[Micah Wolf]

Assuming you are doing this in After Effects, try adding an adjustment layer over top all of the layers. Once you have done that adjust the levels, contrast and brightness of the adjustment layer. Good Luck!

Micah

[Micah Wolf]

There is not much you will be able to do with the footage, if you have already tried adjusting the levels in post you pretty much don’t have any options. If this was my footage I would open up my waveform monitor and get my levels below 100 IRE and add some contrast. Because the highlights are so washed out the camera wasn’t able capture any detail. This is why I hate DSLR’s for video or at least as my primary camera. I don’t personally use a 7D but I have heard about people using Magic Lantern as a way to help monitor your DSLR footage and lets you know when you are peaking while shooting. The footage also looks better when zoomed in because your lens doesn’t have a fixed aperture, so when you zoom in less light enters through the iris. Look at purchasing a f2.8 lens.

Stage lighting is very tricky to work around. If you are doing more of this work in the future look at purchasing a used HVX or HMC-150. You will have zebra’s and the ability to monitor your footage so much better.

Good luck!

Micah

[Micah Wolf]

Hey John,

Check out the Canon XF100. Its a nice little camera that I think covers all of your requests, except for price. Its not much over the 2k mark coming in at $2500.00. It has a real nice picture (a little over saturated but that can be adjusted). I have used one in the past and its matched up pretty nicely against some more expensive camera’s Ive used.

Good luck.

[Micah Wolf]

No problem Steve.

I brought a Macbook. Nothing fancy but just something that would be able to act as a go between from my camera to my hard drive. When I edited my footage I used Adobe Premier which I like over FCP, just my preference. I like how Premier can use MXF files natively and I don’t have to convert to Quicktime files like with FCP. Its just a process that I finds works for me.

You shouldn’t have a problem bringing a Dell laptop. If all you are using it for is the USB or firewire port to transfer your footage you will be fine. What you will want to make sure you do is format your hard drive to work on both PC and Mac’s. I am not a hard drive format expert but if you would format it on your mac using Disk Utility and setting the Format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) both your PC and Mac will recognize the hard drive.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Micah

[Micah Wolf]

I traveled to Africa with a HVX and had to do the same thing.

There is no way to go straight from the camera to a Hard Drive but there is this

https://www.panasonic.com/business/provideo/AG-MSU10.asp

What I did was transfered through my laptop to my external hard drive. Its a lot safer and you can double check all the files transferred.

Lastly I have been getting faster transfer times from my HVX using the USB port opposed to the Firewire port.

Good Luck
Micah

[Micah Wolf]

Guy,

Thank you so much for your input. I think I will be ordering the camera later this evening. It was nice getting some reassurance from some one who uses this camera.

Micah

[Micah Wolf]

Check out camcorderrepair.com a friend of mine used them to fix his HVX. They did a good job at a fair price.