Videography Era |OT| - LUT's Talk About It

ShapeGSX · Jan 9, 2024

We have Photography Era and CamERA Equipment |OT| and even a Drone Photography Thread but no Videography Thread!

Video is a huge part of everyone's daily lives, for better or worse. Let's have a thread about video production. Everything from phone shooting through Arri Alexa shooting (seriously, if you have an Arri anything, let's see your stuff!). TikTok editing through Premiere Pro and Davinci Resolve. Lighting, frame rates, shutter angles, ND filters, special effects, titles, drones, pacing, color grading, LUTs, video capture, you name it, if it's video related, let's cover it!

Clearly posting your work will be part of this thread. Show off an editing technique, or a shooting technique and hopefully teach others in the process! If posting videos gets to be a bit too much, we can always break it out into a different thread like the photo threads.

ShapeGSX · Jan 9, 2024

I'm going to start. I posted a video a few days ago. I primarily shoot with my drone (I have a Mavic 3 Pro, a Mavic 3, an Air 2S, and an Avata) but I'm staring to experiment with my Sony A7IV too.

I wanted to add a title to the sky behind a somewhat silhouetted rollercoaster. I use Premiere Pro. So I started out using After Effects to mask out the rollercoaster using the AI masking feature in After Effects but the rollercoaster track was so complex that it just wasn't working. Then I realized the sky was almost all one color. Maybe I could use a color key?

So I started googling but nothing was really sticking out as the exact thing I wanted to do so I started experimenting.

I used the Ultra Key effect and started noodling around with it. I selected the alpha channel option since I knew I wanted some level of transparency and alpha seemed like the way to do it. The image turned to grey scale and I could key on the sky color with enough fuzziness to get almost the entire sky to turn black or grey with the foreground white.

And then I started googling alpha channels. Most alpha channels get embedded in videos or photos but you can also apply one to blend it.

So I created another layer with my original video in it on layer 4 and I applied the alpha channel (now in layer 11) to it using the Track Matte Key. I placed another copy of the video on layer 1 because I knew I'd want my video to show through the transparency everywhere except where the title needed to be.

Then I put the title text in red on layer 2. Fucking bingo!!!!! It looked amazing! And no masking required! The title was behind the rollercoaster and it looked like I masked it perfectly!

My son came in and said he liked it but he suggested to choose a color from the scene. This is what I got.

It was perfect! The sun shining through…the line of clouds highlighted in the text! I was ecstatic!

Here's the video. It's probably my best video so far. I'm really happy with it.

View: https://youtu.be/OuNk-Jc-Nhc?si=B6i9sCFuQgQ2z-kc

Silent · Jan 10, 2024

Just wanted to say that drone video was very cool, and I appreciate the insight you gave in how you solved a problem while editing it!

I do videography for fun, but I'm always way too timid to show any work to my peers. I don't think I take criticism well; I'm pretty aware of the shortcomings of my technique, but I think hearing from a professional would just hurt my feelings. It doesn't make sense, and I know it doesn't, but that's just the way my brain works and why I shy away from creative fields that I'm actually interested in like music production, photography, and videography.

I've only made four videos so far, but my favorite style is just an everyday, cinematic story-telling style with a model. Two of my videos are videos of a trip to Japan, which I really enjoy doing, but it's also rather stressful to deal with while on vacation. I don't know if I'll continue doing travel-style videos in the future. I like attending anime conventions, and one thing I would like to do is shoot a little video with all the cosplayers, but I'm always conflicted with whether I want to go around getting footage or if I want to cosplay myself and roam around and enjoy the convention. I usually get really shy when it comes to shooting in public as well. I get anxious about being in people's way or having people judge me or my model. There's a popular video of this guy taking a video of this girl at the aquarium and an older gentleman begins mimicking the girl. This video has been posted a lot on Reddit specifically to ridicule the model, and I hate thinking that that's how some people look at me. Sometimes you just want a cool video, man.

