Guest post by Jeremy…
Video stabilization is a great tool for tweaking and smoothing video that was shot with out (or even with) the use of some sort of rigging to keep the vibrations at a low rate. I use Final Cut Pro to edit my video, and have always been impressed with the results of the default Smoothcam filter/effect. I was asked by Alain to do a review on CoreMelt Lock and Load X and give my honest opinion.
I ran the video through 2 different tests, the first was a simple pan that was shot without the use of my tripod. The footage was about equal on both parties results. I was impressed with Lock & Loads X (LLX) speed. It took Final Cut Pro over 2 minutes to analyze the footage, while LLX analyzed it in under 15 seconds, with a render of about 20 more seconds. The final end product were about the same. I left everything on the default settings for this run and was impressed with the results.
For the second footage, I decided to test a moving object, an old spinning mill wheel at a local resort. FCP’s Smoothcam took over 5 minutes to analyze the footage, while LLX took only 45 seconds with a render time of 30 seconds after that. These results were not as cut and dry.
The Smoothcam render has a noticeable wave coming from the right side of the screen, at the base of the mill. If your looking at it, the footage seems like it is spinning. I know this is due to the fact of how Smoothcam processes the data.
LLX’s footage was a bit rough around the edges, I had to go in and play with the settings to get a decent shot. I actually ran the footage through two different ways, one in the “lockdown” stabilization mode, the other in the “smooth single shot” option. I was not as impressed with the footage. I did some tweaking on the “lockdown” mode to get it as smooth as possible. I admit, I could be doing something wrong, but compared to the “smooth single shot” the footage was better. The “smooth single shot” mode is the default setting when you start LLX to process the footage, and what I have noticed on the video I shot (along with the video on the demo real on Coremelt’s website) is that when using this method, the stabilized video becomes wavy, almost like your video was being projected onto a white screen blowing in the wind. With the hints of movement, it can make your audience feel seasick. I am going to continue using the trial and if I come across findings that alter my judgement, I will post them below.
Pros
It’s fast, and non intrusive to the editing process. The whole process is very easy and the support from CoreMelt’s website walks you through step by step with great explanations on the science that goes on behind the scenes. Coremelt’s plug ins have a reign of success because they are efficient at what they do. For panning shots, I encourage you to try the LLX plugin.
Cons
I was not impressed with the really shaky footage. The warping effect would deter me from using this plugin on anything more than panning shots. Any action shot I ran through the process was playing too many tricks on my eyes. Even though I got the same experience with the Smoothcam filter, I was more impressed with the footage for shots like this. Even on the footage they have on their website’s demo reel, the you can see there are issues with the periodic wave of pixels going in and out.
Result
As stated before, panning shots are awesome and LLX is a time saver. Is it worth the $150 price tag… not in my opinion. Even the time ratio equation doesn’t work for me. Since Smoothcam can work in the background, it isn’t so intrusive I would consider buying a program to help, I would invest it in better stabilizing gear to get the proper shot in the first place. I am not badmouthing CoreMelt’s programs, they have other great plugins you should try for yourself.
I dont post clips (from others) often (maybe I should?), but I think this one deserve some visibility for many reasons. First because free running (aka parkour) is cool, second, because it was shot with an HDSLR (Canon 7D) and, finally, because it was made by a visitor of the blog (who turned into a friend) who could use some exposure: Chad Bonanno.
When Chad contacted me a few months ago about how to balance a Glidecam 4000 with an HDSLR, I thought he was a wedding shooter then forgot about it until I saw the video he has been working on. Lets just say that I was wrong!
About Dan
I was born and raised in Los Angeles. I’ve lived here my whole life. I started up gymnastics when I was about 13. When I graduated I left gymnastics and started freerunning. Since then I have turned my passion into a career and a full time job. I am also currently pursuing my career in stunts an plan on making this a life long journey.
