basspig
02-11-2008, 12:50 AM
A friend of mine was commenting on how (to him) rediculous it seems that Sony put a camera on the market whose output nobody can read (NLE incompatibility). While reading another forum, I found there is XDCam transfer software on a Sony web site. Only drawback is that it’s not currently available for Windows.
What the XDcam really needs is an enhancement to Clip Browser that will reverse the Big Endian audio bit format to Little Endian for proper playback on Intel-based machines. As many of you know, there is no audio when you import an XDCam EX .MP4 file into Premiere CS3.
I have been exploring demo versions of two products that are supposed to solve this challenge:
Cineform Prospect HD/2K
MainConcept MPEG Pro HD 3
The first choice does not make XDCam files directly readable in Premiere. The files must first be converted to 80Mb/S Intermediate format first. Many wipes, transitions and color grading effects don’t work in realtime (you get a red “X” in the corner of the screen, and on all clips the luminance shifts toward high contrast when playback is paused. The workflow is just about as efficient as working with HDV off of tape, because of this extra conversion step—the speed advantages of tapeless recording seem to be not fully-realized because of this. In addition, users who depend on dual-head graphics cards for second monitor video-only display will lose that functionality.
The second choice seems to offer more promise, in terms of efficient workflow and avoiding the ballooning disc space and conversion time required with Cineform, but it too has its issues, in that again, no second monitor support on dual-head graphics cards like nVidia GTX8800, and in the RC8 that I just evaluated, unrendered segments, when played, see a rapid ramping up of memory allocation by Premiere, until, after 20 or so seconds of continuous play, the RAM usage hits the addressable limits of Windows XP and Premiere crashes.
Still frames grabbed from Premiere with either CODEC look just about indescernable from one another—the quality of both is excellent.
Both add-ons above achieve some small degree of interoperability, however, my friend taunts me about being “bamboozled” into purchasing expensive third-party CODECs just to import the footage from the camera. I told him that this is the price you pay for being on the “bleeding edge” of technology—sometimes you get the cuts and blood to show for it. But in thinking more deeply about it, I do think it would be a good service to Sony customers if Sony could build a converter into their Clip Browser, thus removing a considerable obstacle as perceived by a segment of the buying market that may be ‘on the fence’ about choosing this camera over something else.
My personal pet peeve with this camera is the fact that when you switch it off, it’s not OFF. Leave the battery on it for three days, and when you need it, that battery you thought was still fully-charged it about to shut down. So you adapt and take the battery out, introducing the possibility that you’ll misplace it, or worse, lose it entirely and be caught with no power source on a job. That’s really the only “stupid” design flaw that I can raise issue with on this camera. But you know what? The picture and sound on this camera are beyond reproach, in my book, and weighting that in, I think I can live with the battery situation.
Ergonomics have been talked about with regard to this camera. Yes, it is a bit awkward, and I have big, stubby fingers and find it challenging to use the buttons on this camera, but that’s been true for all the Sony cameras I’ve owned, so I’m not particularly disappointed here. I think a camera this good deserves some sort of shoulder brace, if the user can demonstrate that it will improve his or her shooting style. We use our other cameras tripod-mounted a lot, and I don’t see this changing, so it is not an issue here.
Controllers… I’ll probably miss the convenience my Manfrotto 523 offered with the V1U. But not a whole lot. Maybe the folks that make these controllers will come up with clever tricks to add features like ‘push auto’ by manipulating signals to the lens controller. Time will reveal what products take shape.
Overall, Sony did a remarkable—no—an AWESOME job, integrating the features, quality level and portability that they did, and at an absurd giveaway price. Instead of buying one F900, we can afford a whole cadre of these EX1s, which provide more value than the one camera ever could.
Bottom line will be how well these cameras hold up over time. My first unit had to go back to the store because it simply stopped working altogether after 5-1/2 hours. Given the long string of 100% reliable Sony cameras I’ve owned, statistically, this would seem inevitable. Of course, once you’ve seen a brand new camera fail before your eyes, it does shake your faith for a while. Same thing happened with some super-power amplifiers I added to my sound system last year—but after I repaired it, it’s been working flawlessly since and I’ve regained some confidence in it. Hopefully I’ve had my one bad unit and the rest will be trouble-free from now on.
