3 Saltwater Sights and Sounds - appreciate any comments to improve

[sbunting]

I've been a still photographer for nearly 60 years, so I thought I'd try my hand at video. Should be a piece of cake, right? Well, I think we all know that answer is no. Flying a drone for video is much different than for stills. Editing is another beast to conquer. I wasn't happy with just music, so I went out and separately recorded the nature sounds. So then scrubbing audio was a another challenge. All said and done, it was a learning experience. I intended to capture a lot of the beauty of my area's wetlands and waterways before over development seriously degrades them. I hope I achieved at least that. What started out to be a simple project turned into a 5 or 6 month long adventure.

When I first uploaded to Vimeo, the video was soft and ugly. It seems H265 was not a good fit for Vimeo. 264 fixed that and I'm somewhat satisfied with the quality now. Curious how I can improve it. Some may find it too long, 15 minutes plus, but I'll just have to live with that, unless someone can cite specifics of what could be cut. Appreciate any feedback.

 

[Rhody Seth]

There are some beautiful shots here. Especially of the kayakers. I like the nature noises but some of the bird calls are a bit jarring - a little loud compared to the music. I think it might also be the absence of other sounds in some of the shots. Some wind or light water noises along with the bird calls could go a long way.

 

[MS Coast]

That's very nice work. You must have put a lot of flight time into shooting all those beautiful scenes, and a lot of editing time, too.There's lots of beautiful light in what you shot. I particularly like the clouds moving over the marsh at about 3:00.

The editing is very well done from my "still photographer learning video" perspective. It's very smooth and flows nicely

The location is beautiful. I have a friend who lived in Lewes about 40 years ago who will enjoy seeing this. I've sent her the link. I never knew that the marshes and beaches in Delaware are so wonderful. They look very much like the ones here on the Gulf Coast, but with different plants and a lot more tidal currents. I found myself looking for redfish and egrets and wondering whether Canvasbacks flew past that blind in the fall. The osprey on the lighthouse didn't seem bothered by your drone at all. I might dial back the volume on the bird calls a bit.

The music and your recorded audio work very well. I picked up on the Great Blue Heron's indignant squawk and the Fish Crows. Laughing Gulls?

I did find myself skipping ahead. I've faced the same editing difficulties in trying to condense video into something my friends are willing to endure. I keep reminding myself that the individual drone shots I've ever seen in movies and television programs are seldom longer then five seconds and ten seconds is unheard of.

Are the paths in the marsh made by people or critters?

 

[sbunting]

Thanks! That Blue Heron's squawk is jarring, especially when you are near it. It startles you every time, but I probably could turn the volume down and those squawks, and probably the crows. They are obnoxious and prolific on a good day. Thanks again... Try to get some light wind worked into it..

 

[mavic3usa]

Happy to comment on such a beautiful video, the footage is stunning and I like the overall look and feel. I also try to retain and show as much footage as I can which creates a longer video but recently I learned to speed up the video in some places or cut out parts with a transition to make it a little bit shorter.

My hearing may not be the best but the birds in the background are a bit loud. Waves are fine but I think you lost some of the music in those places.

Otherwise, looks like a fantastic location, great weather, good scenery and overall a great video. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Crash Gibby]

Well done. I am the same about too long. Hard to shorten videos down. One thing for sure is if there is good entry spots and a vehicle down the Carary Creek some place it would be a very enjoyable trip by take. Some very nice shots there.

 

[Dale D]

I've been a still photographer for nearly 60 years, so I thought I'd try my hand at video. Should be a piece of cake, right? Well, I think we all know that answer is no. Flying a drone for video is much different than for stills. Editing is another beast to conquer. I wasn't happy with just music, so I went out and separately recorded the nature sounds. So then scrubbing audio was a another challenge. All said and done, it was a learning experience. I intended to capture a lot of the beauty of my area's wetlands and waterways before over development seriously degrades them. I hope I achieved at least that. What started out to be a simple project turned into a 5 or 6 month long adventure.

When I first uploaded to Vimeo, the video was soft and ugly. It seems H265 was not a good fit for Vimeo. 264 fixed that and I'm somewhat satisfied with the quality now. Curious how I can improve it. Some may find it too long, 15 minutes plus, but I'll just have to live with that, unless someone can cite specifics of what could be cut. Appreciate any feedback.

Steve:

I hit the "like" button and was able to get though about 4 minutes of your film before shutting it down.

Yes, the flying was perfect- nice and slow, and the scenery was beautiful with rich colors, sharp images, and great compositions with leading lines of the curving river. But like you, I have been doing photography all of my life and trying to show my friends- I just turned 85 Sept. 9. I have learned the painful lesson that most people simply will not watch a long film like this. Don't believe me? Just look at your own Vimeo or You Tube statistics, which are easily available from them. The average watch time is always less than 1 1/2 minute and the maximal watch time is about 3 minutes. For most of my stuff, the "finishes" are about 10%!!! My stats have never changed.

