Michael Palmer
Forum Replies Created
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The EX came with a component port and proprietary breakout cable. It is on the left side with a black plastic cover. You just need RCA female to female barrels and extra component cable.
Good Luck
Michael Palmer -
Ian,
Here are some quotes from some extremely talented people with extensive green screen experience.
Mark Suszko
“Super-saturating the screen using filter gel lights seems like overkill. The particular shade of green doesn’t even matter all that much, though too much yellow gets you closer to skin tones and that’s bad, but Beyond a certain amount, saturation is no longer the issue; flat, even level across the screen is, and as long as you have a strong contrast, you don’t need it to glow like green neon to key well. ”Bill Davis,
“You’re spending too much time THINKING about green screen and too little time actually doing it.The geometry of good key shots is relentless. Distance from camera to subject is critical to allow you to get as much of head to toe shot as you need. And further distance from the talent to the screen is important to avoid spill. ”
Ian if you only have a 14×12 room with 9′ ceiling you may not want to use super green tubes as this is mainly used on very large studio stages for CGI block buster feature films where there is sufficient room to work with. The biggest problem you are facing is not having enough room to work. If you plan on adding green gel or using green tubes you will need to control these units so that none of the raw light hits your subject. If you don’t have any lighting experience you most likely will over light the green and this mass amount of green bounce will fall onto your subject and you will have major issues in post pulling a key.
In a room this small my advice is to use the same color temperature units on the green screen and on your subject. My suggestion with the Philips T-8 tubes would be cost effective and you can get plenty of light from 2-4′ 2 tube units for the green screen and you can select either 3000k or 5000k to match up with you Key (main subject) light. You may even want to use them as your Key and Back light and keep everything the same. You may also want to paint the ceiling and side walls Black and consult with a good Key Grip to help you order some grip gear so you can set some Floopy Siders and top Teezer to control the green screen bounce.
The best way to learn lighting is to turn every light OFF on the set and turn each unit on individually to see just where the light falls, this will train your eye to see where light needs to be added or eliminated.
Ian you have been given great advise here, and I couldn’t agree more with Bill Davis’s quote, “”You’re spending too much time THINKING about green screen and too little time actually doing it. “.
Ian Please keep responses positive or I will moderate (delete) your post.
Good Luck
Michael Palmer -
You will find these files aren’t that much bigger than HDV files, however you will want to keep the original BPAV folders and back them up on 2 separate drives or burn to Blue Ray.
Sorry I’m out of time today, got to go.
Good Luck
Michael Palmer -
You risk the loss of all data with raid Zero. I would change this to Raid 5 with these large drives, or just separated all of them as single drives. You will have plenty of speed with internal esata for multiple streams of EX video from single partition drives. . If you want more internal drives go to https://www.maxupgrades.com and they have a fantastic hardware kit it instal 2 or 4 more drives using the optical space area.
Good Luck
Michael Palmer -
Do they know without lighting their video will be compromised? Can they hold the ceremony just out side this area? What about a china ball or two to open this area up with light? Or perhaps you can bounce some light into the ceiling.
If non of these options are possible then you’re going to have to expose for faces and just let the BG blow out.
Good Luck
Michael Palmer -
This quote I made was in response to your post where it seemed you where looking for an affordable lighting solution and you found some lighting that fit your budget for illuminating a green screen.
IMO There are only 2 reasons to build your own light figtures,
1. you want something that isn’t offered.
2. you have a limited budget and you can build it for less than the retail price that meets your needs.I built my Florescent units because at the time Kino Flo units weren’t as color constant from unit to unit and you couldn’t purchase the dimmable models, these units were only rented and again they didn’t really work to well.
I found that the Philips TL9(hundred) T-8’s were a pleasing architectural Florescent tube series that offered a nice warm 3000K to work with tungsten lights and a slightly warmer daylight (5000K) solution for working with HMI’s, and you could dim them down to about 20% output with a major color shift.
If you are looking for a dedicated lighting fixtures to only light a green screen you have many options and T-12 / T-8 Florescent light is a solid solution for this purpose, and it really doesn’t matter what color temperature they are as long as they are all the same brand/model/series, however you will need to contain .
In 1983 I was working on promos for the leading news station in Sacramento (KCRA) with a small production company. I was asked to purchase some florescent lights that we could attach to our C-stands to use in the offices so our lights matched the color of the fixtures in the ceiling and it work very well. However it was limited to just the offices that had these fixtures in the ceiling. My point is you can get the light you need but it may be limited to just this task.
