Jeffrey Buras
Forum Replies Created
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Any thoughts on the crop factor?
My guess is that there is no crop. It resizes. It uses the full sensor but records in a 720p format.
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Without buying new equipment, your only option is to get far away and zoom in as much as possible.
Larger sensors and lenses with very wide apertures give professional cameras their shallow depth of field. Longer focal lengths (aka zooming in) also gives a shallow depth of field.
Depth of field converters are also used. Like Todd said, they are more expensive than it’s worth for your camera. If you spent the money for a DoF converter, you might as buy a new camera.
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Sounds rough. Good luck.
DV is a decent acquisition format if you take the proper care to have high production value.
For post-production, edit in uncompressed. Once you capture, do NOT go back to DV at all, even for final output to tape. DV compression will ruin your graphics and color correction. If you can get it to a Beta tape from there, I think you’ll be okay for broadcast.
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The XHA1 will give you a better picture, hands down.
You can’t really compare the sensors of these two cameras because they work in different ways. The HV20 captures all of the colors with a single integrated sensor. The XHA1 has three different sensors, each roughly the same size as the HV20’s, each dedicated to a different color. The three-sensor system gives better results.
In addition, the XHA1 has a better lens, further improving picture quality.
In the end, both cameras write the same HDV format at 1440×1080.
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The answer is: it all depends. 720p has better motion; 1080i has better resolution.
You should always deliver with the same resolution as the source material. Converting from one to the other won’t give you any benefit if you’ve already shot the material.
The truth is that, in the end, 95% of people don’t care or can’t tell the difference. So in reality, choose your HD camera on other factors, like lens quality, comfort in operation, or integration with your current workflow.
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Yes, they are true vectors. Illustrator files animated in After Effects. I’d like After Effects just to stretch the whole animation, but if I simply change the sequence settings it just makes the screen size bigger and leaves all of the elements the same size.
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Basically, the lens lengths are like the zoom on your camera. A 24mm lens gives you a wide angle, like zooming all the way out. A 200mm is telephoto, like zooming all the way in. The others are somewhere in between.
To get an idea of what exactly these lenses look like, try out a full frame SLR still camera with a bunch of lenses. A local photo store with REALLY nice staff would be able to walk you through what each lens does.
It’s hard to say what lens you should get because each production has different needs. If I was forced to answer, I would say for the greatest versatility you should have a 24mm, a 50mm, and 80-200mm zoom lens.
Todd is right, this is a big step for someone and if you have to ask, you probably shouldn’t be doing this. If you are spending money on this, I would say your production would be better served with more budget for lighting, art direction, better crew, etc.
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The camera downconverts to 60i. Use the Easy Setup for DV Anamorphic.
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Just set your shutter speed to 48fps, or as close to it as your camera allows. The “film look” is less about frame rate and more about professional-looking lighting, camera work, and production design. I just stumbled on an article that will help you with those basics:
https://finalcutpro.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=91973-0The XL1 doesn’t have an enormously shallow depth of field, but no comparable camera really does until you get into more professional 2/3″ cameras. The easiest way to soften the background is to get really far back and zoom in.
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If video quality isn’t a huge issue:
Idea #1:
1. Nest the sequence into another sequence and apply the timecode reader filter.
2. Export with Compressor or Quicktime Conversion, single-pass H.264 at a lower resolution (480?). If you are using Compressor, you can use both Macs in a cluster to reduce compression time.
Idea #2:
1. Nest the sequence into another sequence and apply the timecode reader filter.2. Output with the KONA card over firewire, capture with the second Mac.
3. Export.
You’d have to run a test to see if it is faster to resize and encode with software only, or to resize with KONA hardware and encode with software.
If you have a few extra dollars, you might want to pick up one of these to reduce your encoding time:
https://www.amazon.com/Elgato-Turbo-264-Encoder-Hardware-10020500/dp/B000PCVIEU/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/104-7584744-8999954?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1191427089&sr=8-2