Sony XDCAM HD -- various topics

[Kalunga Lima]

Hi,

I recorded a concert with various cameras;
Sony F350 (1080/50i VBR)
Sony Ex1 (1080/50i HQ)
Sony Ex1 (10801/501 SP)... borrowed camera didn't notice the setting at the time...
3 x Sony Z1 (1080/50i HDV)

I've since captured all the material in their respective native formats and am ready to begin editing. In order to use FCP's multicam function however, all footage must be in the same CODEC. Any suggestion how I would go about converting everything into perhaps ProRes422?

thanks

[Gene Bauer]

Our Editors are looking for a way to do a batch ingest of XDCAM material based on an EDL made by a Producer(with Sony PDZ1 software). We have Final Cut Studio2/KONA and PDW-F70 decks that can be accessed via network, firewire or thru their video I/O. The options for EDL export with the PDZ-1 software are:
BVE-9100 EDL
XML for Newsbase
ALE
Editlist
convert to ASF

Has anyone had any success in Final Cut with this?

[Gene Bauer]

Was able to test this with an Editor on Final Cut Studio2. If you export your cliplist(EDL) as a BVE9100 EDL, Final Cut can import the EDL and it will setup your timeline without the media(media offline) .Then we did a batch ingest into that sequence with 9 pin(422) control and the HD-SDI(out of PDW-F70) into a Kona card. Final Cut brought in only the subclips created in PDZ-1...hi-res of course. This worked well and should be huge timesaver for us. Producers make a fat rough cut and Editor brings in only the footage needed.
The other options for EDL out of the PDZ-1 software were greyed out and not selectable by Final Cut.

[Ben Ruffell]

Hi,

I have a shoot next week with the F350. Filming a silver car on snow roads in full sun. Blue sky. Contrasty bright New Zealand light.

I have shot the F350 before, and not been happy with the results. I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right set up direction.

NTSC HD 59.94i.

Handing disc's over at the end of the job, so I would like to get a clean look in camera, as I have no idea if the image will be graded.

I will have Panasonic HD monitor on the day, but I only get the camera the night before.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Ben

Ben Ruffell

[Steve Phillipps]

Do we know if the PDW700 chip is progressive or interlaced and generated the progressive by de-interlacing (as with the F350 etc.)?
I assumed it was a native progressive (like the HDCams?) but now not so sure, especially as it shipped with just 50i to begin with, seemed to hint that that was what the chip was doing.
Steve

[Alister Chapman]

It's the same optical block and CCDs as the HDC-1500. As far as I know the CCDs are capable of both native progressive and native Interlace.

[Eugene Kosarovich]

A friend of mine just got a F335, and he has a few questions/issues that I haven't encountered with mine, so I was hoping some here might have the answers.

1) He's running Anton Bauer batteries, is there a way to get a voltage display like he is used to in his other cameras instead of the percentage display that the F335 is currently giving him? I couldn't find a way in the menus to do that.

2) He was trying out the new camera outdoors, and he had a problem getting it to do a white balance in the shade a few times. The image wasn't overexposed, he was pointing at a white card, and the camera came back with "too high" or "White Balance NG". I'm not sure the exact wording, but he said it was something like that. He then changed ND filters, got a WB, then went back to the original clear filter, and got a valid WB that time. Have any of you encountered this?

3) Should one do a Quick Format when reusing a Pro Disc that had previously been recorded with different resolution or frame rate clips? My friend found that if you simply delete all clips, even if they were in a different resolution or frame rate, the camera was happy to start from the empty disc recording new clips in any format.

4) Since focus is extra critical in HD, do the rest of you have the VF peaking set as linked with the VF H/V detail or not? My friend finds the default, with it linked, to be a very different look from his last camera's peaking with that linkage turned off. Is the peaking and VF H/V detail an actual different function?

5) What do the rest of you have your automatic audio AGC set for? The default is -6dB, but that seems a lot higher than what the DSR-300A did under automatic.

Thanks.

[Richard Raaijmakers]

Hi Eugene,

To answer your question 4, this is what I use for peaking:

A31 VF Setting
Peaking VOL. LINK OFF
H DETAIL LEVEL 50
V DETAIL LEVEL 50
DETAIL FREQ HIGH

I'm using a Detail setting in the Paint menu of -10, and find this setting combined with the above peaking settings comfortable for me.

With the defaults (VOL. LINK ON) I find the peaking to high, and the image in the viewfinder much to "busy". Also it's very hard to use peaking this way to get critical focus.
With the H and V detail at my setting and VOL.LINK OFF I use the peaking knob on the viewfinder to "fine-tune" the peaking based on the scene I'm shooting.

Richard

[Steve Phillipps]

I thought I read somewhere the suggestion that when the PDW700 gets its 720 mode it would do it by de-interlacing the 1080i (cutting it to 540 lines) and then up-rezzing that to 720. I hope and assume that's not the case. Anyone know for sure what the situation is?
Steve

[Eugene Kosarovich]

What's the best way to get high quality Flash video from Sony HD MXF?

Can On2's Flix Pro input directly from a MXF file?

Any other suggestion on the best way to go from MXF to Flash on a PC?

Thanks.

[Paul Gale]

I always do it using Sorenson Squeeze compression suite and the VP6 codec - but I go via a Matrox AVI file (from my Axio system). Not sure that Squeeze will read MXF file - but worth a go as there's a free trial version available.

[Uli Mors]

Hi,

I need some printable 300dpi or 600dpi beauty shots of a XDCAM HD camcorder (nice front shot , or nice side shots).

Has anybody a download or can send me an email?

Thanks!!

ULI

[Steve Phillipps]

It seems that the MPEG compression scheme in the PDW700 is capable of I frame compression (it's the same as that used in the Flash XDR and that can do it so it must be capable of it). Any possibility that Sony will introduce it for the PDW700?
It seems to me one of those strange situations that crop up these days where you can get a third party item that'll do a better job with the camera than the camera can do itself an you end up wondering why the camera maker didn't do it like that in the first place.
Steve

[Alister Chapman]

I very much doubt you'll see it on the 700. To get the same quality using just I frames as opposed to 50Mbps long gop would take a bit rate around 150Mbps and the optical discs just aren't fast enough for that. Besides which who would only want record times less than 15 mins on a 23Gb disk and less than 30 mins on a 50Gb disc. One of the key advantages of XDCAM is the relatively small file sizes that makes throwing footage across networks or the internet easy. XDCAM allows the use of simple, common interfaces such as USB 2 or firewire and you don't need fast raid arrays for editing. Push the bit rate up to 150 Mbps and you won't be able to do real-time or faster work using USB and you will need raid arrays for editing. The 50Mb codec offers excellent quality yet can easily be edited on laptops which is hugely important for many users.

[Eric Emerick]

Upon upgrading my firmware for my 350 to AT 1.70 and Package 1.95, i read where i should also upgrade to 2.1 of the FAM driver (for OS X). Anyone know where I might find that? The Sony website is no help at all, I really hate it.