i have a docu which i'm thinking of shooting w/the ex1.

i believe that the sp setting is akin to the sony flavor of hdv which was present in the sony v1/z1 cameras. can anyone confirm this?

if so, that flavor of hdv played well with fcp. can anyone confirm this?

my understanding that w/ two 8 gig cards and one 16 gig card, i can increase the record times from 100min in hq to 140min in sp-a 40% gain in time while still availing myself of a light sensitive 1/2" chip camera and using a hdv codec that many were willing to shoot just a few short weeks ago.

has anyone seriously shot sp on the ex1? if so, care to post some footage? how does it look? does it play nice with fcp?

maybe the ex1 is a better docu camera than i originally thought.

any and all thoughts would be appreciated.

be well

rob

Rob,i've shot for 8 hrs with sp, 1080/50i,my 8 gb card went from 28 mins on HQ up to 39 mins. I had no problems,quality was still excellent.
Only one problem caused me to panic a bit on the shoot,here's my workflow,i was filming bands for 1 hour at a time which is why i switched to sp mode,2 cards covered it just nice,then i'd take cards 1 & 2 out in the 5 min interval,put in cards 3 & 4 (number your cards,it makes it easy to get them mixed up),offload/rewrap my footage with lappy and portable hard drive and card reader,check with vlc player,whilst the other cards are recording on locked off tripod,if all is ok then erase cards with clip browser
PANIC !!! Where's all the footage ??? No picture,only audio.
VLC plays audio and video on HQ only,in SP only audio.
When i got home and checked with vegas,all was ok,audio and video,phew !!

What i do now is transfer the whole BAPV then check with clip browser,if it's all ok then erase.

You say SQ is the same as ZI HDV quality,it is but you're still recording with a cam with 1/2 inch chips and technology instead of Z1,s 1/3 inch chips.

Paul.

I have found hardly any differences between SP and HQ. You really have to study the image closely to see any noticeable difference. HQ appears to have more tonal range and obviously slightly sharper.

When delivering on standard definition, my viewpoint is that the recording capacity gained on the cards by shooting SQ greatly outweighs the benefit of shooting HQ over SQ.