Camera and Lighting Supports: Making Switchable Magnetic Mounts for 11 Inch Magic Arms

In this short film I make magnetic posts using switchable bases (the type that are usually used to hold DTIs and the like) to allow easier mounting of camera and lights when filming my YouTube videos.

The 11” magic arms are available through all the usual on line marketplaces. I’ve only used the low cost ones (high end / professional brands also supply them, but I can't say if their extra cost translates into extra quality / longevity). The cheap ones work really well, but as noted in the film the wear out fairly quickly. This is probably as much my fault as the arm itself, as I don’t always fully slacken off the hold-nut before moving the arm to a new position. I wonder if introducing a sacrificial washer (fibre? leather? plastic?) between the two halves would make them last longer…?

My thanks go to Andrew for donating his aluminium pole to the project 😉
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It’s been a little while since my last film.

Up until this point I’ve been using Final Cut 7 on a late 2012 Mac mini (Quad i7 16GB). It worked beautifully, cutting 1080/50P ProRes 422 with ease, but I was becoming increasingly frustrated with a system that couldn’t move forward (FCP 7 has long been end of life and wouldn’t run on a later OS, preventing me using any other software that demanded a more contemporary environment, not to mention security updates, browser functionality etc)

Another issue is trying to find help when I ran into difficulties or wanted to try something new; sites which used to be full of tutorials, tips, tricks and advice have started clearing out seldom visited decade old threads to make space.

So I’ve updated my setup to an M1 Mac mini, and I’ve been trying to get to grips with DaVinci Resolve 17. There are some aspects I really like, and some less so: It’s incredibly fully featured given its cost (currently free), though having to go back to working with proxies and optimised media is a bit of a shock. I’ve become used to just loading and going (my 10 year old hardware and software just worked, rendering when complex but quick and / or not required at all for basic stuff).

For the same reasons I’ve had to ditch my ancient copy of Photoshop in favour of Affinity Photo. And it’s a similar story; incredibility good for the price, but needs a lot of re-learning. Lots of time spent figuring out the new keystrokes and mouse clicks to get out of Affinity was was second nature with Photoshop

It’s early days and the more I use them, the less reliant on a 20 minute YouTube tutorials I'll become.

This film is short, but owing to the learning curve took no less time to put together. Plus I didn’t want to risk making a 45 minute epic, only to run into problems near the end that might have scuppered the project.

One interesting thing to come out of the exercise (thanks to numerous other content creators for doing the leg-work) is that upscaling the finished piece to 4K for upload to YouTube appears to give slightly better looking results compared to uploading the native 1080 material. It seems like YouTube's recompression algorithm is a little kinder to the higher resolution material, even though it started out lower. This is entirely subjective though -I've done my own little tests both ways and the results look better at my end, and I don't want to fall out with anyone over it.
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Manually subtitled for accuracy -click the CC box.

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Shot: HDC-HS700 1920x1080 50P AVCHD / Galaxy s10e 1920x1080 30P H.264
Edit: DaVinci Resolve 17.4.4 ProRes 422
Upload: 3840 x 2160 Ultra HD upto 100000Kb/s
Mic: DR-05

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Видео Camera and Lighting Supports: Making Switchable Magnetic Mounts for 11 Inch Magic Arms канала The Recreational Machinist