I’ve been hanging out for the new Pixel. The launch event was last night, so I woke up to a bunch of news.
I have the Pixel 6 and I am sodisappointed in the video quality. I’ve basically stopped vlogging in part because it looks like hyper-saturated glitchy slop, and even though I’ve got other physical cameras it’s way easier seeing something cool and going from pocket to recording within a couple of seconds.
The new Pixel can record 8k, which you’d have to assume would scale down to stellar 4k. But I don’t trust Google’s video team one bit, so I wouldn’t bet on it.
The one big thing that caught my eye was the satellite SOS functionality. I’ve been doing a bit more solo camping out of range, and it would be a comforting thing to know I could get myself out of weird situations even outside of phone range.
But after launching we found out that it’s a US-only feature.
The feature launches first in the US “regardless of your carrier plan,” Rakowski said, though it won’t be available in Hawaii and Alaska, per a support page
I’m having trouble finding what the exact deal is. What kind of footprint does the satellite provider Skylo have? Apparently only continental United States. Will this feature ever arrive to other markets? Probably not. There’s not even satellite hardware listed on the Australian store page as far as I can tell, so it’s very clearly not a priority.
Either way, this was a killer feature for me that just disappeared on launch day so I’m bummed.
Cos they sucked me into a free trial and charged my card a year later without my realising. I didn’t even know I was subscribed.
Further, as an Australian there’s no way to contact them because they work on US business hours. So I was up at 2AM the other night hanging off a chat box where Vincent was apologetic, but kept pasting prefabricated blocks of text telling me to get fucked.
It’s enshittification at its best. They’re beholden to investors, and have to invent junk services to get that sweet recurring revenue. And their policy is no refunds, ever. So it’s obviously deliberate.
So basically, fuck em.
Insta360 and DJI both have excellent products in this space that may have their own ideological foibles, but at least won’t brazenly steal money from your card.
Just a quick one because when I tried searching for the solution I couldn’t find it. DaVinci Resolve is my favourite professional, free video editor.
For a while though I haven’t been able to get render caching working. This weird Resolve bug would churn up my GPU, the red line above the clip would turn blue to indicate it had been render-cached, but any render cached clips were showing up as “media offline”.
Some people online mentioned this can happen if your disk is full and the files can’t be written, but I have lots of space remaining.
I tried changing the render cache directory to a custom folder to no effect. However, when I browsed to the render cache folder manually, it had no video files in it. Just a bunch of empty folders.
After some further googling, I found switching from ProRes to DNxHR HQ (High Quality [8-bit 4:2:2]) fixed it. It seems to be choking on ProRes for some reason. Some folks mentioned it was specifically ProRes 422 HQ, but I didn’t test the theory since I was in a rush.
Changing the format and hitting save was enough to trigger all my “offline” render-cache clips to rerender in the new format and start working again.
This was on an M1 mac running MacOS Ventura, using Resolve version 18.1.4. But I understand from Stack Overflow that it also happens on other v18 version as well. Given Linux and Windows don’t support ProRes I’m not sure if this tip applies there.
Hope this helps you out, traveller. If you want, chuck me a follow on Youtube. <3
People often (once) ask me what I use to create my videos. It’s been a bunch of different stuff over the years, but I think I’ve settled on a good setup.
TLDR: I reckon a good camera and a tripod/selfie stick is pretty much all ya need.
Sony ZV-1 Camera
This thing is amazing and I wish it existed when I started. It’s essentially the latest in Sony’s RX100 compact point & shoot line, but tailored for video. So it’s a massive sensor, zoom lens, integrated stereo mic and 4k recording in a tiny 300 gram package.
This isn’t the perfect camera. The stabilisation isn’t very good and the highest level crops in and makes the image less sharp, so I generally turn it off and take care with the framing. It also caps out at 30fps, so none of that sweet slow mo b-roll. Finally it records in h264 rather than h265, which is fine but the video takes up at least double the space.
But the image quality is stellar and I love it and I’m very happy.
Tripod/selfie stick
It’s easy to giggle at the sheer vanity of a selfie stick, but I am a vlogger after all!
The ones I’ve found the most utility from are essentially mini tripods. They combine a tripod base, telescopic pole, and standard screw thread (1/4-20 UNC) so I can mount pretty much anything from a microphone, my phone, camera or GoPro and stick it in place.
I’ve taken some variation of these around the world, from the windy cliffs of Lisbon to the window in Iceland trying to catch a glimpse of the northern lights.
The BK15 on the left is much more sturdy than the BK10 on the right. These days it’s my mic mount
I’m on my second one now, the Benro BK15 Selfie Stick & Mini Tripod w/Bluetooth Remote. I don’t use the remote, ever. But the stick is sturdy, doesn’t move from wherever you stuck it.
The BK10 started to flex on me after a few years, but the BK15 is the next generation and feels a lot more solid.
Pixel 6 (phone cam)
I was a big believer in using my phone to vlog. I can whip my phone out of my pocket and be recording in seconds. But the quality isn’t there.
I bought into the Apple hype and trialled a 12 Pro Max and it produced such god-awful video that I never released the vlog, destroyed the evidence*, and returned the iPhone for a refund.
