Matt Davis
Forum Replies Created
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Depends on what the client wants. Letterboxing the cameras on a 4:3 projection screen that has a fancy surround offends the creative sensibilities of a lot of my clients. OTOH, doing a 16:9 show ups the Production Value, but then it means putting a process in place to ensure everyone turns up with a 16:9 PowerPoint deck. It’s the cheaper shows and the built-in installations that still demand 4:3.
Director/Editor – MDMA Ltd: Write, Shoot, Edit, Publish – http://www.mdma.tv
EX1 x2, T2i –> FCS3 (FCP, Motion, Colorista, Episode et al) -
Shooting SD is simple, with no Log & Transfer process required. One can just copy the AVI files off the card, dump them on the FCP timeline and edit (been there done that).
Yes, recording HD for later whilst feeding a vision mixer with SD is fine, but then you have framing to look out for. What looks natural at 4:3 (headroom) can look a bit too airy at 16:9. Scaled down HD will look nicer, but takes longer to encode. I’ve stuck to 1280×720 on conference records.
You can also record from FireWIre straight into FCP if you need really really fast editing. Treat EX1R in SD mode as non-controllable FW device, hit Capture Now and away you go. Build an Exclusion Zone round your Camera/Mac setup, cables too easy to dislodge.
Do look into SD-SDI instead of composite. Or even RGB. Composite has all the sharpness and clarity of a damp teabag when compared to SDI and RGB.
@ Craig – this is for conference projection, 4:3 is still mandated because so much PowerPoint is 4:3 still. Putting 16:9 Standard Definition (anamorphic pixels) and 4:3 data together leads to loads of ‘issues’ that are deemed unacceptable (budget for extra kit, letterboxed video, etc).
A colleague and I are looking into HD-SDI vision mixers fed with 4x EX and a couple of Macs on DVI as a portable vision mixing rig feeding an XDCAM or KiPro deck, but it’s still a very rare beastie and not sure if our market is ready for it.
Director/Editor – MDMA Ltd: Write, Shoot, Edit, Publish – http://www.mdma.tv
EX1 x2, T2i –> FCS3 (FCP, Motion, Colorista, Episode et al) -
The Zoom H4n doesn’t do Line Input out of the box. You’ll need to purchase a -20dB or -30dB pad – mine are just XLR barrels.