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@KnightsFan is right, but to re-emphasise, this isn't a hardware problem. When you're rendering video, it doesn't need to happen in real-time. I frequently export projects at anything down to 1 frame-per-second, and the HDD, CPU, GPU, etc all just chug along at whatever speeds they can manage and eventually the export is complete. YouTubers often talk about rendering out their 10-minute videos taking an hour.

People tend to transcode to Prores HQ or DNxHD HQX files as proxy media, often depending on what platform they're on (PCs can't make Prores files IIRC), but my research didn't turn up any differences in quality between the two formats, so use whichever you like. If you want way too much information about proxy formats, here you go.... https://blog.frame.io/2017/02/15/choose-the-right-codec/ https://blog.frame.io/2017/02/13/50-intermediate-codecs-compared/ The second link shows the bitrates of the various codecs and you'll see that Prores HQ and DNxHD HQX are very similar, but note that DNxHD HQ is 8-bit vs DNxHD HQX is 10-bit, and this will likely make a difference so is worth checking if you go the DNxHD route. With all things, when you make a compressed copy of something you only degrade the quality. However with high quality codecs like these the degradation will be minimal and likely not a factor in the end result. As you say, this is about story and storytelling, and I think that the ability to edit with smooth playback will add more to the storytelling than the very slight degradation of the image will detract from it.

Not that I know of. IIRC Resolve has some built-in tools for backing up databases and otherwise managing them, but creating one per project seems like a neat and tidy kind of approach. I'd suggest a bit of googling to just check it's not got some unknown issues - Resolve can be a bit like that sometimes. This process makes sense. Copying the whole card/cards to the SSD array, editing it there (likely with directories for music, SFX, exports and other project files), and then backing up that whole directory structure to your archive drives when you're done seems good. If you want to revisit the project once it's been moved from SSD array is actually not that hard, as Resolve has a great function for relinking source media. If you go to the media pool, highlight all of your offline clips, right-click and choose the option Re-link Source Media (or similar) it will ask you which directory to look in. If you point it to your source project directory it can look through the whole directory structure and find all the files. I use this function all the time and it works really well. If you just needed to render out a new export, or make a couple of small changes to the grade or whatever then you may find that working off the slow archive drives is quite functional. One thing I'm not clear on (and am still working out for myself) is the pros and cons of archiving completed projects. My current approach has been to delete the optimised media and render cache files (via the Playback? menu in Resolve) and then renaming the project "ARCHIVED <project name>" in the database so I know I've deleted them. Otherwise you gradually fill your SSDs with cache files (stored in a non-human-readable directory structure), like I did. This means I have a database with all my past projects in it and can revisit them whenever I want to, re-linking to the source media as I described above. However, Resolves project archiving feature might be better for you. It appears that it copies/moves (?) the whole project, all the source media, optimised media and render cache files to a drive. From reading the section "Archiving and Restoring Projects" on or around page 76 of the Resolve Manual it seems like the directory structure is non-human-readable and to re-access the project you'd have to restore the project, probably copying/moving all the media once again, which is a large overhead. If that's true it would also be a PITA if you wanted to look at the source media from that project (eg, if you were making a showreel) or quickly re-export with slightly different settings. I shoot home and travel videos of my family, so I copy all my footage to a directory structure based on a /YEAR/YYYY-MM-DD <event or location>/ naming convention, which contains all the video and photos I take with any of my cameras, and I often want to include footage in multiple projects, for example a trip video, a year-in-review video, etc. So having my footage all locked away by Resolve in archives wouldn't suit how I work. I've re-written this post a few times as I fact-checked and learned more during writing it so hopefully that makes sense! ???

So many good cameras out there.. When I watched the GH5s vs P4K video I was more impacted by the slight changes in focus between the two cameras instead of the cameras themselves, which is in the skill department not the equipment department. I remember someone (@kidzrevil perhaps?) speaking about the Resolve Super Scale feature and how great it is, so that's something that might breathe new life into lower-resolution footage. More info: https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/resolve-15-super-scale-feature/ In terms of using slow-motion, I would suggest it's a new genre of film-making. Like all genres it will have fans and critics. Personally, I agree with @mercer around testing a camera by actually making a short film. That way, not only do you test the equipment by using it how you would on a real project, but you also get a real short film at the end of it, which is what all this fussing with cameras is ultimately for, right? ?

Australian Rules Football.. Wikipedia says that fields are "typically 135–185 metres long goal-to-goal and 110–155 metres wide" but I don't think he's on the full-sized field just yet. It's amusing that there isn't a standard size too - hooray for being Australian and basically not giving a sh*t about anything! ??? I'm seeing lenses like the Nikkor AI-S 100-300 f5.6, Tamron 80-250 f3.8-4.5, Canon FD 75-200 f4.5, Vivitar 75-205mm f3.8, etc that I can get for under $100 including shipping. The problem is that I don't know which are good and which are lemons, and considering that I can basically adapt any lens mount, I have a huge number of lenses to choose from. Today all lenses are optically excellent, but back in the day they weren't, so you can end up with something with nasty CA, isn't sharp (which matters as I'm seriously zooming in to its FOV).

