[Matt Townley]

I shoot with an AF100 on a regular basis and almost always record on my SD Pix240. I record in DNxHD 422, but it can of course do ProRes or DNxDH. With very few exceptions, the picture quality is noticeably better than the native AVCHD codec. It looks better and holds up better in post.

I run audio from the mixer into the AF100 and then run SDI out of the camera into the Pix. I set the Pix to get timecome from the camera and start and stop with the trigger from the camera. This way I can roll the camera and the Pix and have identical files with matched start/tops and timecode. The Pix is my primary source and the camera is my backup. Works great.

[Matt Townley]

I’ve used them on 2 shoots so far and am very pleased. The build quality is actually better than I expected.

Color rendition seems to be good. Wouldn’t be surprised if the 85 rating they quote is conservative. I haven’t actually measured it but just going off of “how’s it look to the eye through a properly white balanced camera” – the color looks great.

As others have said, the diffusers that come with them are pretty bad. If you account for the pain to attach them, then I would even say REALLY bad. Why couldn’t they make them a slide-in sort of thing instead of requiring 4 bolts? Or heck, even magnets like some of my small on-camera LED lights. I pump 1 or 2 of them through a 4×4 silk for my key and have great results. That leaves 1 for a hair light or bg light depending on the shoot. I got a double header to attach 2 of them to one stand when I use 2 for a key and it works great.

The biggest thing that has surprised me is how bright these get.

Overall, very pleased.

[Matt Townley]

I haven’t used them and don’t know much about them, but I just read a short article about the ATEM Converters from Blackmagic Design. You can run HDSDI/Return/com over optical fiber, which can go very long distances. Since you can convert it back down to standard signals on the receiving end you can use whatever production switching gear you are used to using.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/atemconverters

Might be worth a look.

[Matt Townley]

Hi Rick,

Thanks for the thoughts. I decided to pickup a 3pc set of the F&V K4000 daylight floods to try. For the price it was just too hard to pass up. I’ve read from others that they have measured a CRI quite a bit higher than 85 from them, so maybe that number is conservative.

I haven’t had a chance to shoot anything yet, but so far I’m pleasantly surprised by the build quality. Seems strong and durable and the case for the set is nice. The diffusion panels leave a LOT to be desired, but I knew that was a common complaint going into it. I’m curious to see if I can find a way to rig a cloth-like diffusion similar to a KinoFlo diva.

Once I have a chance to use them on a few shoots I’ll post some more thoughts.

[Matt Townley]

You could get a DVD-R recorder and record directly to DVD. Feed your camera or switcher into that and treat it just like any other VTR or recording deck, except it records straight to DVD, including encoding on the fly. I do this all the time for corporate clients that need to leave the room with a window-dub of whatever we shot. I would never trust it to be the only source rolling, but it works great. It takes a few minutes to finalize the disc after you stop recording, but this will probably be much quicker than any process of encoding and then burning on a computer.

[Matt Townley]

I have a Pix240 and shoot with an AF100 somewhat frequently, using the two together almost exactly as you have described.

• Over SDI, yes, the timecode can sync up from the camera to the Pix and match.
• Yes, the camera can trigger the Pix to start/stop recording. The Pix has a menu setting for this and has an option for the AF100 that makes it work seamlessly.
• File naming system is good, but not perfect. Overall much better than the AF100. You can customize several settings prior to a shoot and then have it auto-advance certain parameters. You can even plug in an external USB keyboard for typing which is handy on cart based or studio setups for fast entry.

I really like this setup using the Pix as my “primary” record device and having the AVCHD files on SD card as a backup with matching timecode. The Pix also makes a pretty good on-camera monitor with focus assist and really big (read: easy to see) audio metering. It’s a bit heavier and bulky compared to a TV Logic or Small HD monitor, but works well if you don’t had a vid tech.

I’ve never used a Samurai and only used a Hyperdeck once or twice, so I can’t really speak to them much other than to say the Hyperdeck works well for what you pay. That to say it doesn’t have full size SDI inputs, has few I/O options, has limited settings and can’t be configured on the fly easily. But it’s also a LOT cheaper than some of these options and still records a great picture.

Just my 2c.

[Matt Townley]

Hi Chris,

I’ve handled a few jobs like this in the past. We have several Rimage Producer 7100s that we use mainly for duplication, but they can be run “backwards” to bulk read/copy data from DVDs as well. We have loaded as many as 600 DVDs at a time and walked away for a few days and it does the rest. It’s expensive hardware to buy if you were just buying it for this task, but it’s pretty handy to have.

Other than something very specific like that, I’m not sure of any better way to do it, but using a dedicated copy utility other than dragging-and-dropping in finder would help so that the entire process doesn’t abort due to a single error.

[Matt Townley]

Just emailed you off forum.

[Matt Townley]

That was the plan that I started out with, but the two A/B switches that I tested both dropped the signal completely when you went from A to B. This caused the displays we were using to think the signal was gone and go back to the input display list and show the Sony splash screen before detecting the new signal and going back to it. This process took almost 10 seconds, which didn’t work for our purposes. If there was an A/B switch that made a seamless transition without any drop in signal it would have worked fine. I am sure this is such a thing, but I didn’t have time to locate and test one.

[Matt Townley]

Thanks, Ronald (and everyone else).

I looked at BrightSign, ProPresenter and SCALA. ProPresenter ended up doing everything we needed and even some things we didn’t know that we wanted to do. 🙂 I’m looking forward to playing with it a bit more to find out how we can use more of it’s features. Looks like a very powerful program.

The idea of using web-based tools and just writing a little site to load off of a local network would actually be a really good solution, too. I’ll have to play with that when I have some spare time.

Thanks!