Mark Maness
Forum Replies Created
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[Tim] “HDV has been kind of a stop gap for me the last couple of years…but I am now looking at the XDCams and the HDX900s.”
I’m sorry… but I’m going a little off-topic for Tim.
I agree with your concerns and I understand fully you wanting to go with the XDCAM HD or the HDX900. I jaut wanted to tell you that my company has been using the XDCAM HD since August and we used XDCAM for a year before that, so I (we) have lots of experience with the Sony XDCAM series of cameras.
Now, after saying all of this… What do you expect to shoot with these cameras? I ask this because each camera has its place. Both of these cameras are almost the same camera with the exception that the XDCAM HD doesn’t shot 720. But if you have a capture card like the AJA Kona 3, this isn’t an issue at all.
Here’s something else to consider… XDCAM HD shoots on a disc (digital info), at HQ 35 mb/s, you can get about 62 mintues of footage that doesn’t have to be cued up to record and the XDCAM HD has a cache record function that continually pre-records up to 12 seconds of video and audio. This is very helpful when shooting footage that cannot be recreated. The workflow in FCP using XDCAM HD is awesome and easy to use.
Now, the Panasonic HDX900 is an absolutely awesome camera. Its main purpose was to fill the gap between the lower-end P2 cameras and the high-end DVCProHD cameras (also, a competetor to the XDCAM HD system). My main drawback with this camera is that it writes to tape. It has all the issues that field shooters have been dealing with for many years. You have to rewind your tape to view a clip and then recue it to continue recording. The XDCAM HD camera allows you to bring up a thumbnail image of your clips and play those directly without cueing and if you need to record more, just press the record button and it creates a new clip – this is much faster to work with in the field. Other than the tape issue, if Panasonic made a camera based on the same principal as XDCAM HD (I mean a disc based system), I (we) would have went with the Panasonic route because Panasonic cameras do shoot an amazingly beautiful picture. The issue that I have with P2 is backup storage. This is no reliable form of long term storage available at this time. Blu-Ray (a Sony product) has come about but its still a little on the small side. Until Dual Layer Blu-Ray comes out, there is a storage issue in my eyes.
These are all just words of thought by me and these are my personal experiences. Please don’t take this as the Word of God. Ask others who use XDCAM HD and users of higher end DVCProHD cameras. There’s a lot of money at stake here and I’m will to help you with you decision.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com -
Always use the old standby with issues such as this…
Trash your preferences, and Zap the PRAM.
That will usually do the trick.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com -
Clone your drive and then install.
If anything is messed up, you can boot to your clone drive with all of the old versions still intact.
[demitkadet] “Will it delete the plugins or will it work straight from where you left of? Is it compatible will the 5.1 suite or will you have to purchase a new set of plugins?”
As for this… That will all depend on your plugins. Most of them will need to be upgraded, too.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com -
[Bob Cole] “The price differences between the 25 and 1500 today are much less than the old Betacam UVW-PVW-BVW differences, and if I knew that HDV was going to be nearly as significant as Beta, I’d opt for the 1500. But I’m thinking that HDV is going to be just a bridge format, and that’s why I’m trying to be as stingy as possible with the deck.”
All very true and valid points. But let me ask… How long has DV been around? How about DVCPro and DVCAM? HDV is more than likely a bridge format but so was DV and its still being used widely. So, my arguenment is you can’t base your decision entirely on how long this format is going to last. Its based on a proven format that has been used for the last 10 years. HDV will be around for many more years, I feel.
If I had my way with my company, I’d purcahse the HVR-1500 decks and replace my HVR-M10U decks but I don’t feel that’s going to happen anytime soon…
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com -
[paulos] “I have Graeme Nattress’s Film FX plugin set amongst others and have been very happy with the results. I was wondering what are the differences between the Nattress plugins and the Magic Bullet suite besides the price and the longer render times in MB.”
