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spicytuna
Jun 23, 2009, 11:43 PM
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Hi,
I was just wondering if there was anyone here who took their camcorders up a mountain/route to document their climbs.
Now that Youtube has gone HD, I decided to put away my Ricoh GX200 for a while as I try to document my climbs on my Canon HF200 16:9 SD camcorder.
Needless to say, it involves a lot more work than I expected. If it isn't my poor camcorder handling skills, its the editing, if it isn't the editing, it's finding that proper render setting for smooth playback, etc.
Anyone have any samples of a video trip report? My pathetic examples can be found on Youtube under the username : Canmoreken
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JasonsDrivingForce
Jun 24, 2009, 7:40 PM
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I have about 10 videos of my son on youtube(user=mpgxsvcd) and in the videos section on this site.
http://www.youtube.com/user/mpgxsvcd
Most recent Trip report and videos
http://www.rockclimbing.com/...d;page=unread#unread
They were all recorded with my Panasonic DMC-ZS3 digital still camera. The videos are not edited very well but they look good and most are at 720p which is as high as youtube goes.
I know most people here will claim that you can’t get great videos and pictures without using a professional camera. However, I think that any High Definition video is better than all standard definition video.
I have only seen a couple other HD climbing video besides mine. I sure wish more people would shoot in HD(More specifically progressive scan HD). I can’t stand watching a great HD video get ruined by interlacing artifacts.
The only problem with my camera is that I got some chalk dust in my lens so there is a hazy circle in the middle of some of my videos. I should have bought the TS1 which is the water and dust proof version of my camera. Oh well, I might just crack it open and try to blow it out.
I use Sony’s Video Vegas 8 and a program called AVSVideoConverter to edit and compress my videos to 720p .wmv files for streaming on the web.
(This post was edited by JasonsDrivingForce on Jun 24, 2009, 7:40 PM)
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spicytuna
Jun 24, 2009, 8:38 PM
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Those videos are pretty good.
The optical stabilization on my camcorder (vs your digital stabilization) may be a tad better but otherwise, there's isn't much difference in quality as far as youtube viewing is concerned.
What format are you using to upload to youtube? V9? I'm using Vegas Pro 8 as well and I can't seem to get smooth video playback on youtube. They look much better on vimeo but of course you can only upload 1 HD video on vimeo a week without paying...
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JasonsDrivingForce
Jun 24, 2009, 9:09 PM
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spicytuna wrote: Those videos are pretty good. The optical stabilization on my camcorder (vs your digital stabilization) may be a tad better but otherwise, there's isn't much difference in quality as far as youtube viewing is concerned. What format are you using to upload to youtube? V9? I'm using Vegas Pro 8 as well and I can't seem to get smooth video playback on youtube. They look much better on vimeo but of course you can only upload 1 HD video on vimeo a week without paying...
Actually my Digital camera has optical image stabilization and a 12x optical zoom and both can be used while taking video. Remember image stabilization is only meant to stabilize slight movements. If you move the camera around a lot no stabilization is going to fix that. In my latest video the footing was not very good so it was not very stabile while it was hand held. Most of that video was shot on a tripod though.
What do you mean by smooth playback? Is it choppy on your computer when you select HD? Then you have to upgrade your video card to something that does onboard video decoding. My newer laptop plays everything buttery smooth. My older desktop does not. I could buy a newer video card for the desktop but I am too cheap to spend the extra $50. Try the link below. I bet that one plays fine on your computer. It is the .wmv format which is easier to decode than the H.264 used by youtube.
http://twills.fatcow.com/...r=/Kids/2009_06_June
I use Vegas V8 for any of the movies that have been edited with music and transitions. Otherwise I just use AVSVideoConverter when I am in a hurry.
The dynamic range of my camera is not as good but Panasonic should be coming out with a replacement for their DMC-LX3 this fall that will rival all camcorders for video performance and shoot some extremely nice still pictures as well.
Here is a great page to find out what digital cameras Panasonic has. That site even has sample videos for almost all of the cameras.
http://www.dpreview.com/...ews/specs/Panasonic/
(This post was edited by JasonsDrivingForce on Jun 24, 2009, 9:11 PM)
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spicytuna
Jun 24, 2009, 10:00 PM
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By smooth playback, I meant the playback within Youtube. The videos look normal on my computer but look very choppy/laggy when uploaded and viewed in Youtube.
The same video file (rendered in Vegas as a WMA) looks better on Vimeo so I'm still playing around with the rendering settings to better match Youtube.
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JasonsDrivingForce
Jun 25, 2009, 2:10 PM
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spicytuna wrote: By smooth playback, I meant the playback within Youtube. The videos look normal on my computer but look very choppy/laggy when uploaded and viewed in Youtube. The same video file (rendered in Vegas as a WMA) looks better on Vimeo so I'm still playing around with the rendering settings to better match Youtube.
Can you describe a little bit more about what you process is for recording and compressing the movies?
For instance, your camera is a standard definition 480i camcorder right? You shouldn’t encode it to 720p then. Instead you should encode it to an extremely high bit rate 720x480 .wmv file. If you are using Vegas then make sure you select the best deinterlace option as well.
By encoding to a 720p resolution you are actually bit starving the video when you upload it to youtube. If you keep the resolution at the native resolution then each pixel will actually have more bits and you don’t gain anything from trying to upscale it.