I had the idea to shoot a high production video for quite some time but I never had the behind-the-camera skills to do so. So for a long time it just stayed an idea. When I met Chad banana I realized that my idea could become real some day. So we sat down talked it out and got to work. We spent 5 weeks of filming trying to pump out as much as we could each day. This became tough once my body started to get tired of filming each week. But despite injuries and aches and bruises we pushed through to the end. After all the action was done the video was then given to Paul Darnell to cut and edit. Once that was done, the torch was then passed to Chad bonanno. He worked his magic on the video and gave her a little nip/tuck. Finally, after a ling process the monster had come to life. So far the video has gone way beyond what we had expected and we hope it continues to do so.
About Chad
My name is Chad Bonanno, I am a Art Director and Animator based in Los Angeles, and also do a lot of action and glamour photography on the side. I have taken a particular interest in the Canon 7D series, and that is my weapon of choice. I hooked up with Team Tempest in 2009 and started doing design and animation projects with them, but when the time came to give one of Team Tempest members Dan Mast a new Demo reel, I jumped at the opportunity. Using the Canon 7D , a Canon 16-35mm and Canon 10-22mm (also a Tameron 10-24) and a GlideCam 4000, we got to work. Shooting all over LA, in locations such as downtown LA, UCLA campus , Santa Monica , and Hollywood. The shoots are pretty fast paced, since the freerunning moves are very flowy and quick, you have to have your setup locked down before shooting. On the other hand, it is a run-and-gun situation because a lot of the locations we shoot prohibit parkour due to liability issues amongst other things. Victor Lopez assisted in many of the 5 days of shooting as a coordinator , Victor being a lead member of Team Tempest, guided day with creative direction while I worked out the camera moves and angles. I used 2 other B camera shooters, Dave Kim and Mark Williams.
Here are a few behind the scene shots I selected. I piked these because they show the scale of Dan jumps and also give an idea of the camera man job!
The overall result is excellent and we should expect more from Chad in the coming months in this domain.
A few technicalities
- The shooting was done in 5 days, spread over 5 weeks.
- Keeping the action in focus was done by shooting at f4-f5.6, measuring the distance to the subject and trying to keep up with him!
- Grading was done In After Effects
- Mostly desired item for the shoot would have been a quick release plate on the GlideCam to reduce the setup time
Gear used
For various reasons, I rarely post videos from others on the blog, focusing instead on creating original content. Yet, I can’t resist the urge to show you this clip from Clemens Wirth. The guy is super creative and mix 5DMrkII footage with visual effects perfectly.
I asked Clemens to share some tips and he gladly accepted.
He shot almost everything with the Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5X Macro
For those who never saw the MP-E 65, it is a manual focusing lens with a macro ratio of 5:1. As far as I know, it is the only commercial lens with such a magnification factor. While hard to use, it can produce some incredible results as Clemens showed us.
Last week, Chase Jarvis published a very popular article about his workflow/backup strategy. The article was retweeted and by many and commented by Vincent Laforet who gave it his nod of approval.
Well, I am not the kind of guy who is impressed by cool charts and I found two flaws in Chase workflow.
Flaw 1: Archive the cards, not the file!
First, I would remove Aperture from the On Location process. A better way to import data from CF Card is to create disk images of these cards. This is a trick I picked from the book From Still to Motion
Flaw 2: Live work backuped with Time Machine? WTF!
First off, don’t get me wrong. Time Machine is good, very good. It is a set and forget kind of thing: it will backup files that have changed between two drives every x minutes. That is its strength but also its weakness: it does the copy based on time and not on milestones.
Lets take a worst case scenario: Time Machine just copied your project, then you decide to make three variations of one of your file. A few minutes later, you are done and while waiting for the automatic backup to happen, disaster strike: HD failure!
Here is another scenario: in the span of an hour, you modify a file three times then realize that you need version #2 which was not backuped by Time Machine (it saved #1 & #3). What can you do?
These are two example of how time based backup can (and will!) fail. While they are very good a copying stuff when you would not think about it, they dont have a notion of what is important for you to backup. Losing an hour of work on a file does not always mean that you will be able to get it back by spending another hour on it. Creativity and inspiration are not a function of time.
