Diving El Nido Philippines with hero 3 black

[Marty Cerven]

Max depth 25m here all shot with a URPro cry filter in cam raw pt mode, 2.7k30 and a few 1080p60w shots. All grading done in cineform studio.

[video=youtube;ZgfevNMjX3M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgfevNMjX3M[/video]

 

[RedStang]

Ok, after watching your video I need to try 2.7k in my aquarium again ! Thanks for the vid.

 

[Marty Cerven]

2.7k I think has the best image quality even when exporting out at 1080p plus the advantage of being able to zoom in to a narrower fov in post with no major loss in quality. Most of this was scaled to fit the 1080p frame but a few shots are at 100% size which is slightly narrower then the medium fov in 1080p I think.

 

[fbk]

Looks great Marty! What was the average vis on your dives?

My H3 black will be here any day, already got my SRP SO filter. Taking it to Raja Ampat next month. You've convinced me to try shooting in 2.7k 30.

Did you ever get around to outlining your grading workflow of the PT raw files in Cineform?

 

[Marty Cerven]

The vis varied from 10 to 25m but mostly over 15m, light was good but ocassional cloud cover and one dive where it got so dark I thought it was a night dive. When we came up we realised a big storm came over and it explained the darkness lol, overall conditions where much better then any other diving I have done locally but still a bit short of some of the best conditions I have had in the past with 35m+ vis in Thailand the other year. Overall I have been quite impressed by the pro tune and cam raw mode giving good web control in post.

Of the many hours of footage I have shot there wouldn't be a single frame I couldn't use due to auto wb freak out like in the auto modes. Compared to using those modes eve with filters the have been times where the auto wb would be very poor and correcting pretty much impossible. It does add to the workflow a little but in the end its much easier to get good consistent results where auto wb is quite hit and miss, OK at times but pretty poor many other times.

I did write most of my workflow down in another thread on this forum, but I do intend to make a video showing this too and will likely try make one while editing some more video of this trip.

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/gopro-video/443147-gopro-cineform-editing-how-does-work.html

 

[fbk]

I guess what I meant was more along the lines of what adjustments (saturation, sharpness contrast etc as well as WB obviously) you typically make to the raw footage. Your raw/graded comparison is impressive, I would like to be able to achieve similar but as I've yet to get my H3 to experiment with I was just curious more than anything about what would be a starting point, even though all footage will be different. Thanks for the input!

 

[Marty Cerven]

When using protune and cam raw wb the first thing I do after importing to cineform is reset all, as by default the protune preset gets added and I dont like this too much.

This let's me start from scratch, I then pretty much always set sharpness to 0.5 which is 5 clicks to the right. I will then add contrast between 1.2 to 1.7 depending on the scene and also reduce exposure most times to try and get the black levels set.

I then adjust the wb and this is very dependant on the scene, lighting and depth so there is no specific setting. I tend to use a slate for wb or others tanks if diving locally where everyone uses white steel Faber tanks. You can also use the sand with the dropper to give a starting point but then I always tend to adjust the sliders manually as the dropper never sets it as I would like.

Once I have all my clips converted I will then import them into premiere pro where I will do the final trims and add them to the timeline. Here I can preview my full sequence and if I find some shot doesn't quite match the rest, I will open up cineform again and make some more adjustments to try and make sure all shots match up quite well together. This will automatically adjust my sequence and so I continue with this process until it all looks OK to me then export put of premiere.

Using the filters does give me much better colours in the end, though without filters you can get good web still using this method but colours end up lacking much more then if using a filter. Down to 25m or so I find the filter helps more then it hurts by reducing light but this is also dependant on the conditions. Great vis and light you may get good results to 30m but in poorer conditions it may struggle much past 20m.

 

[fbk]

Thanks Marty, great stuff. I've only ever tried using CF on my Hero2 footage with AutoWB and no protune. Then it just seemed too much of a hassle as I can import and edit the MP4's straight into PowerDirector anyway which is what I did on the couple of videos I've made. I am looking forward to seeing what I can do with CF and PT Raw footage and will hopefully get some good conditions and footage in Raja Ampat.

Until today I didn't realise that the adjustments to the exported CF AVI's get instantly updated in the editor so when my H3 Black finally gets here I'm going to introduce CF into the workflow by converting all my Gopro files, adjusting colour etc in Cineform then editing and exporting with PowerDirector. Your advice and tips and numerous informative posts are appreciated!

 

[USMCRet]

Excellent video!!!!

 

[Marty Cerven]

Thanks Marty, great stuff. I've only ever tried using CF on my Hero2 footage with AutoWB and no protune. Then it just seemed too much of a hassle as I can import and edit the MP4's straight into PowerDirector anyway which is what I did on the couple of videos I've made. I am looking forward to seeing what I can do with CF and PT Raw footage and will hopefully get some good conditions and footage in Raja Ampat.

Until today I didn't realise that the adjustments to the exported CF AVI's get instantly updated in the editor so when my H3 Black finally gets here I'm going to introduce CF into the workflow by converting all my Gopro files, adjusting colour etc in Cineform then editing and exporting with PowerDirector. Your advice and tips and numerous informative posts are appreciated!

CF uses non destructive meta data so the big advantage is that when you use it you can use it on the fly and make changes at any time. If you pre-render your sequence in your timeline you will need to delete the render files if you want new changes to show up in your sequence. I used to use magic bullet for grading but Im finding cineform is more then enough for the basic grading and recently I haven't even touched the image settings outside of cineform.

If your not using protune there is not much advantage to using cf studio but if you do its easily one of the better options to work with the files and the wb sliders work very well with cam raw for uw footage. If you want to avoid the extra workload then just shoot in regular modes which can do OK but I find it not much better then how the awb worked in the hero camera. If anything I think the hero 1 was best at awb underwater with hero2 and 3 black tending to get very green whenever the camera fets a little confused. The results with the h3b with pt and cr after grading are well above what was possible with the earlier cameras.

Its not necessarily the method for everyone and I'd suggest beginners to start out shooting in the regular modes, if the inconsistency bothers you then you always have the option of the method I use. If your going somewhere special and don't want camera wb issues to ruin some of your shots then using the protune option is the way to go but you just need to deal with that extra step in the workflow.

Excellent video!!!!

Thanks, I will have a bit more from this trip once I find the time to do some more editing that is.