Clint Fleckenstein
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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I have a standard UV filter screwed into ours. It must be removed to use the stock Sony wide angle adapter, as I found out in the dark last night while trying to capture the meteor shower. By the way, the results…not good. I got great stuff with my DSLR, but the EX3 was mostly noise. I was using slow shutter mode and 1-sec interval recording, iris slammed wide open and 6db gain.
Cf
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Sony’s been saying “Any Day Now” for a looooong time. I too have a PDW-U1 paperweight. Someone on the forum said they were able to download software to support this on a PC last week, in the UK. Nothing on the Sony USA site last time I checked. I don’t know if the Mac support is close to follow.
Sony has slowly rolled out data support for other XDCAM disc hardware, we’re just at the end of the line.
Cf
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As far as lights, you’d be well equipped with one of these: link. We have a pair of them and have been very happy with them (we have other supplemental lighting for big stuff).
I’ve also been very happy with this tripod and head for both cameras. We have one unit that we “share” but I have approval to order a second.
Cf
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One problem I have with XDCAM Transfer is that you lose all subclip and title information when you “remove” a source folder from the list on the left-hand side of the screen.
We use one central machine to log and rewrap footage for our multiple Mac edit stations, so using FCP to log and transfer isn’t an option for us. What would be nice is to be able to insure that the information generated in XDCAM Transfer would somehow be stored in the BPAV folder somewhere so that it can be retrieved the next time the folder is added as a source in XDCAM Transfer.
Cf
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We use Flip4Mac. Then we don’t have to worry about the Quicktime or MPEG-2 configuration of any PC that might get the footage.
Cf
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I posted a while back (with photos) about how that’s an unlikely scenario. I slid the EX3 viewfinder piece (yeah, it’s removable – COOL) off one of our cameras and held it up to the EX1’s LCD. They don’t match up well. Look back a ways and you’ll find that post, I don’t have time to fetch it right now.
Cf
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“Sachtler FSB6 head with their Carbon Fiber Quick Lock legs. “
Amen to that. We absolutely LOVE this tripod with our EX1. I’m about to order a second one for our EX3.
Cf
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You need to get the original BPAV folders. Using Clip Browser, they can easily collect your footage (assuming they archived what you shot) and combine/split into DVD sized chunks for burning. Simply getting around the issue by purchasing the codec may or may not solve all your issues, and it’s best to do things “by the book” in my opinion.
Earlier this year, despite how often this comes up, I still tried to take a “shortcut” for a friend and export MXF files for his PC-based Avid. He had issues with the footage, never having worked with XDCAM EX footage before, and I ended up doing just what we advise everyone else to do: give the editor the raw BPAV folders and let them sort it out. I knew better, figured I could deliver what he needed, and should have taken my own advice.
This brings up a common line of discussion, as it is associated with “school.” (thus I’m assuming you’re a student.) I’ve read plenty of accounts online of people complaining that graduates coming out of “school” have all kinds of grand Spielberg-ian ideas…but ZERO workflow skills. There’s only one way for that to happen to students who are still being allowed to graduate: instructors are not doing an adequate job of addressing, teaching, and enforcing good workflow habits. You got bit by it on a school project…imagine if there were thousands of dollars and an angry client in the mix! It’s a good lesson.
Hopefully you can get the original footage and work with it as you see fit. There’s always the aforementioned Calibrated Software codec as well. Hopefully you also got a good lesson. If you can graduate school with good workflow skills and the patience to work through the boring technical part of working with specific equipment and formats, you’re going to be ahead of 90% of the other graduates.
(PS: by putting “school” in quotes, I’m not mocking…I just want to point out that it’s a pretty broad term these days. Some are good, some are not so good. Neither can replace valuable real-world experience.)
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Ah…UK 🙂 That’s why, I was looking on the USA site.
Thanks!
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Got a URL? I poked around under “Software and Downloads” but only saw the last firmware update from a few months ago.
Cf