kye

On 12/26/2018 at 10:39 AM, IronFilm said:

Would be a hell of lot less risky if only Panasonic had shown support for MFT in their next tier up of cameras, such as a Panasonic EVA1 MFT (or even an AF200 or DVX200 with a MFT mount). 

Or at least if BMD had released an UMP with MFT mount!

Are only hope as MFT users now is a JVC LS200??

I think it depends on how long you consider and how much you're investing.

We all know that technology is a poor investment overall, but we seem to have the idea that lenses is the exception to this rule.  In a sense it's true, but everyone who invested in the systems we now refer to as "cheap vintage" lenses made poor investments (eg, m42, etc).  I've put under $2k into MFT system lenses, less even than the GH5 body cost me, so when I upgrade from the GH5 in a number of years I won't have a huge investment there.  For me the investment is so little, and the life expectancy of my GH5 is so long, that it doesn't matter much to me if their value approaches zero.

Had I put $25k into Canon L lenses it might be different...  People make those kinds of investment over the course of their career and expect that lenses will last a whole career, which I think is riskier.  In that sense, investing into a set of lenses that are already vintage might be the better way to go.  Having a mirrorless future also means that there will always be adapters available for SLR lenses and you can swap systems whenever you want.

The value of the Contax will be larger in 50 years than the MFT lenses for sure, but if you're talking which will give you the best overall return when you take into account the usability, results, and final sale price, then it really depends.  MFT lenses have AF and lower weight, and all sorts of stuff that manual FF primes with adapters don't, and those things play a part.

Great video..  looks like a LOT of work!  Well done!

I haven't used Fusion yet, but it's on my list.  It can do some truly impressive things if you know what you're doing and put the work in..

21 hours ago, Trek of Joy said:

So far so good, after a couple weeks its becoming very intuitive - almost as fast as FCPx with better audio editing tools. I'm focusing on my three needs -- audio production, grading and most of all editing. I'm really liking just about everything about it. Its replacing FCPx & an older version of Protools, or Premiere and Audition depending on the project. Its really well sorted on just about all fronts, if you see the logic behind it, it really makes sense. That's why I like the BM video so much, they show a lot of really great features that I hadn't discovered in other overview videos I've gone through in the last few weeks. What seemed like a really steep learning curve is actually no worse than any other NLE I've worked with, it just has its own process and its actually pretty easy to grasp once you see the basics. And its so easy to move between editing, audio production and grading, I love just clicking on the icons on the bottom and bouncing between media, edit, color and audio. It took awhile to wrap my head around nodes and the ways to link them, how to use them and so on, now it makes perfect sense.

I just have to figure out how to get it to show the estimated file size when exporting a finished edit, so I can adjust the bitrate to suit file size limitations like Facebook uploads without waiting for the finished product. Most of the time its not an issue, but I was doing 1-hour versions of a Yule Log project and getting the file size correct took a few tries, at about 4 hours each. Then there was the 8-hour version ( lots of looping) that took 22 hours to export. And it took 4 tries to get the bitrate right and it froze on me a couple of times. Grrr.... But I think the project just overtaxed my ram or video card. On shorter pieces, like 30 sec to 6 min its been fantastic, and really fast from start to finish.

And that manual, aye. Seems like a good chunk is Fusion and that one is way beyond most of my needs. I'm not a motion graphics person, so I'm all about the templates. But I do need to learn to animate titles so after getting comfortable with grading, audio and editing I will start work with Fusion basics.

The above is a long winded way of saying no regrets about jumping in and making the switch. I really like the all-in-one solution. I tried v12 and didn't like it, but v15 is so much better. I'm now producing photo and video pieces for VISIT FLORIDA and Resolve is going to play a big part in what I do going forward. Eventually a Pocket 4k will too, I shoot a lot of sunrise/sunset stuff so raw will be a welcome addition sometime early next year.

Every day I spend 30 minutes or so on a tutorial to sharpen my skills. Thanks for all the help and resources. I check this thread almost daily to see if anyone posts anything new.