The classical approach to this kind of problem is to “save as” every minute and create a multitude of copies of a single file and manually backup this file on another drive. Not very practical.
Fortunately, there is a better solution. It is free, powerful and easy to use! And you know the best part? You don’t even need a complex IT infrastructure to make it work. I would never dare to say that I am the first to think about it, but according to Google, I am the first to blog about it: using GIT as a version control/backup system for your visual assets!
What is GIT
GIT is a distributed code versioning system. It is used by programmers to keep an history of all the modifications done to each file and distribute these files/change. In plain English, it means that it tracks changes to files, can go back to any milestones in its history and can apply all the modifications done on workstation to all the others.
GIT is the industry standard in the IT field and while its features set is an overkill, its performance and ease of use makes it a mandatory tool for every paranoid virtual asset owner.
How to use GIT
Understanding how to use GIT is out of the scope of this article. I am planning to publish a detailed article on the subject soon. If you can’t wait, and want your work to be meteor-proof, go take a look at the GIT Ready website. While the content is targeted at programmers, it will teach you the basics (tips: just read the sections about the init, add, commit, push and clone commands).
Conclusion
If there is one thing I hope you learned from this post is that a full featured backup solution is not simply about having multiple copy of your (RAW) files in various location. That is only part of the equation (which is fully covered in Chase video). The other part is making sure that you will also be able to access the version (live work) that is important to you (which I will cover in an upcoming article).
I have been working real hard for the past few weeks on a music video we shot for one of my friend. I shot a few clips for him in the past (the single camera on tripod kind of thing) but this time, he wanted something more. Since I am always up for a new challenge and I was totally naive about the amount of time it would take to shoot the clip, I accepted.
While the whole thing could have been done in a weekend under perfect circumstances (and a bit more experience and preparations), we did a few mistakes that really made it harder to do the edit.
Since I am the kind of guy who loves to show my errors in front of thousands of people, I thought it would be a good idea to make a list of all the things I learned so it could help anyone who would be crazy enough to start the same endeavor!
Note: a lot of these tips are targeted at people crazy enough to do clips which require lip sync. If you can keep the images and the music separated, things will be much easier.
Planning
Having a plan in your head is good, but not enough. Music video are all about timing and if you dont want to end up with blanks in your sequence that you wont know how to fill, make sure you have a storyboard covering the whole clip! In my case, I totally forgot to get something to cover the bridge section of the song, 32 seconds of nothingness… I guess it is good to stir creativity.
Syncing
If you can find a clip concept where you can get away with lip syncing, do it! It is a huge time sink. That being said, in the case you have to show the singer actually singing, here are a few pointers:
- Shoot with as many camera as you can (see below)
- Prepare a MP3 version of the song with a very loud and short BEEP at the start and end.
- Use an electronic slate to sync the various camera together (in case because the audio is not never perfect)
- dont start editing until you have trimmed and synced all your clips
Shooting
Bring as many camera as you can! In our case, we only had 2 5DMrkII and I wish we had at least one more. The more coverage you have of each sequence, the easier it will be once you are in the edit room. For Traumatic Head Injury, I decided to focus mostly on the head so we shot a few versions with a close up cam on Jon face (using a 100mm Macro
The shooting settings were f4 to 5.6, 1/50 sec at between ISO 800 and 1600. Shooting with a wider aperture would have been asking for trouble since it was already hard to manage the depth of field. I would strongly advice you to use zooms when working in tight spaces since they make framing so much easier.
Framing
Don’t capture the singer lips unless you have too. This way, you can reuse sequences in other part of the clip and no one will ever notice. Also, in a multicam setup, make sure there is a significant change in the point of view from one cam to the other, else it just feels weird when jumping points of view.
