[Craig Seeman]

Mark, I often shoot in similar circumstances. The challenge is that one doesn’t see the roll if it’s very very slow, as in your case. One can tweak the EX1 flicker reduce frequency but certainly the time that would take with a slow roll isn’t likely there in such shooting circumstances. Alas, the client has to take some “risk” if they don’t provide enough time or money for lights.

[Craig Seeman]

DSR 500 is a great camera. If you own it, it certainly warrants use. I just wouldn’t make it as a current purchase unless I had the need, could turn a profit on it very quickly.

I mention it as a choice though for the very good reasons you mention. 2/3″ chips, 16:9 which makes it great for SD needs and one may get a good upscale to HD.

Is that $450 sans operator?

The cost of living in NYC is so high . . .

[Craig Seeman]

[ali jafri] “they don’t even really know the difference between DVCAM and HD”

Are you sure they’ll NEVER know (or at least a couple of years away).

Are they buying the camera or are you? The purchase depends on the business model.

At what point do they notice quality at all? They could buy a good used DVCAM camera like a Sony DSR-570. That wouldn’t be my choice under any circumstances at all. They may even be fine with a Panasonic DVX-100. If you want tapeless you can look at some of the new HDV cameras that can shoot SD to CF.

Any organization with even the slightest ability to look forward would be buying HD even if they’re still delivering SD.

[Craig Seeman]

It depends on whether you need to deliver with tape at all.

If you’re doing broadcast tape you’d be choosing between DigiBeta or HDCAM.

For local cable spots I don’t deliver on tape at all. I do MPEG 2 Program Streams.

For corporate video I’m delivering on DVD or web.

For digital signage I’m delivering HD with MPEG 2 Program Streams too.

What motive do you have to deliver tape?

[Craig Seeman]

Mark speed up the clip to make the role more obvious. It’s very slow. It’s what I saw on one of my shoots too. I believe I had the gain cranked and an extremely fast shutter speed. I was just experimenting. For me, the problem didn’t exist at “normal” gain and shutter settings.

As noted above, there is a flicker reduce function that defaults to “auto.” Given the VERY SLOW nature of the role it’s hard to “dial in” a flicker reduce setting (good monitor and being able to spot it over many seconds to test).

In Mark’s case, turning off shutter would probably work. In my case it would be an additional problem since I was shooting sports. BTW I had NO PROBLEM with 720p24/60, 180° shutter, +3db gain, which is what I ended up using for my shoot.

I agree with you about the ballasts. It’s one of the reasons why I turn off such lights in most shoots.

[Craig Seeman]

[Bruce Bennett] “if they paid you, then they own your footage and final deliverables.”
This statement is VERY MUCH DEBATABLE but let’s NOT do that now. Such debates on the COW can be searched. Basically it MAY or MAY NOT be a “Work For Hire” but I don’t think anyone here can know that for you or what the practices are in Ireland.

I don’t know verbatim your discussion with her but given that someone there called you and you offered to help for free, I’d say she certainly doesn’t value your assistance . . . especially value added assistance offered with no additional cost.

I wouldn’t fight over the footage as I suspect it’s not worth it. Keep using what you have for your own demo purposes. I wouldn’t hand over anything additional (they haven’t asked so do NOT offer). If anyone from that place calls for assistance I’d say something like, “I have to clear it with your boss” and then contact her explaining someone contacted you from their office for a service and then explain what you’d charge. In other words, offer NOTHING for free and make it clear to her that you’ve been asked for help.

BTW if they’re posting your stuff on YouTube without the credits you might try adding them in a comments field unless or until they block or moderate the comments.

What is clear is that she doesn’t appreciate the value of your service. It’s time to use the demo material to find new clients.

[Craig Seeman]

Mark,

I saw something like this on a shoot I did in a gym with fluorescent lights some time back. I was just testing some “odd” settings that I’d never use though.

Looking at the footage and where your based, I assume everything was 25fps/50hz.

Given this happens with fluorescent lights (and not all of them for sure) it must be that some are refreshing at a rate slightly off from 50hz (or 60hz in my case).

There is a Flicker Reduce feature in the EX which defaults to Auto. I’m wondering if this has something to do with the issue. It’s hard to test though when the “flicker” is more of a very slow drift.

[Craig Seeman]

If you have a multicore Mac you can set it to distribute to the cores (Virtual Cluster) using Apple Qmaster.

Go to System Preferences and click on Apple Qmaster. Click on QuickCluster. Click on Compressor. Click on option for selected service and select the number of “Instances.” Typical recommendation is to have 1GB of memory per core. Usually 4 Instances is good enough even for an 8 Core Intel Mac.

[Craig Seeman]

If you have the MP4 and nothing else is working, use this.

https://ffmpegx.com/index.html

It’ll convert the MP4 to something you can use like H264

If you have Telestream Episode Pro you’d then be able to convert it to an EX .mov but even the output from ffmpegx will work although you’ll have to render in the timeline.

[Craig Seeman]

Given that file size is a result of data rate and duration, you could do the math.
If you Google you’ll find there’s lots of free calculators online.