Who's actually filming and Editing in 4k

[Grae]

Personally, I do not shoot video in 24 or 30 FPS if I intend on slowing it down. If I was going to do a significant amount of slow motion I would not shoot the video in anything less than 60.. I do shoot slow motion for some events. I use a gh4 for that and shoot 90 fps. Comes out buttery smooth.

Cool. Thanks for this info!

 

[jack1144]

Thanks for this. Really useful. In terms of frame rate, as shooting 4K does not support 60fps (for example), do you consider this a significant disadvantage in terms of slowing footage down for that type of effect? Can you still slow footage down effectively in 4K? I read a lot of conflicting views regarding low and high frame rates.

I'm chiming in because this interesting hope you don't mind.
This is a $400 camera so there are certainly some disadvantages. Depending on the project delivery needs determines what to do.to get maximum value. If you need a clip of slowed footage shoot at 30 (29.97) and slow by 80% in post gives great 24fps .if your project is 24fps.
I agree with m0j0 , shoot with the best, edit to what is needed .Another item when editing is the higher 4k transition data gives a nicer transition unless you do cuts only.

 

[gravity]

Can you explain in more details about the conversion? I have a GoPro but don't use the gopro program anymore. I usually record everything in 1080 but I have this one video of the fireworks right at midnight on the 31st of December that I mistakenly did in 4K and my laptop can't handle it. I have no issues editing and rendering 1080... Thank !

Using the gopro program, put your 4k video in, and tell it that you want 1080p to come out. It will do your conversion and give you the 1080p. Keep in mind that if you are doing a full 10-20 minute video it will most likely take HOURS. Do it overnight.

 

[With The Birds]

4K is useless for anyone but videography and aerial photography professionals. 1080p is good for the majority.

here is the reason why:

1. Most people have phones where 4K doesnt look as good as a big screen and 1080p looks smooth and crisp. Most phones today cant even handle 4K resolution
2. Most Monitors being used dont use 4K and 1080p look the best due to 4k looking jagged due to smaller pixels on non-4K monitors
3. Most Phones and machines today cannot play 4K content
4. Most Machines today cannot even handle 4K editing let alone 4K downsampling which takes huge system resources.

if you get 4K without really needing 4K you will likely spend 500-1000$ to have a machine and monitor which can play and edit 4K video.

I can see 4K becoming standard by Phantom 4 where its camera will have 4K on the base model and the higher end model will have other features.

2015 there is no use for 4K when I know the machine to edit it and the media devices to play it are very expensive and in its infancy. I would wait till 2016-2017 when 4K monitors and capable machines and televisions are in more homes.

Right now 4K is only catering to about 10% of the mass audience and thus not worth the money. it will be in a year or 2 but not right now. I would save and get a Phantom Advanced and 2 additional batteries or 1 battery and a backpack than to purchase a Phantom Professional.

Wait a year when 4K adoption is more, the Professional is not future proof because the new quads will come to the market every year and P3 will be obsolete by P5 completely.


TLDR, no need to purchase 4K to cater to the niche product as of today.

why not save money now and buy 4K when it does become more common in 1-2 years. Right now a year before P4 unless you are a professional videographer, its a waste of money to be honest.

Hard drives are cheap, why not have 4k files ready to edit when the display devices are mainstream. 4k frame grabs make decent stills also, another advantage.

 

[Luap]

I thought that 4k was not really worth using. But after flying with a friend, he using 4k, me using 1080P60fps, I realized his footage on YT was way better than mine.
We had been flying over a lake filming sail boats, the city at the other side of lake etc. Everything looked crisper and especially larger on his. Boats had more detail, city appeared closer etc.
That's when I realised the FOV is different in 4k compared 1080. I.e. in 4K the footage appears closer than in 1080P. (Easy test - place you P3 on table film at ultra 4k 4K and 1080P. Now take stills and compare what has been framed).