Anyway, I'm rambling a bit. I appreciate the effort you put into making this thread! I'll definitely visit often.

ShapeGSX · Jan 10, 2024

Silent said:
Just wanted to say that drone video was very cool, and I appreciate the insight you gave in how you solved a problem while editing it!

I do videography for fun, but I'm always way too timid to show any work to my peers. I don't think I take criticism well; I'm pretty aware of the shortcomings of my technique, but I think hearing from a professional would just hurt my feelings. It doesn't make sense, and I know it doesn't, but that's just the way my brain works and why I shy away from creative fields that I'm actually interested in like music production, photography, and videography.

I've only made four videos so far, but my favorite style is just an everyday, cinematic story-telling style with a model. Two of my videos are videos of a trip to Japan, which I really enjoy doing, but it's also rather stressful to deal with while on vacation. I don't know if I'll continue doing travel-style videos in the future. I like attending anime conventions, and one thing I would like to do is shoot a little video with all the cosplayers, but I'm always conflicted with whether I want to go around getting footage or if I want to cosplay myself and roam around and enjoy the convention. I usually get really shy when it comes to shooting in public as well. I get anxious about being in people's way or having people judge me or my model. There's a popular video of this guy taking a video of this girl at the aquarium and an older gentleman begins mimicking the girl. This video has been posted a lot on Reddit specifically to ridicule the model, and I hate thinking that that's how some people look at me. Sometimes you just want a cool video, man.

Anyway, I'm rambling a bit. I appreciate the effort you put into making this thread! I'll definitely visit often.

I get the dilemma between taking photos/video on vacation vs just "being there". When I went to Philly earlier this year, it was right after I got my Mavic 3 Pro. I asked my wife if she wanted to go to Philly over the weekend and she was like, "to fly your new drone? Sure!" The good thing about the drone is that you can't really bring it everywhere so you also can just have fun too. A camera, you definitely can bring everywhere. Now that I'm getting into terrestrial photography more, it's something I have to be aware of.

I would hope any comments you would encounter here would be to help and would come from a good place. I'm an inherently positive person, and I like learning, so I try to help when I can.

Thanks for your comment about my post and video! Hopefully we can attract more people to come in here. :-)

Silent · Jan 11, 2024

ShapeGSX said:
I get the dilemma between taking photos/video on vacation vs just "being there". When I went to Philly earlier this year, it was right after I got my Mavic 3 Pro. I asked my wife if she wanted to go to Philly over the weekend and she was like, "to fly your new drone? Sure!" The good thing about the drone is that you can't really bring it everywhere so you also can just have fun too. A camera, you definitely can bring everywhere. Now that I'm getting into terrestrial photography more, it's something I have to be aware of.

I would hope any comments you would encounter here would be to help and would come from a good place. I'm an inherently positive person, and I like learning, so I try to help when I can.

Thanks for your comment about my post and video! Hopefully we can attract more people to come in here. :-)

My dad gifted me a DJI Phantom 4 a few years ago, but he's honestly used it more than I have haha. Piloting a drone is so difficult, and I'm also intimidated by the idea of lugging around all that gear. I'm also unsure about the regulations regarding drones!

Regarding my overall video experience, I feel like I invested a lot of money rather poorly. I've got a Sony a6500, and I started out with a Sigma 16mm/f 1.4. Eventually decided that I needed a little more range for photography, so I got a Sigma 30mm/f 1.4 as well. Then I got a DJI Ronin SC for smoother shots, especially while walking. But for my last trip to Japan, I decided that the Ronin SC was just too big to carry around all day, so I downsized to a Zhiyun Crane M3. Well now my Sigma 16mm/f 1.4 is just a bit too large for that gimbal to handle, so I got a Sony E 15mm/1.4. Phew! That was a lot of investment just trying to find a small, do-it-all kind of rig!

