Gordy generously / foolishly volunteered to be a drone target yesterday, which revealed both my lack of flying skills and inability to smoothly edit a video...
It's hard trying to film someone riding a bike - you're concentrating so much on flying the drone that you forget about things like camera angles and lens flare. And other people..
You also end up with 15 minutes of footage, most of which is hovering and manoeuvrings, and need to cut that down to get to the 'action'. I was in a bit of a rush so didn't have time to figure out how to do smooth fades & cut shots so this is all pretty basic stuff without any stabilisation. But even simple video editing tools really hammer the laptop! I don't even want to think about adding a music track...
Showing posts with label Drone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Drone. Show all posts
Monday, August 26, 2013
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Droning On
I've been playing around with the drone when I can over the last few weeks. Unfortunately it needs relatively windless conditions and a reasonable level of light to work, and it's hard to find that when I'm in the office most days and the infamous Ekka Westerlies are blowing.
Flying the drone always felt a bit odd but I couldn't figure out why. It all clicked into place when I read a post online that pointed out that you're not controlling the individual components of the drone like you are with a model plane. You're not increasing the throttle or tilting an aerilon - instead you're using the application that you have on your android device to tell the drone what you want it to do, and it then does its best to carry out that action. You don't increase the throttle to make it move faster, you tell it to move faster in a certain direction and the various bits of computing power make the adjustments to tilt and propeller speed to accelerate it. This is why it's so intuitive, but also why it can be weird if you're used to breaking down these things into individual components.
It also means that you can download and use different apps to fly the same device. Here's me trying to figure out a new app, as taken from the drone. Ah - so that's the camera button
'
Unfortunately recorded video is still jerky and hard to watch as I'm not very smooth in my movements. If you fly the drone at speed and then tell it to stop suddenly it needs to tilt backwards to make that stop, so I'm slowly learning to decelerate it in a way that doesn't leave the viewer feeling seasick. I'm getting there though and still aim to chase mountain bikers through the woods. I just don't want to be this guy...
Don't think I'll be doing any wedding shoots any time soon....
Flying the drone always felt a bit odd but I couldn't figure out why. It all clicked into place when I read a post online that pointed out that you're not controlling the individual components of the drone like you are with a model plane. You're not increasing the throttle or tilting an aerilon - instead you're using the application that you have on your android device to tell the drone what you want it to do, and it then does its best to carry out that action. You don't increase the throttle to make it move faster, you tell it to move faster in a certain direction and the various bits of computing power make the adjustments to tilt and propeller speed to accelerate it. This is why it's so intuitive, but also why it can be weird if you're used to breaking down these things into individual components.
It also means that you can download and use different apps to fly the same device. Here's me trying to figure out a new app, as taken from the drone. Ah - so that's the camera button
'
me trying to show someone else how it works (Hi Marin! Bought one yet?)
and a few scenic shots of the neighbours yards...
Unfortunately recorded video is still jerky and hard to watch as I'm not very smooth in my movements. If you fly the drone at speed and then tell it to stop suddenly it needs to tilt backwards to make that stop, so I'm slowly learning to decelerate it in a way that doesn't leave the viewer feeling seasick. I'm getting there though and still aim to chase mountain bikers through the woods. I just don't want to be this guy...
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Cooking in the gardens
We packed our passports and headed north of the river on Sunday to check out the Redcliffe food festival. Australia is big on its food festivals and they vary from small intimate gatherings to large corporate events. The atmosphere tends to vary inversely to the size - at the Southbank festival we've even been scolded by a stallholder for daring to taste a wine at a wine tasting and not immediately buying a bottle.*
The Redcliffe festival was a little different as it was held in the botanical gardens, with a twisty turn maze of pathways threading through beautiful woodland
Along with the food, wine, gardening talks and general knick-knack stalls were some historical recreation societies including a gypsy group
and a medieval recreation society, one of whom gave a great talk on making mead
Hanging over everything and constantly chattering to themselves were the fruit bats that have made their home in the gardens
I thought that bats slept during the day but these guys were early risers
After a few hours we sought refuge from the crowds and went to the beach - it was beautiful Qld winter weather and I didn't see a single cloud in the sky all day. This is an aerial shot from the drone, although I'm not game enough to fly it over water quite yet.
