[Curt Pair]

Thomas,

If you are “outputting” to DVD, I’d recommend OVER SAMPLING your shot footage to 1080! Remember the ONLY two entities in the world BROADCASTING 720 footage is Fox and ABC (all aspects, even ESPN, Disney, etc.)… ABC is in the process of converting to 1080 or beyond (think 4K!)

This is why Panasonic has jumped out of the 720 business! Things are better in 1080!

Your finished piece will look SO MUCH better if orginated in the cameras maxium resolution! Don’t sell your self short… you’ll be happier in the long run! (shoot 1080, 30p!)

And yes, pick up Vortex Media’s DVD if you are an operator type guy, and not so technical or Call Box’s DVD if you’re more of the techie type dude…

Curt Pair
Picture This Productions
Sony ICE Team
F900/F350/700/EX1/EX3/D790/D600
Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 HD/Matrox
Phoenix, AZ

[Curt Pair]

I have both of these same cameras… I own an HD waveform/vector scope (Leader 5330). Believe it or not, it’s fairly simple to MATCH both of these cameras!

I’ve “saved” looks for these two, and when we shoot with them, there’s never any post color correction.

Curt Pair
Picture This Productions
Sony ICE Team
F900/F350/700/EX1/EX3/D790/D600
Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 HD/Matrox
Phoenix, AZ

[Curt Pair]

Baz,

I’m bummed! I went to your link… and it’s no longer valid! I’ve done similar methods… I have a Deneke TS3 slate in which every camera shot the slate… OR in times when I had a F350 or PDW700 and and EX1 as a second camera, I had the EX shoot either the TC on the other camera directly or shoot a monitor displaying the other camera’s TC… then there’s a reference point!

I was hoping that company had a Black Berry app too! Are they still in biz?

Curt Pair
Picture This Productions
Sony ICE Team
F900/F350/700/EX1/EX3/D790/D600
Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 HD/Matrox
Phoenix, AZ

[Curt Pair]

I use one of three different options for viewing my HD material in the field. I will list them, but NOT in ranking order! (I feel obligated to start by saying at one time I owned a 17″ Panasonic HD monitor, but it ALWAYS looked green, even after calibrating it! So I was fortunate enough that Band Pro took it back and replaced it with a JVC).

1) JVC 17″ HD SDI monitor. This thing has all the inputs you’d ever want, component, composite, SDI (auto sensing). I thought this was the cream of the crop, until I saw monitor number two! I still use this because it has a Porta Brace case built/made/designed for it, with a built in sun shade and it works well outside! It’s also AC/DC operable.
2) Sony Luma Series 17″ HD monitor. WOW! Is all I can say about the picture! No monitor under the size of 24″ is “truly” 1920 x 1080 native. However, even at a smaller pixel size, this thing is amazing! I’d make this my ONLY monitor if someone like Porta Brace, Petrol or Kata made a “run-bag” type monitor case for it that had a built in sun shade and shoulder strap! It is AC/DC operable.
3) Leader 5330. This is the latest toy. It’s phenominal! It’s not only a 6″ monitor, but it’s a wave form monitor, vector scope and has some pretty other amazing features designed to help in the field… It can sample two distinctive points in the picture and then give you the difference in their apature ranges! This is great for knowing the dynamic range of your picture. It has a “Zone” metering system that displays exposure in terms of color… similar to Predator, if you’ve ever seen that movie. And it can give you TRUE RGB values so you know what a composite signal will look like. This one costs more than the rest, but when it’s CRITICAL, we reach for this first… more of a calibration and monitoring of tech status than a monitor, but a very good monitor as well!

Curt Pair
Picture This Productions
Sony ICE Team
F900/F350/700/EX1/EX3/D790/D600
Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 HD/Matrox
Phoenix, AZ

[Curt Pair]

I would like to remind you that the more you OVERSAMPLE your footage in terms of acquisition, the better it will look if downconverted!

