Joshua Tree Stars - Added 1080p version

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
This is from last night (Sunday) out at Joshua Tree. Besides wanting to get some usable timelapses, I still had a bit of experimenting I wanted to do.

So first off, I outsmarted myself with this one.... :rolleyes: I went vertical with this one because I wanted to catch more stars above the North Star. Of course that is the still photographer of me thinking, the timelapse photographer didn't think until about an hour later that for timelapse and video you really want it to be horizontal. Oh well, I decided to just finish what I had started on this camera.

This was from the Sony A6400 with the 12mm Samyang f2.0 This was shot at ISO 1600, f2 and 20 secs. I had 2 of my Nikons that I had set up to capture the sunset through dark, so I didn't want to mess with this one until after the sun had set and it was getting darker. There was a 22% moon to light up the ground for me. This was 550 photos captured with no gap between photos. I converted them to jpg in ACR and pulled them into Movavi for creating the Timelapse with a .1 sec Duration. My previous Star timelapse from a few nights earlier I sped up the playback to 200%, this one I left it at 100% playback (the default). It was about 3 hours of shooting that turned into 53 secs of a Timelapse.

Now I had scouted this place out Friday morning, it is set well back from a straight section of the road, maybe 200 yards with the idea that no headlights from passing cars would hit the trees. I was right except for twice someone decided to do a u-turn at the pullout I was parked at. But since I had shot this as stills and not an in camera Timelapse, it wasn't hard to just mask in the ground layer on those 4 or 5 photos. So that's a point in favor of shooting stills to do your timelapse if you are in an area that might get unwanted light pollution from headlights, etc... One thing I didn't think about was how the road would eventually curve and the headlights would occasionally light up the far hills in the background.

Hopefully despite all that, the timelapse is enjoyable, it's still a work in progress doing these.

Jim

Note: Videos often appear blurry on Google Drive or YouTube immediately after they are uploaded. This is because both Drive and YouTube display a low-resolution version of your video while they're still processing the HD version in the background. ... But your video will ultimately appear in HD once it's ready. If anyone has a solution to this, please share it. It's something we have only recently noticed, so I am not sure if there is a solution.

4k version


1080p Version
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
Neat result. At full screen the first 15 seconds or so was out of focus but looked much better for the rest of the video. Looked like a good night to be out for this session.
 

Ben Egbert

Forum Helper
Staff member
Neat result Jim, this starting OOF on youtube is another issue we need to address, I get it too. Now you have inspired me to try my own star time line.

I tried a straight up star shot in my front yard to test my new Rok 14. The center was great, but the light fall off on the edges was pretty bad, I ascribed part of it to having a thinner atmosphere straight up thus making it brighter.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Neat result. At full screen the first 15 seconds or so was out of focus but looked much better for the rest of the video. Looked like a good night to be out for this session.
Thanks Alan. It was in manual focus, so nothing in the video is out of focus. I think it was Ben who noticed that our videos can appear to be out of focus as the video is buffering in.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Neat result Jim, this starting OOF on youtube is another issue we need to address, I get it too. Now you have inspired me to try my own star time line.

I tried a straight up star shot in my front yard to test my new Rok 14. The center was great, but the light fall off on the edges was pretty bad, I ascribed part of it to having a thinner atmosphere straight up thus making it brighter.
Hey Ben, I am glad you like this. I wonder why it has that OOF in the beginning. It’s impossible to be from my camera as it was in manual focus the whole time and once the camera started shooting, I never touched it. So I will have to google that and find out why it is. I am guessing it does have to do with buffering the video in.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Neat result. At full screen the first 15 seconds or so was out of focus but looked much better for the rest of the video. Looked like a good night to be out for this session.
Yeah, its definitely not blurry, it's a rendering issue. I have just started googling it, but Youtube serves up the SD version of the video first while the HD version downloads. I don't know if this is the result of my making this one a 4k video? I had just been doing 1080p on my timelapse videos, but with Jim Dockerys comments to Ben, I decided I should do 4k if I can. I would need to render it at 1080p and see if there is a difference. Though from what I have seen on Google, it can be hit or miss on whether the HD gets rendered slowly or not.
 

