My experience with the Sony TD10, thus far.

[Matt Faw]

Dear all, I am new to this forum, to Stereo shooting and post, and to the TD10.

I have, however, been dreaming about getting my first 3D camcorder, for some time now, and have been watching out for subjects to shoot, once I had it. When I finally got the camera, early in November, I rushed out to test all my hypotheses. The following YouTube vid is the highlights from my first weekend with the camera.
My First Weekend with the Sony TD10

The camera was extremely easy to learn, and the viewfinder shows depth beautifully, so it will make a great pre-viz tool, even for those who prefer to shoot with more complex rigs. The lack of a viewfinder is problematic on bright exteriors, although setting the LCD brightness up helps somewhat. I'm very interested in shooting sports, and following birds in flight, but both are tough, without a viewfinder.

The optical image stabilizer is excellent (all my shots on the video are handheld), low-light looks beautiful, and the image quality is top-notch, especially for such an inexpensive camera.

Of course, the difficulty arose, when I tried to edit my footage. I've mentioned some of my experience in the "Editing with TD10 footage" thread, so I won't go too far into details here. But the biggest issue was that the MVC to AVI Converter literally mushroomed the data size of the files 100X! At that rate, a full camera load (64GB) of the camera's native .m2ts files would expand to 6TB of AVI footage (and take forever to transcode)! Not the most elegant workflow...

As I mentioned in the other thread, I am currently cutting my YouTube selects on Vegas, but it's pretty questionable editing, as the playback is so stuttery (I literally have to export the full sequence, just to see how it plays back). I do appreciate that I've been able to cut the .m2ts files natively, but Bruce Shultz said that Cineform Neo will soon support that codec, so hopefully I can get back on FCP, which is my usual platform. I have shot a 3D interview, using the GoPro rig as my B-camera, and I was pleased to see that Vegas was able to multi-camera the GoPro's Cineform codec, with the TD10's .m2ts, without having to transcode either. Hopefully, soon I'll be able to take those advantages from Vegas, and bring them back to FCP.

[Pavel Houda]

The LR appears reversed. The yt3d:enable=true is no longer supported. Perhaps that is why I am getting "!" next to the 3D mode and have to force it manually. There are several ways to split the MVC into dual streams and then edit with several editors. YT will always decimate video int hideous quality. Plainly not enough bandwidth, no matter what you do on your end. Vimeo offers much better quality, but has no player. You'll need to play the SBS on a PC using Stereoscopic Player or on 3DTV.

[Matt Sharp]

3D playback on your YT video works perfectly for me, and the depth looks great! I picked up the Sony bloggie 3D to test out 3D video and now I'm waiting for the next version of the TD10 that hopefully shoots in 60P.

I've edited test shots from TD10s that people posted on here and other sites, it must be your computer as they were buttery smooth for me (using Vegas Pro 10).

[Matt Faw]

Thanks for the replies, y'all.

Pavel, thanks for the youtube advice. I was indeed, uploading via the old enable=true format (including swapping L/R), since I had not yet heard of the new procedure. I'm going to see if I can re-output and upload as WebM, which I gather is the future of YT3D.

So much to learn in this new territory!

[Matt Faw]

A little more about the TD10. The zoom is quite nice. Given the right subject and distances, there is plenty of depth available at all places along the zoom. Plus, the zoom out from an object moving toward camera creates a striking effect, like the Hitchcock Vertigo dolly/zoom, with an added depth expansion bonus. A little gimmicky, but quite interesting. (There are samples in the link above: the school bus, subway train, and jewelry store window).

Also, of course, like most prosumer cameras, the zoom control isn't as ergonomic and easy to smooth as say, an ENG camera, but it's actually far better than the prosumer cameras I've tried in the past.

[Paul Newman]

Hey, great results, can you tell me if you can set the gain and iris to manual on the TD10? I'm about to buy one, and I've not been able to discover this.

On another note, I've been testing the new Edius 3D package (free month trial of beta) and it edits this camera's files natively, no transcode - and outputs to a variety of formats - performs really well.

Guess it would run on a mac with bootcamp.

thanks

Paul

[Wolfgang Schmid]

No, in 3D you have only very limited manual control. You can adjust
1) concergence
2) focus (but the control is weak)
3) exposure (what is maybe similar to gain?)

manually, and that is it.

[Paul Newman]

Oh dear,

no manual colour temperature? just auto white always changing the colour balance? I thought that kind of setting was reserved for the €100 camcorder.

thanks anyway, at least you can control the exposure, but I wonder if when you shoot in a shadowy scene the gain kicks in and increases the noise and grain, I'm going to have to test the TD10 at a local store.

Paul :-)

[Wolfgang Schmid]

Yes it is a shame a little bit. For its price the TD 10 should have more manual controls also in 3D.