Received the Nano/Testing/Rocks

[Dan Keaton]

Dear Aaron,

We are looking forward to your footage from you new Viper.

[Barlow Elton]

Very much looking forward to your footage too, Aaron!

Here's a clip of 24F embedded in the 1080i stream. I can't wait for the firmware update that allows pulldown removal!

http://files.me.com/mrbarlowelton/bfrpc9.mov

11 second 100 mbs long GOP, 138 MB file.

Note: If my shots look a little flat and washed out...it's intentional. It's the closest thing you can get to camera raw from the H1. Footage is VERY nice to color correct this way, however. 4:2:2 with no compression artifacts does help a lot!

[Dean Harrington]

Finally, all seems to be here for some test runs. Apart from heavy rains today, I'm in deep post production ... should be done tomorrow or the next day and then, I can have some fun with the EX3, SGBlade and the NanoFlash! Just wish I could play all day!

[Aaron Newsome]

A fairly still shot. Single frame grab. I've been doing some torture tests too but I thought I'd post this (the fine detail on the caps and bottles would be a torture test for HDV).

Straight out of the camera, captured with XDR, no color correction or modification.

Last night I did a torture test by strapping on some rollerblades and skating fast with my camera and XDR with the lens set to infinity and the aperture wide open. It was fun and pretty dangerous too (I don't recommend any hand hold a rig this heavy while on rollerblades). Even flying by objects very fast and doing pans while moving forward, no compression artifacts whatsoever. Amazing really.

Anyway, I promise some footage with some motion soon.

[Aaron Newsome]

if the link for the TIFF doesn't work. just pull it up from my site:

http://www.vjaswift.com/archive/propel/01085001-60.tiff

[Dan Keaton]

Dear Aaron,

Thanks for posting.

I find the Viper images very interesting. The level of detail makes the images very interesting.

I changed the filename to ".tif" so I could open the file.

[Aaron Newsome]

Originally Posted by Dan Keaton

Dear Aaron,
The level of detail makes the images very interesting.

the moving images are so detailed that they look unreal. there's also a fine grain that i find very pleasing.

oh yes, and this is shot with a cheap standard def lens. i can't wait until i save up for a nice sharp high def lens.

[Craig Chartier]

Are you using the onboard canon batts, or do you have an adaptor to run AB or V-lock batts?
I was thinking that you could tap into the aux port on these adapters and supply power to the unit?? anybody know if this is correct. We are looking at getting one soon and was hoping this was a good way to power the unit

[Dan Keaton]

Dear Craig,

We have many battery options.

1. Our most popular is the Anton Bauer / IDX Male D-Tap to 4-Pin Female Hirose cable.
This works with the Swit battery with the D-Tap also.

We are now building a variation of the above cable so that a Female D-Tap is included to power a light, as well as power the nanoFlash.

2. We offer 4-Pin Male Hirose to 4-Pin Female Hirose.
We recommend number 1 above over this one as not all cameras supply 5.6 watts of power out their 4-Pin Hirose power outlet.

Some only supply around 200 milliwatts, and others, even in the same brand, supply up to 1.5 amps which is great as we only use .47 amps (at 12 volts) and .40 amps at 14 volts.

If one has their own camera and knows that it supplies up to 1.5 amps, then this is a great cable to use. Otherwise cable number 1 above is safer. Using this with a camera that only supplies 200 milliwatts or so must be avoided.

3. We offer 4-Pin Female Hirose to bare leads cables.

4. We are building a battery cradle for the Sony L-Series batteries.

5. www.Dolgin.net offers a battery cradle for the Sony EX1/EX3 series batteries.

6. Swit offers battery cradles for many batteries that we can modify for the Hirose 4-Pin Female cable.



We offer the following mechanical mounts for the nanoFlash:
(These do not supply power to the camera or to the nanoFlash.)

A. Hotshoe Ball Mount

B. IDX V-Mount (for use with IDX Piggyback batteries, or the camera mounted V-Mount)
(If mounted directly to the camera, then another way to power the camera must be provided.

C. Anton Bauer Gold Mount
(This allows the nanoFlash to be physically mounted as if it was an Anton Bauer Gold Mount battery, but this does not provide any power.



We offer the following adapter which allows an Anton Bauer Gold Mount battery to be used to power the nanoFlash. (Please remember that the nanoFlash is much smaller than a Dionic 90 battery.)

AA. Anton Bauer Gold Mount battery plate.
(This allows the nanoFlash to accept an Anton Bauer Gold Mount Battery which can then power the nanoFlash). A Dionic 90 will power the nanoFlash for over 15 hours.

BB. Anton Bauer Elipz Battery cable.
The Elipz battery can attach directly to the back of the nanoFlash. This is a cable to power the nanoFlash.

[Aaron Newsome]

I'm using an Anton Bauer battery plate to power both the XDR and the camera at the same time. This seems to work pretty well.

[Rafael Amador]

[/QUOTE]

I can also confirm editing straight from the CF card (SanDisk Extreme IV 45 MBs) in FCP 7 and outputting a self-contained QT directly without recompression. (I put in a few transitions to see if they held up and they were fine)

The only curiosity is that FCP seems to recognize the material as XDCAM 422 1080i 50bs, even though I was able to edit and output at the native file size/bit rate.
[/QUOTE]

You must be aware that whatever you render in FC won't keep the original data-rate, but the one of the time-line codec.
When you export your QT movie as XDCAM 422 50Mbps, the picture that is rendered will be crunched to this data-rate while the picture that is not will keep the native one.
Once you need to render I think that the way to keep the picture quality is to go to Proress, Uncompress or any other high quality codec.
Cheers,
rafael

[Dan Keaton]

Dear Rafael,

Your footage is recorded at the bit-rate you selected, such as 100 Mbps Long-GOP.

But, we trick Final Cut Pro by specifying 50 Mbps in our file's header so that it will accept the file and work with it.

Even though we trick it, you get all of the benefits of the higher-bit rate.

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Dan,
i know that you can record with the data-rate that you want (from 19 to 220 Mbps),
I'm talking about exporting from FC with the XDCAM 422 50Mbps.
Cheers,
rafael

[Barlow Elton]

I can also confirm editing straight from the CF card (SanDisk Extreme IV 45 MBs) in FCP 7 and outputting a self-contained QT directly without recompression. (I put in a few transitions to see if they held up and they were fine)

The only curiosity is that FCP seems to recognize the material as XDCAM 422 1080i 50bs, even though I was able to edit and output at the native file size/bit rate.
[/QUOTE]

You must be aware that whatever you render in FC won't keep the original data-rate, but the one of the time-line codec.
When you export your QT movie as XDCAM 422 50Mbps, the picture that is rendered will be crunched to this data-rate while the picture that is not will keep the native one.
Once you need to render I think that the way to keep the picture quality is to go to Proress, Uncompress or any other high quality codec.
Cheers,
rafael[/QUOTE]

Believe me, I am aware that rendering causes the bit rate to conform to whatever the codec dictates in a FCP timeline, however, what I've found is that unrendered high bit rate nanoFlash files do keep their original quality, even when editing in a XDCAM 422 50mbs sequence. And I don't mean that in the sense that they look fine, but that they actually export as self-contained QT movies with the 100mbs rate. I didn't get any render bars on footage that wasn't filtered, etc.

Yes, ProRes is better if you have to render, but what I've found so far is that you can do a very nice 'offline' in the XDCAM 422 50mbs environment, but when you need final output, you can simply copy/paste or nest the XDCAM edit into a chosen ProRes or even CineForm sequence and do a first generation render into the higher quality intermediates.

Basically, there's no need to convert all your original nano/XDR footage to an intermediate in order to get the best final quality output. And on the faster Macs, XDCAM does edit nicely. You also have a choice to render in ProRes rather than XDCAM in the edit preferences.

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Barlow,
I agree with you.
I don't see the point of transcoding unless you work with few layers of footage.
Transcoding XDCAM 420 it mays makes sense when done through an AJA. You get the best 420>422 Chroma filtering available.
NANO-XDCAM is already 422, so nothing to be gained.
I expect to work NANO-native as I've been doing with EX-1.
But never rendering back to GOPs. For me this only makes sense if this is your delivery format.
Cheers,
rafael