EX1 Abominations Solved with Nano!

[William Urschel]

Over the last year and a half I have submitted a number of new threads and posts here about the horrific results I have obtained with my EX1 - and many of you have been kind enough to provide well informed and experienced advice as to solutions, and I have tried many of these, but to no avail, until I installed a Convergent Designs' nanoFlash recorder on my EX1, and I now for the first time am free of bizarre anomilies and artifacts, and have superb results!

For the FIRST time seeing I am producing GLORIOUS video from the EX1, with the nano!!!!!! I have
been tearing my hair (and other things) out for two years, and spent over 1,500 hours evenings
and weekends (to say nothing of over $15,000 spent on another new powerful workstation and 6
major editing and/or conversion programs) trying to get anything decent from my EX1, unlike most
of you who get great pictures from the EX1 and who have expressed bafflement with my issues.

I am now convinced that there is something radically wrong with the video recording (to SxS) with
my EX1 - for two years, SxS recording has shown egregious interline twitter in progressive
recordings put on Blu Ray, with the darndest vertical and horizontal hash around any fine detail or
sharp edges (I guess both are really the same). My FX1 and four other HDV cams have produced
video far superior to the EX1, until nanoFlash, now. I would have been far better off for my life
expectancy just to have thrown my EX1 in the trash and have invested in another cam.

In any event, the output I am now receiving from the nano is just downright GLORIOUS!, I now have
almost no interline twitter, except just very minor on the finist detail, and gracefully, NO wierd
artifacts such as the vertical and horizontal hash previously from the SxS. Color rendition from SxS
was great, and of course is even better with the output of the nanoFlash.with its 4;2;2 colorspace.

For the moment, I'm back now to editing HDV material until I have Win 7 and Adobe Production Premiem
CS5 installed - and hopefully correct in my understanding that Premiere will ingest and process MXF
files without any plug-ins?

And then, I'll be using ONLY the EX1 with the nanoFlash!

Again, thanks to you all for your well informed opinions and advice - it has been much appreciated.

[Bruce Rawlings]

Out of interest William what bit rate are you using on the Nano?

[Richard Crowley]

If your EX1 was not performing properly, why didn't you return it or have it repaired under warranty? Probably too late for that now. I would not have had a fraction of the patience for finding a workaround for something that was not performing to spec.

[William Urschel]

Bruce, I'm recording at 100Mbps, Long GOP.

And Richard, your thought is a great one - return the camera for repair - EXCEPT 1) with all the great advice I received from everyone, I didn't think of that, and no one suggested it until you just did! Everyone suggested such issues as, it was my hardware, it was my software, it was my set up, it was a computer bug, it was Adobe, it was PC, it was Cineform. And various hardware and software suppliers were very busy saying it couldn't be their product, and ended up attacking my incompetence. - EXCEPT 2) the issues I experienced didn't show up on my computer screens at any stage of the processing, so there was no evident purpose in posting video to web as requested by many - the groteseries and anomolies didn't show up until a BD was played out on any of my customers' screens, or on any one of my 3 test screens - and therefore I was told it must be the player or screen setup - excuse me, but I have been designing and installing CRT, flat panel, and projjection home theater systems for over a quarter century for myself and others, and had never seen anything like this - but no matter - EXCEPT 3) I was loath to send my camera back to the left coast Sony hands after they had had it twice in hand at my exhorbitant shipping, insurance costs (going there under warrenty), the apparent total inability of the staff there to even begin to comprehend the nature of the problem that I have described above or how to even see it, the jamming of my camera in shipping carton upon return, with sloppy, inadequate packing, needlessly exposing the camera to unneccessary damage - I have been VERY careful on this and other boards not to "flame", and maybe this comes closest to it, about Sony Service, but only after looking back over my totally unrealistic stubborn insistance at getting at the heart of the matter, sans what I percieved as a hopeless cause of enlisting Sony Service for this issue, do I now see that I should have just thrown the camera in the trash. I deluded myself that if I made enough (what I thought was intelligent) effort, I could take care of the problem, since except in the case of patently obvious equipment malfunction, I had always without exception been able to do so in the past. Well, silly me.

The camera is a wonder to behold (not to hold!) and when it is operatng correctly, can't be touched by anything else in its price range (well, that was true when it came out, but now look around!), but my goodness, NEVER have I had a Sony product at a seventh of the original cost of this one with issues that I experience of backfocus, flaking finish, etc, as has been well documented here and elsewhere. Fool me once, fool me twice.....before this post gets deleated, or I get thrown off, by Chris, I'm going to stop right here! I believe the negatives about the Sony product and service which I have reported above are accurate, unexaggerated reports of reality. But discretion IS the better part of valor........................