Cheers

Chris

Good to hear you're making progress and getting good results

Getting an estimated file size seems to be a bit of a challenge, but when you look at how compression works you realise that it's basically trying to guess the future.  The bitrate controls in Resolve are based around maximum bitrate, not average bitrate or minimum bitrate.  This is important because sometimes the video to be compressed might be very simple and not need much bitrate (eg, a mostly black screen with silhouettes, titles, very little motion, etc) or they could be very difficult and need lots of bitrate (eg, trees moving around in wind and rain) so the bitrate that will actually be used in the video export is dependent on what is in the video, so can't really be estimated accurately beforehand.
You will find that if you compress a video to max bitrate of A it comes out as X Mb, but if you then export it with a max bitrate of A/2 the file size is almost certain to be more than X/2 because the video won't have been hitting the A bitrate limit the whole time.  In fact, you can sometimes halve the max bitrate and only knock a few percentage off the export file size.  This makes sense because sometimes there are big changes in what you see (a straight cut changes every pixel on the screen) but most of the time the changes are very small (people talking and only their faces moving) so most of the time the max bitrate isn't having any effect on the export bitrate at all.

There are a few tricks you could do for longer edits though:

• Export a minute from the middle of a video and then estimate the total size from that
• Write down what file sizes you're getting with what settings to give a good starting point for future exports (I also include the bitrate in the filename eg "Cool video - 10k")
• You can also queue up a few exports with different bitrate settings and then hit go and let it render overnight, then choose the one with the right file size

I have the same issue, but as I only make short videos I just re-render them.  It also helps that for some reason I'm not completely critical of the video until I'm watching the exported video file so I often export, notice mistakes, then tweak and re-export anyway!  I have also gotten a feel for which max bitrates I tend to end up using to upload so start with those numbers and tweak from there.

I would imagine that you'll like Resolve even more when you get the P4K because the RAW stuff is included (and will be high priority for full support).  One of the best things I find in Resolve is that you can adjust any part of the workflow at any time without having to re-render, re-export, or whatever.  Half-way through colour grading you can change the edit, fix some sound, then grade a bit more, then change the edit, etc.  I know that people often work in passes, doing edit first, then sound, etc, but a lot of my process is just noticing things that bother me and fixing them as I go.  If I was round-tripping or had to make-do with the puny colour tools of other packages I think I would feel like I was working neck deep in mud with one arm tied behind my back.

On 12/22/2018 at 9:26 PM, Sage said:

Sure thing; led quality is indeed vital (on the Alexa or any camera). Check this out (the color spectrum graphs give a sense of it):

https://www.oscars.org/science-technology/sci-tech-projects/solid-state-lighting

Great link - I've seen power distributions before but not in a film-making context so the colour charts were a new addition.

One of my favourite things about the science of colour is that there is no such colour as purple..  that one took a while to wrap my head around!

Thanks @leslie - Merry Christmas to you too (and everyone else!).

May santa bring each of us a bit more skill in our craft, a bit more knowledge about how we like to work, and a bit more wisdom and restraint when it comes to buying new gear! 

8 hours ago, Trek of Joy said:

Just saw that Blackmagic has uploaded tutorials. The grading tut is linked above, but I found their intro video to be far more comprehensive than any other I've watched so far. If you're new to Resolve, this is where to start. There are a lot of clever tools and time savers that nobody else talks about. As an editor its far more powerful and well sorted than I first thought. I get all of this is in the manual, but I'm a visual learner and things like the edit overlay and how you can choose where your clip is inserted into the timeline is much easier to grasp when you see it in action. Highly recommended.

Chris

 

What is it about a 1000+ page manual that isn't quick and easy to read?? Lol.

I saw they put out a bunch of videos but haven't looked at them yet. Great to hear they're useful

How are you getting on with learning Resolve?