Wow.. did he? I guess he'd probably be pretty bland on YT considering the extreme toxicity there!

I just looked up how big a lacrosse field is, and our football fields here are quite a bit larger, so that would factor in too. Hang on, a 200mm lens is enough, because with the 1.4x crop of the ETC mode and the 2x crop of MFT sensor size, a 200mm lens will have the same FOV as a 560mm lens on a FF camera. There are a bunch of lenses in the 70-200mm or 100-300mm range that look good.

When I was shooting with my Canon 700D and 55-250mm lens I used it in the Magic Lantern crop mode which turned it into a 264-1200mm equivalent lens. The 1200mm took waist-up portrait shots from the other side of the field and I got a few really nice shots like that, so that was the most zoom I would want. With a 600mm equivalent lens I'll be able to get 1200mm in 1080 by cropping into the 4K from the GH5. The 55-250 was a total pain to pull focus with because it is a cheap plastic lens and had a bit of play in the focus ring which made small smooth adjustments very difficult. Any half-decent manual lens should be 1000% nicer to use in that regard.

I want a lens to shoot my kids sports games. I will be using it with the GH5, which has IBIS, ETC crop mode, and (paired with a non-speedboosting adapter) the MFT 2x crop factor. I'm therefore thinking a fully-manual vintage lens could fit the bill. From shooting previously I've found that 600mm equivalent is enough reach, so if that's with the ETC mode, then the lens only has to be up to 200mm. A zoom would be really handy. My preferences are for a lens that has good IQ, is nice to use, has MF the right way, and has a longer zoom range. I can probably extend into the $100-200 range if there's something really nice, but cheaper is better What lenses should I be looking at?

Cool video. I know that 4K / colour science / AF / etc are not required for film-making, and I know that you also know that. It kinda makes me question though... I thought that most people here know that too. Do you think that there are lots of people on this board that don't understand these things? We all get excited by the tech, but when it comes to the art I thought we all calmed down a bit and regained perspective.

Cool. So, 3680 dots <is about> 1.2MP <is about> 1240x990 resolution (assuming a 5:4 aspect ratio). I just wondered because the viewfinders in the video I posted were 720p and 1080p and I wondered how the GH5 compared. He said that there was a slight difference between 720 and 1080, but that 720 was ample. I must say that the viewfinder is very nice, especially when you put on fast and high quality glass

Also, a question... The Panasonic quotes the GH5 EVF as having "3,680k dots" but does this mean 3.6MPixels, or is it counting the RGB lights in a pixel separately (which would mean it's about 1.2MPixels)?

I don't know about "affordable" but this might be helpful?

Shooting 4K and downscaling in post is a pretty good way of getting high quality 1080p, and it may record in a higher bitrate too. I have done image quality comparisons of different resolutions given the same file size, and you're normally better off with the higher resolution, so even if the camera shoots the same bitrate for 1080 and 4K, you'd still be better with the 4K file.

Great question.. I assumed @User was just using Resolve to generate media for use in some other software, but maybe that's not true?

Cool! Let us know how you go when you've had a chance to test it all

True, but only for longer focal lengths. If you're looking for a lens in the 100mm+ equivalent range then 50mm f1.8 lenses are great and cheap, and longer and slightly slower lenses are (almost literally) a dime a dozen. If you're looking for lenses in the range of, say, 50-100mm equivalent then you can get things like 28mm or 35mm FF lenses, but they're either cheap and slow or expensive and fast. If you're looking for lenses around 35mm equivalent then there are lots of 18mm APSC lenses around but you have the same cheap and slow or expensive and fast problem. And if you're looking for lenses under 35mm equivalent then you're basically screwed with a 2X crop on adapted lenses as 8mm or 14mm lenses are more expensive, and if you want 8mm and non-fisheye then it's time to sell a kidney!

Nice looking image. I'm doing the same thing with my GH5 and adapting lenses - using the GH5 10-bit mode to get the colour depth (not quite like RAW, but better than 8-bit) and the lenses to render the scene in a non-clinical way. I've got a couple of Helios lenses, and I have both SB and non-SB adapters for it. One thing to note is that modern lenses can be used as "semi-vintage" lenses too, if you use them wide-open or completely stopped-down, as this will normally soften the image significantly and is one of the things that people like about some vintage lenses. You can also 'cheat' a bit with them and use a bokeh modifier on the front of the lens to change the shape of the bokeh from the normal shape to something a bit more interesting. I suspect that if you have a 3D rather than 2D bokeh modifier then you can get different shaped bokeh in different parts of the frame, the way vintage lenses do, but I'll have to test this. It depends on what you're interested in.

