[Joshua Fong]

Todd,

Nice ingenuity & great looking spot. Nice B roll & editing.

I’m not a physics major but I would remind any DIYers getting into vehicle mounts that it is not merely a question of can the suction cups support the static weight of the camera mount but whether it can hold down the mount in the event of a fast acceleration or deceleration.

Force = Mass x speed.

So if you had to stop suddenly, a 10 lb. or 20 lb. mount might become a 50 lb. or a hundred lb. mount or more depending on the weight and speed. It is important to know the load rating of each of the suction cups so you can do the math for the speeds you’ll be working at.

Be very conservative, use extra cups, and always tie down for the safety of the gear and yourself, to say nothing of others on the road.

I find it helps a bit to paper tape around the edges of the cups to help seal off the vacuum. It seems to slow down the loss of suction.

Another issue I’ve experienced when driving with vehicle mounts is that they can be very distracting for the driver. I find having one person drive while another person monitors the mount to be more ideal.

I have also noticed that the car mount is distracting to other drivers on the road as well which may cause them to rubberneck so it pays to be even more vigilant in heavy traffic.

Direct hood mounts can also be problematic sometimes due to engine vibration so I find mounting to the roof of a car to be both more stable and less distracting. Two additional rods mounted to the top of the camera rig can help with harmonic vibrations.

Professional insurance is a good idea if you are out in traffic amongst other vehicles. If this isn’t feasible, then it’s best to shoot in as low-traffic areas as possible.

[Joshua Fong]

Shawn,

Surprise, surprise: CC 14 is Beta!

I had your issue along with some unknown compiling errors today.

What I have figured out, in my situation, is that CC 14 (I am on a Mac with Mavericks 10.9.4) seems to have a bug wherein the audio and video preview folders (Project Settings: Scratch Disks) revert to an alternate drive that is low on space. This happens every time I close and reopen Premiere.

I have to manually rest the scratch disk folders for audio & video previews every time I reopen the project. But then the rendering is fine. Check your scratch disks designations under Project Settings and see if they are full or have been diverted to the wrong drives.

MORAL OF THE STORY

As I am between big projects, I took the opportunity to finally upgrade to Mavericks from Lion. While I religiously waited to upgrade the OS 3 to 6 months after its debut, I wanted to clean install CC and figured I might as well just implement CC 14 and installed it like you.

I think we are being ‘rewarded’ for jumping prematurely into a new release with the Beta Kiss of Death.

I still have a Lion partition with the old CC but I noticed that once again, Adobe is making the current Premiere Project non-backwards compatible with previous projects.

So either we don’t start any more new projects in CC 14 and continue to work in our old CC installs for the next few months, or we bite the bullet and ride out the Beta Bugs. I’m not sure yet in my case.

Why do I feel like a three year old again, having to touch the stove to see if it is hot or not?

Good luck and hope that helps in your situation.

PS: Other issue could be still images or video with larger than HD resolution.

[Joshua Fong]

Naiche,

Your picture is 20 fps but because the audio was recorded separately, in either 24fps or 30fps, it will progressively go more and more out of sync.

1) If you open the audio file in quicktime it should tell you the fps.

2) Check the framerate of your sequence in sequence settings. (Right click on the sequence icon in the browser, go to settings.)

3) Match the sequence framerate to your audio framerate. Your 20fps video footage might need to be rerendered but perhaps it will match up.

4) Last Resort Option: I don’t know how long your project is but if it isn’t too long and nothing else works, you might need to slice the audio up and manually resync it periodically.

Good luck.

Also:

According to Canon, they designed their video functions on their new DSLRs with journalists in mind, not filmmakers so that accounts for things like 20 fps. However, they have acknowledged the broad filmmaking interest in their cameras and seem to be responding. Supposedly a 24p firmware upgrade is coming to the 5D2.

If you’re interested in DSLR video stuff, the Magic Lantern website has useful info, a 5D filmschool, and free firmware.

Josh