8 hours ago, shaolin95 said:

 

I had the G85 for a while...even took it on a 1.5 months road trip in Europe along with my RX100 V. I couldnt disagree more about claiming you need to go much higher than $1000 to beat the G85..If you care about best 4k video IQ, the A6300 will easily beat the G85

I have been shooting Sony after I moved from a Pentax DSLR but have also played with Canon 5D IV, Nikon P900, etc...all sorts of cameras .
Honestly, the G85 never made my happy IQ wise. The 4k video just never had the detail, impact I saw from the A6300 I had before buying the G85. The reason I sold the A6300 is because I only wanted a one camera solution for behind the scene videos of my photoshoots that could also work as a travel camera with more flexibility and better IQ than my rx100 V.
Well,  the G85 surely has better IBIS than the A6300 (which has non) and the A6500 but is not perfect specially with wider lenses. The problem is...the IQ just let me down. Not only lacking in detail but also any time you push the ISO it will get grainy. At 3200 the difference to the A6500 is clearly noticeable. At 6400 is BIG and at 12800 is laughable really (the same goes for the G9).

Sure there are things I wish the 6500 had from the G85...namely a bigger body to have more controls (but this is a complicated matter since there are many that prefer an even smaller body so its a no win situation for Sony). Better IBIS would be nice but I figured that I am better of with a Gimbal instead either way.
But when it comes to IQ...this is a no contest and that is what counts to me the most, not to mention the video AF of the Panasonic is a disaster compared to the fantastic one from the A6500.
So I sold the G85 and bought an A6500 and couldnt be happier with the 4k video quality I get now. Sure if it would do 4k60p that would be even better so that is the main reason I would upgrade but not at a bank breaking price since my main camera is an A7R3.
Regards

Fair points.

I think that detail and sharpness are actually matters of taste and I like the image I'm getting out of my GH5 precisely because it doesn't have that digital sharpness that looks overdone to my eye. The look I'm getting looks more like film (to my un-refined eyes) and had a real timeless quality to it that I like.

Of course I'm shooting with the settings all tweaked for this result.

Perhaps the most important thing is knowing what you value and knowing what kind of image you like. All these cameras have tonnes of examples around so it's not hard to understand what they're all capable of.

14 hours ago, kaylee said:

wow, im learning about music, this is fun!

hey, anybody use adobe audition? i dont even know if its the right software for something like this but i HAVE it, thats why i ask

or is there a decent free app i could use to mix this song?

no way im buying logic for this bc poverty, otherwise i totally would

There are lots of good software choices out there, and for simple stuff it probably doesn't matter which you choose.

A little history lesson that may (or may not) be relevant to choosing a DAW..  I remember there being three major types of audio packages:

• Those designed to work with notes (MIDI at first, but samples later on too, eg Logic)
• Those designed to work with loops (eg, Ableton Live)
• Those designed to work with long tracks of audio (like recording an orchestra, eg ProTools)

It's gotten to the point now where the big packages can probably do a respectable job at all three, but there may still be advantages to getting a package with the right 'heritage' because it might have more features you'd use.

I would imagine you would be more likely to be working with loops, or working with the timing of drum samples, rather than creating tunes, and this is where loop based software can often have an advantage.  For example, in a good loop based DAW you can change the speed of the song and it will slow down the loop samples, programmed elements, and perhaps the effects too, so that everything stays in sync, whereas other programs may just make a mess of things.  In addition to this, Ableton Live has a performance mode where you can take pre-written sections of a song and kind of mix and match them live, allowing beat-matching and other cool stuff that DJs like.

It depends on how you work and what is valuable to you.  Logic might have similar functionality too, I'm not sure, but Ableton Live is just the one I'm familiar with.

10 hours ago, Dustin said:

If you are making beats you will want a midi keyboard at the minimum.

When you're making beats, you want access to enough different samples and you might also want velocity sensitivity (so it knows if you're hitting it hard or soft).  You may want a keyboard (which has both) or you might find that something with pads is nicer.  Pads are rubbery and softer to hit, and are therefore nicer on your fingers, but aren't that good for playing tunes.

Something like the Arturia Beatstep:

I bought this one and it's really solid, is powered by USB so is portable, and has the knobs which make mixing or effects programming so much nicer.

The other thing is that you don't NEED anything except a computer, some software, and your microphone setup of choice.  The rest just makes doing things easier.

