UWOL #9-Seahawk-Martin Vavra
 

Well, here is my VIMEO version. I am not happy with the compressed version and know now that I need to learn compressions and web video techniques. I spent more time fiddling with the necessary download parameters then I did filming and editing.

So, the story behind this story:

I am a middle school science teacher, and just as this UWOL challenge was coming up, I was winding down with school. My days were actually very crazy but I was promising myself that I was doing this, no matter what. I was compelled to find a story and try to tell it in the 3 minute format. Being spring, I was attempting to capture babies, but I have having no luck. We have a wetland that gets red wing and yellow head black birds in right now. I couldn't think of a story but I really wanted to film them.

On my first day off from school, I decided that I would go to the Northern California coast. I live in Southern Oregon, the Cali coast is the closest accessible shore due to the mountains. So I packed the dogs and the gear, figuring I would get a few minutes but seal lions or maybe baby birds.

When I rolled up on the bay in Crescent City I found that the winds were blowing from onshore, totally at a 180 degrees from usual. When I drove out to the farthest point I was surprised to see two osprey diving on the flat waters. It is never like that here. Our ocean is a turbulent mess, but that wind knocked it down. So I grabbed everything but the sun screen and ran up the hill, over the point, and got on the last spit of land that I could overlooking the kelp beds they were hunting. Five hours later and the worst sun burn I have ever had, I was able to get the footage I needed. I may have increased my risk of skin cancer but I wasn't about to miss the shot.

Enjoy!


http://www.vimeo.com/1201989

http://www.uwolchallenge.com/challen...C9_seahawk.mov

Martin... I thought your video was wonderful. I was rivetted to the screen while the osprey was trying to get that fish... that was very dramatic. Great stuff.

Andrew

Martin,

Great work. My favorite part was the Osprey struggling to get airborne after catching the fish. You might get better output from vimeo if you deinterlace the video. I use windows media encoder 9 (free) at 5000kbps, constant bitrate, 2-pass, smoothness 1000, complexity "auto" and get pretty good results after vimeo re-encodes it upon upload.

Wow Martin, nice footage of the Osprey in the water. I've never seen such activity. Must have been exciting as all getout to capture. Hair raising I think.

Look into de-interlacing. If I'm not mistaken your footage looks to be interlaced, which is where those horizontal lines are coming from.

Great job with the narration too. I wish you weren't so far north. Maybe we'd bump into each other on the coast. I'm easy to spot - usually falling over something.

Thank you folks! Super thanks for the compression and video info. There is so much for me to learn, almost all of it has been trial and error and listening in and asking questions. Deinterlacing is something that just came to be for me and I am glad that I got that info from you guys! I think I will output that again using all that info and get it back onto VIMEO. This challenge has ended up being a HUGE education for me with video output. It is something that I haven't really thought about, learned about, or worried about. Yet I have always whined about how my end result was never what I wanted it to be, the reason being that I am retarded about output. If there was one thing that I would take a lesson on, read a book about, or would love to be mentored in it would be video output and that whole world of compression and transcoding. Thanks so much folks!

I would love to say this to everyone, since I found this place I have been nothing but pleased with the community and the support that is here. I am on many boards for various reasons, this being one of the best just for the community and support aspect. I am still trying to wade through all the info available here...Search function is my friend.

So I just watched my UWOL version and I wanted to throw it out there that the video look on there is not being all 1970's or psychedelic. That seems to have been the bad compression that I did. For whatever reason it just never came out right. For a cleaner version, though not deinterlaced, please see my VIMEO link in the first post of this thread.


I hope the judges don't think I was being "creative" with the way that thing looks.

Martin,
It looks to me like the field order is reversed.

Martin,

some nice footage, to bad you missed the stoop!! that is hard stuff to get!!!

the vimeo version is much better but it still has some issues. For birds i prefer to shoot in progressive as apposed to interlaced. The person may be right about your field order. Try it both ways and see if one is better!!

Good point about energy gained in relation to energy expended!!! it all about survival!!!

thanks for sharing, I always enjoy raptors of all sorts!!!

I don't know that I can change that on a GL2. There doesn't appear to be anything in the manual or in the menus when I run through them. When you say shoot in progreessive I am assuming that you mean you have a camera setting for that. I will have to look into this and investigate.

Thank you!

Hi Martin,

Well you were certainly in the right place at the right time! I was riveted.

Unfortunately, the play back didn't work too well at all however, it really goes to show when you've got the story, you can get away with these sort of technical issues. I notice your very good at locking onto your targets also. I find following birds flying is certainly something that needs to be practiced.

The osprey trying to get out of the water after that catch was just amazing. I though its feathers would get water logged and we were going to see the poor thing drown! Then you explained they tend to go for the larger targets less often - as if you were reading my mind, and then coming up with the explanation. Great education piece and I can say that I think we all would exchange some sun burn to capture this sort of material.

Great entry...

Well I enjoyed this one very much, I was feeling sorry for the Osprey when he was stuck in the kelp. I agree de-interlacing would help in this case, but the footage was still quite watchable.

Thanks for sharing this Martin.

Nice one! That’s a cool bird. Well done! You did a good job getting the bird in the frame and you hade some good info, I especially liked that about the wind.
Nice job!

The wind was a blessing and a curse all at the same time. Due to the wind switch, it allowed the osprey to hunt in an area not regularly hunted with ease. The problem: that wind was whipping me everywhere. When the osprey dives, I was trying so hard to follow but couldn't stay with it. Once in the water, those movement left and right are me bucking the wind trying to stay on the shot. That wind was throwing me everywhere. It was all I could do to stand there and keep the camera from being blown off the spit and dropped 100 feet to its doom.

Oprey is one of my favorite raptor! Think you did very well on this one. Some shake and vibration in the footage here and there, but you gave me a good view of this stunning bird. Nice that you got the scene with the unsuccessfull catch!

Thank for sharing this!

Martin,

check the field order in your software when you render out, (not sure what NLE you are using) there is usually a drop down menu to choose.