Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Flying the S2

Thursday, October 9, 2014

The Pixie Pilot: Help Vegas Adventure Flights become a reality!

The Pixie Pilot: Help Vegas Adventure Flights become a reality!: Meet private pilot and future sport pilot instructor, Mike Daniels. I've recently have been assisting Mike with insurance quotations fo...

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

New Blog

I have started a new Blog on my love and experience with Motorcycles.
Harley Tuner

This Blog is directly related to my business so I will try to post on it more regularly than this free for all fun Blog.

Hope you like it.
Mike

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Video from above Beach at the Park in Cedar Key FL

Overcast and a bit dreary today so we decided to take the dogs for a walk on the beach at the park here in Cedar Key.

Very nice park we had a nice walk. I decided to fly my DJI Phantom quadcopter and shoot a little video with its Tarot Gimbal and Gopro Hero3 camera.
Sure draws a lot of attention when I fly this thing around. Luckily its stable enough I can talk with the people asking questions while doing it.

Anyway here is some of the footage, two 360 pirouettes from a few hundred feet above the beech.


Tomorrow we leave for Lakeland.
I will miss Cedar Key,

Mike

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

We are video blogging now & review of the video editing software we use.

Elisabeth and I have started a Video blog about our Nomadic Life Style, to go with her blog Adventures in a Hallway.
Here is the first video.


Here is a short aerial Video of the RV park we are living in this week.


I made this video just playing around with my Quadrotor camera set up and the new version of Corel Video Studio 6. Which is the old Ulead software.

I started digital video editing in the mid 90s with Premiere, and over the years have tried several different video editing packages including Ulead. In these days of smart phones it seems like everyone is dumbing down their software.

Of course you need a Mac for Final cut, which I have but its latest version is hardly more then iMovie, not nearly the powerhouse it used to be. Final cut pro always took to long to render anyway.

Pinnacle Studio was pretty good software in its day and still has some nice features. one of my favorite being how easy it can add background music. I keep the latest version 17 on my machine as a go to for some things.
But like Apples Final cut Avid is dumbing it down to. Maybe I just cant get use to the new interface. But honestly I don't need nor want it to track all my videos for me. I put my lasted clips in a folder until I finish my project then file them all on my external drives by year and subject matter like I always have.... I have way to much video for one of these apps to try and track.

Adobe Premiere is still great software and who doesn't love After Effects. The problem is you can't spend the small fortune it takes to own (use it) once buying your upgrade every 2-4 years anymore. Now you have to pay $50 a month to use it. Being self employed when I'm having a good month I can go spend a few hundred on software if I need it, but during a lean month I may need that $50 for something else. That goes for Dreamweaver as well. I used it from version 1 (before Adobe owned it). If they want me back as a customer they need to go back to allowing you to buy a license 1 time and using it for a few years before buying the update instead of the monthly crap.

Finally my main goto software for video editing these days is Corel Video Studio Pro. It has the same old easy to use and under stand interface they all used to. Simple with all the power you want at your fingertips easy to find. I Love the motion tracking, and there is a great selection of plug ins that I love as well.  I normally don't put so much frilly stuff in a video like the one above but I was playing with the software to show some things to a friend with no intentions of posting it to everyone. My wife and everyone liked it and asked me to post it so I did. Not my best work but fun all the same.

Sonicfire Pro is great for generating background music and it's what I used in the RV Park video above.

Bottom line, use what your comfortable with. For me thats a windows machine with Corel Video Pro Ultimate and Sonicfire Pro.


More Video to come, which I guess means I will be blogging more as well as doing reviews for the things we have tried and that we use.


Take Care,
 Mike

Monday, March 3, 2014

Radio Control QuadRotors/Quadcopters as camera platforms

There are a few choices in Quad Rotor/Quadcopter camera platforms.

I use a DJI Phantom QuadRotor with a Tarot Dual Axis Gimbal and a Gopro Hero 3 Silver.
The DJI Phantom alreay comes with a gopro mount. The Gimbal just allows the quad rotor to move without disturbing the camera for smoother video.

The Gimbal also allows remote tilting of the camera.

It does take some RC mechanical skill and understand to attach this gimbal.

The Phantom comes with a transmitter however I connected it to the higher end transmitter Spektrum DX7s
 I already had for my Helis. So all of my RC Aircraft fly with the same transmitter

DJI has a plug n play Gimbal ZenMuse but it cost more.

DJI has released a new Quad Rotor " DJI Phantom 2 Vision Quadcopter with Integrated FPV Camcorder" It comes with everything built in Camera, Gimbal, even a mount for your phone on the transmitter so it can transmit the video nearly live to your phone. That way you can see what the camera sees.

Blade is one of my favorite RC Heli companies their GoPo platform 350 QX RTF is a good one as well, but like my phantom if you want better video from it you will have to add a gimbal.
Although I haven't flown this Blade 350 yet I have a couple of their Heli's and it would be my guess that it would be the easiest to fly and work on.


Mike