My advice is to remember that music is a creative pursuit, and you should only buy things that help you be creative.  In general, technology is distracting for creativity (having to remember which button does what and how to change modes really kills the creative flow!) so buy things that let you be creative by getting out of your way.

1 hour ago, Adam Kuźniar said:

That's actually a "kind of" music video - they're a musical duo, she sings and he plays the piano. I should've lit it better to start with but in the final edit (where I didn't use GHa) I did separate the shot and give different WB/Exposure corrections for both of them 
Here's the video if you want to see it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ikLey6OMDo

Nice work!  Couldn't understand a word but they can certainly sing very nicely, I watched it through to the end and that's rare for me with music video examples.

The grade looks really nice and your lens choices seem nice also.  It's a very professional looking outcome to my eyes 

40 minutes ago, leslie said:

now there's a viral video waiting to happen ! if you could choreograph it to jiggle bells your on a winner i reckon ?

Shoot in slow-motion and you can slow it down and speed it up to match the tempo

14 hours ago, Adam Kuźniar said:

I've tried it and it looks worse than GH5 samples that were posted here but that's probably be also due to me applying it to some old footage that wasn't shot properly. I've yet to find time to shoot some proper examples and if I do I'll post them here

 

Here's are a couple of screenshots from Premiere Pro - CineD to Vlog applied + GHa Daylight. No additional CC done besides that 

Here are ones with GHa Tungsten (where I think I messed something up while shooting)

I've found that sometimes skin tones can go too pink, but it's normally just a matter of lowering the saturation to fix it.  I think of it like Canon footage which can sometimes have reds that are too saturated, so lowering the saturation of those colours after the conversion is a pretty standard way to treat a lot of footage from different cameras.

I also shoot auto-WB and in mixed-lighting (against Sage's guidance of course!) and it definitely gives you trouble in post.  Sometimes playing with the WB before the conversion can tidy things up nicely, and other times you have to do seperate adjustments to different parts of the image.  For example in the wedding shot you could adjust skin tones on one person and not the other by using a combination of a key and a power-window.  You might push the woman slightly toward pink and the man slightly towards yellow, or perhaps just desaturate him and adjust the woman to match him.

Good luck - fixing these kinds of problems isn't easy!

5 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

I have a Carbon Fiber Manfrotto and it is heavy as hell. But you could sit a Moose on it I think.

Yeah, but will it be stable?  Those moose tend to wriggle around..

14 hours ago, User said:

Alright, another PPro crash prompted me... so I just exported an XML of a PPro 20 min timeline and opened it in Resolve a moment ago for the first time.
On first glance, all the media is there but dozens of title cards (.png) that I'm using for subtitles are in place on the timeline but registering as offline (red) though they still have my text content indicated in them. Not yet sure if I can get them to register as online. Needless to say all the audio/ video effects/ tweaks are missing but it looks like the audio cross dissolves made it across.

I've already built huge sections of the film in PPro so I don't know that I have the time to re-organize and rebuild them in Resolve... but overall it's super exciting to see this opened up in Resolve... it also signals being one step closer to leaving Adobe. Knowing just how many people are pissed - myself included -  I wonder if Adobe may be getting ready to remove this Export XML feature soon? Anyway.

My understanding is that most people currently use Resolve for grading, which means round-tripping to Resolve via the XML export, doing the grading, but then rendering out the graded individual clips which are then swapped into the original project in the editing software to replace the ungraded clips.  In this sense, PP (or FCPX) won't be too worried or motivated to make sure that all the dissolves and effects make it out to a Resolve timeline.  I'd suggest that BM would be very interested in making sure things import as well as possible, but BM is currently adding entirely new screens and hundreds of new features in each major release, so they definitely have their fair share of bugs too.

I've heard that there's normally some work to get all the media linked in Resolve, but it has some quite good features for linking clips quite easily (something like highlight clips -> Relink media -> select "include sub-folders" and point it at a folder with all your footage in it) so if you do need to relink files it's not necessarily a big job.  There's lots of advice around for solving strange importing problems so if you want to pursue it at some point then google can help.

