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Sony EX-1 XDCAM Camera Format Options?
This week I received my new Sony EX-1 XDCAM camera and FCP Studio 2. All the new software and updates are installed and I’m ready to go. But wait a minute. This camera is a little different from my old faithful DVCAM. In the old days (last week) I would shoot good old basic USA interlaced video, capture with firewire to my Apple G5 and edit within a DV environment and then lay it back to DVCAM tape for delivery to my local media outlets.
This EX-1 has a lot more shooting options.
Now this is where I would like to get a little advice. I plan to shoot in the highest quality format.
I have the option to shoot 1080 video in 60i, 50i, 30p, 25p, and 24p. I am hearing a lot of buzz about 24p and it’s film-like qualities. Is there a rule of thumb as to which of these formats is best for a particular situation?
We shoot a variety of different projects. Primarily local TV commercials and cable programming. And I still need to be able to deliver my final projects on DV tape.
Any advice or explanation would be appreciated.Kevin Jones
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4 Replies
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If you have to end up in SD NTSC, shot 1080 60i. You can edit directly in a DV NTSC time-line in RT. Set rendering all YUV to High Precision and Motion rendering to Best. The result is awesome.
PPC G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM/BlackMagic SD/PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM
JVC DTV-17″/FCS2/AE CS3/COMBUSTION/SHAKE -
Do I just drop the 1080i footage directly into a DV timeline?
Does it create the anamorphic letterboxed look?You might like this Ken Stone article about
Outputting Standard Definition in FCP from the Sony XDCam EX1https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/ex1_sd_output_young.html
Thanks for the feedback!
kj
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Hi Kevin,
Put the EX-1 footage in a DV Annamorphic sequence.
I just had a look to the article you pointed. I think that workflow is interesting if you want to have two masters; The first in HD then downgrade to SD.
If you want to master directly in SD, just put your footage in a SD sequence. And two things:
– Is not necessary to set the field order to NONE. When going from HD to SD we have not the interlacing problems than when working with SD footage with different field orders. We are not putting 480 lines in top of some other 480 lines, but 1080 lines in top of 480.
– To set the DV quality to “Best” is for nothing. DV is not an scalable codec. It has only one quality.
What I’ve been doing is just to put the EX-1 footage in a DV time line and before exporting I change the codec to Proress HQ, set the “Render all YUV in High precision” (32b floating point rendering) and Motion rendering to “Best”. In fact the only thing we need is a proper scaling-down.PPC G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM/BlackMagic SD/PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM
JVC DTV-17″/FCS2/AE CS3/COMBUSTION/SHAKE -
Thanks for the info Rafael.
I will be doing a lot of experimenting this week and I will put your ideas to good use.Kevin Jones
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