Don Greening
Forum Replies Created
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Well at least in HDV mode you can get 75 min. of footage on to a 16 gig card instead of 57 min. shooting in the HQ mode. If you’re shooting mostly talking heads anyway you’re probably not seeing much of a quality difference between the two modes.
– Don
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[Sean Meredith] “Anyone have any suggestions or solutions?”
You need to get that person’s camera repaired and back in your possession so you can transfer the footage. But DON’T get the heads adjusted during the repair process or you’re back to square one again. This problem is typical with older cameras that don’t have a regular maintenance routine: the heads wear and/or go out of adjustment to the point that the tapes recorded on the camera can only be played back using that camera. I wish I had better news for you.
– Don
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From what I’ve read the EX is better in low light by about 3/4 of a stop over the F330/350.
– Don
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Capturing live using the SDI port effectively bypasses the camera’s compression section and records a 4:2:2 signal right off the camera head. This is the very best quality you can get from the EX. The HQ 1080 setting that is recorded to the SxS Pro card will be at the 4:2:0 colour space and that’s the best you can get recoding to the cards. Transferring HQ 1080 from the card to a hard drive after the fact will still result in a file with the 4:2:0 colour space.
– Don
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[Mark Leisher] “anybody else having this issue.”
Just about everybody. It’s a bug between the Sony Transfer Tool program and how it communicates with FCP. It was supposed to be fixed in the latest Sony Transfer Tool update but no joy. Delete all your dupes in the browser window and then use the “Import Files” command within FCP to go to the actual folder where the EX clips reside and import them again. This time there will be no duplicate names.
Another way to avoid duplicate names is to use The Sony Transfer Tool as a stand alone app. Transfer the files from your card to your media drive with the program, then start FCP and choose “Import FIles”.
– Don
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[Dan Gunn] “The size of the mic and the price are very attractive also.”
If you also noticed at the Ken Stone site, there is also a new article on various lav systems. I’m looking forward to reading that one. Knowledge is power 🙂 Good luck with your purchase, Dan.
– Don
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[George Strother] “XDCAM Transfer shows the mxf files are in Apple XDCAM HD codec, not Apple XDCAM EX codec, though the shots were taken with an EX1 camera. My guess – this is the root of the error. “
Your guess is correct. This might be a bug in the Sony Transfer 2.5.1 although I wouldn’t be able to run a test to try duplicating your issue because I have the earlier version of the Sony Transfer Tool. This earlier version works fine for me and I’ve never run into the problem you’re describing.
[George Strother] “XDCAM HD blueray cameras (330/350/etc) have 1440 by 1080 chips, correct?”
This is also correct. That’s why one of the other EX shooting modes is 1440×1080, which is designed to match footage shot with the other XDCAM HD cameras. You may have some luck by trashing the Sony Transfer Tool preference file and see if that solves it. Other than that, I wouldn’t be able to offer any more suggestions because, like I said before, I’m still using the earlier version of the Sony Transfer Tool.
Sorry for not being able to offer more help.
– Don
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By design, the Sony Transfer Tool knows that the HQ 1080 35 VBR setting is not anamorphic so it will export a properly formatted 1920×1080 frame. After the Sony Transfer Tool has converted the EX .mp4 files to the QT .mov format you can actually check for format accuracy by opening up one of the converted .mov files using Quicktime Player. This test is to confirm that the Sony Transfer Tool is transcoding the native EX format properly to the QT .mov format. The Quicktime movie of your file will display as a 1920×1080 frame size within the Quicktime Player app.
Once you’ve established that your EX files are the proper aspect ratio but then FCP tells you that the pixel size is 2560×1080 then it’s a FCP thing and not a Sony Transfer Tool thing. Within FCP choose the XDCAM EX 1080i 50 35 VBR setting from the easy setups menu and click OK, then see what the P.A.R. of your clips are afterwards.
You can also make your own custom preset. In this case it would be square pixels (non-anamorphic) with a frame size of 1920×1080.
– Don
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I’m using an Audio-Technica mic part # AT4073a on my EX1. It’s very good at picking up sound directly in front of the camera while rejecting side ambience at the same time. You can read a very thorough test along with other good mic choices here:
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/right_mic_brockett.html
After you’ve read the article you’ll have a much better idea of which mic you should buy.
– Don