Flying Alaska (Part 9) - Homecoming & Debrief

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waynemcc999
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Flying Alaska (Part 9) - Homecoming & Debrief

Post by waynemcc999 »


From ice to smoke. After a great time in Alaska, now for the 3 remaining legs home. We’re expecting some smoke along the way, but for the first time in 2 weeks, no risk of icing! Welcome aboard! Wayne, GeezerGeek Pilot
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Re: Flying Alaska (Part 9) - Homecoming & Debrief

Post by CFIDave »

Wayne, I thoroughly enjoyed your trip videos.

I wish I had your video editing skills. Approximately how long does it take for you to create each part? Do you mind sharing what tools you used?
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Re: Flying Alaska (Part 9) - Homecoming & Debrief

Post by waynemcc999 »

CFIDave wrote: Sat Dec 04, 2021 3:23 pm Wayne, I thoroughly enjoyed your trip videos.

I wish I had your video editing skills. Approximately how long does it take for you to create each part? Do you mind sharing what tools you used?
Dave, I'm very glad you enjoyed the videos... and trust me, it's something most anyone can put together. And, along the way I'm happy to try to answer any questions.

Here's my quite basic Hardware and Software Setup. I started a couple years ago with just one GoPro and used the free iMovie for editing. Earlier this year I added a second GoPro and moved up to FinalCutPro (big brother of iMovie) for editing. There are equivalent editing tools for Windows machines.

A guesstimate of effort and wall clock time to make one of these videos (e.g. the Part 9, 20 minutes final length):
[setup in aircraft before departure... less than 10 minutes]
-- upload video from the cameras/iPad to iMac... 5 minutes effort, ~3 hours wall clock time
-- combine and sync GoPro1/GoPro2/iPad into about 6 hours of un-edited video... ~1 hour
-- cut 6 hours down to 20 minutes of playing video... ~6-to-12 hours
-- add "B Roll" from iPhone camera... ~1 hour
-- add text labels and misc graphics... ~1 hour
-- locate and add a bit of music... ~30 minutes
-- add voice over... ~1 hour
-- upload to YouTube... 10 minutes effort, ~6 hours wall clock time
... so post-flight total for a 20 minute video... say 10-to-15 hours effort over a few days of calendar time

Seems like a bunch of work, but to be honest I find it enjoyable and, duh, it gives me something to do between flying outings :) . As an added bonus, my family, flying buddies and I find the videos a nice way to capture a lasting memory.

To summarize... to make videos at this very basic "under-produced" level, anyone can do it (don't need to be a techie or a cinematographer)... the gear investment is a few tanks of avgas (although it's tempting to keep assembling gear).

Dave, I'm guessing you'd enjoy the exercise... let me know if/how I can help.
Wayne
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Re: Flying Alaska (Part 9) - Homecoming & Debrief

Post by dmloftus »

Hi Wayne,
Do you keep the iPad in recording mode constantly? If so, how big are the files when you transfer? They look to be full HD so I would imagine they are pretty large. Do you have any tricks for synchronizing that video with the GoPros? As I recall, Apple is usually variable frame rate while most other cameras are fixed 29.97 or a multiple. Do you force the frame rates to fixed for easier editing?
BTW, nice to see the quick shots of KRHV, where I earned my PPL a decade ago. I think I have about 200 landings there, and quite a few are in similar smoky haze with the inevitable fires in late summer ;-)
Looking forward to your next adventure. Thanks for sharing.
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Re: Flying Alaska (Part 9) - Homecoming & Debrief

Post by waynemcc999 »

dmloftus wrote: Thu Dec 09, 2021 2:13 am Hi Wayne,
Do you keep the iPad in recording mode constantly? If so, how big are the files when you transfer? They look to be full HD so I would imagine they are pretty large. Do you have any tricks for synchronizing that video with the GoPros? As I recall, Apple is usually variable frame rate while most other cameras are fixed 29.97 or a multiple. Do you force the frame rates to fixed for easier editing?
BTW, nice to see the quick shots of KRHV, where I earned my PPL a decade ago. I think I have about 200 landings there, and quite a few are in similar smoky haze with the inevitable fires in late summer ;-)
Looking forward to your next adventure. Thanks for sharing.
David,
I generally run the iPad screen recording at the same time as the GoPros... for shorter legs, I'll let the iPad screen recording run the full leg. Takes approx 2GB/hour, so with my previous iPad Mini 5 with 64GB, I was stingier than I now am with my 256GB Mini 6.

For synchronizing the iPad screen recording with the GoPros... I watch what I'm doing on the iPad (zoom, whatever) via the over-the-shoulder GoPro and use that to sync the iPad. I do have an issue I haven't really understood that causes a say 2 hour session to have the iPad recording run several seconds longer than the GoPro 24fps recording. My hypothesis is that the ~8 minute long GoPro files drop a few frames between files.

Many thanks for watching, and I'm glad you enjoyed the brief KRHV segments!
All the best,
Wayne
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Re: Flying Alaska (Part 9) - Homecoming & Debrief

Post by dmloftus »

Thanks Wayne. Your issue with the frame drift between the iPad and the GoPros is likely due to the iPad recording in variable framerate. It doesn't matter much when you manually sync short videos, like your quick Foreflight screenshots. But any videos longer than a few minutes will gradually go out of sync.
I found out the hard way when I was using my iPhone mounted to the dash to record cockpit video with faces and voices of passengers and Sony ActionCams and GoPros external. Sometimes I use up to 4 cameras plus iPad videos. Most editing software expects a constant framerate. While I was editing longer iPhone/iPad clips in Pinnacle Studio, the audio would slowly drift further and further out of sync so that people's mouths would move but their recorded voice would be delayed. It's even worse when combining multiple camera angles.
Whenever I use a longer Apple video or when I mix Apple video with anything else using fixed frame rate, I first run the Apple video through Handbrake, a free video conversion tool, to convert it to constant frame rate. Then everything meshes together nicely in Pinnacle. There are lots of videos on Youtube that explain how to fix this issue, probably since it is such a widespread problem. Here are a few:

https://www.google.com/search?q=convert ... nt=gws-wiz
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Re: Flying Alaska (Part 9) - Homecoming & Debrief

Post by waynemcc999 »

David, awesome... I have Handbrake but never thought to use it for this purpose. I'll start processing my iPad screen recordings thru Handbrake to get constant frame rate.
Big thanks!
Wayne

BTW -- here's what QuickTime sees as the video specs for an iPad Screen Recording...
grab45.png
Whereas, here's one of my GoPro over-the-shoulder files:
grab47.png
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Re: Flying Alaska (Part 9) - Homecoming & Debrief

Post by waynemcc999 »

@dmloftus... David, I just took a ~2 hour iPad screen recording and processed thru Handbrake... and voila, the CFR output is indeed about 7 seconds shorter than the original VFR file. And that's about the "sync delta" I was seeing.
Cool! Big thanks,
Wayne
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