12.5 4K Shooting

There are also two ways you can save your 4K video with this camera:

1) Internally, using an "appropriate" memory card (I'm using a Lexar Professional 1000x 128 GB SDXC UHS-II Class U3 card (sounds like Nikon lens nomenclature), rated at 150 MB/s.)
2) Externally via the HDMI port, using an external recorder such as the Atomos Shogun Recorder. (http://www.atomos.com/shogun/)
3) (Okay, three ways – you can select both methods via MENU --> Image 4 --> 4K output select when you have an external recorder attached.)

There IS a difference in video quality between options 1 and 2 – to make things fit onto a standard size SD card, the camera does compress the video a little bit as it gets written. The maximum bitrate you can choose for SD-stored 4K is 100 Mbps, whereas for external recorders you can record your video at about 147 Mbps.

Will you be able to tell the difference? If you're the kind that will plunk down a couple of thousand dollars for an external recorder, then the answer is, by definition, "yes". :-)

As mentioned earlier in the book, there is an official limit to the clip length you can shoot 4K at: 29 minutes, at which time the camera stops recording and you have to start it up again manually. On the other hand, the camera might overheat about 20 minutes into your clip length depending upon a lot of factors. If overheating concerns you at all, it's best to keep the LCD display tilted OUT to allow whatever accumulated heat there is to dissipate.

TIP: If you're the type who enjoys rooting their smartphone, then you'd be very interested in this Sony software hack that bypasses the legally-imposed 29-minute limit on video clips. Basically it's an app that you sneak onto your camera by making the camera think it's doing a firmware update. (Clever!) I haven't had time to try it myself, but others are reporting a great deal of success. See these two posts from SonyAlphaRumors.com: http://bit.ly/1TxWCYf and http://bit.ly/21gpcRf .

 

What's in a Filename? Since both 4K, HD, and MP4 all produce movie files ending in .mp4, can you tell what the original movie format was by looking at the filename?

The answer is "sort of", and here's how the various filenames appear ('x' represents a number):

XAVC S (both 4K and HD): Cxxxx.mp4

MP4: MAHxxxxx.mp4

AVCHD: (the file ends in .m2ts – no confusion there!)

Interestingly, if you're shooting with a 4K recorder attached, the camera's displays don't show you what you're shooting – you'll have to consult the external recorder for that. There are some other limitations when shooting 4K using an external recorder as well:

12.6 Capturing a 4K Freeze Frame

In the past, capturing a video freeze frame usually meant settling for a low-resolution image with murky sharpness. Once of the nice things about 4K is that each frame stands on its own (i.e., it's not interlaced) – you get a 3840 x 2160 pixel image (about 8 megapixels), good for printing a 12.8" x 7.2" print at 300 dpi. In fact, this is how Sports magazines are getting their “decisive moments” now.

If you don't have video editing software that can do this for you, the PlayMemories Home program that came with your camera can do the extraction for you. Here's how to do it:

  1. First, play back your video using PlayMemories Home, and choose Media Control --> Save Frame. (Figure 12-4). Once done, the screen in Figure 12-5 appears.
  2. Most of the controls on this screen are pretty self-explanatory – you can slide the red dot across the timeline to choose your exact frame, change your aspect ratio, crop, choose from two levels of autocorrect ("standard", "high", and "off" (okay, that's 3 levels)) and then you hit "Save".
  3. Your saved image will appear in the same directory as the video clip, with the same file name, appended with an (x).jpg (x being the number of freeze frames taken with it.)

Image

Figure 12-4: To capture a "freeze frame" of a 4K video, play it back in PlayMemories Home and choose Media Control --> Save Frame.

 

Image

Figure 12-5: This screen lets you choose a frame, an aspect ratio, crop, and even do some basic autocorrect before saving.
12.7 Manual Control in Movie Mode

By factory default, pressing the red button starts movies in program mode – that is, the camera selects an f/stop and shutter speed for you (and ISO, if the ISO has been set to AUTO.)

You can invoke the equivalent of Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, or Manual Exposure modes by invoking MENU --> Image 7 --> Movie / HFR. This function lets you specify the exposure mode when the Exposure Mode Dial is set to “Movie”. Your choices are:

 

P
  • P

A
  • A

S
  • S

M
  • M

 

The left column (representing the first four options) are analogous to the P, A, S, and M modes when taking stills. The right column (representing the bottom four options) are “High Frame Rate” versions of PASM, and will invoke the frame rate as specified in MENU --> Image 2 --> HFR Settings. (HFR stands for “High Frame Rate”, described in the next section.)

Here are some other factoids to know when shooting movies in manual mode:

 

TIP 1: The general rule-of-thumb for smooth looking video is “half the frame rate”; which means if you’re shooting at 60 frames per second, then your ideal shutter speed will be 1/120th of a second.

TIP 2: You may be wondering, “If the camera is shooting at 60 frames per second, how on earth is it possible to shoot at a slower shutter speed like ¼ of a second?” (Good question!) The answer is, when you shoot at a slower shutter speed, the camera duplicates frames when it creates the movie. So for example, if you were shooting at 1/60th of a second, one “exposure” will equal one frame of the movie as you play it back. If, on the other hand, you were to set the shutter speed to ¼ of a second (the slowest shutter speed the camera will allow in movie mode), the camera will take the ¼ second exposure and save it as 8 consecutive identical frames in the movie file. So your blurry shot will actually take ¼ of a second to view.

12.8 Slow-Motion Videos

There are actually two ways to shoot slow-motion video:

12.8.1 The in-camera way

You can slow things down in-camera using the new MENU --> Image 2 --> HFR Settings feature. Here’s how you use it:

  1. Invoke MENU --> Image 2 --> HFR Settings and choose between 30p 16M (4x slowdown) or 24P 12M (5x slowdown) (these are NTSC options). Note that, despite what these options say, the camera WILL be shooting at either 120 (NTSC) or 100 (PAL) frames per second.
  2. Invoke MENU --> Image 7 --> Movie/HFR and choose any of the last 4 options that have the “HFR” logo in front.
  3. Set the Exposure Mode dial to “Movie” and then press the red “Movie” button (or another button if you had the foresight to reassign it as described in Chapter 2.)

This feature will record video in the XAVC S HD format without sound.

The camera limits the amount of slo-mo video you can shoot to 7 minutes (at 30p 16M), 5.5 minutes (at 12p 12M), and 20 minutes (or 4GB, whichever comes first) when your recording format is set to .MP4.

 

TIP: Yes, I know that “Movie / HFR” menu and “HFR Settings” are 5 menu tabs apart. No, I don’t know why they didn’t put them close to each other. But before you complain about the complexity of the menus, spend a week with the Olympus E-M1 and your complaints will cease pretty quickly.

12.8.2 The higher quality way

If you’re a video purist, you’ll look at the bitrates in the HFR Settings options (16 Mbps and 12 Mbps) and say “That quality just won’t suit me!”. If that’s you, there’s another way to shoot slow motion: choose MENU --> Image 2 --> File Format --> XAVC S HD, and then MENU --> Image 2 --> Record Setting of 120p 100M or 120p 60M.

When played back at 30 frames per second there's a 4x slowdown. But in order to play it back at 30 fps you must re-encode it using a commercial video editing package, like Adobe Premier, Final Cut Pro, or Sony Vegas. Regretfully I can’t outline how to do that here