Lighting
We shot the clip with minimal gear. We only had two cameras, two tripods, a slider and three lenses (50mm, 24-70L & 100macro) but no lights. Fortunately, the surgery lights were quite good but I wish we had a few more to put at the back of the ’surgeon’ to have a nice outline. Actually, if there was one piece of gear that I would have rented for this shoot, it would have been a few small spot lights, preferably LED to not eat the place too much.
Location / preparation
Location is important. We had access to a surgery room and I think it really contributes to the feel of the clip. I wish we could have used more of it. For example, I wish we had a shot of the stretcher coming in the surgery room for the intro sequence, or as a dreamy sequence in the bridge section.
Unfortunately, all these good ideas are worthless if you can’t execute them! So make sure you visit the location a few days before and give yourself enough time to come up with concepts and shots.
Consistency
If you are going to shoot multiple take of a scene, make sure everyone does the same thing every time. And if you see the singing head at the same time, make sure the actions always happen at the same time. This may sound obvious but it is so hard to execute perfectly. We had a lot of issues with this for our clip, so much that maybe 40% of the footage was unusable because of a lack of consistency.
The solution (that I figured afterward) is to have someone narrating the actions as they are coming while watching the initial shot on a laptop.
Editing
My first idea was to assemble all my clips as a single multi-clip in FCP and cut from there. Unfortunately, it did not work, my machine was not able to manage the 16 simultaneous HD sequences, even with a RAID-0 of 2 VelociRaptor
What I would have done differently?
Lots of things, but the one thing that hurt me the most which I could not fix once in the edit room was the lack of coverage of some parts of the song. At the beginning of the clip, I am forced to cut on the beat while I know (as most of my friend told me) that it would have been better to be off beat for a few cuts to increase intensity and expectations.
Unfortunately, I couldnt because I would not have had enough footage to make each shot look different. This is why getting coverage is important and you can never have enough cameras filming at once! Never!
Conclusion
I have shot films, wedding video, travel and corporate video and let me tell you: music video are the hardest! If you are getting paid to to it, make sure you allocate 2-3x more time for edits and don’t sell yourself short. I am sure there is a lot of money to be made shooting music video with HDSLR, but that is something I will leave for others!
The result
Here is the first minute of the clip. The current grading is a place holder, made under a minute in Magic Bullet Mojo, until the final style is applied.
Saw this time lapse on Vimeo via Petapixel. Shot on a 5DMrkII of course.
Awesome right? Well, not when I was there!
Here is my view of Eyjafjallajökull when I was in Iceland…
Btw, my framing correspond to the same house we see on Sean clip at around 00:42, the bulldozer and other field machinery were leaving when I was shooting.
I think the obvious difference between the two clips show something very important for anyone who wants to produce awesome stuff: commitment is key. If you are not willing to can’t invest your time and energy into something, success can only be achieve with luck. In my case, lady luck was waiting for me the next morning…
This article is a reaction to a post on PhotoCine News about the validity of shooting flat with HDSLR. The article is interesting and worth a read.
To summarize: contrary to popular believes, you should not shoot flat, instead you should use a picture style that matches as closely as possible the target look. While I agree with this statement and the reasons backing it (output format of the 5D is a lossy compression), I think this is an incredibly bad advice to give to 95% of the population because the reasoning behind it does not apply to them.
First, we rarely know how the footage is going to end up and we are rarely able to influence the environment we shoot in. This means you could be shooting in custom picture style that pushes toward orange and later on realize that it does not work with what you had in mind. Correcting the footage could then be much more complicated and involve quality lost.
Using Shane as a reference proves me point: Shane shoots movie where everything is already decided before going on set and he has total control over the lighting, cloths people are going to wear and locations. Having such a high level of control allows him to be confident that his footage will end up in the sweet spot of the exposure curve, work well with his “Shane look” and there will be no extreme values. Because he has such a high level of control, he knows what to expect from the camera so he can trust the clips as being as close as his desired results as they can in camera.
