Aloha,

We have just finished shooting our no budget sci-fi/horror feature "The Orb", using the new Sony HDR-FX1 camera. We shot with two HDR-FX1s and the cameras did great durring shooting.

We had one camera go a little nuts with the image stabilizer. I am not sure why it was on, but the camera just started floating the image around. The camera was on a hi-hat at the time and we thought maybe bugs under the hi-hat were crawling and moving the camera. Turning off the image stabilizer solved the problem. We'll have to take it in to Sony and see if they can fix that.

Our biggest complaint about the cameras was the iris. Since we were doing a two camera shoot most of the time we would have one camera wide and one long on the lens. The wide camera would want to be at an f1.8, but the long camera couldn't go lower than a f2.8. That got old really quick.

One good thing about having to stop down the iris was these camera are VERY DIFFICULT to roll focus on. Focusing close to the camera is nice and controled, but as the focus gets farther away it jumps from 10m to 20m to 50m.

We are just now starting post and have a whole new set of issues. We are trying to use a Decklink Multibridge for analogue to digital conversion and that is not working yet.

For more information about the movie check out our website:
http://www.sandust.com/theorb.html

Hey Dustin, can you allow us to follow you through the process? Post stills and clips while you edit. We in-turn will definately contribute our skills to help with technical problems..

Murph

Dustin, there's nothing wrong with your camera and there's nothing for Sony to fix. Anytime the camera is mounted on something, sticks, high-hat or whatever, you must turn image stabilization OFF otherwise you're asking for problems. The image stabilization will want to fight any intended camera movement and you've already seen the results of this self-induced conflict. Hope this helps -- thanks for the report!

Murph,

I plan to keep updating the website with as much detail as possible and adding lots of pics/screen shots.

Our plan for post right now is:

1. capture downconverted DV footage into FCP and do cuts only offline edit. Each scene will be it's own timeline.

2. recapture analogue to digital footage through the Decklink Multibridge to either DVCPRO HD 1080i or 10bit uncompressed. We haven't decided which yet. We don't have drive space for 10bit, so that will cost a little and we aren't sure there will be any noticable quality difference in the two codecs since we are starting with 8bit footage. Any thoughts on 10bit vs DVCPRO HD?

3. with the HD footage we will color correct using Color Finese.

4. export from FCP using Automatic Duck and import each individual scene into After Effects. We have a lot of FX shots in this movie and it seems that the 16bit render in AE will give us better quality. Mostly we have several old computers laying around so we can make a little render garden and hopefully speed up rendering. We will render out image sequences from AE.

5. We have not decided what we will use for audio editing. We know we want a 5.1 track and FCP doesn't support that YET!

6. Once we have audio completed we will combine the image sequence and the 5.1 audio track. Hopefully FCP will support 5.1 by the time we get there and we can just sync everything up on a timeline and render out the final movie.

Our final destination is DVD.

Thanks for any input.

Chris,

This was a problem with the camera. The camera was locked down and the stabilization was set on minimal. I have seen what image stabilizers do with pans and this was something totally new. With the camera locked down and nothing moving in the frame the image was slowly moving up and down and left and right. It was very wierd.

<<<-- Originally posted by Dustin Cross: The wide camera would want to be at an f1.8, but the long camera couldn't go lower than a f2.8. -->>>

You really shot with auto iris?
Those aperures are in the specs:
Aperture Range: f/1.6 (full wide) or f/2.8 (full tele) to f/11 (24 steps)

Toke,

We did not shot with auto iris.

We manually irised the cameras and we were always trying to be as wide open as we could the get the background out of focus. We would set up one camera as with an ND .6 and an f1.6 and it would be great, but the other camera wouldn't open past a f2.8 so we would have to change everything, put an ND.3 and set both cameras to an f3.1 or remove NDs completely and put both cameras at f5.6.

It really killed us for trying to get a shallow depth of field.

Dustin, I think 10bit is better if you want to do effects work. It creates more color space for changes and won't messup as much when rendered.

That's what I've read elsewhere anyway, but I'd double check it. In my opinion, if you can swing it...go for it. Every "bit" counts after you've poured your soul into something.

Murph

Hi,

Just out of curiosity, did you shoot 30i or the 24 frame look? How about Cinegamma, didi you use it at all?

Yea, we are really leaning towards 10bit uncompressed for the final render. It will be better quality, but I bet 95% of the people who see our movie won't be able to see the difference.

