TheDiveO/Int'l

2013-10-06

Helpful Hero 3 Practice Above + Below the Waterline

GoPro's HD Hero 3 action cams are very popular for sure. Especially GoPro's top of the line HD Hero 3 Black Edition delivers stunning pictures above and below the waterline. And this despite its small size.

But right out of the box, video footage shot with the HD Hero 3 below the water surface still sometimes really sucks heavily, so how do we properly configure a Hero 3 Black Edition and then post-process (color-grade) the resulting footage to avoid such mishaps?

T14SG Telemetry: Setting the Warning Level for the Flight Battery

Personally, I really like Futaba's telemetry function: this way, I can always accurately see how much juice my Phantom's flight battery still has. In this article, I will show you how to configure the T14SG to warn you when the voltage of the flight battery drops below a certain level.

T14SG Phantom Programming: More Sensitive Control Sticks

When I set up my Futaba transmitter T14SG for the first time for use with my Phantom I also programmed a mixer: this mixer allowed me to change the rate (stick curve) for the rudder, in order to get more precise control during filming.

Of course, there is a better way to set up dual rate functionality. Almost any half-decent computer transmitter now comes with such a function already built-in. Time for an upgrade of my transmitter setup!

DJI Phantom and Futaba T14SG/R7008SB

Some time ago, I had this great idea to replace the original DJI transmitter and receiver units in my Phantom with with something better and more robust. I opted for a Futaba transmitter T14SG and an R7008SB receiver, complete with telemetry.

I've even upgraded my Phantom with a Zenmuse H3-2D gimbal recently; that required replacing the original main board.

For those interested in these upgrades I've documented both the hardware upgrade side, as well as the gory details of programming (or configuring) the T14SG transmitter. As there are quite some things to take care of, I've cut down the rather big topic into a series of blog articles:

In addition, you can find more articles with respect to the Phantom quadcopter and the Futaba T14SG transmitter:

tag: aerial.

GoPro HD Hero 3 in Practice

Always diving with the little cam cubes...
(In Fernsteinsee TY/A)

So you've got this tiny little cam cube that pretends to be a full-blown video camera...

...but what equipment do I need and how do I get proper colors even under water, for heavens sake?!

And what is this Protune thing, do I really need it?! What's this crap anyway, it produces awfully dull images??

If you somehow care about the later results when shooting video and if you want to achieve more than just Apple's iRrespective video effects, then you will find in my blog some helpful tips for working with Protune and Kdenlive. My examples are real-world examples taken from the videos I shot.

Equipment

Working with the GoPro HD Heroes becomes more fun when you make sure that you get some more equipment. You may get away for some time without them, but in the end, you will need additional equipment. Please head over to my blog post GoPro HD Hero 3 Black Edition equipment for my subjective list, based on my own experience for working with the HD Heros for over three years now. Also, not least when diving, proper light is of much importance to getting good footage from your HD Hero 3.

Protune For Starters

In Helpful Hero 3 Practice Above + Below the Waterline you'll learn how to start shooting in Protune. I'll show you step by step how to enable Protune and how to switch off the annoyingly bad automatic white balancing.

Effective Kdenlive

Those working with the open source non-linear video editor Kdenlive may benefit a lot from working with the so-called proxy clips. In Effectively Working with 2.7K Footage in Kdenlive I'm explaining how to set up proxy clips and I show the proxy-clip rendering profile I'm usually working with.

Grading Protune Footage

In Grading of Hero 3 (Above Waterline) Footage I'm showing and explaining my basic set of video effects I typically use when grading Protune video footage. I'm only working with really basic effects, so you can easily transfer your knowledge to any other decent video editor software, as long as it offers you the necessary basic tools. Albeit I use a simple set of effects, I've found them to be highly effective in many situations. Of course, I'm using real-world examples instead of artifical scene to show you my simple basics of how to grade footage.

Protune in the Evening

When you need to work on Protune footage shot in evening light, then this additional grading effect may come in handy: in Evening Gold and Hero Red: Protune Grading I'm showing you how to improve the appearance of evening footage even more. This is a more specific topic. Nevertheless, it's again a real-world example I ran into, so you may learn from it and may put it to good use even in other situations.

