[John Baldino]

I too got the Libec, same legs and head and everything. I heartily recommend. Pans are very smooth with very little if no driftback, which is much better than on the Manfrottos, by most accounts I’ve heard, as well as personal experience.

The ONLY downside to the Libec that you should be aware of is that it has fixed drag on the head, so you can’t do swish pans. Other than that, it’s a great rig for the price. I did a lot of research before getting it and it seems to outperform tripods that are even twice its price.

Director/DP/Editor
GoboMedia, LLC
http://www.gobomedia.net (under construction)

“Philosophy is questioning without answers; religion is answers without questioning.” – Anonymous

[John Baldino]

Jon,

This is really interesting because I literally JUST came across this article from a facebook friend of mine:

https://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20000101-264.html

The issue you’ve pointed out and the reason for that BS language has to do with the patent of H.264 in general. It isn’t specific to any one camera or anything like that. I’m in the exact same position you are, as I recently bought the 150 and am using it for the same purposes as you are.

What this article seems to suggest is that there could be some liability for event videographers, but only to the extent that you’d have to pay $.02 in royalty for every DVD that you sell. I’m going to further look into this myself, but I think on the whole we really don’t need to worry about it. Since we’re not really in the business of selling 1000’s of DVDs (we’re in the business of rendering the production service itself), I don’t think anyone is going to come after us for not paying the $.02 royalty on a single DVD we give to our wedding clients.

So in short, Noah is right 🙂

Director/DP/Editor
GoboMedia, LLC
http://www.gobomedia.net (under construction)

“Philosophy is questioning without answers; religion is answers without questioning.” – Anonymous

[John Baldino]

Thanks Jonathan –

I think you’re right, I shouldn’t be too worried about the weight because I can add washers and the like to make up for the somewhat negligible deficit.

So while I still have my eyes on the glidecam rig, I’m thinking I may have to go the DIY route in the interim. I’d be curious as to what kind of rigs you’ve built — tools/materials used, cost, etc. Anything you’d like to share on that front would be helpful.

“Philosophy is questioning without answers; religion is answers without questioning.” – Anonymous

[John Baldino]

Chris is correct…you can burn a blu-ray with Roxio Toast. However you won’t be able to play it back on your mac.

Another workflow is using compressor/Adobe Encore CS4. It is more time consuming and I haven’t done it myself but I hear you get better results that way. Encore is a full featured authoring program like DVDSP, so you’d be able to do more with it than with Toast, like create full menus and so forth, but if you just want a one-step disc for immediate playback then toast would probably do the trick just fine.

As for the burner itself…you can get an internal one for around $200 that should be compatible with your system. I always use newegg.com. I’d check there first.

Best of luck.

John Baldino
GoboMedia LLC
https://www.gobomedia.net (under construction)

“Philosophy is questioning without answers; religion is answers without questioning.” – Anonymous

[John Baldino]

I think there are a lot of factors that come into play here, not just raw population statistics. If you are starting a new business and are trying to assess the viability of your area for finding clients (as I’m currently doing) you need to consider things like a) how many other businesses in your area you are competing against b) does your area have a high ratio of your target client demographic (ie if you are offering wedding videography you probably aren’t going to have much success if your town is mostly older retired couples), etc. These things all need to be weighed in tandem with the consideration of the size of your area.

I would say its true that by most counts 18,000 people is a very small town, but if you’re the only guy who is doing what you offer, then you may be in a favorable position. Being a big fish in a small pond can be lucrative, although if you are going to be a small fish either way, the bigger cities are your best bet. I think LA is super over-saturated right now, but many of the mid-sized cities are doing okay. And it really depends on the kind of work you are doing. Wedding videographers are pretty much everywhere, but that’s because there is always a market for it.

I’m actually based in the Portland (NW) area right now, which is okay, but because I’m trying to focus on business/band promos, the prospect of long-term sustainable income is still a bit dubious.

In any case, best of luck to you.

[John Baldino]

I too use the Transcend 8gb/16gb class 6 cards with FCP 7. And so far, no problems at all. There is a problem in your configuration somewhere, although I think it is very unlikely that the cards would be at fault, but it does happen every once in a while. I would experiment with every variable to make sure the problem really is with the SD cards themselves. As the previous poster said, try using the camera with a usb connection to transfer, make sure there are no errors during playback on the camera (or during recording for that matter), etc.

[John Baldino]

Awesome. That’s it. That was so easy I should have been able to figure it out…but alas. The learning curve, as it were.

Thanks for the quick & helpful response guys. Much appreciated.

[John Baldino]

Alec how old is your Mac Pro? Does it not have a SATA interface for the optical drives?

[John Baldino]

I partially answered my own question. I went through compressor this time and then imported the m2v file and ac3 into dvdsp and i had no issues with quality this time.

After doing further research I found out that the original problem I had with encoding in DVDSP might have had something to do with not setting the correct field order (upper vs lower). I am reading on some threads that AVCHD uses upper whereas DVDSP defaults to lower? Anyone else know about this?

If this is true about the field order being responsible for why I was getting such a lousy transcode from DVDSP, I’m still a little curious about why compressor didn’t give me any issues…both settings for both encoders was set to “auto” for field dominance…in both DVDSP and compressor. My thinking at this point is that maybe compressor is better at analyzing the source file and correctly chose upper field whereas DVDSP did not?

oh the complexities…

[John Baldino]

Thanks for weighing in Tom…it is always nice to get the perspective of a seasoned audio pro 🙂

I ended up getting the AT 897 as a temp solution for on-camera or camera-mounted shotgun mic. Of course, this does not compare in anyway to the Sennheiser 416 but my budget being what it is currently, this was my only option. What I’m doing for now is renting out the rest of the gear that I need on a per-gig basis.

And while I’m at it, I would love to get your advice on an upcoming gig that I have…it is a simple camera set up, but it is mostly for audio. Unfortunately, the conditions are hardly ideal for it though. It is an indoor choir recording. Basically the camera will be setup in one spot and various choirs will be rotating in and out. The project is to create dvds to be sent out for each choir’s respective application as part of a competition. Anyway, the important bullet points (ie limitations) are this:

-Location is in a church sanctuary, but I don’t know the acoustics yet (will find this out on Friday)
-There will be no sound board or PA system to tap into.
-I will not be using a mixer
-I have to run single-system; ie I can only use 2 mics as I only have 2 XLR ports on the camera (I will be monitoring L & R channels discreetly through my headphones)

The other caveat is that I have to place the camera on the balcony and thus in theory somewhat at a distance from the choir. I may be able to run very long XLR cables down to the choir level and put two mics on stands on each side, but still a few questions arise at this point:

a) if I run 200+ ft of XLR cable per mic, am I going to lose signal quality/get interference? Or perhaps a better question, would it be tolerable?

b) If I can put the mics near the choir, what should I rent? Should I go with dynamic mics? I assume that if I have to put the mics on the balcony (worst case) then I will have to go with shotguns…so any recommendations on those would be good too. I know my AT 897 wont’ cut it, although I don’t know about getting a long hyper cardiod mic either, as I’ve heard they are bad to use indoors.

Any further thoughts are much appreciated…