Blaise Douros
Forum Replies Created
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Best of luck. I’ve been pretty happy with the updates, and haven’t run into anything worse than some indecipherable but workaround-able changeups of the way PP handles stereo vs. mono audio panning.
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Post a private Vimeo link of the shot. We’d only need to see five seconds of the clip to give you better advice. Otherwise we’re all just spouting extremely general info.
Dave, without having used the newest version of PP (since you constantly remind everyone around here that you’re using older versions for stability) you probably haven’t worked with PP’s new masking and tracking utilities that might make this possible. If it can be done with a couple of keyframes and a quick mask in PP, Steve might be able to save a lot of time.
Post the clip, Steve. Asking for help without showing us the problem is like asking a mechanic to examine your car while wearing a blindfold.
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I just specced out a B camera rig based on the Sony RX10ii combined with the K2M XLR mic attachment. It shoots 4K if you need it, HD if you don’t, and has a 50mbps XAVC-S codec that’s capable of slog2 if you’re into grading. 24-200 f2.8 constant aperture fixed lens, which is pretty much the perfect range for most video. It seems like a really nice little rig, and at $2000 for the camera and XLR attachment, that would leave you some room in your budget for lights, tripods, wireless mics, and maybe even some sliders.
It’s much cheaper than an A7sii rig, with most of the things that I’m interested in out of that platform. Take a look!
I know you’re interested in Canon cameras, but right now, even as a lifelong Canon fan, I am not at all excited about their video platforms. The C-series are overpriced and under-specced, and Sony has some unbelievably powerful options for mind-blowingly low prices.
If budget is really not an issue, the other camera you might look into is the Sony FS5. It’s bigger than the RX10ii, but is a full-featured lightweight cinema camera, and can take any lens from Sony’s native lenses to Canon’s L-series. An FS5 with a Metabones Speedbooster and a Canon 24-105L will go a looong way towards making you happy in the long term. But it will cost quite a bit more.
As far as bang for the buck…go with my first suggestion. If they decide to hand you the keys to the vault, get an FS5 or FS7, even 🙂
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This is operator error. You need to either have room tone recorded that you can lay under these transitions, or use a fade. Period. It’s standard practice. Here’s why:
This popping sound happens because an audio waveform travels up and down over the center axis as the mic diaphragm vibrates. That waveform is then sent to the speaker, which vibrates in conjunction with the waveform you see. If you cut the sound off when the waveform is at the top or bottom of the cycle, the speaker snaps from that point back to center, creating the pop that you’re hearing. A de-pop filter doesn’t work on it because it’s not caused by a spike in the waveform. It’s not a Premiere issue; this would happen whether you were in Avid, FCP, Premiere, Pro Tools…anything that edits audio.
You can get around this in one of three ways; use a fade at the beginning and end of clips, record room tone to lay under transitions, or zoom down to the sample level every time you make an audio edit, and make sure you cut the clip at the exact point when the waveform crosses the axis. Number three is a dumb way to do it, by the way 🙂 Room tone is the best solution, especially when you don’t have any other audio (like a music bed) to cover up the silence in between phrases.
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Glad I could help. The most helpful thing to do when you’re asking any tech question is make sure to lay out your gear and setup in your very first post, in as much detail as possible; without knowing that, the person on the other end is likely to give you only very generalized info.
I just guessed you had a Rebel knowing that it’s a really popular choice for shooters just starting out…an educated, but lucky, guess 🙂
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I still don’t know what camera you’re shooting–you haven’t told me! It’s important to give all the information available when asking for help, otherwise every piece of information we give you is a complete guess. I’m going to assume that you’re shooting a DSLR, possibly a Canon Rebel? The following information is based on that guess. If it’s wrong…sorry. Tell me what camera you’re using, and I’ll be more specific, more helpful, and less grouchy 🙂
The reason the auto-exposure adjusts all those settings is because that’s what auto-exposure does! If you’re wondering why its changing the shutter, it’s because DSLRs’ auto-exposure programs are designed for still shots, so a fast shutter speed is desirable. It’s not in video.
You don’t want to change your shutter speed from 1/(2 * framerate) unless you want a certain look. If your shutter speed goes too high, the video will look choppy due to reduced motion blur, while if it’s too slow, the motion blur gets out of control.
Frankly, you’re NEVER going to get a good result using an auto-exposure mode on a DSLR. Never. If you let the camera control the shutter speed, you get weird motion blur artifacts as described above. If you let it control the aperture, you get weird flickering exposure changes because DSLR apertures snap to certain set apertures, rather than smoothly transitioning. If you let it control ISO, you get some the same exposure changes, coupled with changes in the amount of grain in the image as the ISO goes higher.
TLDR: Don’t use auto-exposure on a DSLR for video. It sucks. It’s better to find some manual settings that generally work for your scene, and just deal with a few small changes in the exposure. If you’re shooting a vlog that requires you to go from inside to outside, shoot two takes, one for inside, one for outside, and cross cut when you go out the door. It’s better than the horrible problems that cameras create because they’re not as smart, or as capable, as human operators.
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Disclaimer–this is from the similar-but-not-identical XA20. There’s enough concurrency between the XA-series and G-series that I think it should be the same.
In the Function menu, there is an item labeled “Exposure,” which has an option to set it manually. This is actually the exposure compensation setting. Once you drop the setting by a stop, the Program modes like Av and Tv (use Tv for your application, so the shutter speed doesn’t start dropping) will underexpose to your setting.
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Good call, Tero.
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Mate, we don’t even know what camera you’re using. But let me say this: there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of tutorials, articles, and sites that can teach you how to use your camera, or at least how to understand exposure and auto-exposure. You should try a quick Google search.
If you want to film in a semi-automated exposure mode but keep your shutter consistent, use Shutter Priority mode.
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One thing that can help is setting the camera’s focal length manually. Figure out the focal length equivalent (18mm, 24mm, whatever) and enter that in the 3D camera tracker. It will help nail the tracking down. Also, you may want to increase the contrast before tracking–an adjustment layer in the pre-comp can help with that.