Sony EX1 Questions: Please help

[larrys]

Hello All, I appreciate all of your posts and this wonderful forum.

I am not a video pro but have produced educational video in the past with great results in a Canon GL1 and edited in Final Cut Pro. The resulting DVD has been selling for the years since it was produced. I hired a cameramen to shoot and I taught myself to edit in FCP and I loved it.

You can see the dvd I produced on my website:

http://www.actorscraft.com/books-and-dvds/dvds/

I am an actor/director, author and acting teacher

I am now going to be producing another educational video and am in plans to produce a documentary as well. So, after not doing any video since the old GL1 days, I am in the market for a new camera. I will also upgrade from my old FCP to the latest version.

I have been looking at the Panasonic HVX200 and then became aware of the Sony EX1. I have viewed much footage of each camera and I think I am much more likely to buy the Sony. Which has raised some questions.

1) People keep mentioning "Long GOP" but I can't seem to find any information about what this is.

2) I have also read that with the newest FCP and some software from Sony, I can import and edit the Sony footage just fine. Does anyone here have direct experience editing in FCP and will it accept all of the ways the camera can be set up to shoot: 720p, 1080i, etc?

3) For ultimately transferring the video to film for my documentary, what is the best way to shoot on the Sony and then edit in FCP - 24fps, 25fps, 60fps, other? For the educational video, the program will be put on to a standard, 16x9 dvd for sale.

As a non-pro trying to read up on the many varieties of HD shooting set-ups, I find all of these HD options bewildering. How do I really choose the best way to set up the camera to shoot these projects?

Any advice or direction would be much appreciated!

Larry

[ffaf07]

Hello All, I appreciate all of your posts and this wonderful forum.

I am not a video pro but have produced educational video in the past with great results in a Canon GL1 and edited in Final Cut Pro. The resulting DVD has been selling for the years since it was produced. I hired a cameramen to shoot and I taught myself to edit in FCP and I loved it.

You can see the dvd I produced on my website:

http://www.actorscraft.com/books-and-dvds/dvds/

I am an actor/director, author and acting teacher

I am now going to be producing another educational video and am in plans to produce a documentary as well. So, after not doing any video since the old GL1 days, I am in the market for a new camera. I will also upgrade from my old FCP to the latest version.

I have been looking at the Panasonic HVX200 and then became aware of the Sony EX1. I have viewed much footage of each camera and I think I am much more likely to buy the Sony. Which has raised some questions.

1) People keep mentioning "Long GOP" but I can't seem to find any information about what this is.

2) I have also read that with the newest FCP and some software from Sony, I can import and edit the Sony footage just fine. Does anyone here have direct experience editing in FCP and will it accept all of the ways the camera can be set up to shoot: 720p, 1080i, etc?

3) For ultimately transferring the video to film for my documentary, what is the best way to shoot on the Sony and then edit in FCP - 24fps, 25fps, 60fps, other? For the educational video, the program will be put on to a standard, 16x9 dvd for sale.

As a non-pro trying to read up on the many varieties of HD shooting set-ups, I find all of these HD options bewildering. How do I really choose the best way to set up the camera to shoot these projects?

Any advice or direction would be much appreciated!

Larry

1) GOP = Group of frames. The sony codec "groups" the frames to save bandwith, which can be troublesome at times. It is recorded at 24 full frames per second, but the frames are grouped when written to SxS cards, I believe. I don't think it's such a terrible thing for a documentary, considering people have converted 60i to an okay 24p for film outs, and you're still recording in 24fps.

2) I think Philip Bloom edits natively in FCP. I hear it works just fine as well. More importantly is the hardware you'll be editing on, however.

3) 24fps is always the best option for a film out. Always.

[TheMusician]

As ffaf07 said, long GOP = long group of pictures. The explanation is not simple, but in its most simple form it goes something like this. Every 12 or 15 frames, a GOP camera will record an entire frame called an I-frame. In the frames between the I-frames, it doe not record an entire frame. Instead, it only calculates the changes in the frame from the original I-frame. This does wonders for reducing the bandwidth needed to record the image, but can have problems under cicumstances where there is a lot of complicated movement. XDCAM does a lot better than HDV in this department. Panasoincs DVCPRO HD is an I-frame only solution, where every frame is a complete independent frame, which require a lot higher bandwidth to record the information. This is the better solution when it comes to motion quality, but requires a lot more memory to store. The shortcoming here is that to save on memory constraints, DVCPRO HD reduces the resolution of 1920x1080 to 1280x1080, and compensates by using a wider pixel-aspect-ratio. This results in a softer image. So if you are going to be doing a lot of high speed action flicks, Panasonic is the better solution. If you are going to be shooting a lot of documentaries, weddings, interviews, landscapes, the Sony is definately the way to go.