I thought about upgrading my camera body, but I think I'm just spending far too much on something I spend very little time with. I find my footage quality pretty lacking, even if I try shooting in 4K. I tend to shoot in 1080p however since I prefer shooting at 120 fps, which my camera can't do. I'm not sure if this is good practice; I'm a fan of a certain videographer on YouTube who shoots in 120 fps all the time. I do this because it gives me the option to slow down the footage at various levels on a 24 fps timeline, but I've heard others say that it's always best to match the framerate of the timeline, so you should only shoot 120 fps if you for sure will slow down the footage.

I'm still trying to figure out what works best for me, but I'm always interested in the latest Sony technology. I keep fantasizing about buying more lens (mostly a zoom lens for better focal lengths for photography and video) and better camera bodies (the new ones have such good stabilization that makes me feel like I can ditch the gimbal). It's so tempting to buy more and more when I should honestly just master what I've got.

Cyborg009 · Jan 11, 2024

Has anyone used the dji osmo pocket 3 my friend told me it's a perfect secondary video camera but shouldn't replace a main one.

Sec0nd · Jan 13, 2024

We have a Video & Filmmaker OT though :(. But as you can imagine, it's pretty dead.

Anyway, dumb pet peeve of mine but I fucking hate the term videography or videographer, lol. I just want to punch someone in the throat when I get referenced that way,. Heck, I even refuse to reference to my work as 'video'. I make films, goddamnit :(

Maybe that's why I'm trying to shoot more and more 16mm film so I can legitimately say I shoot film.

Don't Be Weird · Jan 13, 2024

I'm glad I caught this thread. Nice work with that drone travel reel. Looks great!
I've started dabbling in making ~~videos~~ films. Still very much in the hobbyist phase, but I hoping to really push myself so I can get to professional quality work this year. I own a Sony A7IV and a DJI Mini 3 Pro. At the moment, I'm trying to find my own style with experimental travel videos that I share on social media. I don't feel completely confident when I'm out with my camera in public. Especially when I'm working with person as my "subject." But I want this to be the year I level up. Looking forward to sharing my stuff with you guys!

One thing I don't like about social media, apart from the disgusting compression, is the growing preference for portrait-orientation videos. I'm having to shoot everything on ultra-wide lenses to make my videos more versatile. Cropping in for portrait mode becomes less of a hassle. I'm relatively new at filmmaking, but I've transitioned from photography, and I've taught myself the rules of composition. Unfortunately, those rules are difficult to apply to portrait mode videos. It's generally more difficult to make a portait shot aesthetically pleasing, and I don't like that I'm now pressured to make my videos in this orientation. It is what it is.

Sec0nd said:
We have a Video & Filmmaker OT though :(. But as you can imagine, it's pretty dead.

Anyway, dumb pet peeve of mine but I fucking hate the term videography or videographer, lol. I just want to punch someone in the throat when I get referenced that way,. Heck, I even refuse to reference to my work as 'video'. I make films, goddamnit :(

Maybe that's why I'm trying to shoot more and more 16mm film so I can legitimately say I shoot film.

Hey dude! Good to see you here. I remember seeing some of your work on the former site. There was one ~~video~~ film you shared that I found so slick and inspiring. I can't remember what the ~~video~~ film was for. All I remember about it was a man polishing his shoes (?) There was a lot of slow motion. I remember being super impressed. This was long before I even considered getting into film.

Sec0nd · Jan 13, 2024

Don't Be Weird said:
Hey dude! Good to see you here. I remember seeing some of your work on the former site. There was one ~~video~~ film you shared that I found so slick and inspiring. I can't remember what the ~~video~~ film was for. All I remember about it was a man polishing his shoes (?) There was a lot of slow motion. I remember being super impressed. This was long before I even considered getting into film.

Ah, awesome! That's super fun, thank for sharing that!

It's probably this film which was prime time Sony FS700 era with crazy slowmotions, lol. https://vimeo.com/edwinvandersande/dukeandsons?share=copy

Don't Be Weird · Jan 13, 2024

Sec0nd said:
Ah, awesome! That's super fun, thank for sharing that!