It wouldn’t pay to build the type of units I made but you could build some units specifically for your studio using florescent light and if you used the Philips T-8 tubes using the designed Advance Mark-5 electronic ballasts they would work very well with tungsten or HMI lighting.
I hope this answered your question.
Good Luck
Michael Palmer -
Don
What Craig and I have found was the name brand cards only need about 4-6 seconds to finished recording and the cheaper cards take up to 10 seconds or don’t work at all. This lag time is an indicator on weather the card is really fast enough IMO.
In any event this is one area where that seems to be overlooked and/or unknown to the user of the MxR/SDHC.
Oh and Don please email me your schedule for the film you are working on and I’ll do my best to get you a Flash XDR or Nano to work with.
Michael
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“These forums never cease to amaze me. People are doing their life’s work, yet they pinch pennies here and there. What is the cheapest mic? What is the cheapest card? What is the cheapest camera? For the life of me, I cannot understand all of this penny pinching when it comes to one’s vocation & career. ”
This forum has a wealth of knowledgeable and talented people helping others every day.
When the MxR/SDHC alternative solution became available my first thought was why wouldn’t it work, and it didn’t cost much to try a few so I did, and with hours of testing I found that human error was a lot easier to make. I bet it would be a good practice to wait 20 seconds after the recording for the green light to come on then power down the camera before removing the adapter/SDHC card similar to the RED for reloads.
The SxS card uses the Express bus technology and Sony opened the door to USB recording technology when they released an external hard drive accessory and that was when curious people began this process. The EX camera records to the SxS cards much faster than the SDHC cards and what many people still don’t realize is that the camera is still recording to these SDHC cards for up to 10 seconds after they have pushed the stop button and if they pull the card out to soon it will destroy all the data on the card. No thinking required with SxS cards, much higher percentage of human error possible with SDHC cards, the tally light goes off and the slot record light is still Red for up to 10 seconds.
I’m sure this isn’t everyones issue but people don’t search back to find answers and information like they should, most people jump right on and ask the same questions over and over again.
I rely on my own testing and from the other leaders here to find solutions from first hand experiences. I think many people try things because of products like the EX1 CAMERA that delivers an unbelievable HD broadcast quality image for such an affordable price. I think many believe the market is being fouled and misguided.
My point is yes “what is the cheapest product” that equals the so called standard. The standard changed because it is easier to sell $8000 cameras with $800 SxS cards than $40,000 cameras (without a lens,). But this makes people curious again because this same Sony mpeg-2 encoder is now licensed to JVC and used inside their new cameras and they don’t require these expensive SxS cards to record the same mpeg-2 35Mbps file type, they are designed with SDHC cards and record the same file that has a slightly different file wrapper because Sony would never pay to license the use of Quicktime from Apple.I agree about penny pinching on what SDHC card to purchase now that I know from my own experience to only trust the major brands. In fact if I needed anymore cards I would only buy Transcend at this point.
The message from this board has always been it is possible to use the MxR/SDHC alternative but read up and know what you are getting into and TEST TEST TEST to feel comfortable.
Good Luck
Michael Palmer -
I’ll be interested to see how you like these little compact flos and how good they really work. I love how B&H prints “dimmable with switches”
I wouldn’t call this reflector a parabolic reflector, its more like an intensifier found as an accessory with some brands of HMI’s, and its hardly reflective. I honestly think you won’t get a nice even source from 5-60watt compact florescent bulbs.
I too like T-12 and T-8 tubes if I want a florescent light.
You may be better off with a few T-8 shop light fixtures from a good electrical supplier and find some Advance Mark-5 T-8 ballast (Dimmable) and some Philips TL950 or TL930 T-8 tubes to install into these cheap fixture. The 9 stands for 90 plus CRI and the 50 and 30 refer to 5000K and 3000K. I built my T-8 system more than 10 years ago and all of them are still working. I used Kino housings and made remote ballast cases and built my own head feeders using the Amp connectors just like Kino Flo. The reason I made them is I hated renting Kinos because at that time they weren’t like they are today and didn’t burn as color constant as the Philips/Advance system.
If you go the DIY route you should still try and contain the back grounnd light from ever spilling onto your subject.
https://www.truesun.com/philips_TL950.php
https://www.bulbs.com/eSpec.aspx?ID=9738&Ref=Base&RefId=21
https://www.advancetransformer.com/products/fluorescent-electronic.jsp?pbid=3Good Luck
Michael Palmer -
“I am wondering with my xdcam ex1 can be used as a deck ”
Yes you can play the clips from the card via SDI into the MXO2 and capture as Pro RezGood Luck
Michael Palmer