Don Greening
Forum Replies Created
-
If you want to find out if “apexgalaxy.com” is a reputable online seller then you need to take the name of that seller and plug it into http://www.resellerratings.com. There you’ll be able to check that company’s online rating and read reviews from actual customers that have done business with that company.
A good rule of thumb: if the price looks too good to be true then it usually is.
– Don
-
Canon is a lot like Apple Computer in that they won’t make any new camera announcements until the thing is virtually on the retail shelves. The people that DO know are most likely bound by NDAs so they won’t be volunteering any info. So anything you or I hear about a new Canon camera will be the product of someone’s overactive imagination. Such is the way of things these days.
CCD sensors use more power and are subject to vertical smearing. CMOS sensors use less power have no vertical smear but create more picture noise than CCDs. CCD and CMOS technology has distinct advantages and disadvantages. CMOS used to be more expensive to manufacture but in recent years the costs have come down to the point that they’re finding their way into the market now in larger numbers.
– Don
-
Just turn detail off completely and see how that looks to you.
– Don
-
[Craig Seeman] “Alas, I wish there were a workflow that would result in no line twitter.”
……and the good Lord gazed down upon the earth and, seeing that standard def and interlacing were passing into oblivion, said: “From this day forward let it be known that I have blessed the Blu-ray workflow. Follow this shining path into the future and fear not, for this is the way to twitterless encoding.” And he saw that it was good.
– Don
-
[Craig Seeman] “[Don Greening] “BitVice didn’t make the line twitter any worse.”
Which means it was the same as Compressor?
“….which means that I used the “Compressor-down-converted-to-DV NTSC” footage as part of my exported self-contained movie that BitVice used to encode to MPEG2. BitVice didn’t make the line twitter any worse than it already was.
– Don
-
Craig,
Once I had another look at the footage I down converted to DV NTSC for multiclip use I did notice a bit of twitter in some bare tree branches and power lines when my camera moved around a bit during the shoot outside. I know you said you only noticed it when you used Compressor for MPEG2 but I also used Compressor for the down convert, so maybe it’s a global thing with the program.
Once I exported my movie (2 hrs 34 min) I used BitVice on my 2.7 G5 and was quite pleased with the result overall. BitVice didn’t make the line twitter any worse. I watched the DVD on my 50″ plasma and you can sure see the difference between the XL2 footage and the down converted EX stuff (EX is better).
FYI the XL2 was shooting widescreen 30p and the EX was HQ 1080 30p. Burnt to DVD9. Considering the big difference in picture quality the SD version cut together pretty well. Progressive is the only way to go if the output is for LCD or plasma viewing.
– Don
-
Glad you got things working. The reason the Import button may have been grayed out initially is because you might have had something else selected that was incomplete in addition to the clip you wanted to stitch back together and import. But since I can’t look over your shoulder this is just a guess.
– Don
-
[Sam Painter] “Going from a Mac to a PC on the same drive any drive? “
If you want to use a hard drive with both platforms it needs to be formatted in FAT32 so both machines can read and write to it. You can format a hard drive in FAT32 using your Mac’s Disk Utility program. The SxS Pro memory cards come already formatted in FAT32 and this is the formatting used by the camera when it erases the cards to clear them off.
There is a 4 Gbyte file size limit when using FAT32 and that’s why long video clips are always split into 4 Gbyte chunks when transferring footage from the cards. The Sony Transfer software will combine the sections into one clip and make it whole again. Using a hard drive formatted in FAT32 binary should be perfect for working between Windows and Mac platforms.
If for some reason you’d rather not format a hard drive in FAT32 you can always buy a Windows program called “Mac Drive” which will allow you to connect and use any Mac OS Extended drive with a Windows machine.
– Don
-
If you have a clip that spans across two or more cards you need to have the two BPAV folders present in the Sony Transfer Tool window. So remove all previous card imports from the transfer program and start by adding the BPAV folder from the first card where the first part of your spanned clip starts. Then click the Add button and import the second BPAV folder that contains the rest of your incomplete clip. Note the clip name from the first card that you want to stitch back together. When you add the second BPAV folder the clip name from the first folder should now say that it’s complete and will have a check mark. Just choose to import that ONE clip and the transfer tool will export the whole thing and convert to the .mov format during that process.
– Don
-
Craig,
At the moment I’m in the middle of an edit where the final output will be on a single layer DVD. The project was shot with our EX and XL2 (a funeral) so I’ll let you know how it turns out. I started out right away with a DV NTSC Anamorphic timeline, dropped the EX footage into it and am editing that natively (XDCAM EX codec), to a point. Since part of the project involves a multiclip over 2 hours long I had to downconvert some of the EX footage to the DV NTSC codec using Compressor. I haven’t seen any appreciable twitter in the resulting footage, but then this is mostly talking heads stuff so it’s not a good comparison for you. Still, I’ll let you know how the final DVD looks as far as the EX footage is concerned.
Oh, and the XL2 footage is 16:9 30p@1/60 shutter, EX footage is HQ 1080p 30@1/60 shutter.
What WAS nice when shooting with the EX during the service was being able to record continuously instead of having to stop and change tapes like my wife had to do with the XL2. I ended up with one clip that has a duration of 2 hours and 6 min. and spanned two 16 gig cards and one 8 gig card.
The finished DVD will be around 2 hours and 45 min. Yikes. I should also point out that when this is finished I’ll be exporting a self contained QT movie and encoding with BitVice, as it seems to do a bit better job than Compressor on really long form projects like this one.
– Don