Category: iMovie

Dundrum Castle

Tinks next outing was a planned one. Looking for a strongly three-dimnensional object to celebrate Mel’s first visit to Northern Ireland, I was going through the list of ruined castles in the Province, and Dundrum Castle in County Down ― not to be mistaken for its namesake in County Dublin ― came up as a strong candidate.

After a short drive, we arrived to find the castle sitting beautifully overlooking Dundrum Bay and the Mourne Mountains. There were a few visitors, but enough space to fulfil the 30-meters-separation requirement for take-off and landing required by law, and the groundkeeper who was mowing the lawn had no objections to flying drones ― apparently it is done quite frequently there. So, with a clear conscience, Tinks took off and shot the following footage:

Dundrum Castle was constructed by John de Courcy, a Norman invader. The exact date is unknown, but he launched his invasion in 1177, and was ousted in 1204, so the castle must have been constructed between those two dates. It is thus closely related to Carrickfergus Castle, and must have been constructed shortly after the latter’s completion.

The castle withstood the siege of Hugh de Lacy during his struggle for dominance with John de Courcy, but was conquered by King John of England in 1210, who added the central round keep. The latter is unique in Northern Ireland, and is tactically and strategically superior to the square keeps other Irish castles featured at the time ― in 1210, it was cutting-edge defence technology. In all likelihood, Welsh masons had to be brought in ― presumably by King John ― to implement this in Ireland until-then unknown type of fortification.

The castle remained in English hands until the Parliamentarians withdrew from it in 1652 for reasons unknown. My best guess would be that with the Irish Confederate Army defeated, the Parliamentarians no longer saw a strategic requirement to hold the castle. With the war won, continuing to maintain the castle was presumably deemed unjustifiably expensive. The withdrawing Parliamentarian troops demolished the castle upon their departure, presumably to prevent Irish rebels from taking possession of the empty castle and turning it into one of their strongholds.

A mansion was later built sometime after 1660 to the South of the ruined castle, but anecdotal evidence has it that the owners overexerted themselves financially in the venture, and went bankrupt before the mansion could be completed. The mansion fell into disrepair and was ruined sometime between then and the early 19th century.

The movie was manually edited in iMovie again after I decided to abandon Quik. As a result, the movie is much longer than the previous two. In spite of annoying me in many ways, Quik did have the one advantage of forcing me to keep my videos short and concise. In future, I may try a mix-and-match approach, where I probably pre-edit the movie in iMovie, but then use Quik to shorten it.

I also have decided to play completely by the rules now, and only use royalty-free background music ― on this occasion “Evil Twin” by Movie Theatre. While I personally think that current copyrights are too harsh on people who use for non-commercial purposes a copy of a song they have legally acquired and paid for, the bottom line is that whether I agree with it or not, it is against the rules…

Tullaghoge Fort

Tinks‘ next adventure was another chance discovery. Because no appointment was available at my local MOT centre for weeks to come, I grudgingly presented my car at the Cookstown DVTA Centre. On the long way back I came across a signpost to Tullaghoge Fort. Hoping to prevent the drive from being a complete loss, I stopped for a nosy. I instantly realised that this site was right up my alley, and so I returned shortly thereafter with Tinks to have a proper look.

The site is not so much of strategic but cultural significance, having been the inauguration site for chieftains since ancient times. It is not known when the site was created, and historical records only prove that the chieftains of the O’Neill clan were inaugurated here, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the site has been in use much longer than that.

The last known inauguration to take place here was that of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, in 1595. Claims that Felim O’Neill of Kinard was crowned here in 1641 are disputed. The site fell into disrepair after the Flight of the Earls in 1607, and very few features of the once substantial and culturally important site remain. Particularly, the missing inauguration stone, Leac na Rí, has been shrouded in mystery ever since.

The superficial similarity to a defensive rath has been dismissed by archaeologists as coincidence, and current academic thinking is that the arrangement of the ditches and earthen walls was unsuitable to be used as fortifications, and were of a ceremonial purpose only.

I used Quik again as the editing tool, followed by polishing in iMovie on my MacBook Pro. However, on this occasion I am much less happy with the outcome. The individual clips are much too short in my mind, and make for a unnerving viewing experience. Essentially, one never has a chance to properly take in any scene, before Quik already cuts to the next. Unfortunately, there do not seem to be settings to make Quik less hyperactive: The result is of the ‘take it or leave it’ variety.

