A guide to creating flying videos

Posted By on November 5, 2011

Reposted from EAA284 … thanks Steve.

One of our EAA284 members, Steve Dilullo, keeps a personal flying blog and posted a great article for those wanting to create videos of their flights. His  how-to article is a great starting point for those who might want to capture their flights on video and are looking for advice from someone who is already digitally shooting and sharing on the Internet without breaking the bank. I’m waiting for his live streamed video someday.

With his permission a snippet of his blog post is below:

We’re talking about creating videos here, so the video camera is obviously a key element in the process. I purchased a Kodak Zi8 a little over two years ago for two primary reasons. First, I work for Kodak and the employee discount was nice. Second, and more importantly, it has an external mic input that allows me to hook it into the intercom to capture audio. It records in 720p or 1080p HD (I always use 720p / 30 fps) and the quality is more than sufficient for my sharing vehicle of choice, YouTube. Nearly all my flying is during the day so any performance issues in low-light video don’t concern me. I’m not sure that any device in the pocket video camera segment has great low-light performance, so keep that in mind if you want to record at night.

Kodak Zi8 with RAM attachment in the tripod mount

I purchased a portable intercom through the AOPA Classifieds a few years ago. It was mainly because the 172 at Stewart only has a two-place intercom in the panel and I wanted to be able to talk to everyone when flying with more than one passenger. However, it also has an audio out jack that has become quite handy for piping intercom and radio chatter into the Zi8.

Sigtronics SPO-42 Portable Intercom with cable in “Audio Out” jack

Video editing software is an area where I’m currently just making do with what I have. I don’t want to buy anything because I need a new computer and have not decided whether to get an iMac or a Windows machine. The MediaImpression software that comes with the Kodak cameras has been perfectly adequate – after all, every video of mine from the past two years has been edited in it – but some things that should be simple tend to be a time-consuming hassle. If you want to save yourself headaches or aren’t familiar with video editing (which I am, and that’s partially why I’ve continued to work around MediaImpression’s limitations) I’d definitely recommend better software from the get-go.

READ MORE

Comments

Desultory - des-uhl-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee

  1. lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: desultory conversation.
  2. digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random: a desultory remark.
My Desultory Blog