When I get the hang of flying it then I can try for some bat close-ups...
*The two of us shared very small tastings of a mediocre Shiraz and an overly sweet & fake tasting 'ginger zinger' wine put out by '2nd 2 None' wines. After politely refusing the suggestion to buy something at $17 / bottle that was outclassed by Dan Murphy cleanskins we were snappily asked 'why are you tasting them if you're not going to buy one?', which is kind of missing the point I think. We spent a few dollars more on a lovely Pinot Noir from a very friendly neighbouring stall instead. '2nd 2 None' are regulars on the foodie circuit - if you see their stall, just keep walking.
The Redcliffe festival was a little different as it was held in the botanical gardens, with a twisty turn maze of pathways threading through beautiful woodland
*The two of us shared very small tastings of a mediocre Shiraz and an overly sweet & fake tasting 'ginger zinger' wine put out by '2nd 2 None' wines. After politely refusing the suggestion to buy something at $17 / bottle that was outclassed by Dan Murphy cleanskins we were snappily asked 'why are you tasting them if you're not going to buy one?', which is kind of missing the point I think. We spent a few dollars more on a lovely Pinot Noir from a very friendly neighbouring stall instead. '2nd 2 None' are regulars on the foodie circuit - if you see their stall, just keep walking.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Getting rid of the shakes...
What do you think of the two videos below? The first one is the drone video from yesterday as directly recorded by the tablet
The next one has been processed with 'Videopad Pro', a free (for home use) video editor with an anti-shake feature.
Can you tell the difference? And if so which do you prefer?
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Droning on
I've got a new toy, a Parrot AR 2 drone, and it is awesome
It's a remote-controlled quadcopter, which is cool enough in its own right, but the technology behind it is really innovative. For a start it has a wireless router on-board, so you connect to it and control it via an app that you download to a tablet or smart phone.
There are a few different control options for the drone - you can control it via a virtual joystick by pushing your thumbs around on the surface of the tablet. But you can also choose to control it by tilting the tablet - the drone will then tilt and move in the direction to match. And you can choose relative or absolute control - in absolute control the drone will move in the direction that is indicated regardless of its orientation. In other words if you want it to go left you direct it to move left, and this works whether the drone is facing towards you or away from you.
The control is also a little different to a standard remote controlled toy because if you aren't steering it it will attempt to hold position, so it will try to correct itself when its being blown around by the wind. It also uses downward-directed ultrasonic sensors to hold the set altitude above ground level, so if you fly 'up' a slope it will gain height to maintain the same above-ground altitude. Not sure how that works if you fly 'off' something like a bridge, I'll need to find out.
All of the photos are taken with it wearing its 'inside' shell, which helps protect the propellers when it flies into something (which it seems to do fairly regularly with me on the controls). That also makes it very susceptible to wind, and in my trial runs it was pretty gusty and rough. You can see this in the attached film, recorded on the tablet via the inbuilt internal HD camera which is streamed in real time directly to the screen. How cool is that??
The video quality is a bit poor so I'm looking at an alternative recording option (watch this space!). Once I get the controls sorted I want to try filming people on dirt jumps from the air or chasing someone down singletrack. Any other ideas?
All of the photos are taken with it wearing its 'inside' shell, which helps protect the propellers when it flies into something (which it seems to do fairly regularly with me on the controls). That also makes it very susceptible to wind, and in my trial runs it was pretty gusty and rough. You can see this in the attached film, recorded on the tablet via the inbuilt internal HD camera which is streamed in real time directly to the screen. How cool is that??
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