I agree, and have said so previously. It's already available (the Sony FS5, FS7ii, etc) but will be great when it trickles down the product lines into our hands. Being able to set shutter angle and aperture (which are creative controls) and then control exposure with ND and ISO (which are exposure controls and not creative controls) will be a huge step forward. Also, setting auto-ND and auto-ISO will allow those of us who shoot in faster run-n-gun situations to keep away from very short shutter speeds. This is the kind of feature that will be significant enough for people to change systems. It's not. There are many native m43 lenses available. However, I think that adapting lenses with a SB is a valid and popular choice for economic reasons: FF lenses are often cheaper than their native counterparts (when you remember to convert the aperture!), and APSC/FF offers fast zooms that aren't available natively either People often already own lenses, so there's a convenience factor There is also the question about how much value your investment in lenses will retain over time, as at the moment it seems like everyone is going FF and it remains to be seen if this is a fad or if m43 will die, or if it will survive but get left behind as a lesser format Of course, adapting a $100 nifty-fifty by buying a $650 speed booster is a false-economy so you'd have to have quite a few cheaper FF lenses to recover the cost of the speed booster. There is also the option to adapt vintage lenses to get a desirable aesthetic to potentially offset the "lack of soul" that some people perceive in todays nearly-perfect lenses. This is art, after all.

Let's be clear about our terminology. When we talk about panning, tilting, or rolling shots, we are talking about shots where the camera stays in the same place but rotates. Eg, a panning shot is where the camera starts by looking left, and then rotates to point to the right. These shots are best accomplished with a tripod where the camera will be held still and the fluid head will provide a smooth rotation. When we talk about dolly shots or crane shots, we are talking about the camera physically moving, and it may or may not be rotating at the same time. These shots have that great parallax effect where the foreground moves faster than the background and you can do reveals and create nice depth. These are created by sliders, camera cranes, and dollys. If you want to up your production value, then the typical setup is a tripod and a slider. The tripod gives you flexibility to position the camera and get the right angles, and then by attaching the slider to the top of the tripod you can get movement that will be steady without it bouncing around or whatever. If you mount the slider left-right then you get sideways sliding shots, if you mount it forwards-backwards you can get push-in or pull-out shots, and if you mount it so it's got some up-down travel then you can get some crane-style shots. Some sliders have a wheel to control the movement, some have a flywheel, and some are motorised, and these are all mechanisms to try and smooth the speed of travel. What this setup will not give you is stabilised rotation. If you mount a fluid-head between the slider and the camera then you can move the camera on the slider and also pan/tilt the camera at the same time, but this requires skill and a steady hand. Monopods can offer panning and tilting shots, and can also do push-ins or pull-outs if you have a fluid-head and a steady hand. Also worth mentioning is table-top devices that give you either a sliding action, or a combination of sliding and panning, so you can go around a product. These are covered in the video previously posted by @BTM_Pix which I've quoted below. Your next step is to be clear about what you want: is it to move the camera? is it to rotate the camera? if you want a combination of those moves, then which combinations do you want? Only then can you think about what options are available and what you should get. These things are typical of film-making in the sense that: they add production value, you get the quality level you pay for, and the more flexible the setup the bigger and heavier it is and the longer it takes to setup and pack-down.

Wow - cool image. People over-use shallow DoF and then everyone gets critical of anyone who uses shallow DoF, but when used in an artistically relevant way it is a valuable technique, as this image shows. Both the fog and the shallow DoF really contribute to the beauty and kind of suffocating feel this has.

Cool you found it. I have lots of those moments! Also, if you don't want to edit the clips but just want to convert all of them to Prores, then the Media Management tool under the File menu (when the Media page is selected) is a great tool. It can also export the things only on the timeline too, either the whole clips that appear on the timeline, or the same but also trimming the clips on the timeline and optionally adding extra frames to the start/end of each clip for flexibility in editing later on.

DaVinci Resolve has heaps of functionality for converting between different colour profiles / gammas and is free, but you'll have to work out what the names of the colour / gamma spaces that you used are, not just the model numbers of the cameras. Alternatively, there is a LUT calculator that might have the profiles you're interested in: https://cameramanben.github.io/LUTCalc/LUTCalc/index.html Of course, the best approach is to not use a LUT at all, and use some kind of proper transformation that doesn't do a destructive transformation. You don't mention what software you're using, and that might help.

And can we afford the disk space and memory card requirements of the All-I codec??

I think I'm moving in that direction too. Maybe I should change my preset configuration to High focus peaking and see how I like it