I bought Cineform's Neoscene 8 years back to convert and edit 1080P videos. Worked great back then.
Today on my 4 year old computer (I7) I can drop a 1080P footage in my editor's timeline, play it back, add quite a few effects including cc, all in real time without use of proxy or conversions (Cineform or other) .

So my question to those that can drop P3P 4k footage in their editors timeline, do some cuts, do basic cc and preview the clip in the editing software without stuttering is:
What hardware do you have and what editing software do you use?

I'm hoping that a sub $2k system can do the job.

 

[sdharris]

So my question to those that can drop P3P 4k footage in their editors timeline, do some cuts, do basic cc and preview the clip in the editing software without stuttering is:
What hardware do you have and what editing software do you use?

5K Retina iMac works perfectly for 4K footage with Final Cut Pro, and they have versions within your price range including smaller 4K displays. You'll also find plenty of Windows capable hardware within that price range.

Buy, record and edit with the best resolution / quality as you can afford at the time as technology is moving on and we know what 4:3 SD looks on our HD widescreen TVs these days, you need the best source material you can get to show the grandchildren what the world looked like in 2016.

 

[Grae]

This is all great info! If 4K shot at 60fps on the Phantom, would you use it or stick with 24fps?

 

[Andy Boyd]

No it won't. The advanced, even with a 4k camera upgrade, still doesn't transmit video back to the RC at 10 mbs. If only does 2

It does much more than 2Mbps. The photo below is the bitrate of a typical cached video from my P3A with a Pro camera attached. As you can see the bitrate exceeds 6Mbps. This is in Auto quality mode on a simple trip 300M from the controller and back again.
I am still waiting for a P3P owner to drop one of their cached videos into this neat freeware; Bitrate Viewer, and report what max bitrate they get.
I think that in reality maybe the P3P does not reach 10Mbps either....

 

[Andy Boyd]

Thanks for this. Really useful. In terms of frame rate, as shooting 4K does not support 60fps (for example), do you consider this a significant disadvantage in terms of slowing footage down for that type of effect? Can you still slow footage down effectively in 4K? I read a lot of conflicting views regarding low and high frame rates.

You are right to think that if you have 60fps then you can stretch them out a bit without the steps being obvious to us humans with our persistence of vision.

But a more important point seems to be overlooked in this chain; fast moving objects in normal speed footage. Since it is so controllable, the Phantom is really great for doing close fly pasts, or skimming across the ground (like 2-3 feet up I mean). But if you do that when recording at 30 fps (or even worse at 24 fps) then you'll easily see the stuttering steps in motion between the frames. The recognised expert fudge to hide this is to put dark glasses on the camera!
If the filter is dark enough it will keep the shutter open long enough to blur the motion. Because of the blurred image on each frame you will no longer see the stutter.
So if you are going to record close objects or fast pan shots on a Phantom using 4k , then you better get some dark filters. Otherwise shoot in 1080 and admire the wonderfully fluid 60fps motion, and dream of the day when 4k will have the same frame rate. And you can also dream of the day when Phantom 4k will have the same quality per pixel as 1080, because Phantom 4k does NOT have that either today .

 

[m0j0]

I guess.. But really the "dark glasses" aka ND filters aren't used to fudge stuttery video.. They are used so that you don't have to shoot at an unnaturally high shutter speed which will absolutely result in stuttery video.. You are correct the cam on the Phantom is not perfect but ... It is very good. It is no worse than the Hero 4 black. And uses the same sensor that sony's 4K action cam uses. It isn't a GH4 or Sony a7 or Canon DSLR. That's in a totally different class.

None of the action cameras have ND filters and will all suffer from the same drawbacks. My recommendation to get the best out of these cameras is to use double the framerate as shutter speed and use ND filters to get the appropriate exposure. Doing that will produce the best video.


Phantom 3 Pro / iPad Air 2

 

[m0j0]

good read if you are interested..

Panning Best Practices

 

[Grae]

Thanks, guys. I have a comprehensive ND filter set and figured to take the frame rate and make the shutter speed double that. There are definitely two camps: 4K and 1080. I'm going for 4K (gulp!).

