Thursday, April 23, 2009

My first bike video

So this is the video I did when cycling in Barcelona (see an earlier post for my overall impression):



About the video
It contains material about cycling along the harbor and seafront. The second bit follows a few women cycling along the Diagonal (one of the main roads in Barcelona).

Techniques
I was cycling with the BiCiNg bikes all the time and therefore used my small and robust (but poor in filming) Olympus photo camera. My gorillapod (the small version) was handy for the quick mount and release I needed, but on the other hand this tripod shakes quite a lot too because of the flexible joints. As a Linux user I used kdenlive to cut the videos. This program is much more powerful, but I'm just a beginner so for this time I took it easy. I changed the video to black&white due to the horrible color abberation and blurring of my camera.

Feel free to criticize, I'm grateful for any advice. I know that the quality isn't great and that I probably would have needed more material in order to create a more lively video. But well, it's just my first try.

By the way, does anybody of you know a proper tripod that can easily be mounted to handlebars and that can safely hold DV camcorders (mine weighs around 600g) or SLR cameras?

5 comments:

Anna said...

Cool! ;). I enjoyed a lot. I think the song is well-chosen for it! The idea of turning the video into black&white gives also a fine effect! And you know is not too long to be boring. I like it.

By the way...the song, "bon dia" means "good morning" or "good day" (it's a pun on words that the song takes advantage of). And it was indeed a good day...until it began hailing...

Anonymous said...

Great video! I love the B&W and the fact of filming a 'bicing' cycling in front of you ^^

Regards from your queue partner ;)

Laura

Lynn said...

Your video is great! The B&W makes it seem like a dream or memory of a fun ride.
I bought a handlebar camera mount from REI:
http://www.rei.com/product/777251
It holds my large camera well, but it can't prevent the shaking from road vibrations. I found that my arm is better at keeping the camera still and smooth. It helps to have a neck strap on the camera for the moments you need both hands on the bike. Keep experimenting and have fun!

Xavi said...

Great video! And great work editing I have to say. I also like the B&W effect.

Now we would like to see something similar filmed in Wien, or anywhere you go cycling.

anna said...

Glad you liked it. I will try to do something similar in Vienna when I have the time for it.
Thanks a lot for you advice too, Lynn.

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