I don’t think I pronounced “promontory” correctly in the intro, many people pointed this out.
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We visit Wilson’s Promontory for the weekend (more commonly known as “Wilson’s Prom” or just “the prom”). Unfortunately, the road up to Mt Oberon is still closed due to flooding, so we walk around the Big Drift, take a quick trip out to Norman Beach, then hike out to the end of Tongue Point from Darby River. After that, we go and check whether the Squeaky Beach is indeed all that squeaky, and then it’s time to pack up and head home before the heavy rain starts.
This was declared the start of Season 3 as our big Queensland trip was over, and we were back in Melbourne, hence the DTAv3 on the title.
This was the first video featuring drone footage.
It was also the first attempt to draw a moving track on the map, however the animation was done in QGIS, and as a result, the labels change in subsequent renderings as label placement is non-deterministic. Future attempts at this would realise the best way to do this is just draw it on in Apple Motion.
We bought this drone from Rusty in QLD - but right at the end of the trip (seems like a waste… we could have used it for previous videos!)
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We follow Track 13 from “4WD Trips Close To Melbourne” on a trip from Marysville to Thornton, via Keppel Creek, the Cathedral Range State Park, Cooks Mill, Neds Gully, Cathedral Lane, Blue Range Road, Quartz Creek Road, the Tom Burns Track, the Rubicon Historic Area, before leaving the area up to a picnic area near Thornton.
This was our first video featuring a drone - we hadn’t bought one until now because there are significant restrictions on where one can be flown. However, a friend offered us theirs for a price we couldn’t pass up, so we used it where it was allowed.
Filming footage in 4k resolution isn’t difficult - the GoPro has been able to film 4k30 since the GoPro 3, and 4k60 since the GoPro 6. Most recent mobile phones can film in 4k as well.
But editing this footage is a different matter. The H.264 / H.265 codecs that are used for such footage gain their efficiency by making heavy use of references to previous (and sometimes even future) frames in their encoding. This is fine for playback, providing you have a powerful enough machine, but if you want to edit said footage, you’re going to want to be able to freely step back and forward through the frames.
The solution is to make use of proxy media. This refers to generating a lower resolution copy of every clip, and using it instead of the original clip during the edit process. But for the full quality final export, the video is generated using the original clips.
When you import footage into Final Cut Pro, there’s a checkbox here to generate proxy media. By default, proxy media is generated using the Apple ProRes 422 LT codec. This DCT-based codec uses only intra-frame compression to allow immediate seeking to any frame, and is very light on CPU load for playback.
But suppose that, say, your main editing machine - a quad core i7 MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM discrete graphics - was dead, and you were using the “backup” machine - a much slower dual core i5 with 8GB of RAM and no GPU. The proxy media sure is going to take a while longer if there’s 200GB of footage to sort through.
On the other hand, let’s say that you have a much more powerful Linux machine that could be doing all the hard work instead. FFmpeg has an encoder for ProRes. How do we generate the proxy media on the server, then have Final Cut Pro recognise and use it?
It’s a fairly simple process, but it’s not entirely straight forward, and I haven’t seen anyone else describe how to do it - hence I wanted to document it here for the benefit of others. Read on to find out how.
And there’s still more to do. In this video, which takes place half in Gladstone and half in Melbourne, we fix the overly visible reflection of a USB cable, a broken sidestep end, add an Anderson to the front of the vehicle, and replace the driver’s side phone mount.
First use of a few gadgets. The 12v fan was bought because it was pretty hot and windless at Carnarvon Gorge (but that wasn’t a problem here).
New set of trekking poles, after my previous one broke after being used once at Carnarvon Gorge.
And the Silky Katanaboy folding saw, seen here chopping a very large log in half.
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We set up camp at Munall camping area then head out to Gudda Gumoo, and check out Rainbow Falls… then go and find something a little more off the beaten path - a lot more fun when you’ve got this many people in your group!
This one looks amazingly picturesque, but it became not very fun once sandflies got involved…
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We return to Lilleys Beach to camp for the night and get Pride Radio Group’s special event callsign of VI2021PRIDE on the air for a night. But in typical Australian fashion, the wildlife has some other ideas…
Not the first video to show a lot of work on the car, but certainly the biggest so far.
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Part 2: https://youtu.be/Pu-WYZgDtL0
We disassemble most of a Landcruiser 200’s interior to clean up a rats nest of wiring that has accumulated over time, and get it under the trim panels where it belongs. Installing a Uniden CB inside the dashboard for a very clean and neat install, moving the DAC switch out of the way for something more useful, and running the dashcam power cable in a completely hidden manner.
Also, since the old dashboard (instrument cluster) glass (well, plastic - Acrylic in fact) was fogged, cracked and otherwise ruined, that part gets replaced too.