My suggestion would be to encode to 720x480 wmv at a quality setting of 93 or perhaps 97(if the video is less than 8 minutes), with deinterlacing, with a frame rate of 29.97 FPS, and with lossless compressed wma audio. If you do that and upload it to youtube it will not have the macro blocking that your videos have and it will no longer have choppy playback.
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JasonsDrivingForce
Jun 25, 2009, 2:15 PM
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spicytuna wrote: Now that Youtube has gone HD, I decided to put away my Ricoh GX200 for a while as I try to document my climbs on my Canon HF200 16:9 SD camcorder.
That is actually an HD camcorder! That changes everything. Encode to 1920x1080(or 1280x720 if that takes a long time) at 29.97 FPS at a quality setting of 83-93 depending on how long the video is(youtubes max is 1 gb and 10 minutes per file). Make sure you deinterlace it though.
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JasonsDrivingForce
Jun 25, 2009, 2:17 PM
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Actually that Canon can shoot at 24 FPS and 30 FPS as well. I would shoot at 30 FPS and then not deinterlace personally. However, shooting at 24 FPS can produce some very sharp looking video as long as there is not much motion in it.
Now that I realize what camcorder you have you can make your videos look a lot better than they do on youtube. Are you recording them in HD?
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spicytuna
Jun 26, 2009, 11:57 PM
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I'm using the default recording settings which is 1440x1080 at a framerate of 60i.
I'll try recording my next clip at 30FPS.
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pico23
Jun 27, 2009, 3:54 AM
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Let me preface this by saying anything I know about video is not much.
I think the issue is the frame rate. Try shooting at 30 or 24 and I think you will have fewer problems. Cinema cameras shoot at 24 and most video display options in the states use 24 or 30. technically the eye cannot differentiate 30 and 60 frames in video, in gaming there are some issues where 60 frames are needed or preferred but in video it's not the case.
I did try to view a few of your videos on my netbook, which doesn't have the best graphics processor, and it kept locking up the video and pausing. Not sure if this is the same problem you were reporting, but I couldn't get more than 1 minute into any of them before giving up. I don't usually have this problem, the processor isn't great, and my fan turns on, but it gets the job done.
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JasonsDrivingForce
Jun 29, 2009, 2:16 PM
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pico23 wrote: Let me preface this by saying anything I know about video is not much. I think the issue is the frame rate. Try shooting at 30 or 24 and I think you will have fewer problems. Cinema cameras shoot at 24 and most video display options in the states use 24 or 30. technically the eye cannot differentiate 30 and 60 frames in video, in gaming there are some issues where 60 frames are needed or preferred but in video it's not the case.
Actually 60p is totally distinguishable from 30p. Check out these videos from the new Sanyo Camera that shoots true 1080p @ 60 FPS.
http://vimeo.com/...earch:Sanyo%20HD2000
Then compare those to my ZS3 videos that shoot 720p @ 30 FPS and then doubles the frames to get to 60 FPS.
http://www.youtube.com/user/mpgxsvcd
No “CURRENT” displays sold in the US refresh at 30 FPS. Some do 24 FPS, 60 FPS, 72 FPS, 120 FPS, 240 FPS, and higher. It is true that they display 1080i content which is technically 30 FPS. However, they deinterlace the content to 60 FPS by interpolating data. That is not a true 30 FPS display.
Old CRT HD TVs were true 1080i TVs. They did refresh at 30 FPS. However, I haven’t seen one of those sold in a store in the US for a couple of years.
(This post was edited by JasonsDrivingForce on Jun 29, 2009, 2:16 PM)
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pico23
Jul 5, 2009, 2:40 PM
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I'm pretty sure the eye cannot actually physically determine the difference between 30 and 60. There is a lot of debate about what the eye stops seeing at fps, and as I noted above some scenes/types of video can be improved at 60 fps.
Those videos could be enhanced (haven't had a chance to look at this, just got back from a 6 day paddling trip).
There are just physical limitations to what the eye can see (and by eye, I mean eye/brain combo).
Anyway, google frame rate and vision, or something, and there should be tons of papers written on visual limitations.
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JasonsDrivingForce
Jul 7, 2009, 8:06 PM
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pico23 wrote: I'm pretty sure the eye cannot actually physically determine the difference between 30 and 60. There is a lot of debate about what the eye stops seeing at fps, and as I noted above some scenes/types of video can be improved at 60 fps. Those videos could be enhanced (haven't had a chance to look at this, just got back from a 6 day paddling trip). There are just physical limitations to what the eye can see (and by eye, I mean eye/brain combo). Anyway, google frame rate and vision, or something, and there should be tons of papers written on visual limitations.
Check the 60 FPS progressive videos I listed above. You can clearly see the difference if you download the original file. 50-60 FPS is where I think the limit of human vision is based on personal experience. Try it and you will see.
You can interlace 30 FPS video to trick the human eye into thinking they are seeing 60 fps. However, a true 30 FPS progressive video is easily distinguishable from 60 FPS progressive video if the video has any motion at all.
"Some RUMORS says that the human eye can only see up to 30 frames per second and some others something over 400 frames."
http://en.wikipedia.org/...man_eye_.22see.22.3F
(This post was edited by JasonsDrivingForce on Jul 7, 2009, 8:15 PM)
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