Diamond Peak video edit

[textrovert]

Diamond Peak is open till April 21st this year, so I should be getting in at least a couple more days. Anyway, I made a "season" edit from the footage I have skiing there so far this season.

 

[Crudmaster]

Part of the appeal of your vid is the viewpoint you're able to put into your final edit. We'd love to learn more about the camera and post production process.

 

[textrovert]

Part of the appeal of your vid is the viewpoint you're able to put into your final edit. We'd love to learn more about the camera and post production process.

I am using a GoPro Fusion camera, but this not using any feature specific to it, other than 360-degree video capture. The same can be done with any of the current crop of very good 360-degree cameras like Rylo and Insta360 One X. All these cameras use 2 fish-eye lenses each to cover the 360 degrees scene. Software automatically stitches the two front & back source recordings to create a single stabilized 360-degree video. You can either directly share that 360-degree "spherical" video (best viewed in VR headsets) or create a traditional "flat" edit using that as the souce, which is what I am doing.

Recording with 360-degree cameras gives 3 big benefits over a standard POV/action cam-

1. Perfect stabilization: This is gimbal level stabilization without and bulky mechanism on the camera. The gyros record all shakes/movements and then since the full 360-degree image is available, it is compensated for when stitching and creating the 360-degree file, without have to crop-in or lose resolution like anti-shake in software on a traditional 16:9 video would have to. No jelly effects with this stabilization even thought it is done in software mostly.
2. Re-framing in edit: You do not have to point/look at anything. Just mount and record. Everything around it is captured. Later when editing, you can punch out a standard 16:9 window in this 360-degree sphere. You effectively are controlling the camera to re-frame during the final edit creation. Things could be happening behind you that you "missed" but there to drop into an edit. Don't like the framing- no problem, just pan/zoom freely till you find a framing you like. No need to go back and re-record anything. Once you get used to this, very hard to go back to standard action cam. GoPro's marketing name for this is "OverCapture". Also, the tiny planet perspectives are created when you pull back all the way.
   
3. Vanishing mount: When aligned along the axis of the camera, the mount completely disappears. For example, if you hold it on a selfie-stick, it will look like someone is recording you, since the pole is invisible. Of course GoPro has their marketing name for this too-- "Angel View"

In my Diamond Peak edit, depending on the clip, I have the camera mounted in one of three locations-

1. Top of helmet: Examples- during the intro chair-ride. This allows me to pan the view all around without being obstructed.
2. Front of helmet: Examples- any section where you see my knees. This allows panning down for powder shots
3. On a small extension pole attached to the top of my helmet: Example- in the clips where it looks like someone is following me closely and you can see me entirely. Here the mount has automatically been deleted by the stitch and it looks like the camera is floating behind me.

My workflow, which I now use on any GoPro Fusion recording-

1. Import: Move raw files from camera to PC. Fastest by directly plugging in the microSD cards
2. Stitch & stabilize: Use free GoPro Fusion Studio software to generate single 360-degree mp4 files for each recorded clip. This is the most frustrating part since my PC is not the latest/greatest. Fusion Studio is compute intensive and takes about 20-30 mins for every minute of recorded footage to process. I just batch them overnight. The mobile app on Android to do this is terrible. iPhone app from GoPro is much better, but still the seamless stich and full control is best on a computer.
3. Final Edit: I use 3rd party software to re-frame and create the traditional edit from the 360-degree source generated by Fusion Studio. This is fairly quick. Jsut like creating any normal edit, but with the added control of pan/zoom now available. I use a budget software- Cyberlink PowerDirector. Works great. I think I paid $40 for it a couple of years ago.

A little long... but I think that covers it.

 

[textrovert]

@Crudmaster -- For some pro examples of 360-camera usage, check out Miles Clark on Instagram. He is using the Rylo camera (and is often featured on their feed too). He gets some great shots with a pole mounted Rylo strapped to his backpack. The pole disappears and it looks like a follow-cam.
https://www.instagram.com/miles_clark/
https://www.instagram.com/rylo/

Rylo mobile app is excellent. You can download it for free and it comes with a few sample clips to play around with. With Rylo, all reframing and editing can be easily done on your phone in minutes itself. So the workflow is much simpler than with GoPro Fusion. Try out the app with the clips they provide- both iphone and android versions are solid. You can play around with it and get a feel for the editing process without even having the camera.
https://www.rylo.com/apps/

Here's a good series from them showing the entire mobile workflow-
https://www.rylo.com/stories/index.html

 

[Mendieta]

Love the video (and the skiing). The video
Got to the podium in the Diamond Peak contest.

 

[textrovert]

Love the video (and the skiing). The video
Got to the podium in the Diamond Peak contest.

Thanks @Mendieta !

Yeah, I entered it in DP's video contest this season and got 3rd place!

 

[Fuller]

Very nice, video technology is amazing these days.