Finally, a Little EX1 Cream of the Crop Video...

[basspig]

...from Yours Truly:

I proudly present the Greater Bridgeport Symphony Orchestra, as promoted by the performing artist, who paid for the rights to use these excerpts on the net for promotion. As a result, I can share with you these gems that I've recorded in the past year:

[BE SURE TO CLICK 'WATCH IN HIGH QUALITY' FOR STEREO AUDIO AND MUCH BETTER PICTURE]


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgw54_uGDDg


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVIKEWzFA4s


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-6MqiGbemI


The above recordings were made with an EX1 at right balcony, two V1Us at left balcony and stage right, and a HV30 in the ochestra shell.
Sound was recorded with our proprietary (patent pending) surround sound mic array flown over the 4th row, and a stereo pair at the balcony light pipes.

[GuyB]

I bet the lady to the rear right of the Cello player (on the Violin) was actually wearing black, not that muddy red brown we see (you can actually see in some of the other shots they are all in black). Cursed IR contamination, forget rolling shutter, this is the EX1s biggest problem.

Thanks for sharing

[Noel Evans]

Sound mix seems good, though a bit quiet - maybe effect of youtube. Really saw the issue as mentioned by Guy, but Im pretty sure I could correct this in post.

basspig, obviously I know you werent camera op on all cams, but some shaky shots, dodgy zooms and some cut heads etc in framing in these clips.

[GuyB]

... but Im pretty sure I could correct this in post...

Its actually not that easy as it is only some of the blacks that are effected and you can't just go removing red from blacks or it starts turning real black blue etc

I am really anxious for the 'comming soon' IR filter that is meant to be designed specifically for the EX.

[Meep]

Any tips on matching the EX1 and A1? I have both cameras and need to spent a little time setting them up to use A1 as b cam.

[basspig]

The audio perception seems to be born out of a recent rash of badly-mastered CDs, those that employ massive amounts of destructive compression and, more recently, clipping, to enhance loudness as part of some new recording culture of 'volume wars'. My recordings are not about loudness, but about retaining the full dynamic range of the performance. In order to prevent the loudest peak from being clipped, the overall record level (in 24 bits) was set to encompass the loudest possible transient the orchestra could produce. That becomes SRL (standard recording level). The files are then normalized to "peak" value in 64-bit float space and then downsampled to DVD and CD sample rates/bit depths. The average volume level will seem low, but when a crescendo hits, it will stun you, as it would in a live performance. YouTube is a poor venue for this sort of thing, but since the performance has been allowed into the client's online portfolio, at least I can link to it.

There were three camera operators on this concert. A forth camera was unmanned, located 12' up in a small nook in the orchestra shell and locked off at fixed focus. This March recording was one of the last recordings where the editing was a bit choppy--ie., switching to a camera when it was musically-important, rather than waiting a few seconds more for that camera to finish reframing the shot. We completed another concert last fall in which an explicit effort was made to only cut to cameras that were not in motion of panning or zooming and I think it looks much better than this March recording.

One has to bear in mind that I discuss the desired moves with the camera ops before the concert and set strategy goals and leave it to them and their familiarity with the music to decide what section of the orchestra or soloist to frame next. We don't use voice communications during these concerts, so it has to be done with some intuition by the cam ops. Ideal situation would be a director backstage with four monitors and an intercom to each cam op, instructing them individually what to frame and when. But then, maybe that'd be disastrous, as it could often work better with cam ops with music backgrounds to follow the flow of the music naturally. The downside is what the editor has to do when three of four cameras are simultaneously repositioning. :-)