It's probably this film which was prime time Sony FS700 era with crazy slowmotions, lol. https://vimeo.com/edwinvandersande/dukeandsons?share=copy

Yeah, that's probably it!

I had a look at the other filmmaking thread you posted. It's a shame it died down. There seemed to be a lot of enthusiasm and quality work being shared at the start of it.

Sec0nd · Jan 13, 2024

Don't Be Weird said:
Yeah, that's probably it!

I had a look at the other filmmaking thread you posted. It's a shame it died down. There seemed to be a lot of enthusiasm and quality work being shared at the start of it.

Yeah I fear that filmmaking is just a bit too niche for this forum.

ShapeGSX · Jan 24, 2024

Somehow I missed all the updates to my own damn thread! WTF! In my own defense I've been busy painting my house.

Sorry I didn't find the Video and Filmmaker's thread! I wonder if I should have put this in the main EtcetEra forum instead of hangouts right away?

ShapeGSX · Jan 24, 2024

Computer update.

I built a Core i9-14900k computer last month. Actually, one for me and one for my son. Mine has an RTX 3070 and has 96GB of DDR5. I mainly use Adobe products for editing. So I had bought my son a 4070 as a Christmas gift to replace his 1070, but then I saw the 4070 Super was coming out for the same price I paid. And Amazon's return policy is pretty liberal, so I'm sending back the 4070 and we already installed the Super in his system.

But before I send it back, I put the 4070 in my own machine to benchmark it.

Again I'm using Premiere Pro and h.264 to export. Export settings were the same for both the 3070 and 4070.

My 2023 drone reel is 2:46 long, but uses compound blur which is not GPU accelerated, so it takes a lot of CPU to render.
3070: 6:38 (6 minutes 38 seconds) to export
4070: 6:25 to export

My South High Community School drone video is 3:27 long but doesn't use much CPU heavy features.
3070: 2:34 to export
4070: 2:16 to export

I don't see the need to upgrade any time soon unless the 50 series has some crazy video encoding acceleration.

ShapeGSX · Jan 24, 2024

Cyborg009 said:
Has anyone used the dji osmo pocket 3 my friend told me it's a perfect secondary video camera but shouldn't replace a main one.

I have a friend who does FPV drone videos. He mainly uses GoPros but also has a disassembled BlackMagic camera on one of his larger FPV drones. Anyway he got the Pocket 3 and he loves it. For his FPV work, it's perfect because the quality would be similar to the GoPro, and a lot of companies just want social media quality video these days.

That said, DJI does really great things with smaller sensors, and the 1" sensor in the pocket 3 really isn't all that small. I had a DJI Air 2S that was my primary drone for a while and it had the same size sensor (maybe the same sensor), and it was fantastic.

The gimbal on the Pocket 3 isn't large so it doesn't have a lot of movement range. I really wonder how well it works with smoothing out walking, or if it also includes some amount of digital stabilization.

I actually just bought a new GoPro Hero 12 Black, which I mainly have used for timelapses. I considered the Pocket 3 but it was actually quite a bit more expensive and I wasn't sure of my use case. I think I'd rather use my Sony A7IV...until I think about the bulk of a gimbal for that camera.

ShapeGSX · Jan 31, 2024

I recently took a trip down to our local skating rink with my DJI Avata drone in the evening. There are a ton of lights on the trees in the park surrounding the rink. I ended up stabilizing the footage with Gyroflow, which just works perfectly. It uses the gyro metadata that the drone stores in the video file to stabilize the footage. I even locked the horizon.

This is footage right out of the Avata's camera. I used Auto ISO with a limit of 800 (I think), and set color temp and shutter manually. The Auto ISO was required to not blow out the rink. I have a GoPro mount for the drone too, but it makes it a bit too top heavy for my liking.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu1ahHLmABo

Sec0nd · Feb 1, 2024

My new favorite lenses definitely are the Zeiss Super Speeds. My DP brought them along for a shot and they are stunning. At first I was a bit disappointed because she over promised me that we could probably shoot on a Mini, but that didn't work out in the end. So she brought an FX6 with the Super Speeds. I've shot on the FX6 a whole bunch now and it's definitely alright (it's great actually but the fact that everyone and their grandmother shoots with the damned thing, which makes it kinda boring) but damn I'm just so surprised by the image quality.

