Hi all, I'm shooting weddings with the Sony Z7 and because we film in a documentary style, being able to record quickly is a priority - it's very frustrating to miss great shots because the camera has taken 4 or 5 seconds to start recording (often by then the shot has gone).
A couple of months back I activated the Quick Rec function to fix this issue, and was happy to discover I never had to wait more than 2 seconds at most to start filming - much better!

But now we're having a major problem editing these weddings - they take up about 3 times the amount of physical memory on our PCs (editing in Premier Pro) - so everything is very slow and we get lots of crashes. This occurs whether we're editing files transferred from the MRC1 card or captured from tape.

Many of the clips have frozen frames at the end (something they warn you about in the manual) which could be part of the problem. The frozen frames also occasionally occur in the middle of a shot.

Is anyone familiar with this issue? Is there anything we can do to make editing on these projects possible?

And the only filming solution I can think of is just shooting to card (no tape in the camera) on the MRC1 unit which gives instant response time (fabulous)... but seems to involve more risks than shooting to both tape and card. Has anyone tried this and found any problems? I love the quick file transfer from the card compared to real-time capture from tape, so this would seem to be a great solution if it's safe...

Many thanks,
Langdon Rodda
Melbourne, Australia

I shot a wedding last summer using my Z7 as the primary camera. I used the 1080i setting to avoid the rolling shutter issues because of the flash from the still photographer. I used the card reader as a backup. These comments don't address your issue but maybe some of my experiences could be of help. I used a second camera (XL 2) as a b roll camera and I had a sound man to record sound on a separate recorder. We got audio from the church PA and wireless system and from our mic set up for ambient sound. I also had audio tracks from the cameras. I worked with the wedding party to plan our shooting actions. I did the wedding as one take. My second shooter and I worked out when we made our camera moves at different times so we had coverage. One take makes the missed shots less of a problem, but I still didn't have some things that I wanted. Now the first question is how can I mix HD and SD shots. Final Cut does a good job of resolving the differences and the SD footage to the HD time line. Since the final delivery was to DVD I used Compressor to down res the project to a DVD file. The result was a very high quality DVD. My thoughts after the project were:
1. The idea of one long take is a good one.
2. More cameras would be good. I think four would be the best.
3. Separate audio track was a very good idea, but using the church pa was not the best.
This is still a work in progress but I was pleased with this effort. I gave the bride a good discount since I am experimenting with the set up. I lost money on the project but it was a good learning experience and once I refine my system I think I will have great product. Sorry this so long but I hope this is of some interest.

hallo!
i have the same problem editing with premiere and matrox.only troubles,i`m very frustrated.
i dont think this is a problem of the clips,it`s premiere.
i have some plugins,like boris swish pan,sometimes i can`t render this effects,because the ram is empty,i dont know why.it`slowing down an crash.

regards fred from austria

sony HVR z 7E

[QUOTE=Harry Christensen;1442067]I shot a wedding last summer using my Z7 as the primary camera. I used the 1080i setting to avoid the rolling shutter issues because of the flash from the still photographer.

Thanks for sharing your learning Harry - though as you say it doesn't really address the editing problem we're having. I also shoot the whole ceremony in one take - don't want to miss anything! I'd love to be able to charge couples for 4 camera operators (or even an assistant and 3 or 4 tripods) but I think that's a topic for a different forum..

I'm doing some tests now, capturing from the tapes in different ways to see if it improves the PC's performance.. will report back.

In the meantime, hoping someone can throw some light on this..

Langdon

I had comparable problems with Premiere and a PC, when I edited my Z7-clips. Sold the PC and bought a Mac Pro plus Final Cut. Works perfectly, never had problems since...

Langdon, I often use my Z7 in the quick record mode but I haven't had any editing issues at all that resulted from using quick record. I have PP CS3 in a Core 2 Quad with only 2 gigs of Ram and I have a loaner computer that is another Core 2 Quad running CS4 on a 64 bit system with 6 gigs of ram and neither have experienced any differences in editing speed because of quick record. But you can certainly induce a horrible glitch on the tape if you start and stop recording immediately.

In my Z7, I often record both to tape and to the MRC1 at the same time. The MRC1 does start recording almost instantly while the camera spools back up in preparation for starting recording to tape. When I am recording both, the tape is just for back-up/archive. So I don't have any real reason to mix the footage between the two sources. My only issue I have is that I can't figure out how to get Premier Pro to recognize the media time code from the CF cards. It would make producing time code dubs for clients much easier.

I had comparable problems with Premiere and a PC, when I edited my Z7-clips. Sold the PC and bought a Mac Pro plus Final Cut. Works perfectly, never had problems since...
I use Canopus Edius 5.12 and have neither problems. I know a lot of people who use the same soft. Some friends from our videoclub use Premiere and have always a lot of problems.
In Edius 5.12 sceneseparation from tape is absolute no issue. The timestamp on tape does it all.

Dirk PEL(NL)

Big thanks to everyone for your responses.

Luc - I lead a team of 3 editors on 3 machines, so switching platforms and software is a v expensive solution, unfortunately. Also, one of our editors works regularly in FCP on Mac, and on Premier for me (to be compatible with the rest of the team) and he says that for our particular style/processes of shooting and editing, PP has better features. (Not sure what exactly, I was just happy with that answer!)

Dirk - yes, I hear Edius is popular amongst wedding videographers here in Melbourne too, mostly for its real-time effects rendering I think. Our work doesn't need this (we do a strictly documentary style with almost no effects) so I'm still hoping the solution isn't to make a change that would slow production down in our busy season (now). Also, we never had problems with PP until I started using Quick Rec.

Greg - we seem to have been using the same recording approach (shooting to tape and card at the same time) but I just tested my Z7 and the camera won't record to the card until the tape is ready to roll. (So unlike your camera, recording doesn't happen to card as soon as I push record). I wonder if the reason may be related to your problem of not getting the timecode on the card files - what are your TC settings? (see page 13 of the MRC1 operating instructions booklet). Mine are set on the Z7 as: TC Run = Free Run, TC Make = Regenerate.

I just shot 2 full-day weddings to card ONLY and all went well, recording to HDV files on the CF cards (Sandisk 32GB). I loved the fact that recording was alwasys pretty much instantaneous, and also no lengthy capture process. I'd love to switch to this method for good but will start a new thread on this topic to see if others have had experience with it and if there are hidden dangers. (Also, to find out how I can convert the m2t files to standard-def .avi files so we can edit these for DVD)