EX1 on a shoot
 

I used the EX1 on a short shoot recently. Nothing too spectacular, but it enabled me to get a better feel for the camera.

http://www.simonwyndham.co.uk/pmw-ex...ok-part-2.html

Thank you Simon. Interesting reading. Great stuff!

And you're uploading the rough cut of the trailer in 5 minutes?<wink>

Any observations on using SxS cards?

Any issues setting up the camera the way you wanted it (menu, etc)? You don't mention whether you used 720p24 or 1080p24 or p60 (for those great zombie bite, limb toss, blood splatter slow motion scenes as de rigeuer for such a trailer).

Thanks Simon, looking forward to your future updates.

I shot the trailer in full 1920x1080 25p HQ mode. I just used the default settings as I wasn't sure how the prototype would hold up, or what its exact behavior would be. So I didn't risk it.

I didn't use any off speed shooting for a variety of reasons. Foremost being that there wasn't really a shot that would have suited it.

The SxS system works well. But as with P2 I'm not fully convinced yet. I need to see a full workflow in place first. But that will come as the camera nears release.

Thanks Simon.

Since you mention reservations about the SxS workflow did you have to offload the cards at any point during the shoot? If so how smoothly/quickly did that go?

Simon,

Thanks for you honesty. I am seriously looking at the EX or the next incarnation on the HVX200. Right now the EX looks very interesting but I prefer not to go the HDV route as I will most likely have to update my NLE system. I am hoping that Panasonic will step up and come out an update with a longer lens (hopefully 16x) and better performing sensors.

XDCAM is not HDV. It's long GOP but 35mb/s VBR is not 25mb/s CBR.

Most recent fast computers and NLEs can handle long GOP. There are many cards that can convert it to something else (MacPro, FCP6, ProRes for example).

I'm sure Simon will post about workflow.

Ops, my bad. I was familar with the 35mbs but have heard so much comparison to HDV. I guess the proof will be in actually seeing a clip.

A note on NLE's, Vegas 8 is great for the XDCAM format, especially if you don't perform any grading process. Vegas 8 is the only NLE to my knowledge that can take HDV and XDCAM HD and only render out the portions of the video that have changed (ie transitions been added or filters applied). If you have performed a cuts only edit then Vegas can render out an HDV or XDCAM HD file without any recompression at all! Nada, zilch. Thats zero recompression, and zero quality loss. Neat huh?

Nope, no need to offload the cards. I had one 16GB card that sufficed for me for the shoot (with room to spare). When I got back I copied the files over to my PC until I decide what to do with them next. I also had them backed up to XDCAM Professional Disc via SDI into an F70 deck. Workflow and software for the EX is still under development so there is no established way of doing things yet.

Simon,

What do you exactly mean by "Lens ramping"?

Simon,
can you confirm that the XDCAM files from the EX1 work natively with Vegas. I've heard that for this cam Sony changed the wrapper to mp4 and Vegas cannot handle this as of today. I'm also told the workaround is a utility that I gather strips the video from the wrapper and then Vegas can handle that.

Are you in a position to confirm any of this?

I noticed that there were fingerprints on the screen, does this mean the EX1 is Touch-screen?

At full aperture, as you zoom in, there comes a point with most lenses (even extremely expensive broadcast ones) where the effective f-stop becomes smaller - the lens "ramps down", and the picture gets darker. You can EITHER have max focal length OR max aperture, but NOT both together.

It's nothing to worry about - at some point a designer has to trade off max focal length versus max aperture versus size and weight. What Simon describes is pretty typical of the compromise that most designers go for.

Yeah.. My V1 "ramps" from the max F1.6 down to some 2.3, if I remeber (tha Canon A1 closes the iris even more). But - considering the max aperture of the EX1 is already not so wide to start with at F1.9, I must admit I was hoping it wouldn't ramp at all - the 1.9 would be quite OK then.

Avid Liquid has been a native mpeg editor for years. It "was" the first NLE to have native HDV or any type of mpeg2 editing.

I'm not talking about the ability to edit HDV or XDCAM HD. I'm talking about the ability to edit it and then create a final edited file for output back to tape or disc without needing to recompress the footage. AFAIK Vegas is the only NLE out there that can currently do this. Though I'll put my hands up if I'm wrong.

Simon: Could you tell me how long the EX is?

It looks like it is nearly identical in size as the Z1 in these photos from:
http://www.dvuser.co.uk/content.php?CID=171

But the specs say the EX is 2" shorter.

Can you confirm any thing either way? Thanks

I like the looks of the EX. It has less of the HVX200 toaster shape. LOL

Am I not getting the same from FCP by sticking to the native XDCAM HD codec and exporting the sequence back to disc? If so, please explain. I'm talking cuts only editing like you mentioned.

-gb-

I was under the impression that even cuts-only GOP mpeg had to have some recompression when layed out as unless you only ever cut on the I frames the GOP structure changes and needs to be "reassembled"... (which I would assume means recompressed)

Re-conforming the GOP is not recompressing the material. It should just be going back to frame one of the sequence and labeling the frames according to the GOP length. I'm going to look into it further.

-gb-

I don't think that would work... Isn't the GOP is always a set number of frames?

Data-wise an I frame is quite different to a P frame... So surely any edited sequence would actually need recompressing to create new I frames and P frames, as they don't work interchangeably.

You may be right, but using that logic, no software, not even Vegas 8 as Simon mentioned, could work without re-compression after editing.

BTW, GOP length in XDCAM HD changes, not within a sequence, but based on frame rate. When shooting 24P, the GOP length is 12, as opposed to 15 in 30p or 60i.

