How are you editing the footage on this camera?

Green Hornet

Green Hornet

Veteran
I have had an HVX200, and sold it to buy the HPX170.
At first it seemed like the HPX170 was the best camera out there.

Then I thought about what it would take to get enough stuff for a days worth of shooting, and for me, the P2 card system didn't make sense.

I was tired of trying to offload cards in the field, and my Firestore to be honest, I never used it, other than testing.

The P2 cards cost too much, or should I say, more than I WANTED to invest in something that will lose value faster than any other thing I can think of.

That lead me to the Sony EX1.

For $6,300 I can get one with 2 cards, adn be shooting from day one.
Get a few adapters and some $200 worth of SDHC cards, and I can shoot all day.
So for $6,500 I am done spending money untill I WANT to spend more.

The HPX170 will cost me $5,000 and I will have to spend at least another $2,000
to be shooting all day, and have footage that I feel is not as good.
So in the end, the HPX170 will cost me more.

All that being said, Having $4,000 from the sale of the HVX200, and when I sell my firestore, and remaining P2 cards, I should be very close to pulling the trigger.

My question now is...

How does one edit this footage?
I have Premiere Pro CS4, and I belive it will edit natively, but I EXPECT it to be slow and choppy with a laptop with a core 2 duo 8400 processor and 4 gig ram. (I have not tried this yet as I have not purchased the camera..just heard it was not as easy to edit as the HVX200)

I want smooth editing like DV.
I also have cineform aspect HD, but not currently supported in CS4.

With the laptop I have, what would I have to do to be able to edit like DV, the footage from the EX1?


What is everyone else editing on?
 
Last edited:
FCP works very well. Haven't tried Premiere in ages Though. Sony Vegas is useless for all HD (except for HDV). To bad, because imo Sony Vegas has the nicest timeline interface of all NLEs.
 
Even rendering the files won't give you smooth previews? Maybe setting the preview to draft quality?

I'm a bit outdated but is there a way to use FCP in Vista? I heard about some Mac OS emulators...
 
I've only had my EX1 for a couple of weeks, but have been editing footage using Vegas Pro 8.

I had a couple of problems early on (renders crashing) but recently everything seems to have improved. EX1 and HDV have mixed fine in the timeline, and renders are have gone without a hitch.

As for the previews, I have been using "draft" quality (or whatever Vegas calls it) for smooth playback, but switching to "full" quality when I need to edit fine detail.
 
Sean Michael said:
I've only had my EX1 for a couple of weeks, but have been editing footage using Vegas Pro 8.

I had a couple of problems early on (renders crashing) but recently everything seems to have improved. EX1 and HDV have mixed fine in the timeline, and renders are have gone without a hitch.

As for the previews, I have been using "draft" quality (or whatever Vegas calls it) for smooth playback, but switching to "full" quality when I need to edit fine detail.
Click to expand...

Hi Sean, are you using an intermediary codec like cineform? Or editing natively in mpeg2?
 
Gents:

Vegas Pro 8.0a or something like that is a Sony product and as such it works with XDCam EX footage pretty well.

FCP also works well.

There's a Clip Browser and conversion utility available from Sony (for free) that does the conversions to and from the SxS cards.

I'd say Vegas Pro 8.0a or FCP 6.0.4+ for your editing. I'm doing a network special on FCP at the moment, it's not XDCam EX but HDCam HD codec and so I was able to bring that in natively, and also output it natively when I'm done.

This saves further encode/decodes until after it reaches the network, where I believe at least 6-8 separate compression/encoding/decoding steps are involved before the image actually hits a screen at home.

This is the major reason why formats like HDV, etc., are marginal for HD TV, and why it's not a good idea to encode/decode more than absolutely necessary in post.

You can have an HD master that looks great, but has been messed around with in post, say four or five transcodes, etc., and by the time it gets to air it's gone through over 12 transcodes, and looks blocky and horrible. And of course fails network QC. Which is a problem.

So, thus far, most of my HD work has been on FCP Quicktimes. Even though I do have Avids, I feel I can sleep easier knowing that I'm working on originals and not on transcodes. Probably nothing to that, just superstitious nonsense, but hey, call me old school.
 
If you really want to cut this as easily as DV, then cut proxies. Render out a full version of the clips as 1/4 size uncompressed proxies, cut those, then substitute the real thing come render time. That's how I started cutting HD before my machine upgrade. Worked well and is SUPER fast.
 
emotepix said:
Gents:

Vegas Pro 8.0a or something like that is a Sony product and as such it works with XDCam EX footage pretty well.
Click to expand...


The current version of Vegas requires a re-wrap of the EX files out of clipbrowser. It cannot edit the native format. In that sense, it's no different than any other NLE.