What the XDcam really needs is an enhancement to Clip Browser that will reverse the Big Endian audio bit format to Little Endian for proper playback on Intel-based machines. As many of you know, there is no audio when you import an XDCam EX .MP4 file into Premiere CS3.
I have been exploring demo versions of two products that are supposed to solve this challenge:
Cineform Prospect HD/2K
MainConcept MPEG Pro HD 3
The first choice does not make XDCam files directly readable in Premiere. The files must first be converted to 80Mb/S Intermediate format first. Many wipes, transitions and color grading effects don’t work in realtime (you get a red “X” in the corner of the screen, and on all clips the luminance shifts toward high contrast when playback is paused. The workflow is just about as efficient as working with HDV off of tape, because of this extra conversion step—the speed advantages of tapeless recording seem to be not fully-realized because of this. In addition, users who depend on dual-head graphics cards for second monitor video-only display will lose that functionality.
The second choice seems to offer more promise, in terms of efficient workflow and avoiding the ballooning disc space and conversion time required with Cineform, but it too has its issues, in that again, no second monitor support on dual-head graphics cards like nVidia GTX8800, and in the RC8 that I just evaluated, unrendered segments, when played, see a rapid ramping up of memory allocation by Premiere, until, after 20 or so seconds of continuous play, the RAM usage hits the addressable limits of Windows XP and Premiere crashes.
Still frames grabbed from Premiere with either CODEC look just about indescernable from one another—the quality of both is excellent.
Both add-ons above achieve some small degree of interoperability, however, my friend taunts me about being “bamboozled” into purchasing expensive third-party CODECs just to import the footage from the camera. I told him that this is the price you pay for being on the “bleeding edge” of technology—sometimes you get the cuts and blood to show for it. But in thinking more deeply about it, I do think it would be a good service to Sony customers if Sony could build a converter into their Clip Browser, thus removing a considerable obstacle as perceived by a segment of the buying market that may be ‘on the fence’ about choosing this camera over something else.
My personal pet peeve with this camera is the fact that when you switch it off, it’s not OFF. Leave the battery on it for three days, and when you need it, that battery you thought was still fully-charged it about to shut down. So you adapt and take the battery out, introducing the possibility that you’ll misplace it, or worse, lose it entirely and be caught with no power source on a job. That’s really the only “stupid” design flaw that I can raise issue with on this camera. But you know what? The picture and sound on this camera are beyond reproach, in my book, and weighting that in, I think I can live with the battery situation.
Ergonomics have been talked about with regard to this camera. Yes, it is a bit awkward, and I have big, stubby fingers and find it challenging to use the buttons on this camera, but that’s been true for all the Sony cameras I’ve owned, so I’m not particularly disappointed here. I think a camera this good deserves some sort of shoulder brace, if the user can demonstrate that it will improve his or her shooting style. We use our other cameras tripod-mounted a lot, and I don’t see this changing, so it is not an issue here.
Controllers… I’ll probably miss the convenience my Manfrotto 523 offered with the V1U. But not a whole lot. Maybe the folks that make these controllers will come up with clever tricks to add features like ‘push auto’ by manipulating signals to the lens controller. Time will reveal what products take shape.
Overall, Sony did a remarkable—no—an AWESOME job, integrating the features, quality level and portability that they did, and at an absurd giveaway price. Instead of buying one F900, we can afford a whole cadre of these EX1s, which provide more value than the one camera ever could.
Bottom line will be how well these cameras hold up over time. My first unit had to go back to the store because it simply stopped working altogether after 5-1/2 hours. Given the long string of 100% reliable Sony cameras I’ve owned, statistically, this would seem inevitable. Of course, once you’ve seen a brand new camera fail before your eyes, it does shake your faith for a while. Same thing happened with some super-power amplifiers I added to my sound system last year—but after I repaired it, it’s been working flawlessly since and I’ve regained some confidence in it. Hopefully I’ve had my one bad unit and the rest will be trouble-free from now on.