A project with 2 F350's and an EX1 - advice needed

[Piotr Wozniacki]

I have posted this in the XDCAM EX forum, but didn't get too many responses. Since it involves intercutting the EX1 with two F350's, perhaps I'll be more lucky here?

I'm preparing for an important project, recording live chamber music in the Polish kings' castle in Krakow. Apart from my EX1, two XDCAM HD machines will be used, and the sound will be recorded by a sound engineer. I'm going to cut it myself using Vegas.

Considering it's going to be my first project using both XDCAM EX and XDCAM HD material, I am open to every single piece of advice from our more experienced members here. On Friday, I will be test shooting with the lighting setup (provide by Philips Poland, who is one of the sponsors for this series of events). Anything particular I should pay attention to, and perhaps ask the lighting engineers for?

Also, which format to use? Shooting with just one cam, I've been using HQ 1080/25p almost exclusively; but considering the bigger XDCAM machines don't use 1920, should I sacrifice the HQ mode in order to inter-cut better?

How about WB - should the three of us manually balance to a white card, or just dial-in the same Kelvin number?

Also worth mentioning that although I'll edit in HD to create HD master, for the time being we'll be making SD DVDs only.



I'll appreciate any input :)

[Thierry Humeau]

Piotr,

We just did a 3-camera (2 x F350s and 1 EX) shoot yesterday at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington DC. The HD-SDI output of each camera was mixed through a Panasonic AV-HS400N digital mixer and the line cut recorded to a PDW-F70 XDCAM HD deck. Both F350s were easy to match and with a few tweeks, the EX came pretty darn close. You definetly need to white balance, even when using scene files on the F350s, they never quite match in preset mode unless you go deep in the engineering menus and make some base settings adjustments. I dont' know how Vegas handle mixing 35mbps footage from both, the F350 and EX cameras but even if the EX offers a full 1920 x 1080 HD raster at 35mbps as compare to 1440 x 1080 on the F350, I'd go with this.

Thierry.

[Eric Emerick]

I am also interested in the answer to this question, but I'm not sure I understand the answer. To what exactly does "this" refer to, the 1440 x 1080, or 1920 x 1080? I think you mean the 1440 x 1080, but not sure.

[Dan Brazda]

Just got back from shooting a concert with 2 x 350's and 1 x EX-1. I'll be digitizing tomorrow and post the results. Our tests looked GREAT with all three cams so I'm hoping the real deal looks as good (just wish the 350s were a stop faster like the EX-1). We did a lot of menu tweaking on all cams to get them to match so I'll post the results soon. Had two GREAT board feeds from one INCREDIBLE sound tech going to the 350's so I already know the sound will be perfect.

[Piotr Wozniacki]

Originally Posted by Dan Brazda

Just got back from shooting a concert with 2 x 350's and 1 x EX-1. I'll be digitizing tomorrow and post the results. Our tests looked GREAT with all three cams so I'm hoping the real deal looks as good (just wish the 350s were a stop faster like the EX-1). We did a lot of menu tweaking on all cams to get them to match so I'll post the results soon. Had two GREAT board feeds from one INCREDIBLE sound tech going to the 350's so I already know the sound will be perfect.

Dan, I would appreciate it very much if you shared your experience with me. I have no hands-on experience with the F350 at all (other from what I read about them); I guess I'm quite comfortable with my EX1 but the thing is I will be directing the event, so I feel quite a bit of responsibility burden on me :)

Thanks in advance,

Piotr

[Dan Brazda]

Originally Posted by Piotr Wozniacki

Dan, I would appreciate it very much if you shared your experience with me. I have no hands-on experience with the F350 at all (other from what I read about them); I guess I'm quite comfortable with my EX1 but the thing is I will be directing the event, so I feel quite a bit of responsibility burden on me :)

Thanks in advance,

Piotr

So all the footage looks great (other than our Pit Cam EX-1 getting bumped around a lot by the enthusiastic crowd- definitely a "you are there" look). We did not have control over the lighting but there was enough exposure to shoot the 350's at +6db gain, 1/48th shutter (we shoot 1080/24 35mb HQ) and Low Noise 1- stop was F 2. Set the EX-1 up at 0db gain but all other settings same as the 350s (no Low Noise menu on the EX-1 that I could find on our rental). Prior to the actual shoot we were careful to go through ALL menus on the EX-1 and be sure all of our custom settings on our 350s replicated those on the EX-1). Very happy with the results- the 3 cams matched almost perfectly. Very little color correction needed in post.

I basically just treat the EX-1 like a 350 but a stop faster. I really think you'll be happy with your results Piotr.

[Thierry Humeau]

Originally Posted by Eric Emerick

I am also interested in the answer to this question, but I'm not sure I understand the answer. To what exactly does "this" refer to, the 1440 x 1080, or 1920 x 1080? I think you mean the 1440 x 1080, but not sure.

Eric,

Not all cameras that shoot 1080 actually have a 1 for 1 pixel count. A 1080 HD video raster (image size) is 1080 x 1920 = 2,073,600 pixels. Camera manufacturers rely on a technology called "pixel shifting" to artificially increase the camera CCD resolution. For exemple, the AJ-HDX900 Panasonic camera CCD which is rated for 1080 actually only has 921,000 pixel (and it shows..). In the case of the XDCAM HD F350, the CCD has 1440 x 1080 pixels for a total of 1,555,200. Not quite 2 million but with pixel shifting applied, it yields very sharp image in 1080 mode. The EX1 uses a CMOS sensor which are less expensive to manufacture so Sony was able to include a full 1080 raster imager on that camera.

Thierry.

[Matjaz Fajdiga]

Theierry,
as I know Sony does not use pixel shifting at 3xx cameras. And also question for Dan. Does picture from 350 (+6dB and Low Noise mode in position 1) looks much more noisy than EX1 (0dB).

Matjaz

[Eric Emerick]

I'm sorry, I should have phrased my question more carefully. I wanted to know, when mixing footage from the EX and the 350 in the same sequence, which pre-set would one use. Or does it really matter?

[Rick L. Allen]

Since both cameras record in XDCAM HD it doesn't matter what preset you use. The sequence preset is determined by your storage capacity and your final output needs/client delivery requirements.

[Dan Brazda]

Originally Posted by Matjaz Fajdiga

Theierry,
as I know Sony does not use pixel shifting at 3xx cameras. And also question for Dan. Does picture from 350 (+6dB and Low Noise mode in position 1) looks much more noisy than EX1 (0dB).

Matjaz

For all intents and purposes, they are the same.