3 hours ago, Snowbro said:

My cousin is a senior manager at adobe & I still couldn't get him to fix one small bug in premiere. Adobe will do whatever it wants, at least they did add some features to premiere finally (color)

Ouch - I'd say that using contacts to circumvent their prioritisation of bugs is a bad idea, but considering how buggy people say it is, maybe that process isn't working so well!

I remember when those colour features were added.  I saw a bunch of Youtubers had released videos with exciting titles and I thought the added features must be really great - then I saw them and actually laughed out loud.  If you double (or triple) the available features then it looks like a huge improvement, but to Resolve users they just went from having 1% of the features to 2%, so it's not so exciting from our perspective 

2 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

Very, very little. The extra crop in 4K can be a bit of a hassle, no headphone jack stinks, and there are a couple of minor features missing that the GH5 has, but I'd argue 85% of the time it'll do everything most people would use the GH5 for. 

Image quality wise there isn't a ton of difference. You can cut between the two and they'll match perfectly with minimal, if any, tweaking needed. 

Panasonic really doesn't get enough credit for the G85. It was incredibly brave to pack so much into that camera knowing a few months later they'd be announcing the GH5. It will follow the G7, I think, in having a long, healthy life cycle. 

I did a quick scan of the differences and I guess the 10-bit video is something I care about, considering how much I push the image around in post.  Of course, for most people this is probably a much less important factor.  Grading the 10-bit HLG files from the GH5 (even in the 150Mbit mode I shoot in) has been a wonderful experience so far.

Battery monitoring isn't very reliable. So I wouldn't draw any conclusions based on a 1% change in battery level.

@IronFilm can tell you the cheapest way to hook up the mic to your computer.

In terms of making a sound booth, you want to pad it out with as much absorbent material as possible, blankets and foam mattresses work well, but use whatever you have. The heavier the fabric is the more likely it is to absorb sound.

Of course, rappers have recorded in all sorts of circumstances and on all sorts of equipment, including their iPhone in a walk-in-robe, so experimentation is the key. Remember that music is creative so it's not about quality so much as getting the sound you like, so experiment with everything you can think of.

Also, performance is more important than the sound, so if you don't perform well squatting in a wardrobe covered in blankets then change it up.

Best of luck!!

I wrote electronic music as a hobby for about ten years and when you make something that sounds great there's no better feeling!

I can't speak to the G80/85 but as a recent GH5 buyer I can confidently say that the lenses are the other half of the picture, and if you have to stick to a budget then put some aside for great glass.

I've just done a couple of trips with the GH5, Voitlander 17.5mm f0.95, Helios 44-4, and SLR-Magic 8mm, and the stand out aspects to me are the DR, the 10-bit capture, and the three lenses.  The 8mm has that WOW factor for scenery and landscapes, the f0.95 gives that lovely DOF on the MFT sensor and great low light performance (better than the human eye), and the Helios gives a soft rendering that really looks like film and without a speed booster gives a 116mm equivalent and rounds out the lens kit.

I have no idea how much you sacrifice from the GH5 with the G80/85 but I get the impression it's not so much?

Edit: I shoot hand-held and the IBIS worked spectacularly well, at 58mm in gusty winds on a small boat the locked-off mode gave rock solid landscape shots even with the ETC digital zoom mode making it something like 160mm equivalent, it was just incredible.

On 12/18/2018 at 11:48 AM, webrunner5 said:

Redneck Bokeh.

https://petapixel.com/2018/12/17/how-to-make-and-shoot-a-bokehlicious-tin-foil-backdrop/

There are a ton of cool stuff you can do with basic stuff if you know what you're doing.  A lot of them don't work so well for video though if things are moving.  You can get a lot of cool tips for this stuff by watching those "5 photography hacks for under $5" videos / articles.

It might be interesting to do a Resolve stress test to see if it can handle big projects.

Maybe someone who finishes a big project can pull it into Resolve and render it out and give their impressions?

I'd do one but I don't have a real project that's big enough to be a genuine test.

