Positive feedback required

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
:cool:

Yeah I subbed for that effort. Nice work mate. That is such a beautiful area you guys were riding in. I wish I had areas like that to play in back in the day. I'll check your other stuff soon because I am on my way out to go make my own crappy low res dvr vids ;)
 

fixnfly

New member
The videography looks awesome. Most of my experience is in live TV production which can be very picky. Keep up the good work.

Positive feedback:
Nicely shots
I love the variety of aerial and FPV style shots.
Many other things you got right that I would only notice if you had got them wrong...

Negative feedback: (because that is how you get better)
For gimbled shots, try to avoid pan/tilt aliasing. This is when you can see individual pan or tilt movements within a combined move. It is hard and takes lots of skill to get right and I think you did a good job avoiding this. Even the pro Jib camera operators get some now and then with their $5000 moving heads.
More switching between FPV helmet cam and aerial footage without time cuts would look awesome. (there is the live production side of me talking)
It would be awesome to hear those bikes make some sound mixed with the soundtrack! This unfortunately takes a separate set of quality audio gear to accomplish. Video production that puts the viewer where the camera is both visually and with sound has the highest production value.

Those are the only three things that I can think of that you should work on. Some might want more camera stabilization, but as long as the viewer doesn't get dizzy the shake as you shot it actually conveys a small portion of the experience of riding. Over all, the video is shot very tastefully. I wish I had the gear to do stuff like that! Sadly all of my stuff is stuck on the ground right now.
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
Well there ya go. Words from someone in the industry. Guess no need for me to say anything now. :D

I do agree with what fixnfly said specially with the sound thing. I been in bands on and off and have done live sound and some studio work before. It's not an easy thing to balance multiple sources and still give the feeling that it is you doing what is shown. Some of the videos out now drive me absolutely bonkers. When you listen to people speaking you have to crank your volume way up and then they suddenly inject some (usually craptastical) music in well over 20db louder. Even movies in theaters need to have the production engineer for sound severely beat about the head and shoulders for that. I had one video nearly blow my tv speakers. I was watching the interview at normal volumes and when it got near the end the music came on so loud everything was nothing but distorted noise. I dropped the tv volume to 2 and I could finally discern what was playing. (rant off)

So yeah a subtle mix can be done in video editing. There is usually a separate tracking bar where the levels are represented by a line. Markers can usually be added at various points to be able to change volumes just between those markers. Most people do not realize that and think the entire mix of clips used can only be set to one volume per clip.
 

fixnfly

New member
PsyBorg, you are correct. Sound editing is a whole other profession and the proper gear for recording can cost as much as a prosumer camera system. The most important step is to make sure all sound clips are normalized to the same average level and that clips that carry information such as talking have slightly higher volume relative to the rest of the track. Signal to noise ratio is important. Never forget to tell a story with both your video and audio even if one or both are extremely simple. I look forward to seeing what WeaponX comes up with next.
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
You can still do some changes in video software once your clips are put together before being merged. Using the markers and then manipulating the levels in the track is simple enough to get it where things are better balanced. Having a decent set of reference monitors helps.. Editing sound using beats headphones... not so much
 

WeaponX

Junior Member
Hey thanks guys really means alot coming from people in know about these things! I wonder want the boys at flite test think?