So what I do is make a show reel of about 3 minutes for You Tube or Vimeo and a longer private Vimeo for myself. You could have easily shorted the flight over the swamp to 30 seconds or a bit more, and the same with the ship wreck.

If you check out my major travels, I have managed to get a 3 week Middle East Trip (Doha,Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Israel, Jordan) or African Safari , jam packed with sites into 25 minutes, for my own enjoyment and for my photography friends. But most of my stuff is for mass consumption at 3 minutes.

By the way, I use an iMAC and have gone back to .264h from .265h with LUTS.

Dale Davis, M.D.

Dale Davis,M.D.

Advanced amateur photographer, world traveler, and avid enthusiast of time lapse photography.Also, retired M.D. ophthalmologist.

vimeo.com

 

[Phantomrain.org]

Huge fan of adding sounds, however you had my whole family looking on the Patio for some crazy chicken , lol

A couple things will help you need to have Reference when your going add the sound like that or they loose there wow factor and become lost in context like the birds in the beginning.

Notice how having a little more reference can really make the differnce other than tricking my family into a wild bird hunt it was really smooth and well done.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain. Land on the Water.

 

[GFields]

Awesome video. Well put together

 

[MS Coast]

@sbunting, I'm curious about which video editing software you chose, considering your experience with photography and computers.

 

[Dale D]

@sbunting, I'm curious about which video editing software you chose, considering your experience with photography and computers.

MSC

I think you are writing to the originator of this film, but if you want another opinion, I use Adobe Premier Pro along with the remainder of the Adobe suite. I have been getting a great offer from Adobe for the entire suite (I hardly use anything but Photoshop,Lightroom and Premier, plus PDF). I know that DaVinci Resolve is free and great but I can afford Adobe and have learned on Adobe so I am too lazy to learn DaVinci Resolve.

The bottom line, however, is that it really doesn't matter!

I once heard an old saying as a freshman in medical school when we were always arguing about what was the best stethoscope to buy. The final answer was the following," It's not what's IN your ears, it's what's BETWEEN your ears!" E.g.: As creators, the tools are just tools. It's your creativity and art and skill that will make the final product.

I'm sure we already all know that.

Dale

 

[MS Coast]

MSC

I think you are writing to the originator of this film, but if you want another opinion, I use Adobe Premier Pro along with the remainder of the Adobe suite. I have been getting a great offer from Adobe for the entire suite (I hardly use anything but Photoshop,Lightroom and Premier, plus PDF). I know that DaVinci Resolve is free and great but I can afford Adobe and have learned on Adobe so I am too lazy to learn DaVinci Resolve.

The bottom line, however, is that it really doesn't matter!

I once heard an old saying as a freshman in medical school when we were always arguing about what was the best stethoscope to buy. The final answer was the following," It's not what's IN your ears, it's what's BETWEEN your ears!" E.g.: As creators, the tools are just tools. It's your creativity and art and skill that will make the final product.

I'm sure we already all know that.

Dale

I used Premier Elements for several years, but eventually went to the paid version of Resolve. I stuck with Adobe for photo editing and just recently updated from CS5 to the current versions of Lightroom and Photoshop, partly as a result of your suggest a month or so ago.

Working at my level, any of the main software packages offer more capabilities than I'll ever use. For me, choosing software is a matter of finding one that matches the way I think and organize my work. Lotus 1-2-3 suited me perfectly. It was intuitive and just made sense. I ultimately had to move to Excel, but it seems to have been written with someone else in mind.

 

[Dale D]

I used Premier Elements for several years, but eventually went to the paid version of Resolve. I stuck with Adobe for photo editing and just recently updated from CS5 to the current versions of Lightroom and Photoshop, partly as a result of your suggest a month or so ago.

Working at my level, any of the main software packages offer more capabilities than I'll ever use. For me, choosing software is a matter of finding one that matches the way I think and organize my work. Lotus 1-2-3 suited me perfectly. It was intuitive and just made sense. I ultimately had to move to Excel, but it seems to have been written with someone else in mind.

Probably one of the best Photoshop tools that has ever been developed was about a year ago with the MASKING TOOLS. I am now able to edit and adjust every single portion of my image separately .I am presently working on my Canadian Rockies trip. Many of these images have a huge high dynamic range of many stops. Here is an example of before and after , on a waterfalls in a dark canyon ( Johnston Canyon, Alberta) that I have just spent the past 30 minutes editing. I did every single portion of this image with a separate mask. Here is the edited and unedited versions.

 

[sbunting]

@sbunting, I'm curious about which video editing software you chose, considering your experience with photography and computers.