Protune Below the Waterline

In Grading of Hero 3 (Diving) Footage I'm dealing especially with the situation of filming in Protune under water. Starting from my basic set of video effects, I'm now making some changes to accommodate to the specifics of under water lighting conditions and even the water conditions itself. Again, I'm explaining my grading process with the help of several (bad?) real-world examples, fresh from mountain lakes and other filthy water holes.

Misc...

Over time, there will be more articles related to GoPro HD Hero and Kdenlive video editing, which are...

tagged as: GoPro.
tagged as: Hero 3 Black.
tagged as: Kdenlive.

2013-09-22

For the Records: Phantom Cable Spaghetti

Luckily, newer firmware releases for the Naza-M starting with V3.16 support S.BUS2 operation. The english articles already base on a S.BUS(2) setup. Having only a single cable between receiver and Naza-M is a great improvement, no more cable spaghetti.

For the records, I'm documenting the mess that was my interim setup, using seven servo patch cables to connect the receiver to the Naza-M flight controller. You need to see this...

Horka-Werbellin: a Short Dive Trip

Marco of Tauchrevier Deutschland fame was watering my mouth for quite a time already to do some dives in the lakes in the larger region around Berlin. Some weeks ago I got the opportunity to go on a short trip, starting at former stone pit Horka and travelling North until Werbellinsee. Of course, there are so many more dive spots in this area, so my wish list hasn't been checked clean so far. It was a really pleasant experience visiting the region, the landscape, interesting dive spots and with even more interesting people. Enjoy the video!

First Under Water Cyclist with Full Face Mask?

As if cycling under water wouldn't be bizare enough. So I couldn't resist and add a full face mask on top. This is now my personal, inofficial world record. Probably I'm the first one to do it in this combination... so a good reason to celebrate this with its own dedicated video clip. Enjoy!

Trimming Video Files Lossless Using ffmpeg

Recently, I needed to trim an H.264 video file of several megabytes size down to a few seconds worth without loss of quality. I simply didn't wanted to deal with this big video file in my editor and wasting space on an enormous proxy video file. Of course, ffmpeg immediately comes to mind, but how to tame that beast...?

Upgrading My Phantom With a Zenmuse H3-2D Gimbal

Unimpressive box containing impressive tech!

Welcome to another upgrade (or add-on) story for my ready-to-flight quadcopter! Rrrriiing ... my doorbell proclaims new work arriving. The kind delivery man hands over a small parcel containing pleasant work. At least for now I consider it to be pleasant, so let's enjoy the moment.

The parcel contains my long-awaited Zenmuse H3-2D gimbal system. This upgrade should bring me into the league of super stable aerial filming.

I couldn't resist so I immediately opened the next chapter in the book of my flying construction site. Today, it seems ages ago that I purchased that ready-to-flight kit...

Test Flight of Zenmuse H3-2D Gimbal

Taking aerial footage now is a great pleasure using the cam gimbal system Zenmuse H3-2D. You have to see how incredible stable the camera point of view now is, so here's a little video showing some simple footage. Now seeing such stable footage is great earnings for the effort I had to suffer when upgrading my Phantom quadcopter with the gimbal. More on the upgrade details will come as a separate blog article. Update: see here for my Zenmuse H3-2D upgrade experience.

SanDisk Extremes Without Problems So Far

I now could test the new SanDisk 32GB Extreme microSD cards both in the air as well as under water. They performed without any problems so far. Since their writing performance includes a good safety margin with respect to Protune requirements there is hope that these cards will also perform okay over a longer period of time. But only time will tell...

Replacement Superlative: and Now for the Extremists...

We now opened a new chapter in the probably never ending story of class 10 microSD cards from SanDisk. The currently heavily marketed Ultra series turned out to be an underperformer when used in HD Hero 3s, as they weren't up to the required writing performance of Protune. Now SanDisk marketing sends its extremists to the Protune race, as a replacement superlative for their ultras that took a big hit. Since one of my dealers wanted to only replace my Ultra cards with other SanDisk cards I bit the bullet and agreed to start the experiment...

World Records Day Under Water Video

Now you can also get a more vivid impression of our world records day under water. Enjoy!

World Record Day Under Water

Yesterday, we saw two new world records under water (2013-09-07)