[Don Greening]

[Johnny White] “Seemingly sony mentioned problems with the drives when people use non-sony batteries….any truth in that??”

I haven’t heard about that but if I’m reading this post correctly:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/142/860121

Juan Martinez from Sony is saying that cameras that have a build/shipping date before the second half of August need to have the firmware updated to the latest (v.1.11) in order to use the the drive successfully.

– Don

[Don Greening]

[Alison Wolf] “Are these things possible?”

Probably.

[Alison Wolf] “Easy to do?”

Relatively. It depends on parts availability. Your machine is old by today’s standards.

[Alison Wolf] ” Inexpensive. IE, less expensive than buying a whole new machine?”

Probably not. For example, the RAM for your G4 is quite pricey compared to newer machines. You’d be much better off, price-wise, to find a newer refurbished G5 or early Mac Pro.

[Alison Wolf] ” is there some work around to enable me to open a consolidated cut from FCP 6 in 4.5?”

Have your client send you an XML file of the FCP v.6 project. This file is basically a text file that will tell your version of FCP how to display the timeline. I’m not even sure if FCP 4.5 was able to read XML files but I know for sure you could with FCP v.5. Even if you can open an XML file with your version you still need the referenced media to make it all work. The other way is to have your client send you a self-contained QT movie of the edit in a codec your G4 can work with,

– Don

[Don Greening]

[Harcharan Singh] “Does EX3 also cannot sent 1080 24p thru HD-SDI? “

According to Sony, any EX1 or EX3 camera shipped from the factory in the second half of August can stream 1080p 24 through the SDI port. Cameras made earlier than that will have to wait for 3 weeks for an official Sony announcement as to when a firmware upgrade will be available for all earlier EX series cameras.

[Harcharan Singh] “If we use memory cards whether it is SxS or Nanoflash why is expensive cards such as AJA Kona required..for final mastering I suppose ..?”

A card like the Kona would be needed if you want to connect a broadcast monitor to your editing suite via HD SDI or you want to print to HD tape and change codecs (like DVCPRO HD) in real time, which the Kona 3 card can do. But for normal editing of EX footage you don’t need an expensive 3rd party card.

– Don

[Don Greening]

[Vicki Vasilopoulos] “But exactly what are the steps involved in “blowing up” the 16:9 footage”

You don’t have to. 16:9 footage is the same height as 4:3 so all you have to do is what’s called a “centre punch” of your widescreen clips. Create your 4:3 sequence and drag your first 16:9 clip into it. FCP will automatically letterbox the clip. Double-click the clip to load it into the viewer. Click on the scale parameter tab in the viewer and scale the clip to 100%. In the canvas window now you’ll see the clip filling the frame but the sides are cut off. You can also accomplish the same thing in the canvas window by dragging a corner of the clip until the top and bottom fill the frame. Anyway, after you’ve scaled up the first 16:9 clip in the viewer just hit “Cmd – C” to copy that clip’s attributes to the clipboard. Drag the rest of your widescreen clips into the timeline, highlight them all and the hit “Option -V” to paste the first clip’s attributes on to all the other 16:9 clips. All your 16:9 clips are now centre punched to fit the 4:3 sequence. Go for coffee.

– Don

[Don Greening]

[Salvatore Interlandi] “But- do we lose color space by shooting in LONG GOP?”

The colour space of long GOP recording is 4:2:0 but there are so many scan lines in a 1920 X 1080 EX frame that you end up with more colour information to work with than many of today’s other available 4:2:2 capable cameras that use smaller frame sizes.

[Salvatore Interlandi] “If I shoot with the EX 3 onto cards at 35mbs – 4:2:0 color space and then edit in that codec – could I regain that color space when I out put or go to color correction? “

No. You cannot regain colour information that’s not there to begin with, but you can transcode your clips to an “I-frame” 4:2:2 codec like Apple’s Pro Res or Panasonic’s DVCPRO HD etc. so the colour information you do have available is retained during colour grading and various other re-compression stages before your final delivery.

If you record at 4:2:0 to the SxS Pro cards that is what you will end up with no matter how you transfer the footage to your NLE afterwards. The only way to get the 4:2:2 space is to record to an external device using the EX HD SDI port. Unfortunately in your case, and as I understand it, the EX does not stream 1080p 24 through SDI (according to the EX manual). A future firmware upgrade may change that, which would be great.

Hope this helps.

– Don

[Don Greening]

Hi Gaston,

Here’s a method that works for me. I originally wrote this lesson for a 3 camera multiclip workflow but I’m sure you can adapt it for your two camera sequence. Take from the article what you need.

Start by creating a new sequence for the purposes of this exercise instead of trying to work with your existing sequence. This way, you won’t be trying to fix anything in your existing sequence first, and in addition you’ll be able to go through the entire setup process from scratch. Set up the new sequence with 4 video tracks and 8 audio tracks.

1. Control or right-click each of the master clips that you want to use for this exercise and choose “Item Properties > Logging Info” from the pop-up menu. Put a number 01 in the angle column for the first master clip and then the numbers 02 and 03 for the other 2 master clips.

2. Select 2 to 5 minutes of footage from all 3 of your cameras and from approximately the same point in time if you can. If not, it’s not a big deal. Double-click your first master clip in the Browser to load it into the Viewer. Set your in and out points for the clip and, after positioning your track selection buttons for V1, A1 and A2 in the timeline, drag the clip from the Viewer to the Canvas Window and choose Overwrite. The beginning of the clip will start wherever your playhead is parked. Do the above for your remaining 2 master clips, making sure you change your track selection tabs each time to target other tracks. Sync up all 3 camera tracks by whatever method you usually use, either by audio or a camera flash, etc.

