[Stephen May]

I really agree with Kevin – when your in DV NTSC you’re basically editing for interlaced CRT type television viewing. So if you can watch your sequence on a video monitor, even sending out firewire through a DSR-11 or some type of DV capture deck out to a monitor, that will be a better way to see what you work is looking like. Otherwise, absolutely make sure your canvas is set to 100%.

All very good advice Kevin.

-s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

short update: Friday, Tim and I had made a couple of folders just to test the system out, mentioned in the original post. After playing around with the uncompressed HD clips, Tim decided to turn off the top box (hard drives 1 through 8) to simulate a failure in the power supply. I thought it was a bit extreme, and I was thinking it would have been enough to pull a drive out (or two) but there it was; eight drives off-line during a big write.

We waited a minute or two and powered the top box back on and the system was already trying to rebuild the drives. We left the editing bay and let it go, and on Saturday I came in and the report showed that the entire RAID completely rebuilt and restored the files and finished the transfer in 7 hours. It was done at 1AM Saturday!

The other thing that’s kind of cool, (and kind of not) is that the system, which I’ve dubbed “BIG Fat Panda” named after Kung Fu Panda’s leading character, actually e-mailed Tim and me to say that I had turned it back on; so we get reports in the event of a failure when I’m compressing or rendering overnight. What’s not so cool is that Tim called to see why it took me until this afternoon to power up the RAID, “What have you been doing all day?” uh huh! (I was burning DVD’s on the Dual G4… true story.

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

I am certain you will be getting very helpful replies to your well written post, but for what it’s worth – here’s my thoughts:

You can shoot 1080 / 60i just like you’ve been doing, and even though your EX3 will be delivering 1920 horizontal res. whereas (I believe) your Z1U is 1440 horizontal res. – they marry well though in FCP 6. Another thing to consider is that there are advantages to be gained by sending your EX3 clips ingested from SxS media cards to compressor to upconvert to ProRes422 even though you will have lost the quality possible from recording straight from the SDI spigot directly to your AJA Kona card.

The advantages are that you will have less compressed clips which will increase the workload for your spinning drives, yet reduce the workload that your processors have to do, AND you will be in harmony with your entire library to date.

I am often exchanging video clips with a couple of videographers who shoot on the HVX200, so I sometimes drop their clips into my FCP6 XDCAM sequences, and things go well. I am usually working in a 1920 x 1080p30 sequence with my clips being native res., and their clips are a collection of DVCPRO ranging from 960 x 540 or 1280 x 720 and it ends up scaling up, but again – it all works out, and especially after compressing the final cut to SD in some cases. Recently, like this last Friday, I finally committed to a 16 terabyte external RAID made by DAT Optics in CA. They’re not very well known in the video arena, but they should be! They were very patient as we went through many hours of phone calls and research, and they are much less expensive than other more known options. I am now considering doing what you have outlines; upconverting all of my library to ProRes422. I have the space, even with the RAID 6 backup file structure, and the system is so fast, I can put more work over to the spinning disks and relieve my Dual Quad, plus it looks like color corrections and other filters are able to make higher quality adjustments, and my sequences can now be ProRes422, thus less compressed. The renders will be more intense, but they can wait until the end of the day.

Hopefully this is a little helpful in deciding which way you’re going to go with your new camera and your workflow. But it’s going to be good! Especially when there is finally a reliable inexpensive device that will record 422 directly out of the SDI spigot in the field. That’s what I’m waiting for. -s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

Don, Craig, thanks. -s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

since posting my question, I’ve been researching the subject. I think I’m getting it.

I’m writing to thank Don Greening for his contribution on December 23, 2007 in a reply to Randy which included this link:

https://www.tech-notes.tv/Archive/tech_notes_035.htm

-s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

Rajarshi,

First, I don’t know what 16:9 letterbox is, but if your documentary is for broadcast, it’s likely going to be NTSC, and not HD. Your best road out then is to cut in the native 4:3 NTSC sequence, and letter box those clips but the 16:9 Z1 clips will likely be HDV 1440×720 and they will need to be dropped in and in the motion tab (not Motion application) -under ‘distort’ you will need to move the aspect to get the proper aspect ratio; possibly to -20 or so, and fcp will likely adjust the ‘scale’ to to a small enough size as to fit the left and right edges of the clips inside your 740 pixel wide frame. The HDV will be unrendered.

You’ll do all of this because it is more forgiving in quality loss to take the higher resolution down than attempt to scale up the regular DV footage, especially because your going to broadcast.

-s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

this happened to me and although I do not remember having clicked the “don’t show me this agin” box before, I finally decided, “fine – whatever” type thing, and clicked the “don’t warn me again” box -and it stopped warning me and stopped stopping the sequence playback. There are several reasons that cause dropped frames, such as playback settings in the sequence, and your hardware in general. If you fell like your system is running as well as it can, and you’re not asking for a quality of playback that is too much for your system, then this may be your only hope to getting back to work.

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

Craig,

Thanks for the link! Great job, and also to Guy for his excellent research and outstanding presentation. I truly appreciate this type of fact based research that exists among the COW forums, and I believe this helps to reign in unfair pricing that can go on in any industry.

-Stephen

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

For that job I did in a ballroom recording the governor and senator, etc. they wanted I-mag as well, and at first I assumed the BNC was the spigot but I was in a hurry, and the I-mag was a little last minute, and I didn’t get it either (possibly it’s only SDI) – so I decided to go with the break-outs, and your choices are Composite (AV breakout on side below handle – yellow RCA) or you can go component, RGB breakout.

I had to assign in the menu, but it worked fine. You will need to decide about crop or letterbox since the SD monitor is 4:3.

-Stephen

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

David,

The majority of your shots will likely be composed in a way that you can see most of the glass blower, and some background of the shop – medium to wide, making the extreme brightness of the blower small enough to not be a concern, so if you light it up (your shot), increasing the brightness of the rest of the scene, you will reduce the difference or contrast of the torch. Add to that a circular polarizer, and even a single ND and you should be fine.

For your cut-away CU b-roll shots and any artistic XCU of the glass blowing, try a second ND, the circular polarizer, and if that doesn’t provide enough protection, try this: shoot for a moment through the glasses you mentioned in the first post that the glass blower uses. If it’s a shield, (helmet) all the better, and if not, just try to position the EX1 to shoot through one side of the glasses, and see what the difference is; what color is being added, if any. See if you can match that color with a full sheet of either a Rosco gel, or a Lee filter. They’re only about $4 each. Brand new, they are as clear as glass, and if you can position the gel flat and tight, along with the polarizer and ND you should be in a position to get very creative and artistic CU shoots for your b-roll.

I’ve tied two strings across a room so that I can clothes line clip the top and bottom of a gel in order to get a tight flat still sheet to shoot through. Saves from buying a large square frame, and works very well.

Let me know how it goes! -Stephen

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer