[Bill Coons]

I am pretty sure that this is an early MacIntel — just prior to the first 8-core release. We have bought every other Mac and are anxiously anticipating the release of a Hexacore (or dual hex — can we hope for 12 core?) Mac next week. This particular system is handling all the XDCAM editing without any problems. I regret upgrading to Snow Leopard, but most of those problems revolve around compatibility issues with drivers and other equipment.

Final Cut Pro runs smoothly with no hiccups — maybe one crash in the last 60 days, and I think that I have edited about 35 programs since the first of the year. (course mostly in DVCAM)

I am using one of my monitors (23″ Apple Cinema HD Display) as the HD monitor, and sometimes the motion in a pan or tilt looks a little stuttered, hence my uncertainty about this HDV codec, but I chalk it up to not enough bandwidth. When I rank the media over to DVD or for H.264 (for web) it looks absolutely fantastic and the clients are very satisfied. We use the MOTU4D but don’t have an HD monitor to output to yet.

Bill Coons

Sony XDCAM 350 HD, XDCAM Transfer 2.10.0
MacOS 10.6.2, Apple FCP 7.0.1
2×2.66 Dual-Core Xeon, 5GB Ram, 1.5T Internal RAID
ATI Radeon X1900 XT

[Bill Coons]

The XDCAM HD 35Mbps VBR is merely a variant of HDV video, correct? The three camera settings, HQ, SP and LP are all some relation of HDV. The video does look great — but are there ramifications that I haven’t run into yet. Most of what we have shot with this camera is green screen interviews or regular interviews.

Thanks

Bill Coons

Sony XDCAM 350 HD, XDCAM Transfer 2.10.0
MacOS 10.6.2, Apple FCP 7.0.1
2×2.66 Dual-Core Xeon, 5GB Ram, 1.5T Internal RAID
ATI Radeon X1900 XT

[Bill Coons]

Andy,

You and Rafael are correct, this footage was shot at SP — 25Mbps CBR. The footage does look great, so no worries re this project.

However, it is a bit disconcerting that Sony doesn’t mention this in the XDCAM operating manual. Aside from the fact that this is a much more expensive instrument than any HDV camera, aren’t there other issues with the HDV codec? I knew that the sony’s XDCAM MPEG2 format was somewhat unique to this camera line, but I assumed that it was not HDV.

Are there any other known issues or am I making a mountain out of a molehill. Note that most of our shoots with this camera have been green screen, and were done with the HQ setting, and the correct codec does display with all of those projects.

THANKS, and any other insights would be most welcome!

Bill Coons
Creative Dynamics Studio

Sony XDCAM 350 HD, XDCAM Transfer 2.10.0
MacOS 10.6.2, Apple FCP 7.0.1
2×2.66 Dual-Core Xeon, 5GB Ram, 1.5T Internal RAID
ATI Radeon X1900 XT

[Bill Coons]

Wayne,

Thanks for your insight. I did use XDCAM transfer to ingest the footage. (V2.10.0) I am working in Snow Leopard, and from what I have read, I understand that it is not fully compatible with Snow Leopard (10.6.2) and that a driver update is coming out at or after NAB.

But checking further, I think I do understand the issue. We shoot our green screen with the HQ setting, and the XDCAM codec pops right in. As noted in the next post, this video was shot at the SP setting, which is not 35Mbps VBR, but 25Mbps CBR.

Bill

Sony XDCAM 350 HD, XDCAM Transfer 2.10.0
MacOS 10.6.2, Apple FCP 7.0.1
2×2.66 Dual-Core Xeon, 5GB Ram, 1.5T Internal RAID
ATI Radeon X1900 XT