[Daniel Stone]

Alrighty, just to give you an update (in case anyone else has the same problem) –

It’s fixed!

I found a friend of a friend who calibrates studio equipment. He came to the studio, opened it, soldered something and turned some things on the inside with a tool and BAM! $200 later it’s the most vivid, sharpest picture!

Though I’m usually the “try it the hard (usually wrong) way first and then spend even more money fixing it” guy, this time it paid off. I just spent $700 total on a 20″ studio monitor with an optional HD-SDI card that other people are buying for $2K+ without the HD-SDI. I’m happy!

[Daniel Stone]

“Whacked about the head…” Ha ha! I love it! I meant to write that I’m capturing footage – from a deck – that was filmed on the Varicam.

Thanks everybody for the replies! That perfectly answered my question. I assumed 10-bit meant Uncompressed but was confused by the fact that it said ‘Varicam’ in the title rather than ‘Uncompressed’ being that the Varicam doesn’t film in an uncompressed format (whew what a sentence – hope that makes sense). But it makes sense about capturing live.

We’ve been using the P2-based HPX-3000 a lot, which neatly packages the footage into ready-to import files. Going from P2 to a tape-based capture gave me angst that I wasn’t going to choose the correct capture settings.

All is good. Thanks again!

[Daniel Stone]

Gotcha. Thanks!

[Daniel Stone]

Got it! Thanks!

I changed from upper to lower field dominance.

So aside from the fact that it’s probably a waste, filming in DVCPRO50 – which is lower field dominance – and capturing in 10-bit Uncompressed – which is upper field dominance – is going to create field issues, right?

Thanks again very much for everyone’s help.

Dan

[Daniel Stone]

Thanks so much, everyone for your help. That was it, exactly. I changed the field dominance for the sequence and the combing went away.

Please forgive me if I sound ignorant with the following question. When I capture my progressive DVCPRO50 footage, I’m actually converting it to interlaced footage? I assume this because the DVCPRO50 and Uncompressed presets have field orders – if it really were progressive there would be no field order issues. Right?

Thanks again so much for all of your help!

[Daniel Stone]

Thanks so much for your help, everyone! I took all of your suggestions and now it works!

Here’s what I did:

– Installed the card in slot 3 and used the Expansion Slot Utility to adjust accordingly (x16 for 1; x4 for 3)
– I uninstalled the CD’s drivers and installed drivers from the web site.

And it works like a charm! Now I have to find out why the K Box isn’t working. I may just have to send it back.

Thanks again, everyone!

Dan

[Daniel Stone]

So far I’ve tried it in slots 2, 3 and 4. Right now, for example, I’m in slot #2 and the Expansion SLot Utility says it’s x16 for my current graphics card in slot #1 (ATI Radeon X1900 XT) and x1 (with x8 in yellow) for my Kona card in slot #2. Should I change the slot to just x1? And how do I do that?

As for the green lights, there is one bright one and 2 dim ones – 3 total.

[Daniel Stone]

To clarify, when I say 16:9 I mean letterboxed.

[Daniel Stone]

Todd, I really like your theory – trust your eyeballs. I think we all forget what’s important – your eyes. I still wouldn’t use a prosumer XL-H1 for a professional commercial application – and especially not hooked onto such a nice front end – but every cinematographer has their own thing, which is what makes this industry so interesting.

I must admit that I’m a but jealous of you. We work with a lot of agencies who hire us based on ‘buzz words’ beaten into them by the industry: Avid, Varicam, Cinealta, 10-bit Uncompressed, Smoke, Flame, etc. They don’t know what those things are, but they want them. In our area the video business is so competitive that you have to be one step ahead of innovative. Eventually I want to get to the point where I get hired based on content and what I can do, getting kudos for having filmed a huge spot with a GL-1 or something. For now I’m in a place where I have to compete by filming with a Viper Cam and editing in Avid (or, rather, having Avid on my system just to say we have it while editing in FCP).

[Daniel Stone]

True, there are things I love that other people hate, too. It all depends on the person and their needs, I guess. And good point about capturing with the SDI out.

Don’t get me started on film – if I could, I’d shoot EVERYTHING on film (I LOVE film).

One question, though – if you’re shooting with a Mini35 ($10K) and Prime lenses ($35K+ each), why use an HDV camera with tiny 1/3″ sensors to capture the footage? I’m sure that good glass makes a big difference but you’ve got an image going through beautiful glass – only to be picked up by a prosumer camcorder. That seems to me like having a Ferrari with a Toyota engine. We rent a set of Zeiss and Pro35 quite often – but capture (at the very least) with a Varicam. No matter how tweaked the camera, there’s always going to be a difference in image quality when you’re comparing 1/3″ CCDs to 2/3″ CCDs. Add to that the fact that the XL-H1’s 24f mode cuts resolution by over 25%, it doesn’t seem to me that the XL-H1 does that glass justice.