process from a technical standpoint. We geek out over cameras and lenses all the time, but I spend at least 70-80 percent of my time in front of my monitor, not my viewfinder. So I think it's worth while to investigate every aspect of how to squeeze performance out of my computer and increase my editing efficiency.

That said, lately I've been using the ssd inside my laptop for program files and keeping my Premiere project files and assets on external ssds. My scratch files have bounced around between the two.  I know the recommendation is to edit on at least two drives and I've heard some people use three or more -- one for programs, one for working files and one for scratch files. I'd love to take a poll and see what's been most effective for other editors. 

After a lot of research, I think I've narrowed my choice down to a Ryzen 9 3950X and a RTX 2080 Super. Puget, Linus Tech and Gamer's Nexus all rate the 3950X highly and it seems like a real value to performance sweet spot. I've got a local freelance tech who I've worked with a my day jobs for the last 5 years who will build my system for under $200 while I watch and learn. I should be able to put together a machine that will handle 6K footage (come on X-T4 or R6!) for less than 3K. 

I think the biggest things left are to narrow down the motherboard and pick the right DDR4 sticks. Looking forward to this box.

3 hours ago, androidlad said:

1000nit high bright high res screen ✅

Man this camera is going to be a banger. Can we get ProRes 10-bit 422 and a mini-XLR on this thing, or is that a dream to far?

Systemic racism is real. He called it out and acknowledged that he's been part of the problem. That's legit. 

1 hour ago, JR Lipartito said:

I didn't say it was a major issue I just said it wasn't great, and will add that's compared to pretty much every Panasonic camera ever. If you're stopping/starting a lot throughout a multi-hour shoot at moderate temperatures (as most people do) the X-T3 doesn't have a problem at all. But if you have more extreme needs, it's not perfectly reliable like a GH5 or S1/S1H.

I've had my X-T3 overheat when shooting continuously @24p for about two hours (only stopping/starting when the limit ran out and to change batteries). It consistently needed a cool down after that much time. I also had occasional issues shooting half-hour long takes on a project in Bali (and fortunately kept a GH5 on hand to fall back on when it did). Again, these are fairly extreme cases, but I mention it as a negative because coming from the GH5 I was disappointed to even have to think about overheating at all. 

I've yet to subject my S1H to the same extremes @6K, and sure the sensor size difference between APS-C and Full Frame will help. But my point is that if the X-T3 couldn't handle those extremes @4K 24p, then an X-T4 with reliable performance @6K 60p feels like a stretch without some hidden caveats. 

I'm not saying Fuji can't do it. I'm just keeping that 8K pinch of salt on hand! 

Interesting. I've run mine for more than 4 hours straight at a concert off of a v-mount without problem, as well as various other long shoots without heat issues.

Just now, Brian Williams said:

I never had heat issues with my X-T3 at 4K, is this a known issue?

I have the same questions. I've used my T3 on a couple of multi-hour shoots without any overheating problems. This was at 4k 24, so maybe 60p would be different. But since most of us shoot to a 24p base timeline, we only use 60p for be-roll and thus takes are much shorter, thus lessening the potential for overheating issues.

There is a lot of wisdom here about things to focus on above camera choice. I'd add this thought exercise to help you determine when to upgrade your camera. Is the camera holding you back from pulling off the shots/camera movements you want to make? Do you nail composition, exposure almost every time? Can you focus better than the camera can? Is the camera going to make you money? If the answer to these questions is no, then keep cracking with what you've got. If you answer yes to all of them, are you able to create the overall look you envision if you have the proper lighting, frame rate and shutter speed dialed in  (ask discussed above)? If you get to this point and answer no, then maybe it's time to start think about an upgrade.

