Well I'm back - after a huge hiatus (life stuff) - so in a way I'm starting from square one again as I've forgotten so much. Today I'm dusting off my GoPro Hero 4 Black - yes, I know, that is so 'old' now!
 |
| In 2016 this was cutting edge... |
 |
| In 2019 this EKEN H9R Ultra does everything my GoPro 4 Hero Black does, but for the price of just £54! Technology marches on. |
A Walk in the Park?
We took the dog out to one of the little wildlife reserve parks on the outskirts of our town, a good opportunity for me to capture my base-line footage. It was a particularly sunny day so I was already prepared for some overexposure when filming into the sun and some unpredictable levels of exposure as I went abruptly from bright sunshine to dark shade as we passed though shaded wooded areas.
Aside from this, I didn't really know what to expect, so lets see some of the raw footage...
Lessons Learned...
While it's annoying having to learn all this stuff all over again, I was glad that the few problems I came across were minor 'niggles' and easily fixable. Here's a little list of things that I think need to be 'fixed' in my next test GoPro movie:
- Stability: (Not strictly a GoPro problem, but...) The FeiyuTech G4 gimbal I used needs recalibration in order to get the horizontal axis level. There's about -3.5 degrees tilt on the left, though this can be corrected in post I suppose.
- Audio: There is very obvious wind noise (rumble) throughout this test, I didn't think it was that windy on the day but this just goes to show how sensitive the GoPro's built in mic is. The solution would either be to cobble together a windshield mod to fix over the GoPro's mic OR I could use a better quality external microphone which has a proper windshield ('dead cat').
- Colour Rendition: The GoPro's default colour and exposure settings are acceptable, but the advanced user may wish to experiment with the cameras custom settings, called 'ProTune Controls'. In future, I will be utilising these controls in order to produce 'flat' colour profile footage which I can then colour correct in post.
There are many tutorials on YouTube which suggest alternative settings which can get the best out of the GoPro, so I will try some of these out in my next test.
A 'Quick Fix'...
As a bit of a learning exercise I thought I would do some minor post-editing to 'fix' at least a couple of the above issues using Power Director 17 (my editing software of choice) before attempting a 'hard' fix with another GoPro test.
First of all, I dealt with the offset horizon issue by rotating my clips -4 degrees to the left. Having rotated the footage, I then had to resize the clips to fill the frames. Luckily - because I shot in 2.7K (2704x1520) - I had some latitude to resize my footage without significantly affecting the final quality of my output, particularly as I eventually downsized my final output to 1080p.
Next, I experimented with colour correction in the software. After tinkering with some manual corrections, I eventually tried out Power Director 17's newly added ability to apply LUTs (colour 'Look Up Table' data files). I downloaded some free LUT profiles (.cube file format) which I imported into Power Director and tried a few different ones before settling on one called 'FG_CineCold'. This profile toned down the hot greens of my raw GoPro footage and gave the final movie an overall more subdued 'cinematic' feel (it's all a matter of personal preference, but I liked the effect).
Here's my 'corrected' movie clip...
Next: I'll try reconfiguring my GoPro with some advanced settings to see whether I can improve the quality of my raw footage.
No comments:
Post a Comment