4. You should now have your first camera angle on V1, A1 and A2, your second camera on V2, A3 and A4 and your third camera on V3, A5 and A6 and all synced up. Your 3 clips don’t necessarily have to all start at the same time but they do need to be synced.

5. Park your playhead at the beginning of whichever track starts the latest (the rightmost video track beginning point) so it snaps to that track and then hit the right arrow key to advance one frame. From this point forward DO NOT move the playhead. Now select the clip in V3. It will become highlighted, then hit the “F” key. This is the Match Frame command and you’ll see your clip load into the Viewer with the in point arrow parked on the first frame of the clip in the timeline. The Match Frame command also makes the Viewer the active window. With the Viewer still the active window hit the “I” key to match the frame to the current playhead position in the Sequence window. This command is changing your in point on the master clip to reflect what’s happening in the timeline.

6. Now click the mute button for V3 and confirm that V3 is now greyed out. Select/highlight V2 and do the exact match frame process you did for V3. Once that’s done click the mute button for V2, select V1 and do the Match Frame process for that track. Once you’re done un-mute V2 and V3.

7. in the Browser window Command – Select the 3 master clips you’ve chosen for this test sequence so they’re all highlighted. Go to the Modify menu and choose “Make Muliticlip”. In the pop up dialogue box make sure the sync method is set to “In Point.” I think this is the default anyway, but just make sure. Click OK and you’ll see your new multiclip name in the Browser. Change your track selection tabs in the sequence window to V4, A7 and A8. Remember, the playhead should not have been moved at all during this. Drag the multiclip name from the Browser to the Canvas and choose “Overwrite.” Mute A7 and A8 and keep it that way. Go to the View Menu > Muliticlip Active Tracks and make sure it’s set to Audio+Video. This way every time you change video angles the audio for that camera will also change. NOTE: make sure all video tracks remain linked to their respective audio tracks, especially the multiclip track. otherwise you’ll see those out-of-sync read flags come up, even though nothing is actually out of sync. No, I don’t know why this happens.

8. In the Canvas Window up at the top middle set your sync to “Open” in the drop down menu. In the View Menu make sure “Show Multiclip Angles” is checked. Play your sequence and change the angles by clicking on different ones in the Viewer window. There should be no red out-of-sync flags when you’re finished.

– Don

[Don Greening]

Hi Clint,

Keep in mind that EX footage is 35Mbits per second and MiniDV is 25 Mbits per second, so you can count on about 4 to 4 and a half minutes per gigabye of storage as opposed to MiniDV which needs a gigabyte of space for every 5 min. of footage. Probably a reliable 5 bay SATA RAID would be fine.

For monitoring take a close look at the Matrox MXO and a 23″ Apple Cinema HD display. In addition, the MXO is also a cost effective alternative for fairly accurate colour grading. More info on this can be found here:

https://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/mxo/

– Don

[Don Greening]

Hi Lawrence,

Panning and zooming within a video frame isn’t too difficult but keep in mind that in order to do both you’ll have to display the video at larger than 100% frame size, so your quality may suffer somewhat. If you can keep the zooming to no more than 110 – 115% it shouldn’t look too bad.

Panning within the frame is pretty simple. If you already have the clip in the timeline double-click your clip to load it into the viewer. From this point forward any changes you make to your clip in the viewer will be reflected in the canvas window and vice versa. In the viewer click on the motion tab. Look for the scale parameter and for the sake of this exercise (you can size it to whatever you want) change it from 100% to 110%. Now your clip is larger than the viewer window. Make sure “image and wireframe is selected. Drag your clip in the direction you want your pan to start from until you reach the edge of the frame. Hit the “K” key to insert a keyframe. Again, for the sake of this exercise, move your playhead 5 seconds furthur to the right down the timeline. Go back to the viewer and drag your clip in the opposite direction until the you see the edge of that side of the dlip appear. Hit “K” to insert another keyframe.

That’s about it. Play your clip and it should pan smoothly from one side to the other. The speed of the pan depends on how far you’ve zoomed in and how long the time is between the two keyframes.

Zooming is the same workflow as panning but instead of dragging the clip left and right you just keep the scale at the beginning keyframe at 100%. Park the playhead further down the timeline, then increase the scale to 110% or whatever, reposition your frame within the window so that whatever point in your frame you want to zoom to is centred in the middle and then insert another keyframe.

– Don

[Don Greening]

To check your firmware version you have to press and hold the following 2 buttons at the same time: the sel/set button, the cancel button, then while still holding those buttons down press the menu button. In the viewfinder the maintenance menu will appear. Scroll down to the bottom where it says “IF” and your firmware version number will be displayed along with the serial number of the camera.

I don’t have any advice about the PHU-60 hard drive other than to make sure that the piece that goes into the card slot is in there firmly, then get the camera to reformat the hard drive before you use it again. Shoot some test footage to the hard drive. If it screws up again, return it.

Good Luck.

– Don

[Don Greening]

Hi Mark,

If your 1080i footage was shot with a non-square PAR (pixel aspect ratio) codec like HDV 1440×1080 then it is a squeezed format as well. I was assuming you shot it with the EX HQ setting, which has a square PAR. I’m not sure if FCP will constrain the proportions of that exported still even or even if there’s a “Preserve Aspect Ratio” check box available when you export using Quicktime Conversion. I know there is for a video export (not at my FCP suite at the moment).

If you have Photoshop I know for sure you can bring the squeezed HD still into that and change the pixel size to 1920×1080 to un-squeeze your picture. Just make sure that “Constrain Proportions” in Photoshop is not checked.

– Don