[Craig Seeman]

[Charles M Clemmons] “I thought the EX-1 could do a down conversion to SD internally and output the stream through the HD-SDI port. If so, why do I need down conversion software?”

You’re correct but you will need an SDI input card that can handle Standard Def 4:2:2 10 bit uncompressed. Maybe you already have input card and hard drive RAID. If so you could be set. Your renders will be painfully slow on a G4 though.

If you don’t have the SDI input card and RAID, you’re going to have a challenge finding a card (used?) to work on a G4. Money spent on buying gear for that system could be better spent on a new Mac, which would not need SDI to work with EX media coming from the SxS cards.

If you’re short on cash you could get an Intel iMac and external hard drives. I’m not sure what you’re budget is but if you have to buy anything for the G4 it may not be worth it unless you can find stuff cheap/used reliable.

[Craig Seeman]

Following on Don’s reasoning, if you can find a Windows computer to run ClipBrowser2 on, you could do the HD to DV downconversion on that and copy the files over to your G4.

The thing is any decent HD to SD (DV) downconvert solution may cost you nearly as much as decent Intel Mac.

In fact, given that cost, you might consider getting an Intel MacMini do use ClipBrowser2 on.

[Craig Seeman]

You can try this
https://www.ffmpegX.com/
It’ll convert the MP4 files but I’m not sure about the MOV files though.

[Craig Seeman]

Ironically VLC will play the XDCAM EX MP4 files.

Like I said. Giving someone the XDCAM EX MOV is the wrong way to go. Not everyone has a Mac with FCP 6.0.2 and up.

There are several ways to use the MP4 but the MOV is much more limited.
Try MPEGStreamclip.

I can try all this but my tests wouldn’t be indicative since I have FCP 6.0.4 installed.

[Craig Seeman]

[Ted Kusio] “I believe were filmed w/ a Sony XDCAM EX”
And if you open them in QuickTime and use the Show Movie Inspector does it display the codec info?

There’s good reason why people should be archiving and distributing the BPAV folders and not the MOV files on Mac. You’re experiencing one of them. You don’t need the camera. The BPAV folders and the FREE Sony Clip Browser would be all you need to play. Clip Browser 2 even has some limited cross convert features too now.

Try playing them back in VLC 086i.

Do you just want to view the files or edit them?

[Craig Seeman]

I’ve heard that Lexar 8GB cards work in SP mode only (25mbps). People are still experimenting and are reporting all sorts of issues in both SP and HQ mode. HQ doesn’t work at all and SP ranges from no problem with 25mbps to lots of restore media requests to complete freezing after a couple of minutes.

[Craig Seeman]

Now that Apple released a ProRes playback component that will work on Windows, that might be the way to go. Of course you need to make sure the facility doing the output has the component but it is free.

[Craig Seeman]

My remote worked for the first few days (so I know how it’s supposed to work) and it’s been dead since.
You basically have to be in front of the camera (think ENG one person crew who must be on camera and have camera control). You need to turn IR on in the camera (every time you turn on camera as noted above).

Again that all worked for a bit for me but doesn’t work at all now. Either the battery is dead or there’s some other IR malfunction that people are going through. I hear a number of people having this issue but nobody seems overly wrought by it since the limitation of having to be in front of the camera renders it near useless except for one person ENG crews.

[Craig Seeman]

[Hernan Jimenez] “it is actually a festival”
I guess until digital cinema takes hold there’s still a use for tape in that market. One might think that Blu-ray would be a viable alternative but few people can burn them themselves although burners are around $500 and players around $400 give or take. I’ve seen some nice Blu-ray to HD projection though.

[Craig Seeman]

Since someone in a thread above had a similar question I’ll give a similar suggestion.

Have you asked whether the entity you’re delivering to can take an MPEG2 Program or Transport Stream? These days many TV stations are using such files in addition to or a replacement to tape formats.