Jameel Hyder

Moderator
Staff member
The 1080p version is definitely sharp. What happens when you play the 4K version off your computer directly (i.e. not from youtube)? Even your northstar video has similar issues. I tried pausing when it gets sharp and playing again from the beginning - to play from the part already buffered. Same issue.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
The 1080p version is definitely sharp. What happens when you play the 4K version off your computer directly (i.e. not from youtube)? Even your northstar video has similar issues. I tried pausing when it gets sharp and playing again from the beginning - to play from the part already buffered. Same issue.
Thanks Jameel.

The video's play great direct, because it's a rendering issue from Youtube. It's documented clearly that it has this issue going back several years. YouTube itself seems to be silent on the issue, but there are hundreds if not thousands of complaints about this when googling for this issue.

It's funny as I was just watching a video on Youtube, the advertisements all seem to get rendered immediately.... Hmmm.... funny how that is.

You would think YouTube could just post a "Loading Screen" until the video is buffered and rendered for playback. I would prefer that to the pixelated mess it is now in the beginning.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
So @AlanLichty or @Jameel Hyder I just tried something.

After pausing the 4k video and scrolling back, letting it almost finish and then scroll back, nothing would get the first 11 secs to render. In the settings at the bottom of the full screen YouTube page, you can change the resolution it's played at. I switched it to 720 and played the video for a few seconds. Upon pausing it and switching it back to 1080p and then to 4k playback, now the beginning of the video is rendered fine. Can you guys try that and see if you can duplicate what I did? You too @Ben Egbert
 

Ben Egbert

Forum Helper
Staff member
It worked for me Jim. So it must be a loading issue.

By the way, how accurately do you need to point at the North star for this? I have sky guide and can find Polaris, but I don't have any accurate aiming devices. I might be able to see it on my rear screen and put it in the middle, not sure about how well I will be able to do that.
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
I played the new version at 4K full screen and still see 12 seconds worth of OOF. I was able to scroll it back to the start and it played with exactly the same result.
 

Ben Egbert

Forum Helper
Staff member
Jim asked us to change to 720 then go to 1080 before retrying at 4k. I did and it worked for me. Not mush of a solution, but it does confirm to me that the issue is with Youtube.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
I played the new version at 4K full screen and still see 12 seconds worth of OOF. I was able to scroll it back to the start and it played with exactly the same result.
Did you switch to 720p first and play a few seconds at that, and then switch to 1080p and play it?
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
On more research this problem with YouTube some people report the issue with some of their video's but then they say other video's they have play fine and load the HD version immediately. So far I can't find any official response from YouTube.
 

Jameel Hyder

Moderator
Staff member
So @AlanLichty or @Jameel Hyder I just tried something.

After pausing the 4k video and scrolling back, letting it almost finish and then scroll back, nothing would get the first 11 secs to render. In the settings at the bottom of the full screen YouTube page, you can change the resolution it's played at. I switched it to 720 and played the video for a few seconds. Upon pausing it and switching it back to 1080p and then to 4k playback, now the beginning of the video is rendered fine. Can you guys try that and see if you can duplicate what I did? You too @Ben Egbert
I tried this and see the same issue. Try vimeo for hosting instead of youtube and see if things render better in 4K there.
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
I checked and it appears that I was set to 720P auto for youtubz and it was staying at that setting right through the OOF start and the in-focus part after 12 seconds. I switched to 1020PHD and brought the scroll bar back to the zero point - it played fully in focus for the whole video sequence.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
I checked and it appears that I was set to 720P auto for youtubz and it was staying at that setting right through the OOF start and the in-focus part after 12 seconds. I switched to 1020PHD and brought the scroll bar back to the zero point - it played fully in focus for the whole video sequence.
You have been playing everyone's videos at 720p? Yikes Alan, glad you checked that then as you would be missing out on some very delicious details in this. :)
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
It's funny, now with both video's I can't get it to play blotchy pixelated anymore in the beginning. It is nice and sharp from the get go.
 
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