[Russell Scott]

Perfect!

Thanks For Your Time Everyone!

The Cow Rocks!

[Russell Scott]

John Pale,

You are the man!!! I just tested it as well. This is exactly what I’m looking for!!

The Cow Rocks!!

[Russell Scott]

I’ve downloaded the DV Matte demo… and I cannot entirely get rid of the green edge around my talent even though the green screen shot was well lit & well shot.

I’m not finding any documentation on this plugin and I’m just sitting here tweaking the slidders around trying to get a clean key.

I’ve sampled the high & low areas of the green.

Thanks gentlemen…

[Russell Scott]

Capturing directly to an NLE really isn’t anything new nor should it be that outlandish of a concept to grasp… High end productions have been doing this for some time with the Thomson Grass Valley Viper camera… and doing it in part for some of the same reasons I have below.

Responding to some previous posts… yes obviously we had a dedicated person (whatever title you want to give them) too off load the cards and yes I know that you can view your shot scenes via the camera. Making smart-ass comments about laptops with cameras coming out of them and that P2 is a faster workflow than the last, so what more could someone possibly want, is an utterly weak way of thinking.

My comments as a whole on my straight to NLE workflow are… we are cranking away our shots / scenes so quickly that we are filling up the cards just as about as fast as we can off load them. (I know what your next response is… “buy more cards” well… that’s not always the answer) And going through the camera and trying to make sure that you do not have any inconsistencies with actors between several different camera positions and takes is a shot in the dark. To wait until post to find out that in your main actor’s best delivery his head is turned the wrong direction in the middle of his dialog keeping you from using your other camera positions & takes… sucks! This could easily be corrected on the spot if you are sucking these scenes in at real-time and roughing the different positions together inbetween takes as you shoot them. If you are off loading cards, and trying to rough the scenes together on set you are running 30 minutes behind the shoot. Thereby holding up the entire shoot if you want this real-time feedback before you can go do retakes to correct inconsistencies and move camera positions lighting etc for the next shot / position. This is a very tight little $100K independent film budget that can’t afford mistakes found later in post, longer than planned shoot days waiting for scenes to be offload and be roughed together or pickup days to fix problems.

So yes, even though you personally may have not had the call for it and can’t possibly imagine doing things any faster or any other way… there is a legitimate need for this type of real-time to NLE acquisition on set.

Unfortunately for the first time posting a question on Creative Cow no one has come forthright and directly answered my original question. Instead of saying “hey I don’t no we’ve never tried it, or yes / no to if it will work”, almost everyone has side stepped the question and made the assumption that off loading P2 cards has worked for their workflow so it must be the way to go for everyone else’s applications. Not always the case gentlemen but you may have a bright future in politics…

We are renting the camera so unfortunately until our next shoot day I will not be able to test and see if I can go directly to FCP, and then at a particular cable distance while recording effectively or not… Thereby ultimately answering my own question.

Another application where direct to NLE capture would be ideal… I have a large client that loves to change things on the spot and try different pitches / deliveries as we shoot in the studio. These are short spots in the $50K+ range and I know damn well if I could rough together cuts as we were shooting them and show instantly if we should continue down a particular treatment or not… they would go nuts. They left their mega million dollar add agency and came to me in the first place because I did things differently and gave them excellent quality results in a fraction of the time as everyone else. Also because I wasn’t afraid to take a step back look at everything and try a different approach.

So in short everyone thank you for your time, but don’t asume that your approach is the only answer for everyone’s application and don’t be afraid to tell someone “hey I don’t know I’ve never had the need so I’ve never tried it… if you do try it let us know how it turns out” There is nothing wrong with it.

Best regards,

Russell

[Russell Scott]

It basically is a studio shoot… We’re running the camera on a jib with Film Prime Lenses & the bulky lens adaptor. Even if we rent some extra cards then we still have to have also rent a card reader, transfer files around, etc. We want to streamline the process.

Another thing about running it straight out of the camera and capturing it is we have instant playback between several different shots & takes organized in FCP while we shoot. That we can make sure that we’re not having consistency issues with our actors between different takes & camera positions.

So back to one of my original questions… How far can I run a firewire cable out of this camera and get reliable results? 25ft? 50ft? more?

Thanks for your time.