I just re-read the XDCAM Whitepaper for FCP. It states that if the sequence is a native XDCAM HD format, no re-compression is required. However, a couple pages later, it states that 'minor' re-compression may occur around edit points to ensure group of pictures and data rate meet MPEG2 compliancy.

-gb-

Thanks for that... I don't know how they do it, but I guess that is better than what I would have expected. I don't imagine that Vegas is any different...

The recompression of a small group of frames is possibly the only way it could be done, thinking about it. I'm just going on what I am told by the Vegas people. When outputting a sequence Vegas displays the actual footage in its preview window. If no recompression is required then it shows a message stating that. I haven't seen any recompression being applied with HDV or XDCAM HD so far on cuts only edits.

I'm not sure how FCP works. I have only just started using that software so I don't know much about it.

The demo of Vegas Pro 8 with EX1 footage in Sydney was pretty impressive. Yes if it's cuts only no recompression is required, obviously if there's dissolves or anything else that affects the image recompression is required but only of the affected portion.
FCP seemed to import the footage as easily as Vegas Pro 8 although the process didn't seem quite as fast. It seemed to loose the metadata in the process. Vegas by comparison gives it to you as markers on the T/L. You also get a basic burn to BD disk for quick previews.
At the same event Edius seemed to cope quite capably, Avid Liquid seemed unable to ingest but will in the next release. They were able to playback the footage once ingested outside of Liquid.
Adobe were invited but didn't show.

Thanks for the nice NLE's vs EX1 round-up, Bob. My question is: based on HDV renders, I'm getting exactly what you describe from Vegas Pro 8.0a: recompression of only substantially modified parts. However, what beats me is that when I play back the no-recompressed renders using Nero Showtime, I'm getting clean video only if the hardware accelleration is off, otherwise it seems the whole bottom 1/3 of the picture sort of gets frozen, then pixelated, from time to time - even outside the cut points of the project. Of course it goes without saying no such problem playing back the original, native m2t's.

Did you actually see any EX1 1920x1080 clips smart-rendered by Vegas, and how it was played back?

No, this was a very quick demo by 4 people, one each from Apple, Grass Valley, Avid and Vegas camps. They were only demoing (or not in Avids case) ingesting and getting the footage onto the T/L and very briefly playing it back.

I don't know why the hardware acceleration is having problems, this would be totally dependant on the graphics card itself, most likely not even a Nero issue. I can only speculate that as any mpeg-2 smartrender has to produce non fixed length GOPs this could be causing the hardware decoder to have issues. If this feature is vital to you my only suggestion is to try it on a better graphics card.

Well, I guess it's vital to all of us, as it suggests the smartrendered mpg2's are not fully compliant. BTW I have a higher class ATI card with newest drivers, but this is of secondary importance as we cannot control how customers will be playing back stuff...

Fully compliant with what?
If you can put it back into the SxS cards and have the camera play it or copy it onto an XDCAM disk and have a player play that then it's mission accomplished.
If you're talking about HDV footage I'd say much the same thing, it's a m2t file which is not the same as a mpg file, I think. If I'm right then it's probably more good luck than anything else that it plays at all.

I was told that FCP and Vegas (and other NLE's) re create the full GOP sequence around edit points by creating empty zero length I,B and P frames so that the GOP still has the correct number of frames. Thats how they manage to have render free cuts only edits and sequences where only transitions and effects are re-encoded.

I wouldn't leave it to luck, Bob. Before I started using Vegas, for a couple of years I smartrendered SD MPG2 files with Ulead editors (MediaStudio and/or VideoStudio), and never had any problem at all with the output files - be it MPEG2's played back with a software player, or VOBs on my DVDs.

Therefore I can only hope for the mxf's being smart-rendered by Vegas in a more smart fashion that the m2t's are now. And since I'm going to intercut my V1E stuff with the EX1 - I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a truly "smart" no-recompression capabilities of my favourite NLE:)

That makes sense to me. In my earlier post, I was writing what came out of the FCP XDCAM white paper PDF file. That would explain the minor re-compression they speak of. Having to re-encode where effects are applied makes a good case for getting the look in camera if at all possible.

Just goes to show that where there's a will, there's a way.

-gb-

This is getting way outside any discussion of the the EX1, probably belongs in a Vegas forum.

But seeing as how you raised the point.
Firstly when I've dug into just how good any mpeg-2 smart rendering is there's always someone who finds the gottcha in what comes out the end. Womble is oftenly touted as being very good for DVD mpeg-2 and then someone says it's fine for 98% of the DVD players, on some specific players they get a problem with some cuts.
My understanding is given the nature of mpeg-2 it's impossible to build a system that is 100% bulletproof to the extent of not having to produce some difference between the structure of the input stream compared to the output stream, especially when we're dealing with a long GOP. If the spec says a 15 frame GOP how can one cut out frames and still maintain every GOP as 15 frames. Maybe as has been suggested by inserting dummy frames but will everything cope with these dummy frames. Even Hollywood authored DVDs have issues, it really is a jungle.

Certainly, you mightn't have had a problem with what ULead did, that doesn't mean it's 100% compliant because as we know even things that are 100% compliant will not play on some DVD players.

Now in your specific case, as I understand it the mpeg-2 stream recorded by XDCAM is quite different in some ways to HDV, the audio being one thing of note. So I have no concept of how one could intercut the footage, smart render it and guarantee that anything will play it seemlessly.

Certainly - my apologies to those not interested in my digressions.

My bad - I obviosuly went too far in imagining both V1 m2t's and EX1 mxf's on the same timeline being smart-rendered. So to gracefully conclude this digression of mine, let me just express my hope the mxf's will smart-render fine in Vegas - I guess everybody in this forum/thread shares that :)