We shot CF30 with Cinematone. After a lot of testing we decided we liked that look best. Straight 60i might have been a better idea, but we really liked CF30 and everyone we showed the test footage prefered CF30 too.

We really wanted to get two HDR-FX1e 50i cameras, but they weren't available in the US when we wanted a camera by. Plus we will only ever see DVD distribution, so 24p was not a priority, but we would have really liked it.

Here are the settings we used:

Color Level: 0
Color Phase: 0
Sharpness: 10
Skintone Dtl: 3
AE Shift: 0
WB Shift: 0
Cinematone: On
Cineframe: Cineframe 30

Manual Iris, manual gain, manual shutter speed, and manual white balance. Actually we used the outdoor white balence preset on both cameras to make it easier to match cameras.

We used the auto iris to find where the camera wanted to be and then switched over to manual for shooting.

About 50% of the movie is day for night. We had no budget for generators and lights to shoot at night,plus we couldn't get permission for our location at night. We had several long discussions about shot the entire movie in day or do day for night. In the end we decided a horror movie entirely in the daylight would loose something and we have done come successful day for night in the past. We used an 80A blue filter and an ND .3 to bring everything down one stop (instead of the typical two stops) figuring we could darken it a little in post if needed, but brightening the image in post would be trouble.

We also shot about 25% of the movie at 1/725 shutter speed. All of our chase scenes and intense action scenes are at 1/725.

Most of the movie is shot on tripod, but we shot all the high shutter speed stuff handheld using a DVRIGPRO shoulder mount. The DVRIGPRO was new for us and we really liked it.

We also got a slate with a color clapper to hopefully help with color correction in post.

For the entire 90 pages script we shot about 33 hours of footage using two cameras.

We used Panasonic MQ tapes because we had tons of them in stock.

That is all the details I can think of for the shoot. If anyone has any questions let me know.

<<<-- Originally posted by Dustin Cross : We would set up one camera as with an ND .6 and an f1.6 and it would be great, but the other camera wouldn't open past a f2.8 . -->>>

Dustin, unless I'm not understanding you, this is the way virtually ALL prosumer cameras work and it's a lens design trade-off. See the following recent thread which covers the optical issues pretty thoroughly, especially Andre's and Robin's posts on the second page:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=37475

Boyd,

You are correct. It is a design of the camera and we knew about it. Having never used a camera with this design flaw though, we just didn't realize how much of an issue it was going to be.

I don't think the XL1 or DVX100 have this problem do they?

Interesting... according to the DVX-100a specs you're right, it says f1.6 4.5-45mm. I didn't know that, thanks for pointing it out.

I got lost on Canon's website trying to find that spec for their lenses. I could only find the focal lengths which appeared without listing the f numbers. Perhaps Chris can shed some light on that....

Most all Panasonic DVC and DVX series camcorders have identical max. apertures at either end of the zoom range:
the AG-DVC30, DVC60 and DVX100A are all at f/1.6 at each end, for instance.

Max. apertures on the Canon XL series tend to vary with each lens:

20x L IS is f/1.6 at full wide, f/3.5 at full tele
16x Manual is f/1.6 at full wide, f/1.6 at full tele
16x IS II is f/1.6 at full wide, f/2.6 at full tele
3x Wide is f/1.8 at full wide, f/2.2 at full tele

Canon GL1 and GL2 is f/1.6 at full wide, f/2.9 at full tele

Sony DV camcorders all have different max aps at each end:

VX2000 / VX2100 / PD150 / PD170 / DSR250 is f/1.6 at full wide, f/2.4 at full tele
PDX10 and TRV950 is f/1.6 at full wide, f/2.8 at full tele

Interesting to note that the vast majority of professional broadcast lenses, whether they're Canon or Fujinon or whether they're for 1/2-inch or 2/3-inch cameras, all will have different maximum relative apertures at each end of the lens. In other words, this is so common in the industry that the exceptions are quite rare (in fact I can't think of one off hand).

DVX is 1.6 on the wide end, 2.8 on the tele end.

To quote the late, great Johnny Carson: "I did not know that!" Thanks Barry, I was going by the specs in the manual and that info is not clearly stated.

Why is it better to capture the already mpeg2 encoded signal via decklink multibridge as uncompressed than via firewire ?

Speaking of the "bit" topic - check this page out today. Mike over at HD for Indies has something about FCP and "bits".

http://www.hdforindies.com/

Gabor,

The reason we went with capturing via the Multibridge is because there is no timecode in HDV. When you output the downconverted DV footage from the FX1 you get standard DV timecode.