I actually shot with an EX1… the day we recieved it. We were shooting for Fox Sports… my audio tech had hooked up the EX to the monitor BEFORE hooking up our Varicam… the producer LOVED the look of the EX. We had to explain, he wasn’t watching the EX… then when we had BOTH hooked up to corresponding HD SDI connections, he CHOSE for us to use the EX over the Varicam… and this was the look of the EX, STRAIGHT OUT OF THE BOX!

Now you may ask your self, “why?” EASY! The EX, even in 720 mode is still sampling at 1920 X 1080! It then down samples to 720 X 1280… the Varicam? Samples at 720 x 960! So the EX was giving TWICE AS MUCH DATA information! That’s why it looked better.

The same applies to your shooting: if you shoot 1080, and then downsample to anything for delivery, it’s going to look better than if you originated it in a lower sampling mode.

Curt Pair
Picture This Productions
Sony ICE Team
F900/F350/700/EX1/EX3/D790/D600
Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 HD/Matrox
Phoenix, AZ

[Curt Pair]

Jim and Craig,

I can tell you that when I shoot 1080, 59.94, for clients who want the end footage on Beta and I try to downconvert EVERYTHING (video, audio and timecode), the TC ALWAYS drifts… Even though it’s a “derivitive” of 29.97, it’s still not absolutely the same.

If you need to match TC to a downconverted source, I’ve had NO PROBLEMS what so ever shooting 1080, 29.97p (30p) and then having the TC “lock.”

If it’s the “look” you want… progressive fields will always be easier to deal with in post than interlaced.

Curt Pair
Picture This Productions
Sony ICE Team
F900/F350/700/EX1/EX3/D790/D600
Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 HD/Matrox
Phoenix, AZ

[Curt Pair]

David,

I can tell you with absolute certainty that CNN PREFERS full size XD Cam HD (in either the 300 series or 700 series) over anything else out there! If you shoot for CNN HD, this is what they mandate operators to use.

ABC News and CBS News are also “preferring” all of their acquisition on some form of XD Cam. Some shows are in SD @ 25Mbps, and others are IMX 50, while some are 50Mbps HD (@30 fps).

I think Sony fell behind in the race for a while, but with the release of the EX line, and it’s capabilities, especially cross HD platforms, and feature sets, they are gaining back any ground they lost.

There has never been a larger buzz or sales orders for a single broadcast camera than the PDW700! The units Sony has sold in a single year is STAGGERING! Now, with it’s nearly IMMEDIATE availablilty, and the impending “TRUE” 23.98 fps option board, MANY companies are leaning to the XD camp.

I’ve owned an F350 for three years. It was a tough sell in the beginning. I had to “suggest” it’s use to clients. NOW, clients are calling because they WANT that format. I think it boils down to the storage and archiving of material. It’s tougher to store P2 material. It’s a slower transfer process as well. At the end of the day, it’s fairly easy to transcode material from SxS cards to MXF files and have a physical piece of media sitting on the shelf with your footage on it.

Mac themselves are, in my personal opinion, the largest stumbling block for the MXF and EX files to overcome. Mac prefers to deal with everything in Pro Rez. I attended the Jackson, Wy HD Symposium in October of 2008. A “head” Mac designer told me personally that they “Never will want a user to edit material in a native codec… we want our users to edit in a QT format…” This is one of the reasons I’m no longer on a Mac.

As far as delivery of material to clients, I do one of two things with favorable reception: copy the ENTIRE BPAV folder to a USB hard drive or transcode the material and ship on an XD optical disc (clients choice).

Curt Pair
Picture This Productions
Sony ICE Team
F900/F350/700/EX1/EX3/D790/D600
Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 HD/Matrox
Phoenix, AZ

[Curt Pair]

Knowing Doug as well as I do, I can tell you that his goal in presenting material is from the CAMERA OPERATOR’s perspective and NOT the engineer’s perspective.

Yes, these cameras have an extensive menu architecture, but does an everyday operator really need to know and understand every single menu option out there? I think that is truly the question one has to ask themselves. I’m a “techie” type guy, and even I learned a thing or two from Doug’s videos. He is extremely down to earth, and breaks everything down in an easy to comprehend fashion.