Its all a matter of preference… We have both and they have similar features with similar results but there are differences. Nattress filters do a much better job at deinterlacing and some of the filters are simplier to use. Magic Bullet seems to have more presets that I can just drag and drop.
[paulos] “Also would the results be better if the grade was done in AE as opposed to FCP? As i think it’s true to say that AE renders in 16 or 32 bit whereas FCP is contrained to 8bit.”
Well, that’s not entirely true. You can now grade within FCP by using Magic Bullet’s Colorista. According to some, it works very much like Final Touch and its price tag is pretty reasonable. Check it out and I’m sure you’ll be surprised.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com -
[walter biscardi] “What happens is a high end audio crackle, like sizzling bacon or crinkling cellophane, is added to the audio when mastering out to the Panasonic 1400 deck via Firewire. Via HD-SDI through the Kona 3 everything is fine.”
Don’t mean to throw you a curve ball…
But I recently had a program that the audio levels were recorded low and I used the rule of twos to bring it backup thru the Audio Compressor/Limiter filter. This audio was recorded outside in the cold so the camera guy stuck the lavs down inside of their clothing a little too far. I had to give it some serious high end EQ to get decent audio. As soon as I did this… I heard the high end crackle that you speak of, too.
We are using the Kona 3 to output HD-SDI to our PDW-70 deck and the programs are edited DVCProHD 1080i29.97. I have noticed this crackle for a little while but it has not been real annoying until this program.
Now, there’s always been an issue of the pops and crackles with the Kona 3. Of which, is getting really really annoying to me. I have this to happen at least 2 out of 5 times that I play the timeline and almost does this on output until I stop it and restart Print to Video. Maybe these issues are related.
Has anyone else seen these issues?
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com -
Walter is correct… we need more info.
The big issue seems to be what computer do you have? It sounds like that you may be using a G4 if your still running FCP HD. If so, the G4’s are quite up to spec for HD work and will have problems working with it, even DVCProHD has issues with the G4.
I had similar issues with my G4 (which is now a compressor station) on a DV project that was an hour and half long. I had to break it up into 10 minute segments to write to tape. I was using FCP HD 4.5 at the time.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com -
Bob, I think that Michael has hit the point.
You need to ask yourself what is really important here. The main differences between the decks are the same as the difference between the prosumer and broadcast quality Beta decks. The HVR-1500 has all the features needed for broadcast quality work, beefer components with better response times. It has HD-SDI out, downconversion to DVCAM, balanced audio (of which I don’t know why you need this if you have HD-SDI), and many more features that make the price of the machine worth it.
Here’s a fact, how BVW-70 decks are still in operation and being used in broadcast facilities? My last job had several that was almost twenty years old, that’s impressive. Now, on the other hand, we had a GV-1000 DV deck (prosumer) that died after only 1 year of work. We have 2 HVR-M10U decks that don’t get used all of the time but have alot of use. So far, they are still working and we do use the AJA HD10AVA converter boxes on them. I have had no issues with them but I don’t have to rely on them for everything because our main format is XDCAM HD, of which, we have the broadcast quality PDW-70 decks. That gives us piece of mind when the job requires it.
This is just food for thought…. Your option of purchasing the HVR-M25U may be just fine for your needs and if you don’t have a capture card, then the Blackmagic HDMI input may be right for you too.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com -
Let me ask you this, Jackknife…
Why are you saving them as Quicktime? If these are still frames, save them as still frames. You can use the deinterlace filter that FCP has and then grab your stills as PSD or PICT files. Saving them as Quicktime is only another step that is causing you grief.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com -
[Michael G] “In my experience Full Height (anamorphic) is always required for both domestic broadcast here in Australia and internationally. I have never delivered a 4:3 Letterbox and no longer deliver Standard 4:3. “
I wish it were that way here in the US. I’m not a fan of letterbox TV BUT we have no choice at the moment with the current standards of the FCC. Until the US catches up with the rest of the world, we’ll have to muddle through this issue for many years to come.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com