[Alejandro Alvaro]

I don’t know the CANON VIXIA HV20, I saw that’s a prosumer camera, under $1.000. I’m used to the CANON 5D MARK IV, (and 7D and 1D), and I can tell you some flaws on this cameras.

First, they are for still, not for video. That means:
1) you need to record audio separately, and then sync the audio in post production. Don’t trust on the audio of the camera, it’s not reliable.
2) There are no trusty solutions for monitoring remotely while you shoot. Those cameras have just a miniHDMI output for an external monitor. This connector isn’t intended for professional use. It’s very, very fragile and unreliable. We use a mini HDMI/HDMI cable to connect the camera to a HDMI split, loop back one cable to a Marshal or miniHD monitor, and send the other to a SDI monitor. So we need another HDMI to SDI conversor to do the trick. The preview wasn’t in Full HD, by the way.
3) The clips have a maximum limit of 12 minutes. This is like shooting in 16mm, but for video-era-filmakers, it can be a hassle.
4) If you use the LCD display of the camera for a long time (a couple of hours), in a hot environment, the camera shuts down (specially the 7D)
5) They use the h.264 codec, which is slow to transfer to FinalCut. Expect 5x times the length of the clip for transfer.
6) Be careful when you shoot big patterns or wide shots with too much detail. Those cameras use a lot of electronics to make an image look sharp in HD, so they create really ugly artifacts when shooting for example a sunset over a river, with those tiny waves moving all the time. The footage will be unusable.

Once the footage is in your timeline, you will be enchanted with the DoF of your images. But be careful with grading, the footage is very compressed, so it’s more tricky to do heavy grading.

There’s a really nice slate app for the iPhone for 5d cameras, very useful (I used in recent jobs, and works really well)

Alejandro Alvaro
Producer/ Director
Blur Filmes
http://www.blurfilmes.com

[Alejandro Alvaro]

I would like to add my thanks to the people at Berimbau Filmes, for their work in this project too!

Alejandro Alvaro
Producer/ Director
Blur Filmes
http://www.blurfilmes.com

[Alejandro Alvaro]

Now, the long answer.

Last Saturday, I directed and produced the image of the first international broadcast in history to show Ivete Sangalo, Brazilian’s most popular singer, performing live over a “Trio Elêtrico” (a stage mounted in a very big truck) directly from Praia do Forte, Bahia, surrounded by a crowd of more than 10.000 people using 8 of 11 EX3 cameras with Letus Adaptors and Nikon 35mm lenses (and a pair of Adaptimax rings). It was broadcasted through YouTube.

I watched yesterday the full HD PGM recorded in XDCAM EX format in our grading room, and the result was incredible. Finally, we achieve a film look for broadcast!

We are very proud to be the first production company who introduces the film look given by the shallow DoF of the 35mm lenses in the Brazilian’s broadcast arena.

I’m very thankful to the people at Caco, Nova, Estudio Base, Axé Mix, YouTube and of course to Ms. Ivete Sangalo for the chance to innovate, and for their support.

You can watch one of the songs here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aypQvKyjCJ0&feature=channel

Alejandro Alvaro
Producer/ Director
Blur Filmes
http://www.blurfilmes.com

[Alejandro Alvaro]

https://www.letusdirect.com/cart/letus-adapters/

Alejandro Alvaro
Producer/ Director
Blur Filmes
http://www.blurfilmes.com

[Alejandro Alvaro]

Motion it’s back!

After searching more about this on the Internet, I’ve found two simple answers to this issue:

1) Resolve duplicated fonts using FontBook
2) Convert the font to TrueType using some utility like FontForge

Alejandro Alvaro
Producer/ Director
Blur Filmes
http://www.blurfilmes.com

[Alejandro Alvaro]

Same thing happened to me. The most annoying part of it was to discover the bug at 2 AM in the morning, with the deadline set to 10 AM…
I tried turning on the monospace option in the Inspector, but the result was another bug! Not only the tracking went totally weird, but also the font changed!
Really frustrating. I had pitched the client with organic text animations made quickly. After Effects presets are not so compelling as Motion Behaviours, but work with International characters. Motion is totally useless for non-English text animations. 😛

Alejandro Alvaro
Producer/ Director
Blur Filmes
http://www.blurfilmes.com

[Alejandro Alvaro]

Thanks for your post, Shane. I was searching the web for more info, and I find this pdf at https://www.dolby.com/uploadedFiles/zz-_Shared_Assets/English_PDFs/Professional/47_Post_it_with_E.pdf, where they explain the process of encoding Dolby E. A DP571 Dolby E encoder is needed to encode the audio signal into the HDCAM tape, and I figured that with this hardware, the encoding process is made on the fly. Then, the Broadcaster needs another hardware, the DP572 Dolby E Decoder to decode the two AES audio par into a two digital channel audio one one side, and 5.1 channel digital audio on the other.
I have to find a facility with this hardware first, but I’m still having some questions about the proper way to prepare my timeline for this purpose. Do I have to render the video first from 29.97 XDCAM EX or Apple PRo Res 422(HQ) to 59.94 XDCAM HD or this is made on the fly by the HDCAM deck? Do I have to place in the timeline 8 channels of audio (on channels 1&2, the aiff L&R, and on channels 3 to 8 the 5.1 a3c file), or first the audio post facility needs to encode the 5.1 a3c file into a 2 channel Dolby E file, and then I drop just 4 audio channels in the FCP timeline (channels 1-2 with a L&R, and 3-4 with the Dolby E encoded)? If the last is correct, how do FCP address the fact that the first two channels are audio and the second 2 are data?
Sorry If I’m missing something, but even with the pdf from Dolby, I’m still confused with this.
Thanks again.

Alejandro Alvaro
Producer/ Director
Blur Filmes
http://www.blurfilmes.com