2nd video, settings, and post editing thoughts/lessons

AAPhoto · Jan 10, 2016

Hey everyone,

On Friday, I headed up to Sunday River in Newry, ME to attend the Red Bull Frozen Rush Pro-Truck Racing event (trucks race up and down a ski slope... in the snow!). There were over 10,000 people in a small spectator area so needless to say, I couldn't get a good view. I managed to capture some clips with my DSLR above my head at arms length but that was it. A little frustrated, I decided to leave and explore the area. I had my P3P with me and knew of a nice big field where I could fly without endangering anyone and was hoping to capture a view of the slopes where the race was happening as well as an iconic covered bridge in the area. Here's the video and I hope you enjoy it.

I'm extremely new to video capture and editing so I'm open to feedback. For this video, i shot with an ND16 filter, a custom white balance, and camera settings were -2 Sharpness, -3 Contrast, and -2 Saturation. I then tried to bring the video back to life in Adobe Premiere Elements. I had some pretty major flickering going on so I took the video into Premiere Pro to run a plugin called 'FlickerFree'. This removed the majority of it which made me happy. What didn't make me happy is that Premiere Pro couldn't export the two different video frame rates (P3P @ 4k/24fps, DSLR at 1080P/30fps) into one video. It made the 1080P footage ghostly. So, I ended up having to take the footage back to Elements because it did a great job exporting the two together, all automatically. It was very time consuming to go back and forth between the two programs. I'm sure Pro could have done everything if I worked at it long enough, but I couldn't figure it out and therefore, this video was rendered multiple times before uploading. I've already changed my DSLR settings to record at 24fps so they match and I don't run into this in the future. That was the first video I've ever taken with my DSLR so i'm learning...

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Muva Bee · Jan 10, 2016

Nice vid,

but i would say that compression just destroyed P3 video. I found exporting from Premiere using ProRes codec gives massive files but less, lot less those compression issues I see on trees on your vid. Last 10 days was experimenting with whole workflow for P3A found this works best for me.

-2 Sharpness, you see bad things on -1, on -3 it looks too dull
-3 Contrast, best dynamic range
-3 Saturation, not sure still but i can always boost level in post

Colour profile or whatever is called; LOG, but i think standard & -1,-2 or -3 saturation could also give good results.

Manual exposure only, when video boosted in post, every single AE auto step is really harsh. Blinks..

Now waiting to upload 2gb, ProRes, 1.05m of todays video to see does this compression thing maybe get better using this massive files.

AAPhoto · Jan 10, 2016

Muva Bee said:
Nice vid, but i would say that compression just destroyed P3 video. I found exporting from Premiere using ProRes codec gives massive files but less, lot less those compression issues I see on trees on your vid. Last 10 days was experimenting with whole workflow for P3A found this works best for me.

-2 Sharpness, you see bad things on -1, on -3 it looks too dull

-3 Contrast, best dynamic range

-3 Saturation, not sure still but i can always boost level in post

Colour profile or whatever is called; LOG, but i think standard & -1,-2 or -3 saturation could also give good results.

Manual exposure only, when video boosted in post, every single AE auto step is really harsh. Blinks..

Now waiting to upload 2gb, ProRes, 1.05m of todays video to see does this compression thing maybe get better using this massive files.

Looking forward to seeing your video.

I agree that the compression degraded the quality significantly. I will try that ProRes plugin, thanks! Since I upload to YouTube, I should mention I only export at a 30 mbps bitrate. This worked well for my first video, but I had moire issues on that one due to not using custom camera settings. May I ask what bitrate setting you use on export? In the past, if I used a higher setting and let YouTube compress it, the results were horrible. Thank you!

AAPhoto · Jan 10, 2016

Another thing I wanted to mention above is I was flying in 26 degree (F) temps, which meant the batteries weren't going to last as long. I kept an eye on the voltage and sure enough, at 50%, even flying conservatively, the voltage dipped below 3.6, turning yellow. I've read that the Phantom just turns off if the voltage drops to 3.5 so I didn't risk it and brought her in to land. I had two batteries with me and they both did the same thing. Oh, and I'm running the latest firmware. It's worth mentioning that I still got 15 minutes out of each battery. Having snow on the ground, I took of from the backpack and hand caught it for the landings. It was the first time hand catching for me, and it worked out surprisingly well. Also, all flying was in P mode... I didn't think I'd have time to mess with the smart functions. Last but not least, I use an Nvidia Shield K1 tablet and I had gotten an "anti-glare" screen for it. Well, it turns out, they were not very anti-glare. They almost added a matte foggyness to the screen and I found it worked better without it. It's still hard to see so I'm going to look into some sort of sun shield or hood. I have a case for the K1 on the way and may just fabricate something using that.

Fly safe and have fun!

shockwave199 · Jan 10, 2016

If anything I would change the phantom to match the dslr @ 30fps, or bump them both up to 60fps. Personally I don't think 24fps works well for aerial. The mystique of 24fps for cinema look aside, I just don't think it's a good choice for aerial. So far with my P3A I've been shooting in 48fps only because of file size compared to 60fps.

As to blending different frame rates, I was pleasantly surprised that magix movie edit pro handled this well automatically, recently. It was a blend of 48fps on the phantom, 48 on a yuneec cgo2 on the steady grip, and 24fps on a knock off gopro for the ground footage of the show. I thought the 24fps was gonna give me trouble but it worked out fine. But I think I'm going to bump up everything to 60fps in the future. I think the P3A benefits from higher bit rate at that setting.

AAPhoto · Jan 10, 2016

Nice video! I shot my last video at 30fps and wanted to try 24fps for the more cinematic look it's supposed to provide.

Keep in mind I'm shooting at 4k and right now, those are the only frame rates available-- 24fps or 30fps.

I have a GoPro that I use on motorcycle rides and sometimes record at 120fps. I find it doesn't really improve video quality, but holy smokes, it makes for some buttery smooth slow motion!

4wd · Jan 10, 2016

Muva Bee said:
Now waiting to upload 2gb, ProRes, 1.05m of todays video to see does this compression thing maybe get better using this massive files.

What's this pro res, I render with H.264 and set the bitrate about 25 (for 4K)
3 minutes comes in at about 500mb It's not 'real' 4K but youtube will hammer it anyway.
In general the less you fiddle about the better it looks - if you have decent light.
I usually just tweak the contrast slightly in curves
Log and -1/-1/-1

AAPhoto · Jan 10, 2016

Very nice video!

4wd said:
I render with H.264

I do the same.

4wd said:
and set the bitrate about 25 (for 4K)

I've been using 30, but will try 25 to see if Youtube likes it any better. You're video came out extremely clear.

4wd said:
In general the less you fiddle about the better it looks - if you have decent light.

I couldn't agree more. That's why I almost dreaded stitching video from two sources together and having to render it multiple times. Oh well, it leaves room for improvement with my next video.

I'm loving these responses and hearing about other people's settings and experiences. Keep them coming!