[Lars Wikstrom]

Thanks, so you did order from them? I don’t trust eBay since many friends have been screwed but it sounds like you had a good experience.

-Lars

[Lars Wikstrom]

The tapes that I use are Exabyte x23 tapes. They come in x23,x10 and x6. For P2 footage means 160 gig,86 gig and 40 gig. I have no idea why it is 86 and not 80 gig.

You should be able to find the x23 tapes for $55-$65. That might sound like a lot for 160 gigs of back up but if think about how long it would take you back up 160 gigs to 4.2 gig dvd-r the answer is clear. Also if you fill up a 16 gig P2 card good luck fitting that on a disc.

If your hard drives are filling up with P2 footage this is a great answer for P2 storage.

-Lars

[Lars Wikstrom]

I got mine right around Christmas and I love it. I found it under $1k from these guys

https://www.nextwarehouse.com/item/?568696

They were in stock and I got it a couple of days later. One thing about video archiving is you can not use the compression feature since video is already compressed. So if you buy a tape that is 160/320 you will get 154 from it.

The great thing is it comes with Retrospect and after you back up all your footage you can restore anywhere from 1 file to the whole tape. You do not need to restore the entire tape to get a file or 2 off of it.

I first was using a USB 2 drive as my P2 dumping ground. When I reached the 154 gigs I would write a tape. USB 2 is slower them firewire or SATA. I was getting around 450 megs per minute. I created an internal 154 meg partition and now I see write speeds of 700 megs per minute.

So to write and verify a 160 gig tape will take you 8 to 10 hours, but you do it when you go to bed and it is done when you get up.

Each tape is designed to be played back 500 times and you can freeze the tapes, leave them in a cup of hot coffee and they will be fine.

So I love it! I am no longer one of those poor suckers spending endless hours burning 4.2 gig DVD-R waiting for Blue ray thinking that is the future. VXA-320 is a no brainier for P2 archiving.

-Lars

[Lars Wikstrom]

Great thanks,

-Lars

[Lars Wikstrom]

I see, I will try it tonight when I get some time.

Thanks,

-Lars

[Lars Wikstrom]

Sorry Adam, I know I am a little vague on my description, that is why I added the link to the dust storms so show what I was looking for. I was not thinking of using thinking-particles. I thought I could just pull it off with the Advanced render and Pyroclusters. I don;t know how the Mograph module would help to create a dust storm in the desert?

Maybe I am approaching this the wrong way.

Thanks,

-Lars

[Lars Wikstrom]

I thought I remember reading something by Berry that the 1080 was less compressed the 720.

Next Month I will be shooting my western short which will be shot in the 1080 24pa and 720 24PN, but final product will be in 720.

I like to shoot a step above for some projects. We have a shoot with a guy ridding a horse while we are shooting from a truck. By shooting that in 1080 I have a a lot of extra room to use the program SmoothCam to take out all the extra bumps. I just have to frame it with extra room on the edges.

I did a test last month between the 2 formats and saw no major difference with the 2 formats. I thought there might be a problem with the interlace 1080 24pa so I shoot lots of small wires and things that might have had some interlacing problems and it looked great.

-Lars

[Lars Wikstrom]

I guess you are right. The I/O has Pro Res for hardware encode but I guess since Apple software decompresses it then it would play through the I/O box in real time?

I guess I am leaning towards the I/O. The V3HD would fit so nicely in my rack I have set up and sounds like it is around $700 cheaper. But I do Color Correct in 10 bit.

Does anyone know of any Pro Res decks coming out? I know there are DVCpro 100 decks out there, I wonder if they will ever make ProRes decks?

-Lars

[Lars Wikstrom]

Thanks for the reply. Edge focus has not been a problem for me but I totally hear you about bringing in a truck load of lights and still need to bump the gain to 6db. I had to do this on my last shoot. My big problem with the 24mm is the brighter center and the vignette that it causes. Looking at your second shoot I can see almost the same results that I get in the skyline.

I wonder how they get the .5 loss vs the almost 2.0 light loss on the M2. I have heard from someone else that they tried on the Letus and it was brighter then the M2, a major plus for switching.

Is there any noise or vibration felt / heard from the Letus? I am so curious to test it out before I buy one.

If you can get a hold of the M2 and do a head to head with same lighting, lenses and post the 2 that would be great. I know a lot of people are wondering.

-Lars

[Lars Wikstrom]

Thanks for posting this. I use the M2 by RedRock to get the same type of DOF. Do you have any experience using the M2 to compare the 2?

You have the same lenses I do and that answered one of my questions with your 24mm. On my M2 using the 24mm I have a slight vin-yet (How ever it is spelled) where I have a slightly brighter center and darker edges. I can see the same results as I get in your fist 2 opening shots with your 24mm in the skyline.

The other would be if the Letus Extreme is over all bright then the M2?

Your shots look great by the way, good job. Clean and Sharp

Thanks,

-Lars