But unless you've got a pretty hot machine, I'd do Cineform, or proxy files. I'm in pre-production right now for a corporate video that will be shot on my EX1 in 1080p, and I'll be doing DV sized Proxy files for that. No way I am going to push around all that data for nothing.
 
emotepix said:
This saves further encode/decodes until after it reaches the network, where I believe at least 6-8 separate compression/encoding/decoding steps are involved before the image actually hits a screen at home.

.
Click to expand...

I've observed this in NLE's but never understood it. If you're pushing around 1's and 0's, why do you still get what's comparable to generation loss? Start with 1's and 0's, end with 1's and 0's. What happens?
 
brianluce said:
I've observed this in NLE's but never understood it. If you're pushing around 1's and 0's, why do you still get what's comparable to generation loss? Start with 1's and 0's, end with 1's and 0's. What happens?
Click to expand...

Because pushing around the exact 1's and 0's (uncompressed HD) requires major hardware that home users are not willing to buy, and requires render times in days for long form projects.

Set up an uncompressed 30 minute sequence in your NLE, maybe 4 or 5 tracks with some cuts and dissolves, add some VFX, maybe some Magic Bullet Looks, and render it out to mp4 and tell us how long it says it will take. I do those over the weekend.
 
So what qualifies as "major hardware"?

Apple MacPro QuadCore G5? (8 processors)
Apple MacPro QuadCore Intel? (8 processors)
 
MitchLewis said:
So what qualifies as "major hardware"?

Apple MacPro QuadCore G5? (8 processors)
Apple MacPro QuadCore Intel? (8 processors)
Click to expand...

G5's are way out of date and can hardly be considered "major hardware" any more.

On the other hand, if it does what you need it to do, it is not obsolete (the buggy-whip theory of technological obsolescence).

Seriously, Steve Jobs announced the transition to Intel based machines years ago.
 
PerroneFord said:
Because pushing around the exact 1's and 0's (uncompressed HD) requires major hardware that home users are not willing to buy, and requires render times in days for long form projects.

Set up an uncompressed 30 minute sequence in your NLE, maybe 4 or 5 tracks with some cuts and dissolves, add some VFX, maybe some Magic Bullet Looks, and render it out to mp4 and tell us how long it says it will take. I do those over the weekend.
Click to expand...

Okay well that I can understand and yeah I've experienced that jamming cineform files into a pentium 4 maw, but that accounts for long render times, not really why you'd lose image quality.

What kind of hardware are you using and what kind of files are your manipulating? Uncompressed?
 
I have a couple 64bit quadcore machines and one 32 bit dual core machine. I don't touch uncompressed footage. No need for it. Most of my stuff ends up on the web or DVD. Generally, I shoot 720p, do a render out to Cineform or cut proxies at 960x540, work on those, and then substitute in the real files for a final render. Once I have an HD master, I then render out my mpeg2 and mpeg4 versions, and if we are going to stream on our server, I'll cut a WMV version.

Working this way, I can do nearly all my rough work on the 64bit laptop, and keep it there until I am ready for final edits and color. Then I move the work off to the bigger hardware. I work on the laptop so that I am not tied to being in my office until I need to be.
 
brianluce said:
Hi Sean, are you using an intermediary codec like cineform? Or editing natively in mpeg2?
Click to expand...

Brian, I am using the Sony Clip Browser to "unwrap" the native files to MXF for NLE. My editing laptop has a 2.5 MHz Core 2 Duo T9300 Processor with 4GB of RAM (also a Quadro FX card, FWIW).

Vegas seems to handle the unwrapped files just fine, although not quite as easily as it handles HDV. To date most of my projects have been relatively brief (less than five minutes) and rendered to WMV.
 
Um... I'm cutting an 8 camera HDCam HD100 program for a network TV show in full res... on a dual G5 running FCP.

It's carrying an Aja Kona 2, a high end graphics card, the full 8GB of RAM, and several terra of HDDs on eSATA, but basically it's doing all right. One 30", one 20" and a bunch of high end monitoring and QC stuff hanging off the Kona.

I do have the rendering out on QMaster to a couple of Quad Intels though.

But the cutting itself is just fine on a G5 - with the video card and the Kona.
 
Moving around HDCam is a LOOOOONG way from moving around 10 bit uncompressed. I can move around my XDCam EX in full res just fine on the laptop. But that doesn't amount to anything when we start talking about uncompressed footage.
 
nsoltz said:
G5's are way out of date and can hardly be considered "major hardware" any more.

On the other hand, if it does what you need it to do, it is not obsolete (the buggy-whip theory of technological obsolescence).

Seriously, Steve Jobs announced the transition to Intel based machines years ago.
Click to expand...


I did a little more research and this is what I found:
http://www.barefeats.com/quad06.html

That's a link to a side by side comparison between the G5 Quad (fastest of the G5) versus a Intel QuadCore. Yes, the Intel is faster, but not by much.

Just thought you should know. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top