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[OM] An interim E-M1/M5 movie report

Subject: [OM] An interim E-M1/M5 movie report
From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2015 20:03:06 -0400
I don't recall how much of this I might have mentioned before but a friend (who teaches classes on iThings) asked if I could shoot a 10 minute demonstration video of him teaching an iThingy class (along with students). Fortunately, I have free access to the development's clubhouse which has some very large rooms for various functions.

Where I planned to shoot this turned out to be a bad choice. He uses a TV set to project his presentation "slides". The room is lit mostly by some sort of strange incandescent bulbs (good color at 3K) but the TV set is balanced for daylight. Shooting the TV in that room at 3K color balance gave some garish results on the TV.

So I had to change rooms to one that had a large TV on the wall and a lot of glass. It is well lit by natural sunlight. It is also shaped such that I could put both the E-M1 and E-M5 back-to-back on separate tripods and use one to video the instructor and the other to video the students. Then all I have to do is edit the 2 videos into on that switches from instructor to students and back again when a student asks a question. Cameras unattended except to start them rolling.

Today was a practice session to decide on lenses for each camera, angle of coverage and distance for the student seating and, especially, how big is the file for a 10 or 20 minute video and can a single battery handle that that much time while working video the entire time.

So here are a couple of numbers that Oly doesn't give you. I had set both cameras to use "HD Normal" which is the smallest MPEG-4 image size of the 4 available... 1280x720 at lowest (normal) resolution. I ran both cameras for about 13-1/2 minutes. One camera produced a file a bit more than 1GB, the other produced a file a bit less than 1GB. The larger file had more motion in it (the instructor walking around and gesturing) the other had no real students in attendance, just me occupying one of 15 chairs and moving around occasionally to different chairs. I think 15 real (moving) students will make the file grow larger.

Anyhow, I consider the test a success. The maximum file size is 2GB so it would probably take 20-25 minutes to reach that which is more than enough time for the completed video. I was also concerned about battery life doing video but the battery gauges show no apparent drop in level after 13-1/2 minutes. I don't know how long they'll actually last but I'm certain it is long enough.

Success... so far. Next I have to actually shoot the real video this coming Friday and then figure out how to edit them into a coherent, single file.

ps: Windows Movie Maker (which seems a fine, simple editor) as delivered in Win 7 knows nothing about MPEG-4 (.MOV) produced by the camera. MPEG-4 is a container file for MOV format which is an Apple invention. But fear not, a codec for MPEG-4 and Windows Movie Maker is available on the web... just not from Microsoft.

See, now we're all video guys.  :-)

Chuck Norcutt
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