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Activity Forums Sony Cameras EX3 down conversion output?

  • EX3 down conversion output?

    Posted by Nelson May on June 11, 2010 at 6:13 pm

    I am doing at Video Assit gig next week with two Sony XDCAM EX PMW-EX3 cameras. Production may get down converters for my VTR rig, but do these cameras have an output setting that down converts to DV? I have an HVX200 and you can shoot HD, while you output a DV signal through a BNC or composite output.

    Cheers,

    Craig Seeman replied 15 years, 10 months ago 5 Members · 8 Replies
  • 8 Replies
  • Rafael Amador

    June 11, 2010 at 6:19 pm

    You can get SD from the SDI out while recording HD.
    You get 10b Unc, so you need a capture card.
    rafael

    http://www.nagavideo.com

  • Nelson May

    June 11, 2010 at 7:01 pm

    Cool, to make sure I understand and can pass it along to the PM, I will need a converter to convert from 10 bit to 8 bit. The VTR in is DV, and I will have to look in the manual to see if I can set bit rate, but I don’t think rigs are set up for that.

    MBP 2.4GHz 4MB RAM, 30″cine, MAC PRO 2.6 8 core 6GB RAM, Mbox, Neumann TLM-103, FCP HD 7. Pro Tools 8, Adobe Creative Suite, Reason 3.0, Macromedia Studio, ProAnimator, HVX200 with Firestore v4.0

  • Don Greening

    June 11, 2010 at 7:58 pm

    In the EX3 menu go to: VIDEO SET>YPbPr/HDI Out Select:

    Your choices are:

    • HD
    • SD
    • OFF

    Then in the same VIDEO SET menu choose ‘Down Converter’ and your choices are:

    • Squeeze
    • Letterbox
    • Edge Crop

    See if those settings work for your SD output.

    – Don

    Don Greening
    Reeltime Videoworks
    http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com

  • Nelson May

    June 11, 2010 at 8:01 pm

    Thanks. I won’t be around the cameras until next wed, and I am not sure who is in the camera dept to ask. They are still crewing for this job. I love shooting HD, but I hate VTR’ing HD. THere are so many cameras and they all have different outputs.

    MBP 2.4GHz 4MB RAM, 30″cine, MAC PRO 2.6 8 core 6GB RAM, Mbox, Neumann TLM-103, FCP HD 7. Pro Tools 8, Adobe Creative Suite, Reason 3.0, Macromedia Studio, ProAnimator, HVX200 with Firestore v4.0

  • Bob O’brien

    June 14, 2010 at 4:35 pm

    Nelson,

    Don’t use the EX3’s built-in down-converted signal. It’s awful. Totally unusable in fact.

    So, take the HD-SDI out of the camera and run it through an external downconverter that will turn it to DV.

    Bob

    CAMERAS
    Sony EX3 & Sony DXC637/PVV3 Betacam-SP

    PORTABLE EDITING
    *MacBook Pro – 2.33Ghz – 2Gb RAM
    *Matrox MXO / 23″ Cinema Display

    DESKTOP
    *DualG5 2Ghz w/2.5Gb RAM
    *UL4D SCSI Card
    *HMV800 DualMax RAID0
    *AJA IO
    *Sony 2800

    SOFTWARE
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  • Nelson May

    June 14, 2010 at 6:44 pm

    I was also told it is a 10 bit out. I am using a DMC console that has DV inputs. It the camera’s DV downconversion so bad that it wouldn’t look good as Video Assist playback. The agency is hooked on HD, but they know we do have HD rigs, so they are used to seeing down the tap of a 35mm camera.

    Will the downconversion get us by? I really wished I had the camera to plug it into the VTR console to see for myself. The shoot is in two days.

    MBP 2.4GHz 4MB RAM, 30″cine, MAC PRO 2.6 8 core 6GB RAM, Mbox, Neumann TLM-103, FCP HD 7. Pro Tools 8, Adobe Creative Suite, Reason 3.0, Macromedia Studio, ProAnimator, HVX200 with Firestore v4.0

  • Bob O’brien

    June 14, 2010 at 7:01 pm

    I do not have a way to use an SD SDI output so I don’t know about the quality of that output. But, the downconverted signal from S-video and composite is terrible.

  • Craig Seeman

    June 14, 2010 at 7:12 pm

    Matrox MXO2 LE will downconvert for example. I do this when I live stream.

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