Stabalized video using FCP SmoothCam Filter

[hulihee]

Hi everyone. I'm new to this forum and new to flying! I got into flying first with the blade MQX to get the hang of flying a quadcopter. Then last week I made my first flights with my new Phantom 2 Vision.

From what I can tell so far with having no incidents (knock on wood), it's important to really take your time setting up, plan what you're going to do in the air before you do it, and make sure you get a good connection to satellites prior to lift off. And for the record, I have not yet updated firmware.

I did a few aerial shots of my parents new home that was just built. I shot using 720P 60fps. I converted my footage using GoPro cineform app (which I realize now is not totally necessary for the P2V .MP4 files). Then I used basic cross dissolves between my best looking clips, and applied the SmoothCam filter within Final Cut Pro 6. I'm pretty happy with the result. It certainly doesn't beat the smoothness of a gimbal, but it seems to work pretty well. Because the FCP SmoothCam filter zooms in slightly resulting in some loss of quality, I'm interested to see if shooting in 1080p, applying SmoothCam, and then exporting in 720p helps preserve some of the resolution. Exporting 720p is standard for me since I only use a basic vimeo account. Let me know what you guys think of my video! And of course, I'm glad to finally be a part of this action! - Curt

http://vimeo.com/80634121

 

[Bwells]

The footage looks good. Very clean and thought out shots. I really like the pull back shot from under the back patio.

 

[Tromac]

Great work, love the smooth panning and movements. Beautiful house as well!

 

[whitewatersalvo]

Wow that is some of the smoothest PV footy ive seen surfin around the web.

Great job, was this all done in atti or gps?

 

[hulihee]

Thanks guys! I'm pretty sure that I've only been using GPS mode but I guess I'm not toally sure... I've been keeping both switches in the upper left and right of my controller flipped in the forward position. Is that what I use to toggle btw gps and atti? Atti mode will only stablalize my altitude, right?

I basically did 2 to 3 passes for each shot, and then chose the best looking one of each when I got to editing. In using the smoothcam filter on more recent video that I've taken, I'm finding that it works really well when the subjects of my shots are fixed, like the house. When you add moving subjects to the shots like a runner, or something like that, the smoothcam filter takes a lot more fine tuning to get smooth shots.

The other thing that I'm finding is that when shooting in 1080, the narrower fov generally works better with the smoothcam filter as you'll minimize the distortion around the edges of the frame, but on the downside is that the original material tends to be shakier the narrow you go.

 

[Timtro]

Ditto from here on the "nice work" comments.

 

[gunslinger]

Ditto from here on the "nice work" comments.

+1