Tales of wonders and woe - UWOL #21

[Mike Sims]

Did I say bear? I must have meant Teddy Bear hamster. Yes, I like it.

[Lorinda Norton]

Ha! Learned something new in this challenge already...the Teddy Bear hamster. ;) Cute!

[Mick Jenner]

Hi all,
Thought I would post here as it is a woe. Sorry I have not been able to enter this round, we will be away on our travels again. I have been keeping up to date on all the new's so thank you Lorinda for taking on running the challenge.

The main woe is that I have been filming a lot of birds and dragon flies this year for a project we have and will be filming a lot more this month so would have had some good material to post if we were going to home in time, but unfortunately we will be away.

Anyway here is a link to a very small part of the project to encourage those of you who have entered this round.
Although filmed during May I have only just edited this section, wsihing you all the best

Mick

Dippers on Vimeo

[Trond Saetre]

Originally Posted by Simon Wood

I'm shooting on HDV pal 25 fps. Editing on CS3 Premiere.

The footage looks good. So I export to Adobe Media Encoder.

Select Quicktime as the format, custom preset.
Video Codec is Sorenson Video 3 Compressor.
Quality 100
Frame Width 428 / Height 240
FPS: 25
Field Order: None (progressive)
Pixel aspect : Square (1.0)
Bit rate: 21.36

The resultant video looked like washed out mush.

Simon, I'm using CS3.
Can you re-check the bitrate you mention. 21,36 is this accurate?
I'll see if I can find some time within the next few days to do a test with your settings.
I'm using Sorenson Squeeze to compress my videos, as I was never really happy with the CS3 Media Encoder.

[Trond Saetre]

Mick,
Sorry to hear you are out already. You are aware of the extended deadline?


I was out shooting a bit yesterday. Oh I wish I knew the magic trick to have the birds cooperate instead of flying away as soon as they spot me and the camera. (They were not afraid when I was fishing from my boat earlier in the day).
Maybe the extended deadline will come in handy this time...

[Geir Inge]

Originally Posted by Trond Saetre

Mick,
I was out shooting a bit yesterday. Oh I wish I knew the magic trick to have the birds cooperate instead of flying away as soon as they spot me and the camera. (They were not afraid when I was fishing from my boat earlier in the day).
Maybe the extended deadline will come in handy this time...

Hi Trond.
All wild creatures have a radius of fear.
Like they are saying; "don't come any closer".
It also varies from season to season, and many birds do get very angry and aggressive when breeding.
Also this radius of fear do varies from species to species.
The grey heron for instance, I rarely get closer then 300 m, if I don't sneak upon them :)
When walking through bird colonies, like the one we have at Runde island, you can get much closer.
It also depends on how used the birds are to people.
I think birds are difficult to shoot, especially in flight
Lately I have tried to use a rubber band when doing pans and tilts,
it then goes a bit smoother then using just hands.
Just fasten the rubber band to the stick and drag it sideways holding just the rubber band.
I have to practise a bit more though :)
Best of luck Trond.

[Mick Jenner]

Hi Trond,

Thanks. Yes I realised the deadline had been extended, but we are away for the rest of this month plus most on next.

Best of luck to you all with your entries.

Mick

[Simon Wood]

Originally Posted by Trond Saetre

Simon, I'm using CS3.
Can you re-check the bitrate you mention. 21,36 is this accurate?
I'll see if I can find some time within the next few days to do a test with your settings.
I'm using Sorenson Squeeze to compress my videos, as I was never really happy with the CS3 Media Encoder.

Hi Trond,

Thanks,
For sure I was surprised with the bitrate, but that was the default setting and I did not change it, though it could be increased easily (does anyone have any idea what would be standard).

In truth I have had lots of issues with CS3 and exporting videos; it seems to be very hit-and-miss for me. Essentially any videos I export as mov or mp4 or avi or wmv work fine on my editing computer, but they are not watchable on other computers (unknown file types and weird errors). I have tried to work out solutions, but its always an uphill battle, and I never could find a definite solution. DVD's were always fine though.

