Clint Fleckenstein
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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Foreword: I know this is a polarizing issue, almost religious at times. So if you think I’m full of it, please just disregard.
I’m of the same mindset as Michael. If you’re going to buy a $7,000-9,000 camera, which is dirt cheap compared to what many of us started out with, what’s the problem with spending a couple grand on reliable media? Otherwise, do what the kids are doing: grab a couple of DSLRs, tell yourself they’re camcorders, and buy all the cheap media you want.
The one appealing thing about using SD cards is that they’re cheap enough to assign permanently to a project or even deliver to a customer down the road. You can still copy footage to SD cards later. But when it comes to acquisition, I guess I’m on the side that doesn’t see the risk vs. reward equation coming out on a positive.
Cf
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I’ve been bringing in XDCAM EX and Canon files natively with Premiere Pro since CS5.5.
Cf
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I bet adoption of Blu-rayâ„¢ for smaller productions would have taken off like wildfire if the consortium licensing BD technology hadn’t made it so prohibitive for content creators to actually produce and duplicate the discs. They got greedy, and it’s kneecapped the format to a degree.
You can go to Best Buy’s website and find BD players for under fifty dollars. It’s impossible to buy a TV, even a cheap one, that doesn’t have HDMI nowadays. People are accustomed to a wide screen, high definition picture. So it’s not the consumer that’s clinging to DVD as much as it’s a PITA for producers to generate all but the most basic BD disc. Expensive programming software, mandatory per-disc surcharges…seriously.
Sorry, that’s been bottled up for a long, long time. 🙂 Have a good weekend, everybody!
Cf
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We have Camtasia (also from Techsmith) and I’ve played around with the screen capture software included with the free download of Microsoft Expression. It looks pretty solid too, for simple screen capture. Camtasia is really flexible if you need to edit and zoom later.
Cf
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I just got a trio of PMW200s and am hoping to add a PMW300. I was extremely disappointed at the loss of the pivoting grip and Shot Transition from the EX1 and EX3. Otherwise…awesome. I just put the wifi adapters on ’em and have started playing around with that, and it’s a very cool feature. As far as weight balance, I have the Sony bayonet mount wide-angle adapter on it, and that thing sure wants to nosedive. No surprises there.
Cf
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I miss the joystick. The IR remotes are the same though, so they have a joystick. Of course, you need to activate them in the menu first!
I did one low-light shoot so far since unboxing the cameras and yes, there is less noise than I remember. That was a VERY pleasant sight. I don’t remember if this is because of a new sensor or new signal processing. In any case, it appeared much better than I recall since I last used an EX1 or EX3.
One thing I’m eagerly awaiting is the arrival of my WiFi adapters. Ian has posted screen shots of how the wireless control looks on an iPhone, and I have a 23″ touch screen waiting for use with my three cameras in a studio setting. I’ll pass along any observations once I get things up and running.
Cf
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I just got three PMW200s. I used EX1 and EX3 cameras at my last job, so I’ve been without XDCAM EX for about two and a half years. My impressions (and I have yet to really ramp up the use of these new cams):
– I miss Shot Transition. Period.
– I liked the pivoting grip. I shoot in a lot of nooks and crannies, and a pivoting grip was an enormous blessing for my wrist. I know a lot of people griped about it, but I wonder how many of those will find themselves wishing they had it in certain circumstances.
– If you want to shoot UDF mode and 35Mbps, your footage will be 1440×1080, not 1920×1080. You have two choices for proper 1080p: shoot UDF/50Mbps or shoot FAT/35Mbps. Of course, you need to format the cards each time you switch between the two. I’ve seen advice on this forum to simply “delete all” instead of doing a full format as it’s a low-level format. I’m using SxS-1 cards, so this is especially important.
I’m not shooting for broadcast, but once I noticed the 1080p discrepancy above I immediately switched all three cameras back to FAT/35Mbps. I also end up recording a lot of conferences where conditions are poor and HDV would be sufficient, which as I read the murky manual puts me back in FAT city anyway.
Cf
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I liked XDCAM Transfer. Let’s hope that Sony HQ doesn’t get an inspiration to come up with a Sony Cloudâ„¢ that gives you the fun privilege of paying for Content Browser annually regardless of whether it already did everything you want it to! That would be a really asinine idea… *ahem*
Cf
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This is a personal thing, but I wouldn’t risk my reputation or my clients’ footage on something like that just to save some money in the short term.
Cf
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Oh, that looks pretty cool. I’m thinking of getting like a 23″ touch display and operating these cameras using that. It looks like things would work very intuitively in that regard.
Thanks, as always! You’re a tremendous resource and I’m glad you’re here.
Cf