Matching Handheld Video With Drone Footage

[baddog]

I am diving deep into luxury real estate video. In the past and for now, I have been doing just aerial real estate/wedding work and sub contacting with videogrphers needing drone support.

I have a Cannon 1DX Mark 2 for ground work/interior 4K video, shooting at 60fps and bringing it down to 24fps in post. I want to match my drone video footage as close as possible. I have a Mavic Pro that I use now for real estate video and it has servered me well but I now want to offer the full package. So, I want to match my footage between both cameras as close as possible. I really want to upgrade to a Mavic Pro 2 but from what I read up on I can not get full 4K at 60fps with the Mavic 2 Pro. Also the mechanical shutter is a must, if I start doing automated mapping missions as well.

I do really like the compact, easy carrying and transport of the Mavic series drones and all of its other features(Obstacle Avoidance, On Board Memeory, 10 Bit Color, and the additional flight modes like waypoint).

I do keep hearing rumors of Phantoms could possibly be phasing out of the DJI line up over the next year. Not that this is a huge concern, since I have been flying my Mavic Pro 1st edition for 3 years now and never needed much, if any support from DJI directly.

Anybody out there with some deeper professional insight, that is willing to pitch in their 2 cents on this topic.

Thanks in Advance

David Terrazas
Drone-Scapes

 

[johnmeyer]

The answer depends entirely on what you mean by "match."

To some, it means synchronizing the video from multiple cameras so they are all from the same moment in time, and you can then switch between the various videos in your NLE. For that task, make sure you have sound enabled on all video cameras and that there is some recognizable sound on which you can synchronize. In the movie industry they use a clapboard at the beginning of each scene, but you can also use a nifty, inexpensive utility called PluralEyes which will do this for you. It supports most NLEs.

If you mean color grading, there are plugins for many NLEs which will help you do what the pros call "color timing," which means making the video from each camera have the same gamma and color, so a red shirt looks to be the same color as you cut between cameras. Your NLE may have such things already built in. You can also do this by hand, once you learn the tricks, without relying on some automated software. The professionals do it that way.

If you mean getting exactly the same video format, if you have the right NLE (I use Vegas Pro), that becomes less important. I almost always have a mix of formats on the timeline. For instance, I still amost always use video from my ancient 1440x1080 Sony FX1 which is HDV (MPEG-2), non-square pixel format, at 29.97 fps interlaced (a.k.a., "60i"). I then intercut that with video from some of my more modern cameras which capture standard 1920x1080 square pixel HD (AVCHD) at 59.94 fps progressive (a.k.a. "60p") encoded with h.264 and stored in an MP4 container. And, more recently, I have added cameras which capture at 4K (including my new Mavic 2 Pro) at 29.97 fps progressive (a.k.a., "30p").

All of those things are on my timeline at once.

My standard for delivery is 60p 1920x1080. I try to avoid 24 fps because it is a lousy frame rate for most things. Also, it is fairly difficult to achieve good results changing 30 or 60 fps video to 24 fps or vice versa, whereas it is very easy to get good results going between 30p, 60p, and 60i.

24 fps is also not a good format because you get "judder" on horizontal pans, and the video has a "once removed" feel to it due to 24 fps being below the threshhold for true persistence of vision. 24 fps is great for movies, but not for many other things.

Finally, delivering in 4K is fraught with problems and I would advise against it because I don't think 4K penetration is very high yet, and there are just too many technical problems trying to get the 4K output from any NLE to play consistently well across a broad range of monitors.