Misc. Open DV from 2008

[Paul Gale]

I do some occasional conference work 7 or 8 times a year. I normally use a two camera setup (one locked off wide and the other main camera following the presenters). I sometimes need to capture the output of multiple PC's (and very occasionally a Mac). This post relates to kit I can use to do this.

As part of the post production, I will normally take the PowerPoint slides and any other videos and mix these into the edit, often using Premiere CS3's multicam edit feature which works quite well (BTW I edit on an Axio LE HD system on an 8 CPU Xeon PC).

What doesn't work well is if the presenter shows/demo's live material (web sites, software, Internet Explorer windows etc) - I'm left with the camera footage of the back projected screen (the conference setups are normally professional with full AV crew and good kit).

I use software capture solutions off-line, like Camtasia and Fraps etc but can't use them here as they'd need to be running on multiple presentation machines (sometimes as many as 5-6) and WILL adversely affect the performance of the presentation machines. Even the fastest PC's can have a problem especially when showing 3D content etc.

So I'd thought about two other possible solutions:

1) Use a VGA or DVI frame grabber connected to a recording PC and linked to the VGA/DVI output of the video switcher. Something like the VGA2USB LE from Epiphan or a PCI based frame buffer card.

2) Use a high quality scan converter to convert the VGA signal to an HD video format and record that on an HD video recorder.

So, anyone done this? recommendations/problems/issues etc?

Any other possible solutions I've not thought of?

Many thanks,

Paul.

[David Delaney]

I am looking for some quick footage of water filling a tank - I want to have a logo being covered as the water rises - just a pet project, not a paid gig. Any sources?

[Stefan Szczuka]

Hello fellow dvinfo-colleagues,

I am desperately looking for the Century Optics VS-WS13-MXL, which is an anamorphic converter for both the 16x manual lens for the Canon XL1 and a Canon YH16 lens for the JVC GY DV5000 camera.

I own the GY DV 5000 with the Canon YH16 lens and I am very satisfied with the pictures I get from it.

Having looked at recent HDV cameras and especially their low-light performance I am hesitating to step up to HDV just yet. Most of my clientwork goes to DVD, so SD should be fine for some time, but more and more clients demand 16:9 production.

So for some time I have been looking for this converter, which seems to be sold out everywhere in all the shops, even on the internet.

Even if a shop states, that it has the converter in stock, after I contact them, everyone so far had to admit that it's out of stock.

Which brings me to the question if there has ever been a single person, who acutally owns this adapter, either for his Canon XL1 or for the JVC GY- DV5000.

So, any hint from anyone to somebody who wants to sell this adapter used, or anyone who magically has a brand new one in a box stuffed somewhere far-out is very much welcomed.

Thanks for your time and Greetings from Germany,
Stefan Szczuka.

[Mitch Buss]

Hello all. I was wondering if anyone knew of any software applications that allow you to pre-visualize lighting for film sets. Any help would be great. Thanks.

Mitch

[Hamad Abdulla]

Hi all!

I'm looking for a concept developer on this site who can help me out on a per project part time basis developing concepts for television commercials and corporate videos; any young fresh minds out there interested? The communication format will be mostly done via emails.

If anyone out there is interested please email me back on: info@al-waad.com

Thanks!

[Ed Space]

What technically is "gain" in a digital format and what does dB represent? I lower my sharpness and boost my gain in low light situations, but I don't really understand the technology. Pretty basic stuff but have to start somewhere.

Ed Space
Geezer

[Aram Rian]

hi there.
i have just found out that the defect i've been noticing in all of my video material since i bought a sony vx2100 is known as "quilting", i.e. blocky edges on a subject (or even all of the subjects and figures in a scene). it normally gets even more enhanced when colour correction is applied. how to deal with that artifact/defect? it really makes all i shoot with such a decent camcorder look like home videos!

[Shaun Steele]

I posted a couple of weeks ago about my clvs, jvc cam, and laptop question.
I have a JVC GYDV500. It DOES NOT display time and date stamp. This company wants me to capture using ULeaD, but the dv tape must display hours mins and seconds, the harddrive cature must display it too. John (one of the regular posters) suggested I use Enosopfts DV processor. I tried it and it seemed ok, now everytime I hit Run (capture) the program goes into not responding mode. So, Im hoping someone can point me toward a $1000ish cam that has all the important manual settings and can do what I need with the time date.....Thanks in advance..Oh yeah, I have to have this all worked out bu the 12th!! Thanks again...Shaun

[Sean Vincent]

Hi all

I've got a JVC GY-DV500 i want to sell. It comes with:

2 x Lithium Ion batteries and charger. (Hold long charge and have power meters)

1 x power lead.

Tripod mounting plate.

It also has a Fujinon Aspheric Internal Focus 19x TV Zoom Lens S19x6.5 instead of the usual one that comes with it. It's an awesome lens...82mm.

