Dean Sensui
Forum Replies Created
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Even the Cow isn’t attending NAB 2008. And the Creative Cow community is as viable as ever.
As Avid had pointed out earlier, they’re able to reach their customer base in other ways.
NAB, however, can’t be beat for a hands-on experience when it comes to hardware. And whenever I attend most of my time is spent at the seminars trying to soak up as much useful info as possible.
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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[Craig Seeman] “[Phillip Ebed] “Can you use the EX1 as a play back deck and keep the info on the cards and plug straight to the PC or is is bad for the camera.”
You plug the camera into the computer via USB and copy the files to your hard drive. Why would you want to do anything else?”
Wouldn’t that wear out the heads? 🙂
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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Running the same clips on my 2.5 GHz G5, with QT v7.3.0 there’s no flickering.
Might be QT v7.4 that’s causing the problem.
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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The sequence settings match the media so there’s no rendering involved. It’s 1080p30. FCP sets the sequence to match when I dragged the clips into the sequence.
And when I exported to Apple ProRes HQ it looked fine without any flicker.
I’ll have to check it out on my main system and see if it flickers when outputting through the Blackmagic Decklink card. Because that could be a problem.
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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Maybe the next question is: at what temperature does the cameraman stop working? 🙂
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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Beau…
There are some advantages and disadvantages to using a Firestore. It’s probably listed elsewhere on the Cow. But here are some things to be aware of based on my own experiences:
— The Firestore is sensitive to vibrations. Others have reported failures while trying to shoot aerials from helicopters and I had a similar bad experience.
— While it does allow long record times you also need a separate battery to keep it running. It takes longer to boot up than the camera, so you can’t turn it off if you expect to be able to shoot at a moment’s notice. That means carrying another set of spare batteries. The larger capacity battery does run quite long, about five hours.
— The firewire connection can be delicate. Someone made an accessory that ties the firewire and 1/8″ audio jack together to make it a lot tougher.
— I’ve had situations where the camera either wouldn’t stop or wouldn’t start recording when I hit the “record” button. The camera had to be powered down and powered back up again to solve the problem.
— Make sure you follow the proper procedures when transferring footage from the Firestore to the edit system. It’s not a drag-and-drop process like the P2. Doing it wrong can result in losing footage.
— The Firestore outputs a significant amount of RF noise that can cause interference with some wireless receivers placed within two or three feet of the recorder. The culprit is the hard drive. So I’d expect any hard-drive recording system to have the same problem unless it’s heavily shielded.
So while P2 cards and the P2 Store was a much more expensive option, I place a very high value on reliability. And, in that sense, the P2 system has paid off nicely.
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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Dan…
I own an HVX and so far only had a chance to test the EX1 for a day. So I’m not an EX1 owner — yet. 🙂
The part about high speed tracking pans possibly being distracting is a possibility. Something else worth testing to see how bad it is. The next time I get my hands on an EX1 I’ll give it a try.
The compositing issue is another one to test. Some have conjectured that although the sampling rate is lower the detail level is higher. So edge artifacts are more or less on par with the HVX.
I do a lot of compositing work and know the HVX can do a very nice job. I’ll have to test the EX1 and see if it can do as well. Another issue brought up elsewhere is that trackers will be distorted by the rolling shutter if the camera is moved quickly enough, and that’s true. However, even with that there might be a work-around. With compositing, there’s always some sort of problem that has to be dealt with. It’s not as automatic as we wished it were. And, boy, we do some heavy wishing with some shots! 🙂
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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To add to Dan’s list, the power switch is terrible and there’s a risk of leaving the camera turned on.
Even if you turn it off, there are reports of the battery being significantly drained when left overnight on the camera.
To rebut some of the negative points made, and please note that I currently own an HVX:
“CMOS imager has significant rolling shutter artifacts”
I did some testing with it but only noticed significant leaning of vertical elements if the camera was panned quickly. In that case I probably would not have used the shot.
“35mbps format is much lower data rate than DVCProHD and less color sampling than HVX”
Data rates for different codecs don’t always proportionately translate into image quality. A good example is RedCode. It’s twice as much data as the HVX, yet the image is at least 4 times larger and the pixel depth is enough to cover the entire raw image spectrum. Quality is superb. So the compression of RedCode is higher than the HVX yet without quality loss. Similarly, the compression of the EX1 is higher, yet there doesn’t seem to be any significant quality loss.
“Maximum size on SxS cards is presently 16GB vs. 32GB P2 cards”
A 16-gig card on an EX1 gives you 50 minutes of 1080p30 compared to 16 minutes of the same frame size and rate on an HVX.
“Some viewers/users report that camera loses significant sharpness and detail when camera is moving. (sharp when stationary, then blurry when panned or tilted)”
This has been tested extensively by some very knowledgeable people at another discussion forum and it seems to be an unfounded concern.
“Horrendously bad ergonomics”
Yep. But it’s been suggested to use the camera in conjunction with a shoulder mount. Any camera this size is bound to be klutzy. I found the tiltable handle a nice touch. It lets the user get the handle to match one’s natural wrist angle, especially if it’s used with a shoulder mount.
“General consensus is that EX-1 produces more video-like images (may or may not be a negative for you?)”
A report from a gathering of ASC members seems to indicate that everyone there was impressed by the image quality of the EX1. This was posted at a discussion forum normally frequented by HVX users. I’m not sure exactly what some people mean by video-like quality. Could be cadence of the motion. Could be burned out highlights. Or excessive sharpening. All of these can be dealt with by the EX1 or the HVX.
Also, with the larger chips the EX1 provides a little better control over the depth-of-field than the HVX.
It’s a very nice camera but it’s far from perfect.
Hope this helps.Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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[Nate Stephens] “Shane, you are truely gifted….. or a mind reader or ……… amazing…. all from a slash…..”
You should see what he can predict by reading tea leaves!
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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You might want to look at Silhouette Roto.
I just did a job with it and it works a lot better than AE’s masks.
It also features a nice tracker and other features.
https://www.silhouettefx.com/roto/
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii