[Craig Seeman]

John, I understand that, I’ve been a video engineer. What I haven’t figured out is why 23.98 video with 1/48 shutter does NOT look like 24fps film. I dislike 23.98fps video and can’t fathom why some people say it looks “like film.” (almost) Matching frame rate and shutter angle doesn’t really seem to be a match in motion.

In my opinion video with pull down still doesn’t look like film with pull down. I can’t think of a technical reason why though and was hopping you had.

I do know that many people shoot 23.98p video because it’s easy to transfer to 25fps or 29.97fps.

30p can have issues going to 25fps given the frame math an the lack of interlaced fields to “split.”

[Craig Seeman]

[john sharaf] “This is a particular flaw in the method Sony uses in the Cine Alta and the “native” Panasonic formats, such that “processing” must be applied in playback for proper motion display.”

Can you describe the flaw and the processing to fix it?

[Craig Seeman]

DR 60 has been available for some time as it came out around the time the V1 did. It’s about $1400 and holds 60 GB, about 4.5 hours. Keep in mind that with the EX1 you’re limited to 25mbps CBR HDV spec.

Currently you can gat two 16 GB cards for just under $1800 which would give you a combined 140 minutes at the above data rate (100 minutes at XDCAM rate).

Depending on what happens at MacWorld you can get a MacBook Pro for about $2000 and there may be a $1500 13.3″ model announced. At that price you can offload cards at 10x, have client screen shots and do a rough cut (assuming you have an assistant).

There may be good specific reasons to get a DR 60 but given the prospect of 32GB cards and the dropping cost of laptops, there are alternatives.

[Craig Seeman]

Yes, Firestore or Sony’s DR-60.

[Craig Seeman]

I got the Sachtler FSB-6 with 2 Stage Carbon Fiber Speed Lock Legs. Very nice system and just a bit less expensive than the DV 6SB (and DV 8SB of course). FSB-6 looks to be good if you don’t quite have the budget for higher DV models.

FSB-6 & Carbon Speed Lock Legs

[Craig Seeman]

My own hunch is that it’s running in Rosetta which works fine standalone but will not run in Final Cut since it needs to be “Universal” for that.

[Craig Seeman]

Create a separate folder for each card. There’s a bit of metadata (.smi) which points to the split clips.

I’ve used Sony XDCAM Transfer Tool for clips spanning across cards while cards are in camera. It displays the spanned clip in the Xfer tool on one timeline. Mark in and out and it imports as one clip in FCP 6.0.2. There’s also a checkbox which IDs the clips as a subclip which has same results as above.

[Craig Seeman]

Currently you can record to hard drive in HDV mode only, from firewire port.

Those 16GB cards which hold 50 minutes in XDCAM HD (HQ) mode can hold 70 minutes in the same HDV (SQ) mode. So in that mode 2 16GB would hold 140 minutes. Dumping a card to laptop with express port would probably take less than 10 minutes.

[Craig Seeman]

I had settings that worked when DG used 720×480 and distributed them to many people. If they are allowing you to use 720×480, I can get you those settings. If they require you to deliver at 720×512, you’re going to bump into a few issues. I’m experimenting with that.

[Craig Seeman]

Quicktime does not like MPEG2 Program streams. VLC does. Good playback in VLC doesn’t ensure DG certification but at least you can see what your compression looks like.