[Greg Pasztor]

I think Neil is right on. In that vein I would take a hard look on eBay for a used Sony EX1R. Yes, only HD, but it will perform well and get you well on the road to professional shooting.

[Greg Pasztor]

I used Vimeo as a way to showcase video to clients/friends without the gutter level whoring of Google and YouTube. I’m sorry to see them give up the fight. It’s certainly in keeping with the downward cultural spiral of the internet. Sorry to see them go. Their interface already does not work for my home page, failing to switch to the video clicked.

[Greg Pasztor]

I have adopted DaVinci Resolve as an ethical and open alternative to the tyranny of Adobe.

As a professor, I have steered many students in DaVinci’s direction. It is not painless. A user is often buried in the prolific manual, wondering what they did wrong—especially with all the BS happening at the hardware and software levels in today’s “connected: world,. It’s been a mixed bag. I’ve barely made it through on my own, with over 40 years of editing. At this point, if a student, or newcomer to editing, is seeking an edit program, they need to decide upfront that they don[t mind turning over their labor to adobe. It’s a shitty equation, but there it is.

[Greg Pasztor]

Purchase a Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle. Download the Media Express software. Use the component out of your DV deck..& audio. In the Media Express software, go to preferences and uncheck the boxes for:

-Stop capture if dropped frames are detected

-Stop playback if dropped frames are detected

Depending on your audio routing, you may not be able to hear when capturing, though the meters should indicate level. You will have to manually stop the capture.

Greg

[Greg Pasztor]

Short answer – No. But you can certainly make the images look better than the raw grabs. When you increase resolution PS is interpolating the existing pixels to create new ones…it does a respectable job but can’t make detail where it didn’t exist in the first place. I’ve had to do this a couple of times and here’s the basics of what I learned.
-Hopefully your footage was shot Progressive. Interlaced footage tends to have jagged edges that require yet another interpolation by the Deinterlace filter in PS.
-Hopefully your subjects are not moving much and in good light.

-Make sure your footage hasn’t been resized somewhere along the edit workflow!
-If you can grab your stills from the original camera footage that’s usually a good thing since it avoids any changes that may have taken place in the edited timeline. I like to open the original clips inside PS and then create layers from the frames I want to grab and export them. You have to manually scroll with the mouse through the clip to find your frames, but works reasonably well.

-If you must create an image larger than the original pixel dimensions:
-I’ve found that increasing the resolution some (say from 72 to 200) will give me a little more to work with for the next step, which typically involve duplicating the original image, using the HDR toning under PS Adjustments tab to lower the “detail” while trying to keep the edges somewhat sharp. Every lighting situation seems to demand different settings. After developing with the HDR toning, I sometimes then stack that layer with the original image and adjust the layer opacity until it looks reasonably good. And your likely going to visit the Vibrance or Hue/Saturation adjustments along the way.
Good luck!
Greg Pasztor
RTF Instructor
San Antonio College

Greg Pasztor
RTF Instructor
San Antonio College

[Greg Pasztor]

I have the same issue with XDCAM footage from a Sony EX-1R. If I import from the camera card (or card copy) the audio imports as mixed. If I use Sony’s Catalyst program to export the clips as ProRes, then import them into Resolve everything is as it should be–separate channels for each of my audio sources. Since I shoot a lot of longer clips and end up spanning them in Catalyst anyway, it was no big deal to just convert all the clips to ProRes.

[Greg Pasztor]

My EX1R gave me fits with this problem until I turned off the image stabilization. It seems the camera tries to “defeat” tripod shots when the stabilization is on…

[Greg Pasztor]

I just looked at your footage. This definitely looks like the steady shot is on and is ‘defeating’ your camera move. Turn it off. Only use the steadyshot when handheld. You should also get Doug Jensen’s PMW-EX1 Field Guide.

[Greg Pasztor]

Is the steadyshot (image stabilization) on?

[Greg Pasztor]

I’ll look forward to it Bill! The first thing I do with all footage is a quick visit to the XDCAM browser to add a set of global metadata (in a batch) and then individual clip names-comments-etc. Then I back up the BPAV for safety. I then import the rewrapped renamed clips using XDCAM transfer which becomes my ‘searchable’ archive (and the folder I bring into FCPX Event browser). I wish the Sony browser software would ‘rewrap’ their files to QT with the logged metadata and clip titles as an export option…but at least the FCP7 XDCAM transfer program will.
I really like being able to find stuff…and to be reminded of things I forgot! It would be nice if the video software folks paid as much attention to metadata & searches (& copyright!) as the still photography industry.
Greg