Short Video from Maldives (HC-7)

[pakman]

Seems like a majority of your shots, even wide shots, are taken using your lights? I've really only been able to use my 20w lights (10w HID x 2) for close-up and macro shots. Your 24w system must really pump out some light!

With the full moon tides kicking in, the viz on a lot of the dives was low so I was keeping the lights on all the time. Actually, even with the 2x24W HID's, I had to be pretty close to the reef to light any wideangle shots.

I guess I've been spoiled by some of the healthier reefs I've seen in the Philippines, but I thought a lot of the sites we did were a bit barren of coral. A lot of dead coral... If you saw some of the shots I've thrown out, some of the reefs looked really barren and beaten up. Not sure if it's lingering tsunami damage or past bleaching problems, or proximity to the capital Male, but there was a lot of dead coral. I was told, however, by a fellow guest who had just come from a liveaboard on the Baani Explorer that that wasn't the case on the sites they covered.

 

[Damselfish]

I was on a liveaboard also and while some sites were better than others (and some were amazing) even the worst I wouldn't describe as barren or beaten up. I think a lot of coral loss is from the big warming/bleaching event some years back. Perhaps proximity to Male doesn't help, though we saw some good stuff near there too. We dove mostly Ari and Felidoo atolls. Also a small atoll called Rasdu which may have been the best we saw there overall.

 

[Kyle in WI]

Wow that was professional. I agree the music was a nice compliment.

 

[pakman]

I was on a liveaboard also and while some sites were better than others (and some were amazing) even the worst I wouldn't describe as barren or beaten up. I think a lot of coral loss is from the big warming/bleaching event some years back. Perhaps proximity to Male doesn't help, though we saw some good stuff near there too. We dove mostly Ari and Felidoo atolls. Also a small atoll called Rasdu which may have been the best we saw there overall.

There is quite a bit of boat traffic given that Male is just 20min away by boat. Also, I forget the name of the island, but there was some massive construction going on on an island just north of Full Moon, some outrageously overpriced luxury water bungalow only resort - staff said 10K per nite! ouch.

Anyways, next time I'm definitely doing a liveaboard.

Wow that was professional. I agree the music was a nice compliment.

thanks Kyle. Glad you enjoyed it.

 

[PerroneFord]

Martin, I had been a Premiere Pro user in the past, but for this video I've given the Sony Vegas Pro 8.0 (trial) a go and I have to say I am pleasantly surprised with Vegas Pro. I think I might consider switching over to Vegas. Premiere has a great user interface, but the encoder is a bit lacking and downconverting in Premiere Pro to DVD was horrible quality wise. I never found a proper workflow for that.

I too switched from Premiere to Vegas (6.0) and have never looked back. I skipped 7.0, but bought 8.0 when it came out. The new titler and 32bit color (kinda problematic going to quicktime) have been marvelous.

The problem with going to DivX from Vegas has to do with the audio, as the audio needs to be MP3 which Vegas cannot do from the timeline. I end up exporting the video as a HuffYUV .avi file, then running virtualdub and doing the divx conversion there. I actually use the Xvid codec which gives incredible control over compression of both the audio and video. I also resize, deinterlace, and convert to 24fps in virtualdub.

By the way, going to 24fps allows you to push the compression bit rates up a bit and keep the same file sizes as 30fps. So you get cleaner video in the same file size.

 

[pakman]

Perrone, actually I was able to render a divx avi direct from Vegas using a mp3 sound file. I'll have to double check what sound conversion settings I used.

Odd thing was it would play in the standalone online divx player and the file details showed it properly encoded using divx, but then darn Stage6 kept refusing to accept the file! I had to run the file through Dr. Divx (new version now handles 6.8 codec) in order to get Stage6 to accept it. Go figure...

I thought about going through that workflow w/virtualdub Nick had outlines in the other thread, but to be honest with you I don't think it's worth all that effort just for the home-type of videos I do.

 

[PerroneFord]

Oh, don't get me wrong. Yes the standalone will play videos out of Vegas just fine. That's why for DAYS I couldn't figure out what was going wrong with my Stage6 uploads. Then I downloaded Dr DivX and ran them through that, and suddenly things worked fine. I went looking for answers on wetpixel, and found out the particulars of the workflow.

It's certainly a bit of work on the part of the author, but for me it's worth it. I hate what youtube does to video. I wish there was a nice option for doing this with streaming quicktime in h.264. Vimeo is as close as I could find, but the site is sorely lacking compared to Stage6.

Anyway, good job on the video.

Perrone, actually I was able to render a divx avi direct from Vegas using a mp3 sound file. I'll have to double check what sound conversion settings I used.

Odd thing was it would play in the standalone online divx player and the file details showed it properly encoded using divx, but then darn Stage6 kept refusing to accept the file! I had to run the file through Dr. Divx (new version now handles 6.8 codec) in order to get Stage6 to accept it. Go figure...

I thought about going through that workflow w/virtualdub Nick had outlines in the other thread, but to be honest with you I don't think it's worth all that effort just for the home-type of videos I do.

 

[BKP]

Excellent video... thanks for posting.

There was another vid on the site: "Big Fish Encounter," was that yours?
Couldn't believe the guy hand feeding a big tiger and a couple of bulls... with nothing more than a chain mail glove, and petting them as if they were kittens ready to curl up in his lap...

 

[pakman]

BKP, no that video is from Amphibiman... He's got some incredible HD footage... You gotta love those Tiger shots!

 

[ronscuba]

I have had very good luck with Divx Stage6. I use Vegas and record my finished videos back to the camcorder for viewing on my home HDTV. Vegas makes an m2t file when it does this. I rename the m2t extension to mpg, convert that file with Dr. Divx., then upload to Stage6.

This workflow process has worked very well for me, with minimal additional steps.