Need Advice – Suggestions for EX1

[Craig Seeman]

If you put an 1920 by 1080 image in a 720 by 480 or 720 by 576 (PAL) timeline you have A LOT of room to zoom in or pan left/right etc without any loss of resolution.

If you’re not sure what “Keyframing” is you’ve got some very very basic things you need to learn about editing and moving objects to learn. Look at some of the COW tutorials or Google for some various tutorials about keyframing. Pick a start point and an endpoint and move an the image.

At this point I would not choose Premiere to edit EX1 video since it doesn’t handle it natively. You’d need to convert to another codec. Right now the best choices are Final Cut Pro, Vegas and I hear Edius might be a good choice too.

An NLE can do a downconversion but the results depend on the ability of the NLE. A program like Compressor can do downconversion too.

There’s doing and doing well and that really depends on the software (and hardware).

My hunch is that the hardware device to record HQ will probably be more expensive than buying a laptop (although probably smaller). With a laptop you’d be able to screen shots with the client and burn DVD backups on location . . . all while the camera continues to record on one card while you dump the other card into a laptop.

I see lots of risks recording directly to hard drive over solid state memory cards. I’ve heard of enough Firestore horror stories to scare me away from such devices.

With 2 16GB cards and a laptop could record all day non stop and the client can look at the previous card while I continue shooting.

[Kaya Hacaloglu]

I have done keyframing before, mostly on stills so I pretty much know what you’re talking about. Though, I don’t see how that wold ease my editing since ‘m used to seeing the whole picture on an equal size canvas. I will do some tests with Philip Bloom’s uncompressed footage that he has posted in his blog..
One strange thing though, on my 2.4 ghz MAcBokPro and Final cut 6.02 Philips EX1 footage playsback stuttering. The image seems to slow down or stop at some intervals..When I changed my playback quality setting under RT to medium (from dynamic) it played smothly with no hick ups. I didnt notice any resolution loss. I asked Philip he said that it is strange and that the MBP should handle the EX1 stream.

I will not be having clients along. My shots will be mostly on the field and I think I can pretty much take care with the LCD panel or a small preview (LCD) monitor. I never used the firestore, I know what it is, although this is Sony releasing its own Hard drive recorder, not a third party product. So, we’ll see..

I just might wait for the EX3 and see if it is an upgrade to the EX1. There is a demonstration at a university with the EX1 today, if I have time I’ll drop over there and see for myself and grab some uncompressed footage to play with.

Regards,

K.

[Janet Nakano]

Hi,

I’m also having problems with viewing Sony EX 1 footage on my Mac Book Pro with Final Cut 6.0.2. It stutters as well. I changed the playback settings to MEDIUM and it works fine now but I’m concerned that it isn’t some other issue. Maybe I have the settings wrong?

Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks,
J

[Kaya Hacaloglu]

Hello Janet,

Yes, I’m also on Final Cut 6.02 alongside a MBpro 2.4 ghz. MAke sure your settings are set to XDCAM ” EX “, though I doubt that would make a difference. I did not notice any loss in quality, have yo had a chance to hook it up to an external monitor by any chance ?
This could make a new thread; looks like there’s something that needs to be resolved..

Thanks for sharing

Kaya

[Don Greening]

Janet,

You haven’t specified where you’re storing your media. It should always be on an external drive and not on your startup drive. Having a good media transfer rate will make a huge difference on how smoothly FCP will play back your footage.

– Don

[Don Greening]

[Chris Babbitt] “What method do you use for downconverting?”

It’s pretty simple, really. The most current project I’ve done was shot in 1080p 30. I did all the editing and primary CC in the native EX codec, including a round trip with Color. Afterwards I just did a copy and paste into a DV 50 NTSC timeline, rendered and output a self-contained .mov for BitVice. Looked great on a Samsung 50″ plasma.

Sorry for taking so long to respond, Chris. Didn’t see your post all the way down here.

– Don

[Janet Nakano]

Hello Don and Kaya,

I have a 1TB external hard drive to store all my footage and use an 800 firewire. I just got my MacBook Pro with the same specs as Kaya. So this is why I was surprised to see that it looked like a processing issue.

I’m still pretty new to Final Cut but I think I have my settings correct. Shot and set on XDCAM 1080p30 V.. (the variable setting).

I was told that the quality doesn’t actually change when I export so that’s good news.

Thanks,
Janet

[Janet Nakano]

Also, I have 4GB of RAM.

Thanks guys.

[Kaya Hacaloglu]

Your settings need be set to XDCAM EX (not XDCAM only) so they say. But still, it doesnt make the difference and for smooth playback, quality needs to be set to Medium instead of Dynamic.

Anyone can confirm this, I’m on a 2.4 MBpro. FC 6.02

Kaya