Timothy Duncan
Forum Replies Created
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No examples that I have placed for the public. For the key testing, I captured 10bit uncompressed HD-SDI from a Panny studio deck and from the F70 XDCAM HD deck.
I also did a capture HD-SDI uncompressed right off the XDCAM camera (never going to MPEG2) and compared that to the same shot recorded to MPEG2 and then captured HD-SDI uncompressed.
For key testing, I used Primatte and Keylight as well as Boris Continuum. And I also used Matrox Axio (which produced the cleanest key of all with a bonus of being real-time). The key from MPEG2 was just as clean to our naked eyes as the pure uncompressed original. I had more trouble keying the Varicam footage.The biggest drawback for us of the XDCAM is that it cannot do 720P. It is 1080 only for HD. (24P, 25P, 30P and 50i, 60i). But we have found that 1080P footage downconverts nicely to 720P. And — with the money you save on Varicam or F900, you can buy hardware downconverters that do a good job at 1080i to 720P. 🙂 We do the downconvert in software for now. I looked at several converters at NAB in the event we get a client that needs a lot of 720P.
td
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Yes to you question regarding XDCAM Standard Defintion. You setup your XDCAM disc in FAM (File Access Mode) and connect it to your PC via ethernet or 1394 and you then transfer the MXF files to your hard drive. After they are on your hard drive, it’s drag and drop into Vegas. Say goodbye to capture.
td
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Steve,
Having been in a few cycle accidents in my past — my heart goes out to you. But nothing I was in compares to your injuries. I can hardly believe you are typing on the computer!
Hope you have a speedy recovery.
I’ll be posting one of the music videos we shot next week and hopefully will have time to follow up with some info. I will probably write an article about our first experiences in real production with this camera for the Creative Cow magazine.
td
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We absolutely love it. We will never rent the F900 or the Varicam again. For acquisition, it is in our opinion, cleaner then the F900 especially in the black levels. You can run with gain up to 12 and still have super clean video. If you want the graininess, you’ll have to add it in post.
And — chroma key is definitely cleaner than what we’ve shot on Varicam. We don’t have any chroma key footage to compare with the F900, but comparing very similarly shot footage between the F900 and F350 — you’ll pick the F350.
I’d have never dreamed this camera would look so good and there is NO visible artifacting in the HQ mode. You definitely want to use this for acquisition and not to bounce to and from HD SDI uncompressed many times. The F900R shares the features of slow shutter accumulation which is such a nice thing to have. And — we have used the interval record mode, too. We just shot a music video this week and shot several lip sync scenes at 60fps and 48fps. Our DP and LD are totally sold on it now.The cons right now are software support. Most support is in beta and not yet released, so for HD work, you have to treat it like video tape for digitizing via RS-422. But — release is imminent. Apples says June for FCP support, and there were PC alternatives being shown at NAB too.
td
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I think it is cleaner in DVDA. It takes longer, but is doing a better job at the variable encode according to my testing. You can definitely see the difference when you encode at lower data rates when trying to fill up a DVD.
td
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Yes — you will have scene detection capturing in any DV capture program from XDCAM. If you are doing DV recording with the XDCAM, then you can use MXF files directly in Vegas 6.0d. No need to capture, just mount the XDCAM in FAM mode and copy the MXF files to your hard drive. XDCAM HD is not supported in Vegas 6, but it can also be downconverted to DV and captured via 1394.
We’ve had our XDCAM HD camera and deck now for almost a month.
td
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Yes — you will have scene detection capturing in any DV capture program from XDCAM. If you are doing DV recording with the XDCAM, then you can use MXF files directly in Vegas 6.0d. No need to capture, just mount the XDCAM in FAM mode and copy the MXF files to your hard drive. XDCAM HD is not supported in Vegas 6, but it can also be downconverted to DV and captured via 1394.
td
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We have already taken delivery on our XDCAM HD F350 and the F70 deck. We had the opportunity 6 weeks back to get our hands on a prototype of the camera and deck to test in order to make the decision to purchase.
The Deck can output via HD-SDI 60i or 23.98 of footage shot at 23.98. If you drop two channels of audio, you can also get a bit more video recorded per disc. (Normal recording is 4 channels of 48K audio).
We have shot quite a bit with the F900 and also the Varicam, and I have to say that ALL our HD shooting will be done with the F350 from now on. It is just so clean, espeically in the blacks, and the setup menus are just like the F900.
td
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Steve,
I don’t think I’d even use Vegas for this. Use a mixer and record live to a DVD recorder and use that to play back. Vegas is not good at playing back live from the timeline without hiccups here and there, even on the most beefy of computers. Or — if you do want to playback from computuer, use the vidcap program to playback as if you were printing to tape. Don’t try it from the timeline.
td
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This will allow you to split out all the files by scene detection using DV time stamp, or optically.
I highly recommend this software.
td