Adam Smith
Forum Replies Created
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Yeah, I’d considered a MacBookPro + Duel Adapter for only slightly more money, but I’m still sort of on the fence.
While a laptop would have vastly greater expansion possibilities, I just don’t have much use for a laptop other than pulling video off P2 cards and getting it into the MacPro. Seems like a lot more possibility for things to go wrong (or just a lot more to do)…
But you know, teleprompter software is a good idea, and I’m sure I can think of more if I try…
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Video Photographer / Avid Editor
Maximus Media Inc. -
The system uses a dark grey fabric with embedded glass micro-beads… it has a very directional reflective property, much like safety tape or a freeway sign. The green (or blue) LED ring mounts on the camera lens and lights the background. To anyone a few degrees off-center the background still appears grey, but from the camera perspective the background is bright green.
Quick to set up, no fancy lighting required for the background so you can use less lights and it’s actually better to have the subject up close to the background so you can shoot in tighter quarters. You can pretty much go nuts with lighting and not worry about the background, the only caveat is you cannot place any lights near the camera lens, as they’d reflect off the background just like the LEDs do.
Issues? Well the green LEDs are a light source that’s attached to the lens, so…
Areas of shadow on the front of the subject may be lit/tinted by LEDs
Reflective subject matter is bad news
Not usable with teleprompter
Lateral movement is fine, but camera moves towards/away from the background will increase/decrease the background intensity and may tint your subject unless you try to ‘ride’ the LED output (fun!)
And finally the issue we’ve been discussing, shadow/halo caused by the LED ring.
So it’s got some benefits, and I’m sure with some testing and research I could wind up getting things done better/faster in post, IMO this $4500 could have been wisely spent elsewhere.
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Video Photographer / Avid Editor
Maximus Media Inc. -
Thanks, that monitor looks good – gives me another $500 towards lighting kits!
Now if i can just scrape that DELL logo off the front… =P
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Video Photographer / Avid Editor
Maximus Media Inc. -
Yeah, I was confused because the first post asks about connecting to a MacPro (no “book”) but it seemed like the Duel Adapter was for laptops.
The problem I have with connecting the camera directly is I’ll be using the HPX-500 and it cannot transfer the native 720@24p footage via firewire… and since you have to be shooting native to use the over/undercrank, stop motion and time lapse features…
It could be worse, any other format would require me to spend $7000 on a deck!
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Video Photographer / Avid Editor
Maximus Media Inc. -
How does this thing work on a MacPro?
I’m just not seeing how/where it connects (and I don’t have my Mac yet to investigate), but I’d love to spend $120 instead of the $1900 I was going to spend for a Panasonic 5-slot P2 Drive…
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I remember a post that was suggesting that when importing HDV footage FCP had to re-queue footage every time the camera was stopped, and I forget why but was it for purposes of pulldown removal or long-GOP format or am I just nuts?
Just trying to educate myself ahead of time, sooner or later I’m going to have to cut a project with the HD-110 that the boss bought…
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Video Photographer / Avid Editor
Maximus Media Inc. -
Cool, glad it’s helping.
I know what you mean about the “ref non-standard” warning, it’s annoying but generally harmless. I have come across consumer-type sources that the fake sync isn’t enough and the deck won’t even stay in record mode, but of course in that case you could just pull the cord and live with a rolling monitor.
It looks like the DSR-45 doesn’t have any Sync or Reference Inputs, which of course is the cause of the issue here… the Beta and the video source device need BB from the same source for the Beta to be happy.
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Video Photographer / Avid Editor
Maximus Media Inc. -
From what I’ve read, the P2Store makes a partition equal to the size of the P2 card you insert.
Insert a 4gb card, and it makes a 4gb partition and then moves the files over from the card. Insert a 16gb card and it makes a 16gb partition.
It works this way regardless of how much data is actually on the card. An 8gb card with only 3gb data still uses up 8gb on the P2Store.
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Video Photographer / Avid Editor
Maximus Media Inc. -
Beta plays fine, beta records fine, but pass-through signal while recording slowly rolls or creeps in little jumps, right?
Your video source needs to be in the sync loop as well, is there signal from the BB Generator going to the device playing the video?
If not, then hook it up. If so, then I’d check to see if you have a bad cable or output from the BB to that source.
It’s possible you can ‘fake it’… if the video output source has multiple outs you can feed component to the beta to record as normal and use a composite video out of that same machine to the beta’s sync in. So in this instance you’d not be using the BB at all.
This is similar to what we’ve had to do for years when dubbing from peoples MDV cameras to Beta without having to dig out the switcher… S-Video for record signal, composite video for ‘sync’. Gets the job done.
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Video Photographer / Avid Editor
Maximus Media Inc. -
Not positive, but I believe you need an Intel Mac Pro to capture to ProRes.
Editing in HDV can be bad because it’s an MPEG2 long-GOP format and therefore even minor edits can require frames to be recompressed (to build i-frames where needed)… so you can wind up with generation loss in places before you even start adding effects and graphics. HDV is also more processor-intensive for the same reasons, it’s just more work for the computer to manage.
I dunno if your best bet is to transcode to ProRes, or to work with HDV in a DVCPRO-HD timeline or what… but keep in mind that HDV is compressed all to heck and essentially any other format you choose to work in to preserve quality is going to result in larger files / less realtime / etc.