I have therefore subsequently abandoned Quik again, and returned to doing my own editing using iMovie. Unfortunately, the raw material got corrupted and lost in most peculiar circumstances, so I am no longer able to re-edit the Tullaghoge movie above into something more to my liking…

Roughan Fort

Tinker Bell‘s next flight was going to be a wildcard. Having heard only recently and by pure chance about Roughan Fort, and being unable to find out anything about it, not even its exact location, I decided to go hunting for it equipped with GPS and Tinks. My good old friend Mary ― who has learned to live with my outbursts of geekiness ― tagged along as an extra pair of eyes, as I found in the past that as the driver, concentrating on the road, it is easy to miss hints or even something as obvious as a sign.

After several hours of cruising the countryside in the neighbourhood where I knew the castle was, we finally found it. Still, it took us two full circles around the castle and associated lough before we found what we think was the official access to it ― I am still not entirely sure that we did, but nobody challenged us on crossing this farmer’s field…

Very little is known about the castle other than that it was built in 1618 by Andrew Stewart, and that Sir Felim O’Neill of Kinard hid here from 1652 to 1653 to escape the English, who were looking for him because his involvement in the Irish rebellion of 1641. Accounts vary, but Sir Felim O’Neill was eventually betrayed and arrested in 1653 either in the castle, or on the nearby crannog. He was subsequently taken to Dublin, and hanged, drawn, and quartered as a traitor.

We know that the castle was still used in 1662, which is the last time it is mentioned in official documents, at least as far as we know of. Sometime afterwards the castle was abandoned, fell into disrepair, and is now ruined.

I brought Tinks with me on the off-chance that it would be worth my while, but was glad that I did. The ruin has been made safe, but not much has been done to allow access, so without Tinks we would have seen very little of it.

I chose to have the editing done automatically by GoPro Quik this time, and have to say that I was quite impressed with the result. For this particular motif and chosen background music, it did a very decent job. Finished off with some polishing using iMovie on my MacBook Pro.

Gilford’s Abandoned Linen Mill

When I left the Philippines to return to my job, Mel was very sad to see Tinker Bell go. For consolation, I promised her I would send Tinks to a surprise location back in Northern Ireland, to shoot her a video. This has a long tradition between us, as Mel has always been curious about Northern Ireland and our strange traditions ― like seasons (!!!) ― so I tended to send her videos from my dashcam before Tinks entered our lives.

The surprise location I came up with was Gilford’s abandoned Linen Mill. The first mill was built at 1841, and the site had since rapidly grown ― and Gilford with it ― until the heydays of linen milling in the 1880s. Strangely enough, it is not fully known when the current building was constructed other than sometime between 1841 and 1880. Following the decline of the linen industry, the mill eventually closed in 1986, and its fate has been bickered over ever since.

The work one can see that has been done to the roof and windows was in preparation of the mill being turned into the Outlet retail center, now renamed as the Boulevard. However, GML Estates ― the company behind the original plans ― changed the location from the mill to the current site in Banbridge when the latter became available, and now the fate of the mill is up in the air again.

Aircraft control via DJI Remote, and edited with iMovie on my MacBook Pro. Again, editing is minimal, the video pretty much shows the flight as flown.

RC Test Flight

The next flight was to be yet another test flight, this time to try out my new DJI remote controller for Tinker Bell. As I hoped, range is much improved, however it is still strictly line of sight only. I wonder if the larger drones have the actual control circuit on a different frequency, e.g. similar to remote-controlled airplanes, to achieve better control and range.

Anyway, this requirement for having line-of-sight with the drone at all times will require future flights to be carefully planned, and require more editing of the videos, to cut out times when the drone was stationery awaiting me to get to a new vantage point, in order to maintain line-of-sight for the next planned leg of the flight.

Edited on iMovie, initially on my iPad, then handed over to my MacBook Pro. To my surprise, the handing over of the project from one device to the other went reasonably smoothly, only minor edits were needed afterwards. Since this was only a test flight, editing was very light, and the flight is pretty much presented as flown…

One other thing I noticed about the remote control is that while the range is much improved, the video feed not necessarily so. I wonder if this is due to the fact that the remote only works with my iPhone, but not my iPad. My iPhone is quite an old model, with limited memory and processor power, so it may just not be able to stream a high-quality video stream in real-time. At some point I will have to look into this and investigate further.