82mm Polarizing Filter

It's got 458 hours on it...but it works absolutely fine. It had a full JVC service last year.

What would be a fair price? I'm looking to upgrade to either an FX1 or something similar.

Any help appreciated.

Sean

[Jose Milan]

Hello people,

I'm looking for any available tools that can take a video that is being recorded in continuous mode and be able to define in/out points plus tags in real time (and modify if needed) and at the end take the whole long clip and export it making the cuts define with the in/out points define before.

To put an example, this will be used in sports recording. We want for example record a basketball game, record straight to a computer non stop, and while recording with a tool define categories/tags, for example faults and when a fault is made with the tool put the tag fault and name (for example fault1). The program will define the in/out points with a user defined prerecording and postrecording (we have to be able to do this while the program keeps recording).

At the end of the game we have a very long clip and a lot of define in/out points/tags, then at export time the utility will make a lot of single clips with the things define.

I hope I make this clear this utility is for making editing much quicker, and instead of having to go through the whole long clip you have done much of the work already.

Does this exist already???

Thanks in advance.

[Peter Moretti]

With the increasing popularity of 35mm adapters, a nice feature would be for cameras to actually flip the image before it is recorded, or outputted via SDI or HDMI.

Why bother when you can flip the image in post?

1. When you compare to the original footage you are comparing to footage that's upside down.

2. If you recapture at a higher resolution, you have to flip the new capture. This can be a real hassle if you have a lot tapes and clips.

3. Flipping the image is not always a lossless process, depending on resolution and software used.

[Chris Klidonas]

Sorry if this is in the wrong place, I was not sure where to ask it.

As for the 24P cameras I understand the slower rate matches the film rate and causes the blur that better emulates film.

So here are the points I am still after months of reading not understanding.

Some cameras shoot 24 and capture 24 and you see and edit 24, but the tv can play 60i so where does that change occur? This is cameras like a canon XLH1


Other cameras shoot 24 but capture it in a 60i and you see 24 on a tv but in order to edit it you need to do a pull down to make it just 24 not in a 60i ?

Is that right? and if so what difference does that make in editing?

And if you capture the 24 without the pull down, and edit it and then render a 24 movie for dvd which sees it at 60i does it matter?

What do you see visibly different? what are the problems with not doing a pull down?

What happens if you shoot 60i instead of 24 then edit it and render a 24 video for dvd?

I will tell you my issues, I don't see the major differences, but then I am not the only final viewer so I want to do it right. I shoot with the XLH1 and an HV20 and HG10, I know the XLH1 is fine, the others need to have a pull down, I do not do that yet, but I edit and output to a 24 HD-mov, or HD-wmv, or SD-dvd. I am thinking of a possible upgrade to a flash camera, either the HF10 or the SR11, the SR11 seems to have every benefit but 24p mode, and the hf10 has 24 but needs a pulldown, which I still do not understand at all.

What difference will I really see between shooting 24 in a 60i and not doing a proper pulldown, and doing a proper pulldown, and a camera that does not need the pulldown as it shoots it as 24, and finally a camera that shoots 60i only and is rendered in the final edit as 24? And if it helps I am using Sony Vegas 8 to edit and gearshift to make sd proxies and edit.

I am really sorry, it just seems that every answer I read is above my ability to follow or does not give any reasons for why or what the real difference is only you need to do this because type answers. I am sure there are reasons, and I really want to understand it, I think I just need one slow easy to follow answer designed for dummies to help me get the initial concept.

I hope someone can help.

Thanks

[Ronald Lee]

Hi,

I'm the process of archiving all my old VHS tapes into AVI format. They will get captured at DV-AVI which is 13 GB/hour and I would like to compress them to a Dvix format, which should keep the quality good, but at less than 1/10th the space.

Is there a special program that will batch encode the DV-AVI files? I can do one at a time in Premiere, but it takes a long time and it's a lot of work to do per file...

Any suggestions?

[Chris Coulson]

Hi,

We have a local film club, and every year we give film shows of our work to audiences of around 100-150 people.

We will project films from miniDV and DVD, and currently use an old analogue mixer that someone used for linear editing back in the olden days :-)

I've been looking for a replacement for this relic of a mixer, and have spotted the Datavision SE500 and the Edirol equivalent. These are both things of joy to look at and play with, however they don't do audio!

So if we used one of these we'd have to have a separate audio mixer and when dissolving, have one hand on audio and another on video?

Isn't there anything out there that can mix 2 channels of audio AND video at the same time, or at least with 2 sliders that are a handspan or less away?

What do other people do?

[David Grove]

I'm just a hobbyist and wondering...

Is there such a thing as a compact camcorder that uses an intraframe-only codec?

If not, is Panasonic DVCPRO-HD at approx $5K the basic cost of entry for a codec in which each frame is independently encoded?

Thank you.

Regards,

DG