Understanding the Phantom Flex 4k - Part 2

 

Phantom Flex 4k Recording...

Good to be in Nature with the Phantom Flex 4k and Canon 400mm f2.8 Lens

    How does it actually record?

• You might be familiar of pre recording or preroll feature in most professional video cameras. Similar to that the flex 4k has an internal ram of up to 128GB, (Our example would be based on the 64GB camera model) which keeps recording in loop until you tell it to stop the recording. 

• Once you trigger the frames stay in the ram until you start and arm the camera for pre recording again.

• But before you do this, you will need to save it to the cinemag first. This will take less than 20secs.

!ProTip

Always playback and watch a clip you just shot. You might find a "jewel" in a bad take.

The Flex 4k recording durations

• The recording duration will vary accordingly to resolution, fps set on camera. 

• How fast you shoot depends on what you are trying to capture.                        But at 4k resolution at 1000fps, you can only run the camera for 5.5secs. For most purposes 1000fps is good enough.

!ProTip

When possible always try to shoot at the maximum resolution capable of the camera. This gives the director an opportunity to crop in POST later.

Shooting at 1000fps is 40x slower

• Your end result of the action will be 40x slower. Can you imagine if you keep the whole clip, it will be 64GB in size, which is HUGE!!!. And your 5.5sec clip is 3mins long!! 

• A few years back we were involved in a WTA Promo spot where we shot 12TB of footages in 4 days. Thats a lot of Clips. So it can add me very fast.

Bts: WTA Tennis Shoot with Maria Sharapova in Super Slow Motion in SIngapore

           Mockup: Captivating Tennis: Maria Sharapova's Slow Motion Bus Stop Ad

Be Selective on Set...

Be Selective and mark your ins n outs

• You don’t want a clip which is 64GB long, it adds up very fast. 

• Very quickly you will be out of Hard Disk space. Your post guys will be unhappy with the extreme large files you have given them.

• I always ask the director which portion he wants, when i am saving to cinemag. This saves a lot of time later and everyone is happier:)

• Saving to cinemag takes less than 20Secs! Some directors want everything, but i always encourage them to be disciplined and select the exact portions.

!ProTip

Usually Production only need 3 to 5 secs of that clip for the edit and you won't use the whole portion. Thats why we have to select our ins n outs. But having said that, the Director is the King on Set. If the king wants a longer take, just give it to him/her:--)

Remember the BTS picture at the top of the page? 
Here’s what we ended up shooting from that setup.