I ended up getting the Pixel 6 which apparently uses some form of software HDR while recording video, but I wish I could turn it off because often the sky is blown out to a deep blue colour while the rest of the picture is heavily compressed and mushy looking. The stabilisation is super janky, and I’ve seen the stock standard stabe warp the image. AND I’ve noticed dropped frames in videos at 60fps. If you’re interested you can see all of this in action on my Australian Christmas video which is shot entirely on the Pixel 6.
I’m being hard on the video because it’s a selling point and it’s truly not good enough. I’ve had much better results out of Filmic Pro because it doesn’t use all the Pixel magic, but that’s slower and requires a lot more care to get a good shot.
But I digress! I use my phone from time to time when I don’t have my camera on hand. It’s not amazing quality, but it does alright.
GoPros for B-Roll
I also used a couple of GoPros, the Hero 7 is currently my main wide angle/action/time lapse camera. You can see it in action a fair bit on my Macleay Island video. I have a chest strap which I use on the bike, as well as a standard 1/4-20 UNC mount that I can use on the tripod. The built in mic is not great at all, so I mostly use it for b-roll and time lapses.
I also have a GoPro HERO5 Session which is a tiny baby, but only barely does 4k so I mostly use that for time lapses as well.
In the pic you can see the Ulanzi cage which holds the microphone adapter for the GoPro. I originally wanted to use this as a handheld vlog cam, and it might still be good for that on hikes and things because of the incredible stabilisation. But I haven’t really found myself using it and I wish the GoPro just came with a damn 3.5mm jack.
Other gear
Zhiyun Crane – I picked this up second hand on ebay but I hardly used it because it’s big and chunky and super slow to set up. But I used it recently at Botanica and I think I’m getting a feel for it. It’s great to stabilise the ZV1 when there’s a lot of movement, but I think it’s a special occasions kind of thing.
Zoom H1n – this is an excellent microphone. I’ve mostly been using it as my video conferencing WFH mic lately, but it’s a fantastic stereo mic which I use to capture ambience and sound floor for my videos. Or at least, that’s the intention, it runs flat really quickly on rechargeable batteries so I haven’t used it as much as I’d like.
Rode VideoMicro – a little shotgun mic I can mount on my camera. It’s good for talking-to-camera vlog style shots because it isolates my voice. But it’s only mono and I haven’t worked out the best way to integrate it with my workflow. Most of the time the built in ZV1 mic is more versatile.
DJI Mini 3 Pro – This is a new addition. There was one shot I desperately wanted to get in my Gympie vlog which was an epic drone shot of the Mary Valley Rattler crossing Deep Creek. I didn’t get that shot, but I did get the Mini 3 when it was released shortly after. I’m excited to play with it more.
I switched to Mac in 2017 in part because video editing on Linux is an absolute nightmare.
I started out with iMovie which I used for all of my vlogs up until 2020. My first real full Davinci vid was last year’s Brisbane Festival roundup, which took a VERY long time to pull together while I learned how stuff works. Quite ambitious.
But I think I’ve gotten a lot better and faster at it.
There’s not a lot of other software I use, but in the past I’ve used Krisp to recover bad audio, and I’m generally a fan of youtube-dl to rip old youtube vids of mine, ffmpeg to occasionally perform some repairs on a video, or Handbrake for tweaking the encoding. I also use rev.com for better or worse when I’m in a hurry and don’t feel like doing my own captions.
Honorary mention Pixel 2 XL (retired, 2018-2021)
This was my primary vlog cam for pretty much the entire time I was overseas. This was an awesome little unit. It couldn’t do much, but it was my first 4k camera and it’s what started everything!
One little gadget I used to take everywhere was the Windblocker. That thing saved my audio on countless occasions and if you’re vlogging with a phone I can’t recommend it enough.
After three and a half years, this thing was so battered around that I upgraded to the Pixel 6 on release day and gave this one away for free on Gumtree to a gentleman who seemed to really appreciate it.
That’s about it
What’s your video set up look like? Is there anything I’m missing? Shoot me an email!
On a steam train ride with my mum, she starts telling a story of the trains when she was young. So thinking quickly I whip out my phone, press record, and get her to hold it so I can actually record her voice over the background noise.
It comes out distorted to ever loving shit.
So this sucks. I have to go back to the original onboard camera mic but it’s SO loud with all the engine noise, cabin chatter, and clanking in the background. Even tweaking all the knobs, you can barely hear mum at all.
Are there any AI tools to isolate voice? I remembered I’ve been using Krisp at work to cut down on the construction noise from next door. Maybe if I run the audio through that…
So I set the sound output from my video editor to go through Krisp, plug in my recorder, and play it through. It’s tinny, it’s dropped some quieter bits, but it’s totally legible! Holy cow.
Now I’ve got an audio track of mum’s voice isolated from the carriage noise. I can mix it back together with the original to boost the voice portion and quieten down the rest. This is kinda a game changer for shitty vlog audio.
This is a pretty convoluted workflow, so it’s really only useful for emergencies like this. But I’m really happy that it managed to recover a happy little memory. And I hope one day Krisp (or someone else, I don’t mind) release either a standalone audio tool or a plugin for DaVinci Resolve.
As an aside, the Google Recorder app is officially off my christmas list. Any recommendations for a better one?
