Flycam Frustration

a few months ago, i made a point of looking into all of the drone laws for the places where i will be traveling this summer. basically what i found is “it is legal to bring a drone here and fly” in every country. but today i did some deeper research and i found out that in thailand and vietnam there are some specific restrictions on flying drones.

in thailand, you need permission from the what looks to be their versions of the fcc and the faa to fly a drone in-country, and you need insurance on the drone to boot. from what i can tell, insurance costs anywhere from $10 per flight to $100 for blanket insurance. but all of the insurance places are super sketchy so i need to do more research. essentially it is probably likely that i won’t be flying most places there because it isn’t worth the risk of losing it.

in vietnam, it appears that i will need to register each flight plan with their version of the faa at least 14 days in advance. i wasn’t able to find any official web page that verified this or provided a place to complete the registration, and from what i gathered, i will need to submit my flight plan in vietnamese. so yeah i am pretty much fucked there.

once i confirm all of the details, i am going to post clear instructions here about the drone certification process in thailand and vietnam. and if i find any other problem areas i will highlight them, too.

and here i thought i would get a drone just to have a good time. the more i look into it, the more involved i realize this whole drone thing is.

Cool [New] Cat

today i broke the ice on a new project that has been in the idea phase for a long time. i launched a new vlog on my instagram feed. and to commemorate the occasion, i’m adding a new blog category: vlog.

i’m sort of thinking that i should potentially start a whole new page within my domain for my vlogs to live on, but at least this once, i want to share the intro video here. i edited the video in premier pro, and tho it took me a few tales to get exactly what i was after in terms of my presentation, the editing was a snap. it literally took about 20 minutes start to finish for the one-minute video clip. before i put it on youtube, i think there are still a couple of things i want to add in terms of graphic text, but outside of that, i am happy with the final product. it’s simple, to the point, and with background music, a little bit of b-roll and chopping to add some variety. basically everything i wanted it to be in less than 60 seconds.

the vlog today marks two really significant milestones for me. first, it was a test-run for my new eos rp, and i have to say, i fell in love. it was amazing. more on that later - in my vlog. second, it was my first time editing a project in premiere pro, and holy crap it was great. once i got a flow going it was so quick and easy to use. by far my top video editing experience to date. of course that is probably because i have only used shit programs before. like imovie and vegas - which would be great if it didn’t crash so frequently.