St Thomas Aquinas Parish Church

The next flight was the first one not done entirely to check out the drone, and practice piloting. It is my strong belief that the visually most interesting objects for drone flights should have a strongly three-dimensional character. This way, the drone’s ability to explore these objects in three dimensions leads to a viewer experience that cannot be replicated by any other means. If the object can be fully covered by just walking along it, what is the point of unleashing a drone in the first place…?

With this view in mind, I nearly instantly had my eyes on St Thomas Aquinas Parish Church in Mangaldan, by far the highest building in the area, and with a nice open area in front of it which directly borders the public park.

I used Hover to confirm that I was not in a No-Fly Zone. There were no immediately obvious “Don’t Fly Drones” signs, and the place was reasonably empty. As for the Parish itself, there was nobody obvious around I could have asked for permission, and given that Filipinos are usually quite open to new technology, I hoped that nobody would take offence and launched Tinkerbell…

Control was still with my iPad, so I continued to be limited by its range, and some of the jerking towards the end of the video is caused by temporary loss of control to the drone. Recovery of the drone was by gesture control, which worked surprisingly well.

Edited in iMovie on my iPad.

San Fabian Public Beach

Tinker Bell‘s next flight was to be on San Fabian Public Beach. It was really yet another test flight, since my personal belief is that a drone only really comes into its own when exploring three-dimensional objects, yet a beach is about as two-dimensional as it gets….

Nevertheless, the mountains around Baguio provided a great backdrop, and the drone rising up over the beach gives a sense of scale, and an idea why I like Philippine beaches so much: Their scale, and the fact that they are not all sold out to resort hotels. I am vastly opposed to mass-tourism, and will never understand while people travel half-way around the planet to be in a place that is deliberately isolated from the local culture, to be with people from their own country, and eat and drink the same foodstuff as at home…

As you can see, I still used the iPad as a controller for this flight, and it’s limited range limited what I could do with Tinker Bell on this occasion. The movie was edited on iMovie on my iPad.

The flight also quite undeniably shows another danger of drone flights. Tinker Bell shows the increasingly desperate state of my cranial hair in a much more blunt and brutal way than any selfie ever could…

[OT] The Coast of Northern Luzon

This post admittedly has nothing to do with drones, but instead is a little collage of videos I shot travelling along the West Coast of Luzon, the main island of the Philippines. The first half of the movie shows footage going westwards from Mangaldan to Los Alaminos, the second half is shot the following day going eastwards from Mangaldan into the mountains around Baguio.

Since I am a seafarer, travel videos will probably also feature somewhat prominently in this blog. If you are only interested in the drone footage, filter for the tag “Drone Flights”… No, there is no actual point to this video, it just shows impressions from a country that I find fascinating.

The footage actually predates the purchase of Tinker Bell, but I only managed to edit the video at a later date. I would love to unleash Tinker Bell onto those mountains at a future date, the result I believe would be visually stunning…

Filmed mostly on my GoPro Hero 4, and a few shots on my iPone SE. Edited in iMovie on my iPad due to lack of time, but have to say that iMovie has actually become really good, stable, and usable. My initial intention had been to renew my subscription for Final Cut, but have now reconsidered, as

  1. Final Cut has become very expensive, now that the Express version is no longer available, and
  2. iMovie is doing the job just fine for the very amateur level editing I am doing at the moment…

Tinker Bell’s First Flight ― The Sunken Garden in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines

After lengthy debate, and investigating a lot of potential sites, we finally decided on the Sunken Garden in Quezon City as the site for the first flight.  While it was unlikely to provide the most stunning of visuals, our thought was that Tinker Bell would be easy to retrieve if she crashed, and that there was relatively limited prospect of causing serious damage in case of pilot error.

The flight was successful, but we instantly learned the first lesson:  Do not take off if there is an overhead obstruction, as otherwise the drone will struggle to return to the landing site ― as it is programmed to do ― if it loses connection to the controlling device.

This flight predates the purchase of my remote control, so I used the DJI GO 4 App on my iPad to control Tinker Bell.  The controls worked fine, but it was also instantly clear that the range of the iPad of about 50 m was not even remotely adequate for my intended purposes, and a remote control was purchased shortly thereafter…

We used the Hover app to check whether flying a drone in the Sunken Garden was allowed.  I very much liked the functionality of the Hover app, but about half a year later found out that its knowledge of No-Fly Zones is patchy at best, and so I now use SkyVector to determine whether or not I can legally fly Tinker Bell in a given area.

Edited on iMovie on my iPad.