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Sweet! My first dolly

dlevanchuk

dlevanchuk

Finally! Built myself a dolly!

Its still kinda wobbly as it moves as you can see, so I probably need to make it a bit more narrow?.. Its about 5 feet by 5 feet..

Work in progress! :rolleyes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS90k8G7PoQ
 
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yes, its on pvc pipes.

Thank you for the suggestion, i'll try it out!

I'm gonna try out different techniques, and methods this weekend, make few adjustments.
Can't wait to use it for my next movie!
 
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Looks nice! The tricky part, in my experience, is in joining two pvc pipes together, when you want a longer track. Very difficult to avoid a bump, as the wheels cross over the joint.
 
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dlevanchuk said:
Got an advice to smooth out the crack transition? ;)
Click to expand...

Wish I did. I suck at it.

I did find one thing that works in post, however. I had a variety of shaky footage that I wanted to smooth out in post. I tried AE, as well as a built-in function in Vegas. They both produced the same results. If the footage is real shaky, like crappy handheld, it's pointless to try to smooth it out in post, because you end up with this really weird artifact, in which the foreground is nice and smooth, but the background is weird and blurry-jello-y. It's hard to describe, but it's not a pleasant effect.

However, the ONE instance in which I found the footage stabilizer to be effective was in smoothing out a small bump, one which results from wheels crossing over a PVC joint. I found that it worked only when the dolly was moving in or out, but not so great when moving sideways.
 
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Oh boy, dreadful words "you know what.. F**K IT!, we ll fix it in post!!" ;)

thats good, i ll keep that in mind.

few google searches suggested to use more weights (sandbag or my fat ass) to minimize the shakeness. Wonder if that will help out..

I ll post the test video with different results on saturday! Plus an excuse to make a short test film with an excessive overuse of sweet dolly shots! :)


add: flicker- oh yea, cant go to sleep, so excited over the new toy haha! just keep thinking about awesome sweeping smooth transition shots.. woot!
 
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dlevanchuk said:
few google searches suggested to use more weights (sandbag or my fat ass) to minimize the shakeness. Wonder if that will help out..
Click to expand...

It's not as easily available, but schedule 160 PVC pipe has twice the weight of schedule 40, is less bouncy, and has a smaller inside diameter for MacGivering connections. I've been in my laboratory doing experiments. :idea:
 
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Use internal couplings. If the couplings are too tight, use some fine grit sand paper to smooth them out and slightly reduce the diameter. Once you have the joints fitting flush, use the same sandpaper to go over the outside of the joint. Sand in long strokes covering both sections of pipe and the transition should be as smooth as a baby's ass.
 
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For our track, we just used larger sched40 PVC which helped smooth out our ride...
For our internal connectors, we used PVC that ALMOST fit inside, but couldn't quite make it (too wide) Then took a hack saw (or other cutty thing) and cut a slit almost halfway from one end... then from the other end at a 90 degree turn to make it able to squeeze slightly smaller, but still wedge toward the center.
 
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Oh, and it's smoother than old dolly shots from the 70's ;) You can run camera smoothing algorithms to get the slight wobble out of your shot (they do it in Hollywood films - per David Fincher on the BTS for "Panic Room").
 
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knightly said:
Oh, and it's smoother than old dolly shots from the 70's ;) You can run camera smoothing algorithms to get the slight wobble out of your shot (they do it in Hollywood films - per David Fincher on the BTS for "Panic Room").
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camera smoothing algorithms? is it some special code that needs to be uploaded into firmware, or another fancy name for stabilization?..
 
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Stabilization tries to remove all movement... smoothing attempts to keep the movement, but average the anomolies to remove them.

In the apple world, Nothing Real was purchased for their program Shake (much of which was rolled into FCP and Motion)... including "Smoothcam"
 
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Cracker Funk said:
However, the ONE instance in which I found the footage stabilizer to be effective was in smoothing out a small bump, one which results from wheels crossing over a PVC joint. I found that it worked only when the dolly was moving in or out, but not so great when moving sideways.
Click to expand...

I hear you and I know exactly the weird effect you're referring to. Played around with after effects motion stabilizer for a while till I got something that's acceptable.

knightly said:
Stabilization tries to remove all movement... smoothing attempts to keep the movement, but average the anomolies to remove them.

In othe apple world, Nothing Real was purchased for their program Shake (much of which was rolled into FCP and Mtion)... including "Smoothcam"
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I follow here. In after effects motion stabilizer (introduced in CS5.5) there is an option of whether you'd like to smooth the camera's motion (if the camera is moving but shaking) or eliminate any motion (in case the camera is in a still position but shaking). Maybe you meant something else?

Would appreciate it if you could shed some light on the differences. :)
 
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Youssef said:
In after effects motion stabilizer (introduced in CS5.5) there is an option of whether you'd like to smooth the camera's motion (if the camera is moving but shaking) or eliminate any motion (in case the camera is in a still position but shaking).
Click to expand...

Nice! Good improvement. There's an AE solution. Last time I saw this done in AE, you had to stabilize a null, then multiply the stabilization to reduce it a bit... the new ones actually smooth by taking the broad changes and flattening out the smaller changes.
 
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