On 12/17/2018 at 12:24 AM, DanielVranic said:

Yea, I did that, and they didnt match up. I messed with the color profiles and then the reimport did match, but the exports were still gross. Except for in VLC

If you're on Mac then I think there are big colour problems with QuickTime and I think VLC is regarded as more trustworthy than anything else, it's certainly what I use to view exports. I haven't noticed any differences between Resolve, VLC and watching YT but I might not be as demanding with colour as you.

I'd suggest asking the question over at liftgammagain.com, those guys will definitely be able to help.

On 12/14/2018 at 9:30 PM, DanielVranic said:

If only there was a solution for the washed-out export concern.

I have tried every tutorial, calibrated my display, tried every combo of export settings in Resolve and literally nothing has worked. Shot a short test clip, and recorded a tutorial on grading Fuji X-T3 footage in Resolve and I can't post it because every export kills my footage..

Have you tried exporting from Resolve and then pulling the export back into Resolve and seeing if it looks different?

If it's different to what the graded shots look like then it's a problem with the export function of Resolve, otherwise it might be that Resolve isn't calibrated properly. Resolve has its own independent colour calibration and profiles capabilities so maybe they've gotten screwed up somehow.

For what it's worth I've edited, graded, exported, and uploaded a couple of dozen videos and they look fine to me, except for the usual browser and media player colour issues.

9 hours ago, Dustin said:

Just wanted to say thanks to all of you for contributing to this thread, I will be bookmarking it. 

After 5 years of paying for the creative cloud, (most on the student discount) I simply cannot afford $60/mo. If it was the student price I would consider. That said, I have briefly played around with resolve, edited a few clips and watched a few tutorials and I think I should be just fine lowering my adobe to just photoshop. The only reason I’m keeping photoshop is I use a film correction plugin for scanning 35mm film (photography not video) and $10 a month is something I can afford.

As with any creative outlet I always like to pick the best tool for the job and budget, I’m looking forward to diving into resolve. It might take a few projects to get that muscle memory going but I’m pumped! 

At the moment I shoot 4k on my Sony a6500 and downscale to 1080p timeline for super crispy 1080p. In resolve will this downscaling happen automatically upon drag and drop or will I need to set it up to do so?

The scaling happens automatically.  Resolve handles almost anything you throw at it. Resolutions, framerates, bit-depths, gamma or colour spaces, the whole lot, and it does it so transparently that when I hear that other software doesn't it just makes me confused why anyone would write software any other way.

I also have photoshop as well as Resolve, they're good for different things.

On 12/13/2018 at 2:10 AM, mercer said:

Has anyone ever bought an expensive lens and felt that it may be too good for them?

I found a Zeiss ZF 28mm f/2 “Hollywood” lens that was Duclos modified for a fair price. I’ve always been interested in the Zeiss Hollywood lens, so I ponied up the money to buy it. After receiving the lens, I can confirm it is exceptional. It is a work of mechanical and optical art but it seems like overkill for my humble hobby. 

Has anyone else been in a similar situation?

Almost everyone is completely outclassed by all their equipment, at least from an artistic point of view (those guys who film walls and then blog about it are safe) so it seems to me that either you didn't like the aesthetic, or you're just aware of something that other people aren't. I could be wrong of course and it might be something else I haven't come across..

I'm shooting home videos with a GH5, Voitlander 17.5mm f0.95 and Rode video mic pro plus. Talk to me about equipment that is too good for the operator, I might be at the epicentre of that scenario!

@Dustin

The list of key differences would fill pages. I'd suggest searching for a few "going from premier pro to resolve" videos on YouTube and see what you can find.

In terms of what's missing, I have no idea, but I've made dozens of short home videos with it (complete work flow within resolve) and I haven't found it lacking.

Welcome to the club!

3 hours ago, DanielVranic said:

I did, it breaks the footage. I have to TRY to break the XT3 footage really hard before i get banding, and that LUT just does it right away

That's a pity, and it's also interesting to me. When I find something surprising that normally means there is something that I can learn.

I'm about to be out of internet range for a couple of weeks so I might play with it and see how it works and what it does