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Drift HD Ghost Help...

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
Hello

Ok so I've been using my Drift HD Ghost a couple of times but i get the feeling i'm not understanding all the frame rates etc correctly. I am hoping that someone has this camera and knows more about it then me.

At the moment im filming in 1080 resolution, frame rate at 30, FOV is 170 and exposure is at 0.

So really silly question but what is this actually giving me and what will happen if i start playing around with all the settings?! I have seen also that you can only edit slow mo's when filming at 720 resolution on the camera?!

Mainly going to be using it for skiing, either indoors or in the alps.

Thank you

phil


Last edited by Poster: A snowHead on Tue 22-01-13 9:03; edited 1 time in total
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Basically a video is a series of still images shown quickly. The image needs to change at a rate that is not jarring to human perception. Recording at 30fps is fine, most cinema is at 24fps for historical reasons. The problem with slow motion is that as you slow a clip down you are in effect reducing the frame rate. For example a 30fps clip played at half speed would in reality be playing at 15fps and look more stuttery. So 60fps is better for slow motion because when you retime the clip you are still within a good viewing frame rate.

Modern software can try create the in between frames to compensate which can work reasonably well but it's nearly always better to go for the higher frame rate options if a shot is to be slowed down. There are super slow motion tools like Twixtor but very often these cause weird visual warping of objects in the video so you have to be lucky and persistent to find shots it works with.

If you want to put stuff on YouTube you can just use the 720p 60fps mode and always be safe to halve the frame rate when you want. Or record in 1080p and pick specific instances where you want slow motion to record in 720p, you can then make the final edited video 1080p and the software will scale up the other footage to fit. The former option is the easiest and the latter option gives the best video quality, most people won't notice the lower resolution footage mixed in.
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Thank you for your reply.

So if for example i didnt want to edit any slow motion clips in the video while editing, what is the difference between me recording in 1080 vs 720 and 30fps vs 60fps?

Videos will be going onto youtube and facebook if this helps also.

Thank you,

Phil
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 You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
1080p has more pixels than 720p and 60fps is more frames per second than 30fps.

thats putting it really simply. I would probably shoot at 720p 60fps, most likely is that nobody will see the diference ever over 1080p
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 Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Thank you again for the reply.

So I'm not sure if I'm looking at this too simply but if i shoot at 60fps it should record and play back more smoothly then 30fps?

Phil
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 You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
Technically, yes, smoother although 30fps should look smooth to the human eye.

I would film in the highest res and highest fps that you can camera and memory permitting. Thats really what the lower frame rates and res are for, so you can store more footage on the same memory card.
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 Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
upbeatelliott, yes, again its a question of human perception and up around 60fps is only really affecting how you perceive the motion in your peripheral vision so is not so important for smooth perception (as mentioned before cinema movies are typically at 24fps).

The other question is that of filesize, recording at 720p 30fps takes up less space than 720p 60fps. Where as 1080p 30fps takes up about the same space as 720p 60fps.

Uploading onto YouTube and Facebook they take your video and reencode it so that it meets their specifications. For YouTube this means any video higher than 30fps will be converted so that it plays at 30fps so there is no real gain having your final project outputting at 60fps.

It's perfectly fine to record video in 720p 60fps and then have the output settings from the video editing software be 720p 30fps. You can then slow some sections down by half without losing framerate and the software will handle correcting the other footage so it is rendered out at 30fps. Then you don't need to worry about YouTube or Facebook ruining anything.
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
Thank you again, very helpful.

I now get those two settings. So how about the exposure settings? I was using 0 but noticed i could go - 1, -2, +1, +2? I guess this is something to do with the lighting?

Phil
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
upbeatelliott, it's compensation for the light levels. Basically the camera is trying to properly expose any particular scene by make it so the lighting isn't too bright or dark overall but has a tiny brain and doesn't always get it right so the ability to set the exposure compensation lets you manually compensate for that but you need to have some idea of what the output is likely to be like in order to use it well.

It works like this:
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Ok i see. Again thank you for your reply.

Phil
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 snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
and in terms of exposure, cameras metering often get it wrong when shooting in snow, this is because the scene is mostly bright white (assuming snowy scene) then the camera will adjust its exposure down, thos results in the snow looking grey as opposed to white. To get around this just manually push the exposure up, though you need to be careful to not blow everything out.
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 And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
The camera will be mainly used for skiing, so yes im hoping the sun will be out on the slopes resulting in the scene being very bright!.

Would it be best for me to manually increase the exposure if this was the case then to +1 or + 2?

I know a lot of this is trail and error i guess.

Phil
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 So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
it is, not having used the ghost i dont know how it comes out. I do know the gopro 1 and 2 work really well out of the box, havent really had a good go with the hd3 blacks as of yet, though i do have a stack of footage to go through.
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