Challenge in videos maybe someone has some ideas on...

[ronscuba]

That sounds like fun and a good opportunity to learn. Curious, what cameras do you and crew use UW and topside ?

 

[Travis Matteson]

That sounds like fun and a good opportunity to learn. Curious, what cameras do you and crew use UW and topside ?

Mostly use Canon 5D MKII, Sony EX1, & Canon 7D. Sometimes we'll do some Gopro work and a couple other random cams.

 

[danvolker]

I shot video of Juno Ledge again this past weekend, with 90 ft viz, and lots of life....I shot this with the iso set at 1200, and used manual aperture.
For the avi file, or a Blu Ray, this video looks much better than the auto iso and auto exposure stuff I had been shooting before....however, for Youtube encoding, using h264 and up to a 3000kps encoding rate, I am getting the darker areas of the video blurring out....as if the compression technology makes a darker reef video less sharp, than a light or somewhat overexposed reef video.

This is the recent one, which I think because of darkeness, has lots of blurring...
YouTube - juno-ledge


And here is the same ledge with auto iso and auto exposure..
YouTube - Juno Ledge and the Coridor wreck dives of Palm beach

Any suggestions ?

 

[longshotgene]

When I worked for the NBA, we always shot full manual. When you are in the deep, the light is less but constant. You are not changing from situations where the light gets super bright and goes dark. I agree with what has been said. Shoot full manual. Here is what you have to ask yourself, "Self, do I want the machine doing all of the thinking, or do I want to do the thinking?" Auto is nice, but it is the lazy man's solution. Plus, you can tell a video shot in full auto!

 

[danvolker]

When I worked for the NBA, we always shot full manual. When you are in the deep, the light is less but constant. You are not changing from situations where the light gets super bright and goes dark. I agree with what has been said. Shoot full manual. Here is what you have to ask yourself, "Self, do I want the machine doing all of the thinking, or do I want to do the thinking?" Auto is nice, but it is the lazy man's solution. Plus, you can tell a video shot in full auto!

I'm fine with shooting full manual...the real question to me now, is am I correct that if I want the video to go to Youtube, that I need to shoot it bordering on overexposed, to avoid the blurriness artifacts in encoding dark areas of reef--or pretty much anything dark I would imagine...on my videos, the reef details are important, and while they should be dark in sme cases, this only looks good for BluRay 1080P.
Since I am new to these issues, I am hoping one of you guys has dealt with a similar issue before.....

 

[danvolker]

I would try aperture 5.6, ISO 1250. Increase ISO or open aperture if it's too dark, decrease ISO if it's too bright.

Increasing ISO will add noise, opening the aperture will put more of the scene out of focus.

Ron,
So after my last video outing, where the highly compressed Youtube video looks particularly blurry in the darker clips of reef below me....what you are saying would indicate maybe I should have tried a higher iso than 1250, so that I could use a smaller aperture setting...perhaps the BluRay version of my last video did not appear terribly blurry in the darker reef areas, but was in fact blurrier than it could have been--and the level of blurriness would be magnified by the much higher compression level needed for Youtube...

I was shooting on manual, with iso set at 1250, and then I would spin the aperture control until the subject looked like light levels were good in the playback ( Liveview) screen of the Canon 5D. I did not actually set any shutter speeds....I actually don't know what they were defaulting to... I will have to check into this when I shoot video Saturday.

Thanks for the help with this!

 

[ronscuba]

If you are happy with how your raw footage looks, but unhappy with what you see on Youtube, it is your editing render settings, Youtube's conversion, or both.

How does your raw footage and edited video look when played off your hard drive.

 

[danvolker]

If you are happy with how your raw footage looks, but unhappy with what you see on Youtube, it is your editing render settings, Youtube's conversion, or both.

How does your raw footage and edited video look when played off your hard drive.

Ron,
I just went back to the avi file and watched for a while.....After reading a bunch of articles on shutter speed and iso, etc., I am thinking that there is actually quite a bit of image shake going on, from too slow a shutter speed...this did not occur at all with the full auto video that I had been shooting before.....Unfortunately, I was not thinking about shutter speed at all for this last Juno Ledge video I shot... I do not even have a clue what it was at, but I am inclined to think it was probably a low shutter speed.
My plan now, when I shoot tommorow, is to try a fast shutter speed. with my aquatica housing, I have to set the shutter speed PRIOR to putting the camera in the housing....from what I was reading, I am guessing I need between 1/500 and 1/1500 --as the current plus my swim speed, has me moving over the coral reef below me ( say 10 feet down --85 feet deep on a 95 foot deep reef)) so quickly that each frame is getting blurred with the slow shutter speed. When my relative speed drops ( compared to video subjects where I am more stationary relative to them), the youtube video looks much better. I think the artifacts I dont like are evident in the avi when I look critically, but they are very exagerated in the Youtube compressed version of it.

Does this sound feasible? How does the 1/500 to 1/1500 shutter speed direction sound, with me just spinning the aperture wheel on the housing, until the exposureshown in the playback of Live View looks right for the video? Whatever I try, I will be locked into it for the dive....Saturday will be at BHB, very shallow 10 to 18 feet deep, huge ambient light.
sunday a reef with good viz and lots of ambient, but depths from 65 to 90 feet ( as in the Juno video I linked).

thanks,
Dan

 

[ronscuba]

I think 1/500 is too fast a shutter speed for your video footage to look natural.

What is your camera video recording setting ? 24p 30p or 60p ? I suggest making your shutter speed 1/50, 1/60 or 1/120 depending on your recording setting.

I also think you should try manual white balance. Use the sand as your reference.

 

[danvolker]

I think 1/500 is too fast a shutter speed for your video footage to look natural.

What is your camera video recording setting ? 24p 30p or 60p ? I suggest making your shutter speed 1/50, 1/60 or 1/120 depending on your recording setting.

I also think you should try manual white balance. Use the sand as your reference.

With the canon 5d mark II I can shoot at either 30 p or 24 p. So far I am shooting at 30P since I assume this will handle the motion of currents and swimming fish "better".
I use a custom setting in Vegas video for the project...1080 at 30p ( Vegas has 24P and a bunch of interlaced settings I would not use). And I use the NeoHD Cineform codec system.

So you would suggest with my iso at 1250 or 2000, with a 30p setting, I shoot at a shutter of 1/60 .....?

This to create a fairly filmic look..

..If motion artifacts become a problem with the 1/60 then I should try something faster..but I am getting from you that 1/500 would cause an "undesirable" look to the u/w video ?

Part of my interest in the potential use of a much faster shutter speed, is the effect of the zero motion artifact ( from the 1/500 and faster) on the huge compression of HD Youtube videos , where I am assuming that any blurring on the avi will be exagerated....so the question would be, what effect will the huge compression of the YOUtube requirements ( 2500kbps encode, Main concept H264) have on a video shot at 1/500 or 1/250 /

Thanks for taking the time to discuss this with me.