4 hours ago, OliKMIA said:

The PC industry is full of BS these days, Intel is struggling to innovate since 2015 and the graphic card market is dominated by Nvidia but Radeon is making a come back. I wrote about that in detail:

Good article. I'd love it if you could expand on why 8 cores is the point of diminishing returns. Puget rates some monster 18+ core processors pretty highly and puts an 18 core unit at the top of their list of recs for Premiere. Thanks for link to Puget, btw. I was meaning to look them up but hadn't gotten around to it yet. I know they are highly regarded for their builds. As I've been told, the trick is to rip their specs and get the actual build done cheaper (if possible).

Also, is it really beneficial to run two lower tier cards, such as the RTX 2060 or 2070 units over a high spec card like the 2080 super or an RTX quadro card? 

I'm reading as much as I can on these topics, but it's good to ask questions and get responses from folks who've had experience.

Just now, Mark Romero 2 said:

My understanding is that Resolve uses the GPU more effectively than Premiere does, so that Resolve will take more of the load off of the CPU (if your GPU is up to it).

You can download the free version of Resolve and test out whether there is much of a difference with your current setup.

Yeah, that's the standard info on Resolve. I do have the free version, but haven't had a ton of time to really play with it. For my new system, I want to get something that works reasonably well with both NLEs. And with the specs I'm looking like, it should blow my old box out of the water either way. Which will be good, especially with what's coming down the pipe this year in terms of new 6K and dare I say 8k cameras.

I'm surprised no one has posted this link already -- a whole documentary about our favorite YouTuber. Sounds like he really does hustle.

5 hours ago, kye said:

I'd encourage you to think about this as a processing pipeline and you're looking to put your budget into the things that will be the bottleneck for your workflow.  I'd suggest doing lots of reading and try to pull together the little snippets of info from forums and YT videos etc into a (hopefully) coherent picture so that you can make sure you get enough capacity for how you work and the software you use.

51 minutes ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

The new AI features in resolve take advantage of the Tensor Cores in the RTX series of GPU's. I believe that every (standard) nVidia carf in the RTX series has some tensor cores. 

I believe that the AMD cards don't have the technology to take advantage of the current AI features in resolve, but I could be wrong about that, so please double check on this first. Also I have no clue about the Quadro cards.

(I know that you were looking at nVidia cards already so I just wanted to mention that I think you are on the right track going with an RTX GPU).

I have been thinking a lot about the imaging pipeline and where the bottlenecks might be/where the lowest hanging fruit of the upgrade will be. I've been keeping my task manager on while I edit, and when things get laggy (lots of effects, h.265 files, rendering) typically the processor will be maxing out while the GPU is not overly taxed. The Ryzen 9 3900x does benchmark really well against the price equivalent i9 9900K for mulit-core tasks . The i9 actually does slightly better for single core stuff. My question is, and this shows what I know about computer processing, are most non-gpu video processes mulit-core or single core. 

My accountant 😉 is very leery of the value proposition of me building my own box, though I haven't ruled it out. I found a desktop/workstation build that has couples the Ryzen with an RTX 2080 super and the board can be upgraded to support Thunderbolt 3, so there's at least that option at the top of my price range. I need to look at the memory and storage (2 SSDs) to make sure they'll be up to snuff. It's a machine targeted at gamers, so it has all kinds of silly RGB lighting, but as long as I'm not paying any extra for it, not a big deal.

Like I said, definitely sticking with Windows, so no need to discuss Macbook options. I have looked for Ryzen laptops, but they don't appear to have hit yet. I like the possibility of being able to port a box around to show clients work, but I don't know how important that will be to me in the future and other than that I don't have a big need for a mobile workstation. So most likely it will be a desktop/workstation.

1 hour ago, Mako Sports said:

I just helped my friend build his PC, I'd reccomend an RTX 2070 and a Ryzen 9 3900x

The Ryzen could be a good choice, but I have a 2 Terra external drive for editing that supports Thunderbolt. I definitely want at least one Thunderbolt slot to take advantage of it's speed. After a quick look, I found one motherboard that supports the Ryzen 9 3900x and Thunderbolt, but it would be nice to have some choices.