[Shane Rielly]

Thanks Dave and Chris,

All valuable info. Some of which I’ll still have to read over a few more times to really understand… I will try some renders today and see what I get. I’m sure I’ll at least learn something.

Shane

The farsighted see better things!

[Shane Rielly]

Thanks so much Ben,

The project is a long one – 90mins, and I wouldn’t ordinarily render that using AE, but the effect I want to achieve isn’t really possible with Premiere unfortunately.
It’s just confusing to me that if I render the 20GB (which was captured from DV, edited in Premiere and rendered out as an uncompressed AVI) together with the 2GB .MOV titles with alpha in Premiere, as an uncompressed file I get a 20GB file, but if I do the exact same thing with AE I get a 160GB file. I rendered to Quicktime in AE and Premiere with the DV-PAL setting at best quality. I don’t really know what AE does to increase the file size nearly 10 times.
I know they are two different tools for different functions, but that seems pretty extreme. I guess I’m so shocked because I’ve never tried rendering such a long project in AE.
Anyway, I will try rendering out a compressed file. I just thought that would reduce the footage quality, which I wanted to avoid. Any tips on the best route to go to minimize loss of quality?
I’ll be authoring to DVD using Encore CS3.

Thanks again
Shane

The farsighted see better things!

[Shane Rielly]

Sorry, I figured out what I was doing wrong!

I didn’t have the animation Codec setting at “millions of colors +” but instead at “millions of colors” when I rendered in Blender!!

Shane

The farsighted see better things!

[Shane Rielly]

Hi,

I have worked with both the FX1 and XHA1. I used the FX1 for about a year before buying the XHA1 which I now use.
I also do weddings and events, but also film surfing, skateboarding and other outdoor stuff.
I think the FX may just outdo theCanon in low-light (in my opinion), but it’s very tight. I found with both that there is just no substitute for light, so I use lighting, and with that it means low-light is no longer a battle. I find the picture quality on the Canon to be great.

The lack of XLR inputs on the Sony was a big deal for me, but you mentioned using the beachtek inputs – I haven’t used them, so I can’t comment there, but having the XLR’s is a huge step up. When I bought, the Canon was cheaper than the FX and had the XLR inputs, which was a definite attraction for me.

The Canon also has a 20x optical zoom as apposed to the Sony’s 10x, which for me was also a big deal as I film surfing.
One thing I love about the Canon is the ability to create and use custom presets for colour etc. There are some great ones for download at dvInfo.net. (I have also set up some low-light ones that help a little in low light without having to use much gain.) These mean I can change the colour settings etc for each different situation by just running through the presets using a button on the camera body.
That brings me to the next thing I prefer – there are more controls on the camera body of the Canon so I don’t have to go into the menu all the time.

I’d say the XHA1 is the way to go from my experience. I way prefer using it as apposed the the FX I had before.

I know this wasn’t an extremely technical response, so I hope it helps in some way!

Shane

The farsighted see better things!

[Shane Rielly]

Hey Matthew,

Like Don said, I’m pretty sure you had your grain cranked too much to get more light on your image. A trick you can use to see if your image is really grainy using the LCD is to push the ‘peaking’ button, which is just below the ‘display’ button. It’s used to check your focus, but will give you a pretty good idea of how grainy your image is. I’m sure you know this, but also make sure you shutter speed is at 1/50 and your iris is at f/1.6 at your widest zoom.
The medium gain setting on the on camera toggle is 6db, but you can get to 3db if you go into the menu if you need to.