I would say that Doug indeeds breaks down EVERY single feature and menu of the camera save the “Picture Profile’s” extensive menus. He explains what MOST OPERATORS need to know and understand to make “pretty pictures.”

I’m in the business of high end production, and I need to know and understand how to match several like/model/kind of cameras and from time to time how to match different brands and models. This is NO EASY TASK. I think for the mass majority out there, most wouldn’t attempt that themselves… Thus Doug intentionally decided NOT to explain what every single sub-menu in the Picture Profile does. After all, it is EXTREMELY easy to “screw up” those settings too! That can be disasterous!

To really do a great job in painting cameras or creating looks, one needs a waveform monitor, vector scope and some form of color chart (the industry standard is a DSC Labs Chroma DuMonde series).

Bottom line, when it comes to “painting” a camera, if you don’t know what you are doing, leave it for the folks in post, or hire an experienced DIT to do it for you!

If you want to learn how to operate the EX line of cameras, and use their features to the best of the camera’s ability (and even improve your own skills), Doug Jensen’s DVD series are fantastic. He even has a new “PMW EX 1 Field Guide” that is being released in the very near future.

Curt Pair
Picture This Productions
Sony ICE Team
F900/F350/700/EX1/EX3/D790/D600
Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 HD/Matrox
Phoenix, AZ

[Curt Pair]

Hi all!

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but… due to my affiliation with Sony, as a member of their “ICE Team…” I made some calls after reviewing some of the thread postings today. To be honest, I was a little upset with the “updates” not being shared with the ICE Team before they hit the web!

After that call, I feel I need to set the record straight! Several postings in this thread are INCORRECT! First of all, Mac users, can now officially “write back” to the U1 drive. This was an APPLE hold up, not a Sony hold up. Mac has now allowed this to happen on their systems. I guess they finally got smart and jumped on the bandwagon! The “General folder” is still limited to the 500 MB file size. This won’t change until the summer.

I’m posting the official response from Sony in this thread:

“Curt,

The User Data write back is not yet available. Probably June timeframe.

The VFAM and MAC-based write back have just been released, and available at the http://www.sony.com/xdcamhd site. The specific link is at https://servicesplus.us.sony.biz/sony-software.aspx?model=pdwu1

(the latest thing is the version 2.1 driver for the U1 now supports 50Mb/s files at 720p.

The Vista 64 FAM drivers have been completed, and we’re waiting from certification from Microsoft. That’ll probably be until June, too. Everything will be Vista 64, no XP 64 support for anything.

The VFAM drivers for the U1 have not been developed yet, and that’ll probably be later than June. Point being, that once Vista 64 is enabled, all decks and cameras will work, but NOT the U1. This probably isn’t so good, but that’s the current situation.”

So for those hoping to use the U1 to EXCLUSIVELY write files into the General folder of an optical disc, this is a sad announcement. This will apparently work with all XD cameras, F70s, F75s and 1500HD decks, but will not work with the U1.

I hope this clears up any confusion running around out there!

Curt

Curt Pair
Picture This Productions
Sony ICE Team
F900/F350/700/EX1/EX3/D790/D600
Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 HD/Matrox
Phoenix, AZ

[Curt Pair]

Justin,

I should have said this method will keep your “structure” of your clips in tact too! The “new” xd clips will look like the EX clips in regards to clip length, TC, name, etc. You’ve just changed the format.

The OTHER way I’ve done this for clients, and they didn’t like it is to go out of the HDSDI on the right side of the EX1 and stream that signal into the input HDSDI on the F75. Then you just put in a disc and start recording.

The difference between the two methods: One will keep clips “clipped out” separately, similar to the EX 1 card structure and the the other is one long, single clip.

My client, America’s Most Wanted tried the long, single clip method and hated it… EVERY shot was the same clip name which was confusing for the log process and cutting process. It was too time consuming for them to sub clip everything out… so, they LOVE the my “new” way of using SCB2 and the Main Concept plug in. It looks the same as it did “in” the EX… everything is separate.

Curt Pair
Picture This Productions
Sony ICE Team
F900/F350/700/EX1/EX3/D790/D600
Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 HD/Matrox
Phoenix, AZ