So we are sending the component (RGB) video and composite audio (left & right) to the Multibridge. We then use the downconverted DV signal just to control playback and get timecode. The component signal is actually YUV and not RGB.

This way I can recreate my entire project by recapturing the footage later.

With the HDV footage captured via firewire I have no timecode and if I ever loose that file I will not be able to recreate the project without a whole lot of work.

<<<-- Originally posted by Dustin Cross : Aloha,

Our biggest complaint about the cameras was the iris. Since we were doing a two camera shoot most of the time we would have one camera wide and one long on the lens. The wide camera would want to be at an f1.8, but the long camera couldn't go lower than a f2.8. That got old really quick.-->>>

That got old really quick? what does that mean. Does it matter that the apertures are different from a wide and a tele dual camera shot?

- Shannon W. Rawls

<<<-- Originally posted by Dustin Cross : Gabor,

With the HDV footage captured via firewire I have no timecode. -->>>

WHAT???? Really???? That's bad news for me and I did not know that.

With no timecode....how am I suppsed to effectively make a movie?? Take wild guesses?? If I record audio seperately, How do I sync it up?? (and lining up a slate with the waveforms peak mark before every single clip take is not an answer). How do I edit in DV for speed and real time effects and then recapture the footage in HDV for the final if there is no timecode for the program to look for??? with the HDV footage?

Please tell me that HDV has timecode, or they fixed this on the Z1.

- Shannon W. Rawls

Shannon,

To make editing easier you want both cameras to look as close to the same as possible. If you set up a shot with one camera using am f1.6, the other camera at an f2.8 will be too dark and if you try to cut those two whots together it will look odd.

For the timecode thing, the only answer I have found is convert the anologue HD signal to HD-SDI like we are going to do when we get our Multibridge working. AJA has stuff to do this that works right now, but the Multibridge was the cheaper and more robust solution, if it ever works.

Syncing external audio is going to be a slow process. There is no way I know of to sync timecode from the FX1 to an external device like a DAT deck. So you are going to be matching up the clap with its sound in post. I guess you could use a timecode slate and get the audio timecode off that slate when it claps. These slates and required accessories I think cost more than the FX1.

<<<-- Originally posted by Dustin Cross : Shannon,

There is no way I know of to sync timecode from the FX1 to an external device like a DAT deck. -->>>

Yes, via the LanC port, you can get the timecode with a little $200 device and then slave the DAT (pd-4) to the camera that way.

OR

(for the Z1, which i planned on getting), You can put both devices on Free-Run code, set em both at 00:00:00:00 at call, start them as closes as possible and clap the begginning of the reel. It's quite simple actually.....however....

If HDV has No Timecode......all is worthless. This is confusing, and puts a serious dent in my workflow.

So are you saying, if I was to use a program that captures directly from the camera...say for instance, the new imovie hd or FCPEHD....then each and every clip that is captured from the camera will have no timecode...or each and every clip will bein at 00:00:00:00, regardless of what position the tape is at??

- Shannon W. Rawls

Shannon,

I have not heard of the LanC port device for sending TC. That is pretty cool.

The only way I have captured HDV footage is with LumiereHD and every clip starts a 00:00:00:00 no matter where it is on tape. I have not used FCPEHD or iMovieHD so I don't know what they are doing. We decided to go with the analogue to HD-SDI solution because we coldn't find anything that gave us TC in an HDV file. I don't think MPEG-2 supports TC.

You can capture HD-SDI to DVCPRO HD which only reqires about 14MB/s. That is about four times the requirment of DV, but most harddrives can handle that speed and FCP supports it.

For the Multibridge and a Decklink HD you are looking at about $2500 or $2000 for an AJA analogue to digital converter and the Decklink HD card if you don't need analogue HD out like I do.

If someone knows of a way to get an HDV file with timecode please let us know!

<<<-- Originally posted by Dustin Cross : Shannon,

every clip starts a 00:00:00:00 no matter where it is on tape. -->>>

Lord, have mercy....This is bad news. That is a devastating blow to my workflow. I will be sad all day because of this.

Here are the devices that extracts timecode from your lanC port...

1. http://www.spcomms.com/lanc_interface/

2. http://www.spcomms.com/ltcexport/

but...so what....no timecode....no reason!

- Shannon W. Rawls

Shannon,

Hopefully the Z1 has real timecode.

