Here's sample that's now five(!) years old, but I think it still gets the job of "a funny thing happened while I was riding" done.
The camera (SJCam SJ7) has bandwidth issues, but was simple to use. Shooting 1080P @ 60 fps still strikes me as crisp enough for YT work.
This clip was taken out of a full day of "turn it on, let it run, and sort it out later" shooting. I used external battery packs to keep the camera running for 4+ hours at a go, changing chips and battery packs at lunchtime. Non-stop 4K just isn't happening with simple cameras - they cook themselves to death and/or shut down.
Shooting everything and then sorting out later means not trying to produce a video and riding at the same time. Making a note or two along the way, to figure just when something good happened, is a good idea, but usually the footage gives enough of an idea about where "good stuff" is.
Point of view (POV).... IMNSHO the camera on top of a helmet POV is just plain stupid. It's not a point of view anyone experiences while riding - it's "here's a camera on top of my head".
I keep my camera at eye level - the POV's easy to relate to. It's what we know. It's easy to say "here's how this scene or event looked to me".
Picking this video apart...
Yeah, titles are somewhat slow. This clip is taken out of all of the videos that came out of a single trip. They all have a common opening to, I hope, tie them together.
I did the title crawls on black because reading titles on scenery, etc. can be a little challenging.
The "dropped" titling was done with some mild title editing. Each title is really two titles - one in black, as a shadow, and one in yellow, as the "to be read" text. This is the sort of thing that looks stupid simple, but actually takes some processing power during the editing. Nudging the shadow into place took some "wash, rinse, repeat" to get everything lined up right. It took more time to do than might be expected.
During the opening, note when the titles change. The cut it right on the beat with the soundtrack. Resolve makes this easy to visualize, but keeping all of the bits of audio straight does take a bit of thinking about.
Listen closely, and there is some wind and engine noise in the background. I didn't want a final sound track that was just the music. Videos with nothing but wind rush... pathetic, simply pathetic.
I could have done the commentary as voice-overs, I suppose, but it didn't seem like a good idea at the time. Looking at the video now, yeah, well, maybe voice-over in post isn't such a bad idea.
Live voice-over has problems. Often the sound quality is simply unusable - excess noise, "wet mouth" or "mic in mouth", or what was said then isn't what's needed now. On a group ride, if only one person's audio is recorded, what that person's reacting to is lost.
Overall, looking at this video after a couple of years, it definitely wants some tightening up. At a guess, I could probably take out about two minutes of run time - tighten the titles, the opening drive, some of "stuck in traffic", and watching "Fast Vinny" ride off.
I used Jamendo.com for the music because the material is royalty-free. But that doesn't keep someone from making copyright claims on video using that material. Looking at the summary of all of the videos I've posted, including the twenty four videos from The Great Alps Trip, most of them have a copyright claim by somebody. The Alps videos all share three tracks (two in the open, one in the close), but not all of them have copyright claims.
The takeaway: beats the heck out of me what the rules are here. The closer something on YT gets to almost any money at all, the crazier people get. Expect some surprises.
The camera (SJCam SJ7) has bandwidth issues, but was simple to use. Shooting 1080P @ 60 fps still strikes me as crisp enough for YT work.
This clip was taken out of a full day of "turn it on, let it run, and sort it out later" shooting. I used external battery packs to keep the camera running for 4+ hours at a go, changing chips and battery packs at lunchtime. Non-stop 4K just isn't happening with simple cameras - they cook themselves to death and/or shut down.
Shooting everything and then sorting out later means not trying to produce a video and riding at the same time. Making a note or two along the way, to figure just when something good happened, is a good idea, but usually the footage gives enough of an idea about where "good stuff" is.
Point of view (POV).... IMNSHO the camera on top of a helmet POV is just plain stupid. It's not a point of view anyone experiences while riding - it's "here's a camera on top of my head".
I keep my camera at eye level - the POV's easy to relate to. It's what we know. It's easy to say "here's how this scene or event looked to me".
Picking this video apart...
Yeah, titles are somewhat slow. This clip is taken out of all of the videos that came out of a single trip. They all have a common opening to, I hope, tie them together.
I did the title crawls on black because reading titles on scenery, etc. can be a little challenging.
The "dropped" titling was done with some mild title editing. Each title is really two titles - one in black, as a shadow, and one in yellow, as the "to be read" text. This is the sort of thing that looks stupid simple, but actually takes some processing power during the editing. Nudging the shadow into place took some "wash, rinse, repeat" to get everything lined up right. It took more time to do than might be expected.
During the opening, note when the titles change. The cut it right on the beat with the soundtrack. Resolve makes this easy to visualize, but keeping all of the bits of audio straight does take a bit of thinking about.
Listen closely, and there is some wind and engine noise in the background. I didn't want a final sound track that was just the music. Videos with nothing but wind rush... pathetic, simply pathetic.
I could have done the commentary as voice-overs, I suppose, but it didn't seem like a good idea at the time. Looking at the video now, yeah, well, maybe voice-over in post isn't such a bad idea.
Live voice-over has problems. Often the sound quality is simply unusable - excess noise, "wet mouth" or "mic in mouth", or what was said then isn't what's needed now. On a group ride, if only one person's audio is recorded, what that person's reacting to is lost.
Overall, looking at this video after a couple of years, it definitely wants some tightening up. At a guess, I could probably take out about two minutes of run time - tighten the titles, the opening drive, some of "stuck in traffic", and watching "Fast Vinny" ride off.
I used Jamendo.com for the music because the material is royalty-free. But that doesn't keep someone from making copyright claims on video using that material. Looking at the summary of all of the videos I've posted, including the twenty four videos from The Great Alps Trip, most of them have a copyright claim by somebody. The Alps videos all share three tracks (two in the open, one in the close), but not all of them have copyright claims.
The takeaway: beats the heck out of me what the rules are here. The closer something on YT gets to almost any money at all, the crazier people get. Expect some surprises.
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