Sometimes I forget, but lenses >>>>>>>>>>>>> camera. Especially these days.

Multiverse Moo · Mar 25, 2024

So lately I've been editing stuff that was recorded in VRchat. Once I have a new computer (currently saving up) I'll also be doing virtual videography, which I've always been fascinated by and have a little experience with in Dreams and GTA's Rockstar Editor.

These are two recent edits that I did for The Dreamwalkers and while some of it is (virtually) handheld, there are also some advanced camera rigs within certain worlds and avatars that allow for tracking, orbiting, etc. As someone who used to film a lot by hand, using shoulder rigs, cranes, and fly gimbal stabilizers I'm excited to mess around with those options.

View: https://youtu.be/pQqJNmBKyEQ

View: https://youtu.be/GsgNLJDreVA

Both were edited in Davinci Resolve Studio, with some 2x enhanced upscaling since the original streams had the VRchat stream camera within a frame, so I had to zoom in (and added some blur to reduce chat noise). Both events were also ~6 hours of footage or more lol.

thedracocat · Mar 25, 2024

This is almost entirely footage from my camera. There are a couple other cameras sprinkled in, but I was the primary shooter for this show.

I shoot on a Canon R3 and the two lenses I used for for that week were 24-105 f/2.8 and 100-400 f/4.5-5.6

All-access at THE PLAYERS 2024 | PGA TOUR Originals

The Cut PLAYERS | Director's CutSUBSCRIBE to PGA TOUR now: http://pgat.us/vBxcZSh Welcome to the official YouTube channel of the PGA TOUR. Here you can find ...

youtu.be

thedracocat · Apr 17, 2024

One of our shoots from The Masters last week. Everything outside was shot using my Canon R3 and 24-105 2.8, and a monopod. There's a single shot (54 seconds in) that came from a Sony camera but I can't remember the model.

The Fine Art Of Skipping | The Masters

The story of the skip that started it all. #themasters ---Since 1934, the Masters Tournament has been home to some of golf’s greatest moments. Amidst bloomin...

youtu.be

ShapeGSX · Apr 17, 2024

thedracocat said:
One of our shoots from The Masters last week. Everything outside was shot using my Canon R3 and 24-105 2.8, and a monopod. There's a single shot (54 seconds in) that came from a Sony camera but I can't remember the model.

The Fine Art Of Skipping | The Masters

The story of the skip that started it all. #themasters ---Since 1934, the Masters Tournament has been home to some of golf’s greatest moments. Amidst bloomin...

youtu.be

Really well done! Love the fact that it started with the slow motion and then showed it at full speed. It almost looked sped up by comparison!

Multiverse Moo · Apr 17, 2024

So this is going up publicly later today, but I wanted to share here.

It's the first (very) short film I've conceptualized, filmed, edited, and animated portions of in VRchat.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GVpjoIu9V0

ShapeGSX · Apr 17, 2024

Multiverse Moo said:
So this is going up publicly later today, but I wanted to share here.

It's the first (very) short film I've conceptualized, filmed, edited, and animated portions of in VRchat.

View: https://youtu.be/UhTWMDqHqMs

That's awesome! Could you use a gimbal to shoot in VR Chat? It's hurting my brain to think about.

Multiverse Moo · Apr 17, 2024

ShapeGSX said:
That's awesome! Could you use a gimbal to shoot in VR Chat? It's hurting my brain to think about.

Possibly! There is some smoothing you can enable within the stream camera itself, but I also have access to VRClense which has all sorts of wild abilities for panning, tracking, custom pivot points, etc.

View: https://youtu.be/tnjnimzH47s

I will be learning how to use this soon.