Don Greening
Forum Replies Created
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[Michael Slowe] “We are all grown up here and all get frustrated by technical problems interfering with our creative processes.”
I may get older but I’ll never grow up.
– Don
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[Michael Palmer] “I understand that I don’t have the same .75X adapter but want to open up a communication line and find out if the EX1 lens and/or firmware issue cause problems for any of their wide angle adapters.”
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with this, Michael. Whatever the reason for the poor performance of the Schneider/Century .75 adapter I think that it caught the manufacturer off guard. Normally their products are beyond reproach and it may well have been an out of alignment EX they were using for development that created these issues in the first place. Who knows. Also, if one factors in the idea that many of the production EX cameras had different lens alignment issues there would be different results depending on what condition one’s own EX camera was in. I don’t envy the task that the manufacturer’s QC team has ahead of them.
I did have the Schneider .75 adapter on order but it never arrived before the recall. Interesting though, that my Sony .8 adapter works well. I just hate having that little tulip shade glued on to the front of it. Sort of precludes any use of a matte box, doesn’t it?
– Don
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[Michael Palmer] “I haven’t really needed to use it yet but now I will call Schneider Optics”
When you call keep in mind that it’s the .75 that’s been recalled and not the .6. That one is still up on the Schneider site.
– Don
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This an important piece of info for all EX owners who’ve ordered or are considering this Schneider adapter. Thanks for posting this, Torv.
– Don
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Well it won’t look any good until you render because in order to play back unrendered footage FCP will drop the quality instead of dropping frames. Plus the fact that the field order of SD footage is lower first and HDV is upper first may also have something to do with it. Check one of the clip’s properties in the viewer and you’ll see that HDV footage shows as “Upper First” in the field order column. Render a test piece and check the result on a broadcast monitor or at least a television.
– Don
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Drop your HDV stuff into a 4:3 SD sequence. FCP will automatically scale the footage so that everything fits into the 4:3 window but this creates the letterboxing you don’t want. So double click on the first clip in your sequence to load it into the viewer and scale it until the letterboxing is gone. This will also crop the sides, giving you a 4:3 version of your 16:9 footage. Now de-select the first clip in your sequence, select/highlight all the others and paste the first clip’s attributes onto the others. That should set up all the other clips with the same scaling as the first one. Make sure you do all this before you render anything.
– Don
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[Chris Babbitt] “Craig, what’s the scoop on the firmware update? I haven’t heard about this. How is it done?”
Some users were reporting that when using ND 1 or 2 their back focus went soft. Firmware update v.1.0.5. is supposed to now fix the back focus issue when the ND filters are engaged.
Press and hold the cancel button and menu button at the same time. Continue to hold these buttons and then hit the SEL/SET button. 3 more menus will show up below the regular menu items. Scroll down to the IF icon. Select that and you’ll see your serial number and the firmware version number appear. Any firmware upgrade has to be done at an authorized Sony repair facility. The MN menu is where the back focus adjustment is carried out and to do so is at your own risk. Auto FB adjustment stands for “flange back”.
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[mason Seay] “How do I import from my hard drive into Final Cut?”
Import what, exactly?
– Don
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I’m not going to try and figure out what you’re doing wrong as far as multiclip setup and editing is concerned but I will tell you how I do it and it works quite well for me.
We generally shoot these types of events with 3 cameras and since tape based cameras need to have their tapes changed every hour or so we always make sure that at least 2 of them are running when the third one is changing tapes.
So……
In the FCP sequence I drag the media from all the cameras into their own dedicated video and audio tracks and sync them all using a common audio hit or a camera flash, whatever you have available. Each time one of the cameras changes a tape it’s another sync job with the other two cameras in the FCP timeline. Once everything is synched then go back to the beginning of the sequence and match frame each camera one at a time. Each time you do a match frame the master clip for that particular camera comes up in the viewer. Mark your in point in the viewer and do this for all the cameras. Once you have all the in points Cmd-select those master clips in the browser to highlight them all. Then go to (I think it’s the View menu?) and choose: make multiclip.
All this time while you’re doing the match frame for the cameras the playhead shouldn’t have moved at all in the timeline. Create a new track for video and 2 new audio tracks and drag the new multiclip from the browser (change the track destination first) into the canvas and choose Overwrite. Now you have a perfectly synched multiclip on top of the other camera tracks. Mute the multiclip audio and in multiclip preferences set it up so that each time you change angles the audio changes angles as well.
The other advantage of doing it this way is that you also have the audio tracks from all 3 cameras available. Edit your multiclip until you get to the next camera break (tape change) and then repeat the match frame workflow and create the next multiclip. And so on until your edit is complete.
Hope this helps.
– Don
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[Robert Storm] “and so I was really hoping for a less bulky solution. “
You probably won’t find one. You need an external mic that is isolated from the tape drive noise and that means a good isolator that mounts on the hot shoe. Everyone that’s serious about their audio quality uses some form of isolator.
Something like this:
https://www.lightwavesystems.com/products/minimount/default.asp
Or this:
https://www.ktekbooms.com/products.php?id=83
There’s lots of different isolator kits around made by lots of different companies. A little searching should find something that works for you that’s not too cumbersome.
– Don