I went with Final Cut Pro, after all, I'm an Apple dude! I took a two-day course with Jenn Jager and I was off and running. Of course, you don't use it, you lose it, but fortunately she provided video copies to us of our course and I put bookmarks throughout the video with VLAN. So I have a reference library that's easy to locate things. I'm used to paying for good software. I learned long ago, that for the most part, you get what you pay for. And considering what I pay for forensic software in my line of work, FCP was cheap, especially as you buy it once, or at least for now. Adobe likes to rent software by the month. Even though I rent Photoshop & Bridge, I didn't want to further a rental program. I figure anything made by Apple is made to run optimally on Apple and my M2Max chip handles it well. I tried the freebies, but in the end, I went with FCP and probably won't look back. I use a lot of high-end expensive software and while it pays to have two tools for any job in my work, you'll typically get good with one over the other and it will be your goto tool, the one that fits your hand like a glove. They are all good and if you choose one that you like and fits your budget, stick with it. As Dale noted, they are just tools. It's how you use them that counts.

 

[Dale D]

I went with Final Cut Pro, after all, I'm an Apple dude! I took a two-day course with Jenn Jager and I was off and running. Of course, you don't use it, you lose it, but fortunately she provided video copies to us of our course and I put bookmarks throughout the video with VLAN. So I have a reference library that's easy to locate things. I'm used to paying for good software. I learned long ago, that for the most part, you get what you pay for. And considering what I pay for forensic software in my line of work, FCP was cheap, especially as you buy it once, or at least for now. Adobe likes to rent software by the month. Even though I rent Photoshop & Bridge, I didn't want to further a rental program. I figure anything made by Apple is made to run optimally on Apple and my M2Max chip handles it well. I tried the freebies, but in the end, I went with FCP and probably won't look back. I use a lot of high-end expensive software and while it pays to have two tools for any job in my work, you'll typically get good with one over the other and it will be your goto tool, the one that fits your hand like a glove. They are all good and if you choose one that you like and fits your budget, stick with it. As Dale noted, they are just tools. It's how you use them that counts.

totally agree

 

[mavic3usa]

Switched to Davinci Resolve and never looked back. It's true a game changer for me.

 

[MS Coast]

Probably one of the best Photoshop tools that has ever been developed was about a year ago with the MASKING TOOLS. I am now able to edit and adjust every single portion of my image separately .I am presently working on my Canadian Rockies trip. Many of these images have a huge high dynamic range of many stops. Here is an example of before and after , on a waterfalls in a dark canyon ( Johnston Canyon, Alberta) that I have just spent the past 30 minutes editing. I did every single portion of this image with a separate mask. Here is the edited and unedited versions.

Impressive. You pulled more rabbits out of that hat than I ever imagined it might hold.

 

[sbunting]

Let me thank each and every one of you for your comments and this dialogue.

I posted this and then went dark, for which I apologize. The job that pays the bills was most demanding this week and for what they pay an hour, I'll gladly do as they ask and when they ask!

I knew up front I'd have some work to do. I plan to trim many of the clips and perhaps speed up here and there. Does anyone have any suggestions how much speeding up can be done without appearing to rush it? I'll tone down some of the bird sounds. While in the wild they are very much loud and startling, or can be, in the video they need to be lessened in quantity (the crow) and/or the audio turned down.

I like the idea of making one video for your own personal enjoyment and another for public consumption, a director's cut and a reader's digest version. Do they still publish the Reader's Digest? Have to look that one up!

Once again, the learning that comes from this kind of interaction is most valuable.

Thanks again!

 

[DMD Cine Attic]

Don't know what to add here, I have to agree with pretty much all Dale D. has said (looks like we're even sharing the same birthdate and name initials ). In short, your footage is exposed well, I come from photography so I know that is never going to be an issue for you. In film scene change (or angle) is very important, 3-5 sec max, unless there is a particular impactful reason to make it longer. Sound design is also very important, but that has been mentioned here as well, your video could use some ambient sound while flying over the marshland (wind, creaking sound, rumble, grass swaying, insects ...) kind what you did with the ocean scene, funny thing is it doesn't even have to match the scene perfectly. Just like in photography, selection is critical, delete/cut button must not be feared but embraced. I often go through a number of passes, deleting left and right, revisiting on following days after a good sleep to see if a particular scene still works for me or is of any relevance/importance. Having said all that, the most important part is that you need to be happy and do whatever makes you satisfied, no matter what the "golden rules" might be. Enjoy.

 

[TerryToast]

Does anyone have any suggestions how much speeding up can be done without appearing to rush it?

Set yourself a goal in editing of 8 seconds per clip.

For example, for your video specially, instead of starting the video with a long 2 minute clip of flying over the winding creek, you would edit down and use the first 8 seconds (of the 2min clip), then the middle 8 seconds (of the 2min clip) and the last 8 seconds (of the 2min clip). The result would then be a much faster and more interesting 24 seconds of winding creek video, which is 5 times faster than your 2 minute original video.