 

[jack1144]

Cool, another good thing is if using higher shutter speeds you can pull some stills from the video.

 

[PJ Orlando]

Im barely scratching the surface when it comes to editing and even shooting 4k video with my P3p.

I kind of faced your question myself before buying. Like in anything I do in technology i look a lot into "future proofing". To me getting a 4k cam was important so that when it becomes main stream i would have it.

 

[fort384]

I agree with a lot of the sentiment here and prefer to shoot in 4K. The flexibility it gives for editing is great if I want to crop a video I can do that and still maintain 1080p, effectively giving me zoom capability. If I don't plan to crop I'll publish in native 4K. It looks GREAT on my 5k iMac screen (definitely noticeably better than 1080p) and when the rest of the technology catches up I'll have 4K video waiting. I am not sure there is ever such a thing as future proof but certainly I think UHD is here to stay for awhile as it is noticeably much higher quality on the right display (I was skeptical until I started playing with and and now HD looks to me like SD did right after the HD transition 10-12 years ago).

As for processing I use Final Cut Pro x on a core i7 27" 5k iMac with 4gb video card, flash hard drive and 24gb of ram. It will handle 4K drop ins with ease and will play any 4K files instantly even with multiple effects dropped in. Rendering takes place seamlessly in the background and I have yet to even get it to stutter on playback with anything I throw at it. I know this system is a bit out of the price range mentioned but I guess my point is I would think even a toned down iMac with a core i5 and less ram would get the job done. I would definitely recommend a stand alone graphics card vs the onboard graphics. Not sure if that option exists with the smaller iMacs.

I used Adobe premier and pcs for video editing for years and just recently made the switch to Mac and fcp after acquiring the p3p and wanting to utilize full resolution. I don't think I'd ever go back. Fcp is comparatively easy to use and it took me no time to pick up the basics. And I think it meets the needs of all but the most hard core video editors -- and even some of them are coming back to fcp after a hiatus and releasing feature length films edited solely in fcp.


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[Andy Boyd]

good read if you are interested..

Panning Best Practices

Mojo,
That's a good little article. But it is based on the traditional advice for stuttery 24fps cine film!
I think visible stutter only exists if the frame rate is SLOWER than the response of your eye.
For example if a car drives fast across your path, you don't see its movement stutter (obviously). Neither should a recording of a car driving across your path if the frame rate is 60fps. Not unless you've got exceptionally fast eyes. The motion will looks smooth. It will be blurred by the response of your eye, just like the real event.
That to me is most important thing, not trying to artificially blur the image because the refresh rate of the image is slower than we are.
Of course if for some reason we are trying to replicate the 'feel' of cine film that's a different story. But I don't know why we should as a principle be trying to copy the shortcomings of a technology that is almost obsolete now. I'm all for a flowing smooth-action future!

 

[m0j0]

To each his own. I love the cinematic feel of 24p.. I love buttery smooth slow motion for sports. For me choosing frame rate is an artistic choice based on personal preference. The entire film industry agrees.... It certainly is not obsolete.


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[Andy Boyd]

To each his own. I love the cinematic feel of 24p.. I love buttery smooth slow motion for sports. For me choosing frame rate is an artistic choice based on personal preference. The entire film industry agrees.... It certainly is not obsolete.


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots mobile app

Hi Mojo,
Sorry, I guess I was being contentious. I'm just an engineer. 24 fps was (and of course still is) distinctly better than the flicker of the 16 fps Standard 8 home cine that my Dad used to shoot. From that I just see the logical evolution to more and more realistic video capture. I agree that 24 fps when skillfully captured is a pleasing artistic effect. But its not how we actually see the world. Our eyes are faster than that.
Sometimes as well as dropping the frame rate I even add film grain to video in Premiere to create some 'atmosphere'. But I wouldn't do it all the time.
Maybe its the classic artist vs scientist debate. Absolutely we need both in this world.
Out of interest, can you see the difference between 24 fps and the PAL standard 25 fps? I guess it must be much less obvious that the difference from 30 fps NTSC.