[Eric Steinberg]

Thanks for your input!

I’m leaning towards 50p. The only thing I’m concerned about with the choice of throwing away every other frame for the cinema, is that if I understand things correctly, the motion blur on each frame will be less on each frame when I shoot 50p than with 25p, since the shutter will be open a shorter amount of time. That means that the result will be more stuttery than if I had shot with 25p. Am I correct in this assumption? I guess I could try frame blending in After Effects, but I’m worried the results won’t be that great.

Kind regards,
Eric

[Eric Steinberg]

I’m a very small one-man boutique, and the Matrox Axio was a HUGE investment for me. I’m not in a position to abandon this major investment and buy something else. Besides, I’ve heard great things about the Axio with mxf/P2 support from beta testers and those who saw it at IBC, so I’m optimistic that pretty soon it will be great! There are always pros and cons to all systems, and I worked (and am still working) on a Matrox RT.X100 for about 4 years, and it has been a good machine. No matter what system someone says is great, there will alway be someone who has different opinions, which is why it always is such a challenging task to decide what to buy. This goes for NLE’s, cameras, plug-in suites..everything. I’m one of those guys who often falls into the trap of “over-researching” because I want to buy the best I can for my budget. Usually I just get more and more confused, so I try to find a good balance between doing some research and then just deciding and making the best out of my decision. So maybe there are better choices out there, but now I am going to do the best I can with what I’ve got. 🙂

Kind regards,
Eric

[Eric Steinberg]

Actually, I have considered those. Any thoughts on which one is better (if Axio works with both)?

Kind regards,
Eric

[Eric Steinberg]

Noah Kadner:

“Though it kind of comes down to why would you ever want/need to put something back to P2?”

Well, so far it’s the only way I’ve been able to figure out how to get my footage into my NLE (playback and capture – not file transfer). Since I’m shooting out in the field and can’t bring my Axio workstation with me, and I don’t have enough P2 cards for my whole shoot, I have to store the files somewhere as I’m filling up my P2 cards. It didn’t work to play the footage from my Firestore for transfer to Axio, and transferring mxf from a harddrive won’t work because the Axio doesn’t recognize those.. yet! So soon my problem should be solved, so it’s not worth it to get a Blackmagic card. But thanks for the tip!

Kind regards,
Eric

[Eric Steinberg]

Ok Barry, glad to hear that it can work, I’ll give it a try. My plan is to take my laptop and an external hardrive with me on my shoot, dump my P2 files onto the external harddrive as the cards fill up, and then when I’m back at the Axio, I’ll transfer the files back onto the P2 cards from the external HD, play the clips from the P2 cards in the camera and capture the playing stream in Premiere as DVCPro HD. A terrible workaround, but the Axio mxf/P2 support is supposed to come in October, so it won’t be for long.
Thanks again,
Eric

[Eric Steinberg]

Thanks pada01!

This is great help, and I’m taking you up on your offer about the Word-document. I’ll send you an email.

Thanks again,
Eric

[Eric Steinberg]

Thanks, I did that, and that helped! Now I was able to record DVCProHD 1080i50, and play it back and look at it on the camera’s LCD. I still wouldn’t mind finding out if there are any good websites with good instructions for settings and workflow for the combination HVX200 / Firestore. Any tips appreciated.
Thanks again!

Kind regards,
Eric

[Eric Steinberg]

Thanks for the suggestion, but then the rendered precomps will be pics with lower resolution, and I won’t be able to zoom into the pics and maintain quality. A pic which is originally 4000 x 3000 pixels and scaled down to fit 720 x 576 in a precomp, will maintain quality when I scale up quite a bit in the main comp if I have the continuous rasterization button checked in the main comp. By prerendering, I in effect make a new pic which only contains 720 x 576 pixels, and scaling up that new pic will naturally cause quality loss.
It’s starting to look like I just have to start the whole thing over, and apply my animations so that they look as close to the original ones as possible. A pain in the …, but I don’t know what else to do…

Kind regards,
Eric

[Eric Steinberg]

Thanks for your reply,

Is the still moving quickly enough for motion blur to be apparent ?

Yes, (see my answer to previous poster). If I turn off “collapse transformations/continouos rasterization”, I do in fact get motion blur, but I need that button checked!

You may trying adding more motion blur by adjusting the shutter angle in the advanced tab of the composition settings.

Won’t help, motion blur is totally ignored.

Any other thoughts…?

Kind regards,
Eric

[Eric Steinberg]

Thanks for your reply:

i just set up a test for this based on the info you’ve provided; and i don’t get any probs with motion blurring my still either precomped or not…

Do you have the “collapse transformations/continuous rasterization” button checked when you succeed? If I turn off that button, I also do get motion blur, but then I lose the ability to zoom into an image without quality loss, since Premiere scaled all my images (appx. 165 pics) down to fit my PAL working space (some all the way down to appx. 10%). I could of course replace every precomp in my main comp with the raw image, but since I’ve got so many images, and I’ve already spent a few days animating based on their already scaled down (in the pre-comp) state, that will be a HUGE job.

motion blur does chug through the memory, does your machine chug when you apply it; or is it ignoring it completely?

It’s ignoring it completely.

how many layers/precomps do you have?

About 165.

if you render a still, do you see the motion blur?

No.

I’m just wondering: Is there a way to easily “Un-precomp”…? That would solve my problem, I think.

Kind regards,
Eric