[Matthew Romanis]

A trick I have used in the past is to use two polarising filters, and rotate one against the other. It acts like an infinitely variable ND.
Most small scale welding though won’t effect the camera that much, just use the on board ND filters, and if you can, set the gain to the lowest negative setting. The worst thing to happen with using a CCD camera is that you may get a vertical smear line at the point of the weld.

[Matthew Romanis]

I am having exactly the same issue with the HPX 3000, however it is only when the camera is recording PRO 50 DV only.
HD 100 and AVC Intra 50/100 have always been clean. We have had the problem with both the duel adapter and the PDC 20 using FW 800/1394b. I can view the fault directly off the card as well as any files transferred to any hard drive. The Panasonic agents believe it has something to do with the SD encoder in the camera.

[Matthew Romanis]

Have the HVX 200/202 (I guess this is hat you are using) set to “Tape” and connect the firewire cable to the camera and computer. Some say both units should be powered down when you connect the firewire cable.
You need to use “Log and Capture” (not log and transfer). You can use “command 8” as a shortcut to get it, or go to the “File” tab in the directory bar at the top of the screen, click and scroll down to the 18th item “log and capture”. When the window appears, go to the “capture settings” tab on the right of the window. Device control should be set to the Firewire setting you are using (either PAL or NTSC). Set the capture/input tab to the flavour of DV you recorded. You can customise a setting in the “Audio/Video settings” pull down menu (Top left under “Final Cut Pro” 5th item down the list) and name it so it’s easy to come back to.

[Matthew Romanis]

On a recent job where we were shooting HPX 3000, HVX 202, Varicam, and HVX 171, I found that using the following scene file setup worked well in brightly lit outdoor’s.
Post production found that there was a good amount of latitude and chroma information to make a satisfactory match.

SCENE NAME :017
00005000: 1 ; OPERATION TYPE: FILM CAM
00005001: 0 ; FRAME RATE: DEFAULT
00005002: 4A026801 ; SYNCRO SCAN :
00005003: 8 ; DETAIL LEVEL: 0
00005004: 8 ; V DETAIL LEVEL: 0
00005005: 8 ; DETAIL CORING : 0
00005006: 13 ; CHROMA LEVEL: 3
00005007: 9 ; CHROMA PHASE: 2
00005008: 6 ; COLOR TEMP Ach: -2
00005009: 6 ; COLOR TEMP Bch: -2
0000500A: 124 ; MASTER PED: -4
0000500B: 15 ; A.IRIS LEVEL: -1
0000500C: 1 ; DRS : 1
0000500D: 5 ; GAMMA : CINELIKE D
0000500E: 0 ; KNEE: AUTO
0000500F: 3 ; MATRIX: CINE-LIKE
00005010: 0 ; SKIN TONE DTL : ON
00005011: 0 ; V DETAIL FREQ : THIN

You may wish to make your own call on the Chroma phase setting as this was for a PAL setup.

[Matthew Romanis]

Hi Nate,
Disregard my last post. I found some footage on line that shows what you have talked about.
I haven’t yet had to deal with that issue when I’ve used a CMOS chip camera.

[Matthew Romanis]

Hi Nate,
Are you able to post a link or load some footage with this artefact?
I have not seen this before, I’m in a 50hz zone and would like to know more about this one.
It may be something that is only occurring in 59.94hz.
I have seen a pulsing bars from fluorescent lights when run from a poorly cycling generator.

[Matthew Romanis]

Hi Roli,
Sorry for the late reply, been away.
this is the link <https://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10949>

[Matthew Romanis]

I use these if AC power is a problem <https://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10949>. These have proven tough and reliable, power off the FW bus on the Mac book Pro. In fact we have shipped dozens of these around the world to clients with no problems.
Otherwise we use a Caldigit dual enclosure with two 750 GB eSata drives on RAID 1. The drives are hot swappable and the thing has worked flawlessly for over a year now. I have just got a cheaper Taurus (1.5TB) alternative to see how it performs.
Matthew.

[Matthew Romanis]

Hi Roli,
Are you looking for a transport medium until you get back to your studio, or are you looking for permanent data storage of the original P2 files?

[Matthew Romanis]

When you say you “captured off a P2” using FCP, what codec did you capture? DVC PRO HD (many flavours), AVC intra 50/100, or a standard definition codec.
If the files remained in native mxf format, then there can be some issues with AE (CS3) using those files. If however you transcoded through the “Log and Transfer” window in FCP then there should be no issue as AE has all the QT codecs loaded from the box.
Check the files in the FCP browser window to see what they are.
Do you have QT4MXF (demo or full version) loaded? This can make identifying the native MXF files through FCP a bit tricky, so make sure you are identifying the right files to give to the AE artists.
Just another thought, is the AE artist using a MAC or PC?