David Eaks
Forum Replies Created
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Great! I’ll contact Sony and see what they say.
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[Rick Diamond] “The camera most definitely should hold focus after zooming out. If it isn’t you’ll need to adjust the back focus.”
Well that is great news! So, exactly where is the back focus adjustment on the Sony HXR-NX5U?
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If you haven’t noticed, the NX5 does not hold focus when you zoom. So if you zoom in to get critical focus, then zoom out, you will completely lose that focus. The expanded focus and peaking features can help you work around this. Honestly, I think there was only one shot that looked to be in good focus, two seconds at 2:47-2:49 (I’m viewing on an iPhone 4s).
Taking the focus issue, along with the tips from Glyn, -3db gain, use a picture profile to drop master blacks and bump up the detail, you should definitely be able to get images that you are happy with.
I just bought my third NX5 and am very happy with the camera in general, just be aware that the small sensors on the NX5 are limiting. Don’t expect to get the image quality of a PDW 800 or something, there is good reason for the large price gap in cameras, you are seeing one of those reasons in the blacks. Good thing is, I doubt that the majority of clients would notice such a thing. Even if it is glaring and nauseating to “us”.
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Check the “Auto Conform Sequence” setting, in the menu Final Cut Pro> User Preferences> Editing Tab. Choose Ask.
Create a new sequence, drop one of the Prores clips into the new sequence. When it asks you about matching sequence settings and external video to match the clips select YES.
How does playback look?
Again, what was the original source of video? A camera you’ll be using regularly right?
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Exactly what was the video that you started with? Codec, frame size, frame rate? Same question about the Prores clips. What are your Sequence Settings?
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“I guess my main question is with that whole setup, how does one not fill up their space in the log and transfer if capturing that way?”
By adding more storage capacity. Capturing video to a hard drive is going to use up space on the drive, no way around that. I suggest that you look into backing up your drives as well. Hard drives are cheap and if your income depends on the contents of a hard drive, you can’t afford not to have backups.
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FYI, I just finished a shoot where the client requested the recording to be 4:3 SD. I basically did the same thing as in my example above (1080 out from the NX5’s, through my Panasonic AWHS-50 Switcher and down-convert w/ crop on Ki Pro input).
During some testing before the shoot, there was a strange occurance where the HDMI output from the Ki Pro was almost completely green. One of two things fixed it, either cycling the “in convert” setting from “SD” to “None” and back to “SD” or cycling the transport mode from playback then returning to record (stop) mode. Sorry, not sure which one fixed it, but I thought I’d let you know that I did experience an issue during down convert w/ crop and that I was able to get around it. Also worth noting is that I experienced the same issue with two Ki Pro’s (which is probably why I can’t recall which method actually remedied the output problem).
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FWIW, the best experience I’ve had so far with 7 & X on the same drive is when I installed X first, then moved it to a new folder in Applications (along with Motion 5 and Compressor 4), then installed 7 (thus allowing it to install to the default location). Seems to be more stable than when X is let to move the FCS Apps to a new folder. I’ve done several clean installs recently and this seemed to be the best method (short of DRW’s Ready to Rumble, partitions method).
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Just a thought, have you rendered the sequence? You can’t export an unrendered timeline, if you try, FCP will render it first before beginning the export. One thing to keep in mind is that this render (done automatically when exporting) will not be saved in your sequence. Meaning that next time you need to export, it has to render again. So, always render before exporting.
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Down convert to an SD Prores file first, then compress to Mpeg for DVD. Doing both down conversion and compression at the same time is much more “difficult” for Compressor. That’s what I’ve learned from other threads here, as far as software down conversion. I generally prefer to use my Matrox MXO2 LE or AJA Ki Pro for realtime hardware down conversion.