At any rate, due to a new gig that I will start doing soon I need to upgrade and buy a laptop that I can edit with in the field. I decided to get an apple MBP (with FCPX) which I should receive in a few weeks. Although FCPX has got some bad press I hope it should be usable for the type of work I will be doing (strictly prosumer work, delivered online and on dvd, with a very fast turn-around). So perhaps this project will be the last time I work with CS3....

[Trond Saetre]

Simon,

I'm surprised you have trouble exporting avi-files. Which file type do you choose under the export settings?
I have always used Microsoft DV AVI when exporting to AVI. (SD source footage)
For HD video I always use Cineform.

Regarding the bitrate, I'd say use as high as you can.

I exported a short clip using your settings, and the low bitrate caused a very washed out picture.
Then I used the same settings, but increased the bitrate to about 1500 and got a big difference.

[Trond Saetre]

Originally Posted by Geir Inge

Hi Trond.
All wild creatures have a radius of fear.
Like they are saying; "don't come any closer".
It also varies from season to season, and many birds do get very angry and aggressive when breeding.
Also this radius of fear do varies from species to species.
The grey heron for instance, I rarely get closer then 300 m, if I don't sneak upon them :)
When walking through bird colonies, like the one we have at Runde island, you can get much closer.
It also depends on how used the birds are to people.
I think birds are difficult to shoot, especially in flight
Lately I have tried to use a rubber band when doing pans and tilts,
it then goes a bit smoother then using just hands.
Just fasten the rubber band to the stick and drag it sideways holding just the rubber band.
I have to practise a bit more though :)
Best of luck Trond.

Thanks, Geir!
I was filming sea gulls. And I guess the problem was no place where I could hide. Some birds would let me get as close as 20m, some departed at 60m range. But the funny thing is, they never departed until I mounted my camera on the tripod. When I had the camera in my hand, I could move in pretty close, to within a few meters. Maybe the gulls just didn't want to be filmed.
Better luck next time.

[Geir Inge]

Hmm, only 3 minutes, well that is a challenge for me, this round.
Wish I had 5 minutes, but I wont give up my original plan yet.
Shot my last scenes yesterday and previous day, down by my fathers boathouse and at Runde island.
My problem is how to cut together clips from Crete and Norway,
into one sensible piece within 3 minutes?
Also I'm not that used to Vegas yet, may I come over Dale so you can teach me a trick or two :)
Hope everyone is doing fine out there?

[Mike Sims]

I know that feeling, Geir Inge. Sometimes I can tell the story I want in three minutes, but only by rushing to get it all in and ruining the timing. I often wish for another minute or two so I can work on the pace. I think Marj has said this as well. I hope it works out for you. I’d like to see your footage from Crete!

Trond- Perhaps try feeding the gulls some fish. The gulls I see will overcome their fear of many things if they think something to eat is possible.

[Lorinda Norton]

I watched deleted scenes on a feature film with the director's commentary. There was one scene he cut that I thought it would have helped me understand part of the movie better if it had been left in; however, it certainly wasn't crucial to the story. Try to keep that in mind when you are paring down your entry.

A few times I've wished I had finished a 4-5 minute film to my liking and rendered that before slicing the extra minutes off. You might consider doing that, then after the contest giving us the full version to compare. Oftentimes, our leaner version is actually better, but not always.

[Lorinda Norton]

Just thought of another thing to consider: If you've cut as much as you can bear and it still laps over the time limit, ask someone whose judgment you trust to watch it and suggest further cuts. I did that for a friend once who said he just couldn't cut more without ruining his film. It tightened up the piece and he ended up liking it better. He didn't win that time, but judging by the feedback it wasn't because of the edit. ;)

[Trond Saetre]

Originally Posted by Mike Sims

Trond- Perhaps try feeding the gulls some fish. The gulls I see will overcome their fear of many things if they think something to eat is possible.

Good tip, I'll try that out next time.