Short Division
I wanted a “credits logo” to show off projects that were shot on a DSLR, sort of like the Edited on Final Cut logotype. There didn’t seem to be any available, so I thought it’d be fun to make one. Here’s what I came up with –
Download the logos with or without the text here – feel free to use them!
I’ve been doing a lot of 3d tracking using the Pixel Farm’s PFHoe - it’s fantastic for the price ($99, or $199 for Pro), but it’s a limited version of its more $840 cousin, and you do start to notice those limitations. So here’s a few tips that might help my fellow low budget match movers.
- Check out the manual – I’m not used to software having manuals (seems to be a video thing) – turns out you really need to read this one. It’s hard to find some features without it.
- Know about the keyboard shortcuts – if you don’t read the manual, however, know that the spacebar brings up a secret menu in most steps, holding option while dragging zooms the viewport, and holding shift while dragging pans it.
- You do need to mask out moving objects – while it doesn’t have a built in way to make masks (I’ve been using Motion 5 – $50), not adding them really messes up the track.
- Keep some sort of cube in the shot – since PFHoe doesn’t allow you to set the focal length, you’ll need to estimate it using a cube (it also helps with estimating the ground plane). If you’re doing tracking on a green screen, you’ll want to put a box on it somewhere, or a box with a box on top if the floor isn’t in the shot. I ended up taping several together and covering it in tracking markers.
- If you’re tracking with a green screen – you’ll need to put tracking markers on it, and you’ll need to have something in the shot to demonstrate parallax, like a mic stand. There’s a really great 25 minute tutorial on placing tracking markers on the samples page for this course (it’s the second one down).
- If you’re shooting with a DSLR – don’t keep your apature wide open if you have tracking markers setup, you want them all to be in focus at once. You’ll also want to have you shutter speed higher than normal, probably at least 100 to reduce motion blur (also mentioned in this video).
- Check your start frames – if you’re noticing slippage in your 3d software you didn’t notice in PFHoe, make sure that the footage in your 3d program (if you have a video background on your camera for example) has the same start frame as the tracking data you imported. This is especially a problem in Blender.
- If you use Blender – know that it doesn’t work in the latest version, 2.5. It does, however, work in Blender 2.49, which means you import it into that version, save project, and then open it in the new version. It’s a pain. I’ve started developing a script that would let you import directly from 2.5, but haven’t been able to get some of the left-right handed conversion to work (so take a look if you’re good with python and math).
Also speaking of Blender, libmv is currently being integrated thanks to Google Summer of Code. So we’ll have open source match moving right inside Blender (you can check it out on the tomato branch). Seems to work pretty well so far, should be interesting to see how it compares to PFHoe.
My wife with our tracking marker setup.
Feel free to comment with your own tips!
Cheap-ish, that is. I’ve been looking at sliders for fun (you’d think I could find something better for recreation), and thought I’d make a collection of the more reasonable ($100-$1000 range) sliders on the market. Jump over to the full post to see them categorized by manual, crank, and motorized sliders.
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A Year Without Rent is a neat project that was funded through Kickstarter (a neat funding tool) – it’s
…a year traveling the country and volunteering on indie films around the country… Along the way, I’ll document the entire experience using geo-tagged photos, video, and blog posts. Think of it as a travelogue meets a series of DVD extras. The goal of the project is both to help these filmmakers get their films made and to start to introduce them to a larger audience.
Should be some nice vicarious filmmaking fun.
Flying from Washington, DC to Portland, ME – some really nice clouds. Taken by my wife on the iPhone 4 with a Glif and mini tripod, which reduced the shaking quite a bit.
We’ve been in the market for a video DSLR for the path few months – and finding the best one to buy is pretty confusing. Right now it’s a tie between the Canon 60D, and the Panasonic GH2. They’re both good cameras for video in the price range, but they both have some problems – like how the Canon 60D has trouble with aliasing, and the GH2 doesn’t have as many cheap, fast lenses available. So I made a chart with some points of comparison.
If you’ve shopped for lenses lately, you’ll notice that the lower the f-stop (i.e., how large the aperture can get, and how much light it can gather), the more they cost. For example, comparing Canon 50mm primes, the f1.8 is $125, which really isn’t bad. If you go to f1.4 though, it’s $363. To shave off just another 0.2 to f1.2, you’ve got to put down $1,427.
Now obviously these faster lenses are great (low light, shallow DOF), but I’ve been wondering why they cost more. Apparently, it’s mostly about the glass. According to Wikipedia, larger apertures require more glass to make, and glass is apparently expensive. Increasing the aperture also makes aberrations more visible, which means the glass also has to be higher quality.
Helpful explanation of formats, focal lengths, distances, and how they effect DOF, framing, and foreground/background sizes. I finally understand how dolly zoom works (that strange, background/foreground shifting effect). From Philip Bloom.
I’ve been spending a lot of time reading about DSLRs (and EVILs), lenses, and film and video in general lately. They say the best way to learn is to write, so expect more about these exciting topics in the future.
Vimeo
