[Blaise Douros]

Better is relative; either way you’re going to end up doing a bit of color correction in post, simply because no two camera see colors the same way. If it were me, though, I would set them both manually to the 6500K setting. That way you can throw a quick color correction effect on whichever one of them you like less when you bring them in to edit.

[Blaise Douros]

I just posted in a thread above yours about the Canon XA20.

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/59/862500

Take a look at it, it does pretty well in low-light, has a decent zoom lens, and XLRs; best part, it weighs in at 2.2 lbs, so it’s as light a camera with these features that you’ll find, perfect for outdoor adventuring (that’s the footage I shoot as well).

Check out this hunting film shot on the previous model, the XA10. https://vimeo.com/111167644

The camera’s size allowed my crew to stay light, fast, and agile to keep up with the hunters. I didn’t shoot this one, but I did edit it–the footage will hold up to some color correction.

[Blaise Douros]

Adam,
I use this camcorder for corporate video and take it into the backcountry when I can’t afford the weight of a higher-quality rig. For the most part, it is a great little camera: it’s lightweight, has relatively good image quality (though it loses contrast a bit at full zoom), and for $2k, you can’t beat it. For ENG and event work, it kicks the collective butts of DSLRs; the integrated audio is INCREDIBLY useful to have for that stuff (as you probably know).

I have trouble getting the colors and gamma to match the 5D MkIII that I use as my other camera–yes, I know how to white balance! You wouldn’t think two Canons would have this problem, but the sensors and image processors are different enough that it can be a challenge in post. My advice is to bring a color reference card along, and spend some time getting your t4i and XA20’s settings dialed in so you aren’t screwing with a lot of color correction in post. The colors, contrast, and gamma aren’t bad by any means, but it just sees them differently than the DSLR.

The disadvantage to getting such a compact camera is that a lot of the settings are buried in menus. The consolation prize is that it has a lot of customizable external buttons, so with some labeling and setup, you have pretty easy access to essential features like white balance, Rec Program (M/Av/Tv/P/Auto), and other settings.

So overall, I’m happy with it–its limitations as a small camera are outweighed for me by its portability, and with a few extra minutes of setup to get your menu settings dialed, it produces a perfectly acceptable image.

As far as sliders, I use the Rhino Carbon; I like the Rhino stuff, it’s well built and it works really nicely.

[Blaise Douros]

Have you tried After Effects’ built-in 3D Camera Tracker? It works pretty well for adding elements to a moving scene, so I’d bet you could utilize it to do your set extension.

[Blaise Douros]

This is a Blackmagic Ultrastudio.

Did you delete your Premiere preferences file, as suggested earlier? How about repairing disk permissions in Disk Utility?

OpenCL is a protocol that Premiere uses to render using certain graphics cards. CUDA is another similar protocol. I asked what graphics card you have in the Mac so I could suggest which to use, but I’ll let you make that determination based on the below info:

Create a new project. When the Project Settings dialog box comes up, the topmost dropdown menu should have three options:
– Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (OpenCL)
– Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (CUDA)
– Mercury Playback Engine (Software Only)

In an existing project, you can go to File > Project Settings > General to access the same menu to change this setting on an existing project.

If you have one of the following Nvidia graphics cards in your Mac, you’ll need to use the CUDA setting when creating a project:
GeForce GTX 285
GeForce GTX 675MX
GeForce GTX 680
GeForce GTX 680MX
GeForce GT 650M
GeForce GT 750M
Quadro CX
Quadro FX 4800
Quadro 4000
Quadro K5000

If you have one of these cards, you’ll want to use OpenCL:
ATI Radeon HD 6750M
ATI Radeon HD 6770M
AMD Radeon HD 7950
AMD Radeon HD FirePro D300
AMD Radeon HD FirePro D500
AMD Radeon HD FirePro D700
Nvidia:
GeForce GT 650M
GeForce GT 750M
GeForce GTX 675MX
GeForce GTX 680
GeForce GTX 680MX
Quadro K5000

Otherwise, you need to use Software Rendering. You also will want to check to see what card your PC has in it; if you need the projects to be interoperable, you’ll need to be sure that you’re using the correct renderer. Software Rendering will be a bit slower, but will definitely work on both machines. A list of supported graphics cards on both Mac and PC can be found here.

Also, if you do NOT have one of the CUDA-supported cards installed, but you DO have the CUDA driver trying to run, this would cause a major problem; you would want to uninstall CUDA if that was the case.

Have you contacted Adobe about this issue? They may be able to help you better than we can.

[Blaise Douros]

Can you post some details of your system? Computer type, processor, ram, video card?

Try trashing your Premiere preferences, and repairing your disk permissions in your Disk Utility. I would also clear any files in the Media Cache folders as well.

[Blaise Douros]

Did you install the Creative Cloud suite before or after you upgraded your OS to Mavericks? Is your version of Creative Cloud and the Premiere Pro app registered and updated to the latest version?

[Blaise Douros]

For anyone interested, I was advised by Craig on the Telestream forums to use an MP4 wrapper for output rather than QT. The Windows QT architecture is shaky enough that Telestream does not recommend using it for 1080p capture of video stream in Wirecast.

This has provided me with a good workaround of Quicktime–I’ve performed a few tests and it seems to be working well.

[Blaise Douros]

Hah, I was afraid the answer would be “it depends.” Thanks for the input, guys–it’ll help me narrow down my options; DV is officially off of the table.