[Wayne Orr]

I am no expert on what type of tile is best for your purposes, but I am not sure you are on the right path with the PVC tiles. You say they are “absorbent,” but that is not necessarily a good thing when you are dollying a large camera on a pedestal, or, a small camera on a large dolly. (Want to see a great studio floor for dolly moves? Go to your nearest up-scale automobile showroom)

Color-wise, your best bet is to go with a nuetral color, such as an off-white. Remember that colors will bounce off a tile floor, so anything other than a nuetral shade will give you some weird flesh tones. For example: Did you ever see a close-up of a basketball player at the foul line, about to shoot a free throw, and notice his face is a sickly sort of yellow? He’s getting bounce from the lights hitting the color of the key area in his face.

The standard tile size for studio floors is three foot square. They need to be butted together very tightly to provide a smooth surface for dolly moves. Of course, this depends on how evenly the concrete has been poured. When they created the new studios at CBS Television City a number of years ago, they actually used lazers to ensure the poured floors were as smooth and level as possible. In fact, I would recommend you contact CBS in Hollywood and ask them what tile they use in their studios. Ask for “building services” as a good place to start. CBS has always had a helpful attitude towards scholastic institutions, and I would be surprised if they were not very helpful.

HTH
Wayne Orr, SOC

G5, Dual 2GHz, 1.5 GB Ram, OSX 10.4.6, FCP5.1, AJA Io, SATA External Array 500 Gig

[Wayne Orr]

You should check-out the video here: https://www.ryantown.com/gayboyfriend/
It’s been around awhile, but it still looks great, and the director has a good “how-to” that provides excellent tips on green screen techniques.
Motion control may be a bit much to bite off for your first green screen experience.

G5, Dual 2GHz, 1.5 GB Ram, OSX 10.4.6, FCP5.1, AJA Io, SATA External Array 500 Gig

[Wayne Orr]

To answer Brett’s question first; the reason to put tc on an audio track is to have accurate tc between multiple cameras and/or a DAT recorder. There is no external “tc in” available on this camera, as there is with the Canon for “jam sync”, so you need to get the tc from an external source, such as a Denecke device (denecke.com), which attaches to the camera with Velcro (or whatever) and feeds the external tc to the audio track.

As for Dannie’s question; unfortunately I don’t know if FCP can read this tc off the audio trak, similar to Avid, but if you don’t get an answer here, you might contact Location Sound in North Hollywood, CA and ask them for help. I know they are supplying Denecke gear to productions that are using this method of shooting, for example, “Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia”. They use a couple of Panasonic DVX100A’s.

I did this a number of years ago on my Media100 system, and it required renting a tc reader, which burned in visible code to my offline material. After cutting the offline with the visible code, I redigitized and assembled the online version. Very easy and pretty bulletproof, unless you don’t want to do the burn-in, which I guess the Avid eliminates. A timecode reader is very inexpensive and easy to hook-up.

HTH
Wayne Orr

[Wayne Orr]

I would contact AJA direct. They are very responsive to owner problem, and it is possible that there is a problem with the AJA box. I had an Io that would not respond, sent it in to AJA, and they replaced it. Come to think of it, they sent me the replacement first and when it worked I sent them my problem box. That’s nice tech support.

Wayne Orr

G5, Dual 2GHz, 1.5 GB Ram, OSX 10.3.9, AJA Io, SATA External Array 500 Gig

[Wayne Orr]

Probably the reason you haven’t received a response from any of the usual gurus here, is because there are numerous “gotchas” that could be the cause of your problem, including your FCP set-ups, and the m10u deck items. Best to go over them again. Pay particular attention to the Easy Set Up you are using, being certain you have selected PAL in capture and sequence settings.

The m10u has a couple places where you need to pay attention. In the “menus” you want to look at the “playback/record” settings. They are found in the double arrow menu item.

A nasty item that can be easily overlooked is in the “Others” menu, where I believe the last item is a choice of 50 or 60 Hz. You want 50 Hz for PAL selected.

Obviously, I hope you have the manual for the m10u.

Wayne

[Wayne Orr]

Speaking of golf club cases, you might look for the SKB line at golf outlets. They make a hard, light-weight case that sells for around $100.00. Very good for those shoots where you can’t bring a lot of gear and you can adhere to the airline limits of fifty pounds. I fill it with a few lights and stands, a light-weight tripod, AC cords, gel pack, a few grip accessories and expendables. The built-in skate wheels make it easy to move around.

I would also recommend dealing with a skycap at curbside. More likely to let you go over the weight limit, which is an arbitrary rule anyway. I don’t bother locking the case, since you have to allow it to be inspected.

Wayne Orr, SOC

[Wayne Orr]

Updated link to Jerry’s post:
https://www.apple.com/support/downloads/quicktime652reinstallerforquicktime701.html

[Wayne Orr]

I think your real problem will be vignetting caused by the addition of the filter between the wide angle adapter and the primary lens. Let us know what happens if you try it out.

Wayne Orr, SOC

[Wayne Orr]

Hey all you cinematography guys. Take a look at the picture examples of the warm cards in action. See the ballerina? Does it bother anyone (besides me) that although her flesh tones have indeed been warmed up (not something a dancer may want, btw), but the entire background color has been changed from the blue that was what the lighting designer had in mind, to a weird green? Making global changes in the field may not be the way to “correct” your images.

I know that many years ago when I was doing a lot of ENG style shooting, we all experimented with different ways to “warm” up the picture. Everything from putting a CTB over a tungsten light illuminating a white card, to shooting a blue gel from a jungle book on top of a white card, etc. But over time, most of us abandonded these “solutions” because they caused exactly the problems you see in the examples. Some people actually get miffed when their blue suit appears brown on tv.

Better results can be achieved through proper camera set-up, or tweaking in post, IMHO.

Wayne Orr, SOC

[Wayne Orr]

Matt, your first trip should be to the Lowel website: http://www.lowel.com There you will find a description of each light along with its intended use. Also other helpful hints for using this gear.

Then do a Google for lowel and you will find other helpful links.

Wayne Orr, SOC