[Brian Paterson]

Thanks Guys,
These things are all new to me so I need to find out more about it and how it operates. It’s great that you have given me your advise and have been so helpful.
I will do some research into this and hopefully it will provide me with a solution to my problem.

With Kind Regards

Brian Paterson.

brian paterson

[Brian Paterson]

Hi Graig,
Thanks for the explanation I can see I am going to need a whole pile of money if I am going to crack this one. At a quick guess looking on the web I would say another three thousand pounds. Out of the question of course as the work dosen’t pay well enough. (Still paying for the ex1.)
Catch twenty two again. Need the money for equipment to save time but can’t earn the money for equipment when it all takes so much time.

Thanks again
BRIAN.

brian paterson

[Brian Paterson]

Hi Craig
Can you tell me what difference your suggestion would make. I know nothing of these although having just googled the latter it seems to be a device for getting pro res files directly to fcp. The problem for me lies in what happens after that. It’s at that point it all slows up and I don’t know what the answer is.
I am running the laters version of fcp on an iMac 2.8 Ghz intel core 2 Duo with 4GB Ram. Would a faster computer be of any significant help.
An 8 second clip slowed down to 50 percent with lock and load some colour correcting, magic bullet and maybe a vignette takes around 11 minutes to render. If I then decide to make any changes it takes another 11 minutes if I decide to cut the length that’s another 11 minutes to re-render and so on. – That’s over half an hour for eight seconds and the more I refine the edit the longer it takes hence an hour and a half video taking weeks to produce. The manufacturers of these cameras and computers would really do themselves a favour if they concentrated more on something that worked quickly and efficiently rather than changing their products constantly. I don’t know how anyone can be expected to make a living from the sort of work I do which is wedding videography when it all takes so long. Unless it’s all just a chop and shunt.
Maybe if I downconverted to SD and gave up on the quality it might be quicker. All in all very dissapointing.
Maybe Sony should make all this clear in their advertising.

Regards
Brian.

brian paterson

[Brian Paterson]

Hi Craig,
Firstly yes you are right i am using FCP sorry for not explaining that.

A few months ago I was doing exactly what you advise then after one particular problem of a lengthy render decided to output the finished edit as a reference movie to write to DVD. However I found I could not make a reference file and was advised of the problem which was that the render control needed to be the “same as the sequence codec”. I have therefore been putting the compressor setting in the sequence settings on “pro res” and the render control on “same as sequence codec”
If I do as you say I will have to output the finished edit as a self contained movie which at the last attempt to do this said it was going to take twenty seven hours for a one and a half hour edit. (approx)
I thought therefore if I convert all the footage to pro res first then edit in a pro res timeline it would cut out a lot of the rendering which occurs when editing xdcam footage in a pro res time line. I can then make a reference movie to output to DVD
I am not great on the technical stuff so if I am talking rubbish please let me know.
I notice in the xdcam ex timeline setup you mention the video processing is in 8 bit which is not the high precision yuv that is available in the video processing options in the sequence settings. Which brings me back to one part of my original question. Do you know if there is really a noticable difference on this.?
If not then is my idea on my original post a valid one.

Many Thanks
BRIAN

brian paterson

[Brian Paterson]

Thank you Don,
The flicker reducer was already set to off.
On further investigation I see that the clips played directly from the capture scratch folder as quicktime files have no issues regarding pulsing nor is there pulsing once rendered in a pro res timeline so it looks as if the problem is somehow tied in with my FCP set up. I have checked everything I can think of but am at a loss to understand why.
Any more thoughts ?

Regards
BRIAN.

brian paterson

[Brian Paterson]

Mick your comment about regularly shooting in an abysmally lit room reminded me so much about the way we used to encounter bad accoustics at some venues when I played in a band and how we would invent methods of overcoming it. Only now i’m rating the lighting in rooms for filming and trying to solve those problems. All good fun though.
It’s been great having all your comments and some very sound advice. Thank you all so much for joining in. It has enlightened me a lot.
Best wishes and good luck to you all.

Regards
BRIAN PATERSON.

brian paterson

[Brian Paterson]

Hi Michael,
Tried to find some way of contacting the creative cow bosses but couldn’t see any way of doing it and can’t spend any more time searching.
The privacy policy seems to say it O.K. to give information if one wants to.
I don’t actually live in London. I am fifty miles West but I do visit once in a while. Give me a ring if you want. 01189 402213

Regards
BRIAN.

brian paterson

[Brian Paterson]

Thanks a lot Craig. I have a Wedding to shoot on Friday and will adopt the workflow you suggest as the correct way to proceed.
You sound like the sort of guy I could have a good chat with down the pub. If you are ever coming to England (I assume you are in America) send me an email. I’m only fifty miles from London.

With Kind Regards
BRIAN.

brian paterson

[Brian Paterson]

Hi Craig,
Are you a teacher, you certainly write like one and you really made me smile. I will consider myself well and truly ticked off. You took me back 50 years and made me feel like a schoolboy again.
But enough of the frivolity. I reall appreciate what you say and you are probably right. I should know more. In this day and age though there are just not enough hours in a day to constantly learn and re-learn everything, as well as get out the work, do the advertising do the promotion do the filming do the editing, make the DVD’s design the cases and the disc do the invoicing etc etc and that is just the video work alone never mind all the other stuff from my other work as a stills photographer and so on and so on. As it is I work sixteen hours a day seven days a week trying to do it all and learn it all so excuse me if I missed something.
I don’t make life difficult for my clients by the way or any more expensive. I film weddings and provide them with an excellent product for a set fee. End of story. If things go wrong it is at my own expense and this is the first time I have had colour fluctuations, but with new equipment there are always going to be teething troubles. If I were sending out files for others to use it would be different but I don’t. I work completely alone and independantly and have never had a need for anything other than a quicktime file to work with.
I know how to tell a story. I have had over thirty children’s books published with a series currently being broadcast on television around the world in 16 countries. On that front technical knowledge is not going make anyone a story teller. I know the language grammer and vocabulary of film and it’s that creative process I spend most of my time trying to refine. When I paint I do not analyse the colours or know anything about them, they just get thrown together to make beautiful pictures. It’s an emotional, creative thing.
Cameras and computers on the other hand are complicate sophisticated machines which have badly written handbooks, and never use plain english to explain themselves.
So we do our best to muddle through and learn as much as we can for the needs we have. If time allows more we might do more, if we can make more money we might buy tuition (expensive). If we have to learn by trawling the internet it’s very confusing and that is why it’s nice to have people like yourself to help on those issues we can’t find the answer to in other places.

Thank you for your advice. I will put all my clients on hold to learn about the Sony importing software and do some tests to see how it works.

Regards
Brian Paterson

brian paterson

[Brian Paterson]

Hi Craig, Not Sure I follow what you mean. If I import the original footage directly into final cut pro then surely those files are my masters. What else is there. – I am no techie, I am more creative so excuse my ignorance.
What are BPAV files anyway and appart from them containing information about how the camera was set up on the shoot are they any less of a master than importing them directly into FCP and archiving those files.
I just want the simplest method without going through a whole load of different applications.

The one thing I would like to be able to change is the annoying way fcp brings everything in from the EX1 as individual clips. Before I got this camera all footage used to come in as one long clip. I could then scrub through and select the bits I want. Now I have to keep opening clip after clip after clip to search for material. Would this sony import software you speak of help me overcome this.
Many Thanks
BRIAN.

brian paterson