Michael Slowe
Forum Replies Created
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Gerry, that’s what I like about Media 100, not too much changes, just improvements as different codecs come along like HD and functions introduced as it becomes technically possible. I’ve been with them for nearly 15 years now and wouldn’t change for the world. It’s the nearest thing to film editing but I guess you youngsters don’t remember that!
Michael Slowe
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I’m with Andy on the infuriating way information on the screen can disappear when you mistakenly press one of those wretched little pads under the handle, although I believe that the EX1 R has made them a bit harder to press accidentally.
On the original thread subject I have to say that much though it may interest some people to be able to pull focus and exposure automatically, the time it takes to set the function up would negate its use for me shooting documentary in the field. If I want to pull focus it’s perfectly feasible to do it manually as we always did before all the ‘smoke & mirrors’.
Michael Slowe
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I think (and I’ll be interested to see what other say) that Clip Browser should be used to review clips and to download to drives using the safety measure or CRC which confirms and checks correct transfer. The XDCAM Transfer is the tool for ingesting selected sections or complete clips into your edit suite. I use this all the time and it’s great, better than the old way of running a tape and selecting from that.
Michael Slowe
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Jim, we’re now going off topic and we’ll be in trouble but this is important for users of the EX1 and EXR. Having tried all the ‘experimental’ hoods made by various people round the world (including the ‘sock’) I find that the best is the Hoodman which replicates what there is on the EX 3 screen. This sounds very much what you are working on and you should look at the Hoodman site because it seems you are doing the same thing. I originally wanted to buy the EX 3 attachment from Sony but there was no sensible way to fix it onto the EX 1 screen. The Hoodman does this very well.
The problem comes when you hand hold the camera or use a brace. You can’t get your eye close enough to jam into the eye cup. The camera is not designed for this, it’s designed so you view the screen at a distance of about 9 inches. All very well unless you’re in bright sunlight!Michael Slowe
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Jim, I’ve been following this with interest. I too used a DSR 300 for aboutten years and great though it was the pictures from my EX 1 are far superior. I shoot in HD and let my edit system Media 100 do the downscale to SD, that seems to give the best results of all the options. If,as you say, your wedding punters want SD then BitVice does an even better downscale as well as the encode – but that’s Mac only I think. But, here in England, wedding videographers are finding that all their customers have widescreen (16:9) TV’s so they’ll be wanting Blu-Ray discs any time now, BD players can cost £100. Go HD as Noah suggests, at least you’re starting with a good picture but don’t you miss the wonderful VF in the DSR 300? These lcd screens are terribly tricky to focus in bright light.
Michael Slowe
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Thanks Alister, I’m sure it was a regions thing, this has always confused me although I know I had problems with an NTSC disc recently from a documentary maker which I don’t think had a region issue. It kept ‘stalling’ but it may have merely been badly encoded and burnt. Will BD discs not have this problem or is there still PAL and NTSC even with Blu-Ray?
Michael Slowe
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My Denon DVD player won’t play NTSC (it is a six year old machine) but also my portable Panny player won’t either. Maybe modern players are more compliant. Also aren’t NTSC pictures inferior to PAL?
Michael Slowe
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Sorry Bruce, I’m not a PC guy, only Mac. Didn’t know BitVice didn’t do PC, good reason to go Mac!
Michael Slowe
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Olly, I urge you to encode your DVD using BitVice rather than Compressor, in my opinion it is a far superior encode and at the same time does an HD scale to SD better than most. The later versions of BitVice also do PAL – NTSC conversions as well as converting the audio to Dolby ac3 files for the DVD.
Michael Slowe
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Thanks Olof, I also treat XDCAM EX footage as purely acquisition footage and edit in the Media 100 HD codec thus preserving the quality. As this thread is concerned with down scaling to SD I was interested to see that you too are editing in Media 100. My concern is with mastering to tape (SD) and I need to get to DVCAM after I have my DVD (downscaled in BitVice). What is your final output, only DVD or BD?
Michael Slowe