Ralph Keyser
Forum Replies Created
-
You can also use something like Ambient Lockit boxes. They drift less than one frame per 24 hours, so you can jam sync the Lockit boxes, connect them to TC-in on the camera, and let them keep the cameras in-sync. We’ve used them often on multi-camera shoots with the F900 with great success.
Ralph
-
Before you give up on replacing the tubes, you might look into just renting them. Our local grip/electric place charges $5 a day and will give you a break on large orders. We did a similar shoot and rented about a dozen daylight tubes which we placed in the area that needed to be lit and left the rest of the overheads off. It was time consuming to mess with the overhead lights, but our whole lighting package was $50 for the day.
-
On the flip side, the Lowell stuff is lighter weight and smaller than just about anything else out there. You pay for that in a lack of robustness, but if it’s a small crew type of shoot, I’d consider that a good trade.
As for the Rifa, I’d go for the larger one. Between changing lamps and moving the source, you can get a larger one to behave like a smaller one, but the reverse is not true.
Ralph
-
Firewire is actually 400Mbs, and the newest version (1394b) is 800Mbs, so it is more than fast enough. There is Firewire support for formats up to 100Mbs (DVCPRO-HD). All of the tests that I have seen show no difference between Firewire and SDI transfers. They are both digital after all. Having said that, SDI is much more of an industry standard, so it may be easier to build a workflow with SDI. Many of the new decks are incorporating Firewire, however, so it’s entirely possible to use Firewire.
This is unfortunately, a time of great transistion in the broadcast arena. There are LOTS of formats out there, and manufacturers keep dumping more on us every year (check NAB again this year). I would check with your clients to see if you can find a format that they prefer. In the small market that I work in, the local stations still prefer Beta SP while they try to find the “next great thing”.
Ralph
-
Jeremy,
I think we would have made the same choice that you did between the SPX800 and SDX900 at this very moment in time. You’ve summed up the pros and cons well. The cameras are the same, of course, so it really is an issue of fitting it into your workflow.
I do have a question for you. I was surprised at the concern about loss of timecode in a digital transcode of DV50 to something like uncompressed. How would you go about doing the conversion?
BTW, I would second the comment about lens selection for either of these cameras. It really matters, and I’d expect to spend more on the lens than the body.
Ralph
-
It seems like a mistake for Adobe to wait. Sony, Ikegami, and Panasonic seem to be homing in on MXF for their tapeless acquisition systems, and Sony already has an MXF-XML dictionary out. Avid and Final Cut already support MXF, yet I haven’t seen any hint of MXF support in Adobe’s latest release. If Adobe wants to play as a “serious” NLE, I don’t see how they not support this format.
Ralph
-
Well, personally, I’ve had very good sucess with Matrox’s Parhelia as a solution for general purpose editing/compositing/motion graphics with a bonus of a true NTSC out without needing a separate card for that purpose. Matrox’s plug-in set works great with the Adobe products and Newtek’s Lightwave (which I use extensively). I will grant you that there are probably better OpenGL cards out there, but I also don’t think you need a dual-card SLI setup for editing.
Ralph Keyser
Albuquerque, NM -
And you might try the trick that’s been in use for years, and that is to white balance through a color correction gel (CTB/CTO). It usually only takes a 1/8 or 1/4 since you don’t want to overdo it. This is becoming less useful as cameras start giving you more control over how they handle the image.
-
For a compact travel kit, I like ’em. They do take a few minutes to setup, so they aren’t as fast as traditional flags and scrims, but they work just like the real deal. They pack up much more compactly than a traditional set. I like the larger Road Rags II set, but it all depends on what you are shooting.
Ralph Keyser
Albuquerque, NM -
I’ll second that suggestion. I’ve had problems before playing tapes from an XL-1 on a Sony DSR-11. The solution was a firewire-firewire dub onto the DSR-11. Worked like a charm.
Ralph Keyser
Albuquerque