[Jason Porthouse]

I’ll second Phil’s sentiments here. DON’T get the 500, wait till you can afford the 550, or look for a secondhand one – avforums is a good place to look in the UK. They do come up occasionally…

But think long and hard about what you want to achieve out of it – if you’re thinking ‘second camera’ I’d think again, as DSLR shooting is a very different discipline. As Phil mentioned, you’ll need to really budget for a Zacuto finder, some kind of mount, and a few lenses to turn it into a rig that is suitable for anything other than very controlled shooting. Sound requires at very least a Beachtek adaptor, or seperate recording device. You will also need to be sure you have a foolproof method for ingesting and backing up media in the field – or lots and lots of SD cards.

I’m not saying don’t – just do your homework before you commit yourself. DSLRs are not the magic bullet route to instant film-like quality.

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jason Porthouse]

No, but you could still be monitoring both channels when you listen off tape. Call up a clip in your viewer, then go to the audio tabs – you should, ideally, have 2 – then in turn, mute each one and listen to the other. Sometimes you discover things aren’t so bad after all. If they are, and the audio has been badly recorded, there isn’t that much that can be done to remove that ‘cavernous’ sound without a lot of skill and time (and hence money!)

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jason Porthouse]

Blackmagic Intensity is one of the cheapest options that will give you HDMI out (and in AFAIK) to drive your screen…

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jason Porthouse]

I’ve a client who… and get this… no, no laughing at the back… is making money with hers. It runs 6.06 without a hitch, has crashed so few times I can’t remember the last time I had a problem, and does 95% of the things my 7 system can. So encodes take a little longer, and renders too, but we got around that one by me teaching her how to render, export and encode. Now she does that outside of my billable hours.

So don’t write them off just yet!

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jason Porthouse]

If you’re going to output to web or DVD, then I’d edit natively with rendering set to Pro Res. I’ve done hundreds of hours of content this way, never had any problems – light colour correction (even some quite complex stuff) and some FX heavy videos. As long as the final render isn’t HDV then it will be fine. Of course, HDV goes to cr*p when you start to push CC or keying, so then I go down the ProRes from start route, but I’ve never had any issues with HDV editing even on humble machines like a dual G5.

HTH

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jason Porthouse]

Ben, it’s a piece of news that I can believe – anything is possible with the Beeb. Why they think CS5 is going to solve their problems I don’t know, but there’s two things apparent to me here. Apple have never really grasped the nettle when it came to wooing UK editors and producers over – as far as I can tell, this was left more to the resellers than the company themselves. And many editors schooled on Avid, fearful of the coming revolution that would enable anyone (or certainly production companies) to buy their own kit and cut just as good a program (small things like talent and experience excepted), refused to get their heads around FCP and badmouthed it to all and sundry.

The Beebs move to Premiere Pro makes sense from the point view that as budgets dwindle, the ‘preditor’ will be in the ascendent in organisations like that. fresh faced twentysomethings don’t cost much, and when you can stick em on a course to use an EX3 and plonk them in front of a ‘creative desktop’ why shell out on more? Or am I just too cynical?

I did some work on a flagship current affairs show recently and was surprised that they still outsourced post to an external house, especially as they had a couple of FCP suites in-house, unused. When I spoke to a producer about this, the sense I had was they never got beyond their editors’ griping about the switch from Avid to FCP – because they had ‘loads of problems with FCP losing sync all the time’ and it ‘wasn’t up to broadcast’ – all incorrect, I know, but classic problems you get when AVID mentality comes up against the different way of working FCP entails.

Sky’s decision to go with Avid makes sense in terms of sheer numbers of freelance editors out there – FCP is still lagging behind in this respect. Once the cost/benefit analysis is equal, thanks to Avid’s price -matching, then the sheer number of editors they can call upon, and hardware savings (not necessarily true, but perceived in the PC/Mac battle) would make it a natural choice.

So though FCP still remains my tool of choice, sometime soon I’m going to have to bite the bullet and delve back in to the world of Avid and Premiere. Don’t get me wrong, I learnt non-linear on Avids, so have no axe to grind, but it doesn’t feel like a move forward to me, as FCP suits the way I cut better.

Dunno how all this relates to your predicament – I guess the ideal, and for me too (though I don’t hire kit out I do have my own suite) would be software that is hardware agnostic, so FCP, PP and Avid all play nicely with whatever card (BM in my case) and we just swap boot drives as needed.

Of course, Apple could release FCP8 and blow everyone else into the weeds, though I won’t hold my breath.

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jason Porthouse]

Ohhh, this has turned into one of those posts that’s just got right on my t*ts.

Johnny – you’ve shot on 35, telecined to SR, and you’re GRADING ON A MAC MONITOR BECAUSE YOU CAN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE?

May I respectfully suggest that if you can’t tell, you clearly aren’t qualified to do the job. Get someone in who is. If I said to you ‘hell, shoot on HDV cos I can’t tell the difference between that an 35mm’ you’d (rightly) think I was a complete ass. You’ll never grade a film properly just using mac monitors… the absolute minimum I would suggest would be a to use and MXO with a cinema display, but even then it would be a massive compromise. Anything less that a proper grade using properly set up equipment won’t be doing the film justice – and all the work put in by the DP, cam ops, art directors et al will be diminished because of a blind spot in your knowledge.

I’m sorry if this sounds harsh, but I’ve seen this before. Do the right thing and get some help in from someone who knows their stuff.

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jason Porthouse]

^^ Wot he said. Unless there is a compelling reason to do it, best avoided. ‘Streamlining’ like this will cost you in the short term, for little gain. If you’re Mac based in both locations, it’s a little easier but the chances of you moving TB of data between two systems, and reconstructing big projects without a hitch, is slim-to-zero IMHO. Better to run 2 systems alongside one another until you have a natural break in proceedings – and even then I’d keep a legacy system until you’re sure the project is no longer needed.

Just my 2 cents!

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jason Porthouse]

Thanks Dennis, but my FCP system is quite fine… 😉

I’m pretty anal when it comes to maintenance, and a great advocate of ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ – such that when I migrate to FCP7/Snow Leopard in a week or so I’ll be storing my nice, reliable Tiger/FCP6 combo away in a little box should I need to change – it’s worth the 30-odd quid a new hard drive cost me.

The problem is, most definitely, to do with the XML files missing as a result of the director not copying over the BPAV files. I have now tattooed the requisite workflow on the inside of his eyelids, so this mistake won’t be made again. Files transferred in the proper manner, even though convoluted (Camera>PC laptop>Hard Drive>Mac) work fine. I’ll wager the XML contained within the BPAV file has some kind of tag that stops XDCAM transfer from fully seeing the files – for one, the creation tag seems to be different. I don’t have time (or the will) to start messing around with XMLs, so I’ll be trying the plugin Andy has suggested.

Here’s hoping Apple and Sony get this sorted for FCP8, but I won’t hold my breath.

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jason Porthouse]

Thanks Andy, it certainly is a puzzling one.

I’ll try your suggestions, and the director has PPro so we can always import/export as per your suggestion. I’ve done a test with him now – copying the BPAV from the camera to his PC and thence to the Mac. Worked fine and flawlessly.

Going to fiddle with the XML files now (nothing to lose) so wish me luck!

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*