On the other hand, someone like me and you, who is shooting guerilla style, has much less control over the light. Shooting flat allows us to protect our clips from high variations of exposure from one scene to the next or even within the same sequence if the subject is partly lit (dont forget that reducing the contrast protects us against the limited dynamic range of the camera). Since we dont have control over much, we need an insurance that we can recover as much of the image as we can and that is what a flat picture style gives us. We might lose some quality by doing so, but that is the price of this ‘insurance’.
Moral of the story is: shooting flat give you more flexibility in post production for your grading and exposure at the cost of additional time while shooting with a custom picture style gives you a better starting image and less work in post production at the expense of time spent in preparation and lack of flexibility in post.
Pick the philosophy that fits your needs.
I am currently testing a workflow that would insure the best possible image quality. It is ridiculously time consuming but I will use it for my footage from my Iceland trip and report on it afterward.
BTW, I am still in Iceland and the country is incredibly photogenic. Here is a small clip from what I shot yesterday, in the rain. And in the wind. And in the cold…
Following the comment of PH Photography on the quality of the Fader ND, I decided to do more extensive testing. As I was stating in my original review, I was having great results while using the Fader ND in video mode with my 24-70 (main video lens).
So, today, I decided to review what I have shot so far in Iceland with the filter. Up until this morning, everything was shot with the 17-40L4 and was good enough to be put on the web at 720p. So I was having different results than what PH Photography was getting. Then, I reviewed the clips shot with the filter mounted on my 400L5.6. Oh boy!
These clips are not sharp at all. While very usable for web display in a downscaled window (as on Vimeo), the 100% crop was not satisfying at all.
I understand that using a variable filter at such a long focal range is not common so this might be the reason why so few people have reported the issue. That being said, I am getting very good results with my other lenses. If someone has a 400mm lens and a Sihn Ray, I would love to hear your results.
Now that I think about it, anyone else experienced sharpness issues with the Fader ND on a telephoto lens?
Should you forget about the Fader ND?
Fortunately, the Fader ND manufacturer is coming very soon with a revised version of the product which will be using much higher quality glass. Cant wait to test these out. Until then, I will not use the filter on any of my long focals.
Disclaimer: Light Craft Workshop is now a sponsor of Canon5dTips.com. If you read the sponsorship page, you know that I only agree to promote products that I actually use and love. So if it wasn’t good, I would not recommend you to buy one, as my painful Pocket Wizard TTL experience proved.
If you don’t know what a ND filter is or why you need one, take a look at this post on the subject (coming soon).
By now, you have probably seen the cool pictures, posted first on M. Laforet site but I am posting one of these again because it looks too cool.
If you want to see more, you can take a look at Planet5D teaser post. Ahh… Maybe I should have asked them for sponsorship!
So, it looks cool but what is it supposed to do? Photocinenews got the whole explanations here.
Updated (here is a better clip):
The whole system, without the iPhone, will cost under 1k$ .I guess they will also need to make an iPad version of the product… This is ridiculously affordable and it will be on my wish list as soon as I recuperate from the financial hit of my trip to Iceland.
Cool but…
I am very curious about how the system works. As the rep says in the video, lenses need to be calibrated and I wonder if all lenses can work with the system. While I am sure the new Zeiss HDSLR lens series is going to be a perfect match, I have some reserves on the Canon EF lenses. The focus distance progression of these is not linear and often a 1 degree rotation is enough to lose focus. Anyone at the NAB can get more information on how calibration works?
And form Zacuto…
Saw this video from DSLR News Shooter.
The first part of the clip talks about the now famous Tactical shooter, but the second part presents a new cage rig. Nothing spectacular of fancy and very comparable to the one provided by Cinevate, at least by its look. While I am not a big fan of these kind of rigs for hand held shots, I find them very good to get smooth pans once they are set on a tripod.
Dont think about getting more information by visiting these manufacturers website. None has been updated yet.
And a rumor for the end
Two individuals have sent me email about something new coming from Apple tomorrow. But since my track record with rumors has been quite bad recently, I will wait and see.
Finally
If you are at the NAB, send me an email. I have some stuff I would like you to check out for me!