The FX1 does not have timecode, but HDV footage downconverted by the camera to DV footage uses the tape counter. I would assume teh same tape counter TC is there for the HDV footage.

There is NO capture software I know of that will currently use timecode in HDV. Just because the Z1 says it will have TC don't expect to use it until you see capture tools that support it.

Actually Shannon you could have posted that question here and get the same answer. And yes, the Z1U has "real" SMPTE timecode, including the ability to switch between drop frame and non-drop frame; preset, free run, user bits and more. See my FX1 / Z1U comparison chart for timecode features (http://www.hdvinfo.net/articles/sonyhdrfx1/compare.php#tc).

See also my [http://www.hdvinfo.net/articles/sonyhdrfx1/freerun.php]Z1U Free Run Timecode[/url] article.

I'd really like to see our members posting their HDV questions and answers here rather than posting links to other message boards. This place is only as good as you want to make it; please accept this as my invitation to build this community by using it for all of your HDV discussions / research / questions / answers etc. Thanks,

<<<-- Originally posted by Dustin Cross : To make editing easier you want both cameras to look as close to the same as possible. If you set up a shot with one camera using am f1.6, the other camera at an f2.8 will be too dark and if you try to cut those two whots together it will look odd. -->>>

Looking back at your original explanation of the setup, you were using a .6 ND on both cameras...if the iris difference made the pictures look different, why didn't you just take the ND off of the darker camera? Or try a different amount of ND on one or the other?

To my knowledge, nearly every video zoom lens has this limitation due to their design...it's something I've worked around many times, and I'm sure others have as well...

Indeed, the work-around is as easy as locking the exposure for both cameras to whatever the max. aperture is at full telephoto; in this case it would have been f/2.8.

Dustin,

A bit of advice, don't capture in down-converted DV mode, use Frederic's solution of using iMovie HD and FCP HD (http://www.hdvinfo.net/articles/edithdv/machdvworkflow.php), because there's no way of offlining in DV and onlining in HDV.

heath

<<<-- Originally posted by Heath McKnight : Dustin,

A bit of advice, don't capture in down-converted DV mode, use Frederic's solution of using iMovie HD and FCP HD (http://www.hdvinfo.net/articles/edithdv/machdvworkflow.php), because there's no way of offlining in DV and onlining in HDV.

heath -->>>

For the FX1....but what about the Z1U???

Also, I am PC based, and my editors use Vegas. Hopefully all will be OK.

Shannon,

AspectHD is nice. (www.cineform.com)

heath

Heath,

We are doing the online with analogue HD converted to HD-SDI.

Since there is NO timcecode in HDV we decided it would be a waste of time to ever use it. Frederic's stuff is good, but with no timecode it is not a viable solution to me.

Reading this new thing about iMovieHD it seems that also has no timecode.

I don't think HDV cameras send timecode out the firewire port. If they did it seems that LumiereHD or iMovieHD or something would take advantage of it. I don't think Cineform has timecode either.

The timecode on the downconverted DV footage seems to be frame accurate with the analogue HD footage converted to HD-SDI. This is the best solution for editing footage from the FX1 right now.

Yeah, doing a timecode transfer + HD-SDI transfer is good.

heath

I can understand you would like a low f number for depth of field issues. But you must also take in consideration that this camera has an f-number where the lens will perform at its best. The picture quality will not be as good, most prosumer camera's and for that matter professional camera's have an f area where they perform best. In the case of prosumer camera it will most likely not be all the way down...
Also I dont understand why with a zoomlens in its widest setting you would want to stop down the iris with ND? I can understand you dont want to shoot with more then f8 but f5/6 would make a great shot..... Only filmlenses can give you at low f numbers such control over depth of field without degrading the picture....

David,

You are correct that every lens has its sweet spot, but from my experience you can't see the difference without shooting resolution charts.

Plus by being wide open with a soft background the image encoded to the tape has less detail to deal with and should give you better quality on tape for the part of the image that is in focus. So that could outweight the quality loss of not using the sweet spot of the lens.

We are trying to do everything we can to make a 1/3" format look like a much larger format and shooting wide open is just one of the tools in that bag.

I can see you could be right with the shot on the long lens. But the wide shot is a different matter, there you would like to have more detail or not?
I mean they should be the same for matching purposes...but maybe f 4 on both...or a little less.
Then there is the camera issue, correct me if I am wrong but the camera itself will give a better shot if you open up the lens a bit more, on the other hand it probably depends also on your lighting of the shot..