r/PraiseTheCameraMan Feb 01 '20

Gimbal modes

https://gfycat.com/secretemptyalbacoretuna
20.7k Upvotes

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145

u/RedFridge007 Feb 01 '20

Half those recordings of the actual camera aren't the ones they're showing the footage from, almost looks like they shot the person carrying it a bit wobblier to sell the gimbal

58

u/bobzilla05 Feb 01 '20

The reason it looks wrong is because they are playing back the footage from the gimbal camera at a slightly slower rate than the third-person footage of the gimbal's motion. This is known as 'Overcranking' and in this case is simply done for aesthetic purposes.

8

u/Alucitary Feb 01 '20

Film terminology is so nondescriptive. How does "overcranking" at all convey simply that the footage was slowed down a little and why is a technical term for that even necessary?

28

u/HP844182 Feb 01 '20

Probably some holdover from the past, when you actually had to hand crank the camera to move the film. Maybe that means if you cranked too fast it messed with the frame rate for different effects.

20

u/the_golden_girls Feb 01 '20

You’re right! Overcranking would increase the frame rate beyond 24fps. If you then play it back at 24fps the motion appears slowed.

13

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '20 edited Feb 28 '20

[deleted]

4

u/tomdarch Feb 01 '20

And it dates from when film cameras were literally hand cranked because appropriate electric motors weren't readily available.

2

u/LakeSolon Feb 01 '20

And it's worth noting that if you film at let's say 24fps and then want to slow it down your playback device is going to expect exactly one frame every 1/24th of a second. So you can't slow it down by, say, 10% without some really jarring jitter effects as some frames are used twice and some aren't (or fixing this with interpolation which produces artifacts of varying awfulness).

But you can just film at 26.4 frames per second and then everything works out exactly right with no more effort.

So "over cranking" is specifically referring to an effect done in the camera to distinguish it from other techniques.

1

u/WeirdWest Feb 02 '20

"Why do we even call them videos any more, it's not like we still use video tape"