AF-100 shoot with Nano

Coco Bermudez

Coco Bermudez

Well-known member
I am getting ready for our first production with an AF-100 and a Nanoflash. I am getting the Nanoflash two days prior to the shoot...not a lot of time to get aquantited with it, but everyone tells me it is a simple thing to do.

Anyone that has used one of these devices, are there any pitfalls I should be careful of?

Post will be done on FCP with some minor After Effects work.
 
Pitfalls? No, not really, other than juggling power supplies. The standard NF battery will last for about three hours, and it's always on unless you unplug the battery, so keep an eye on it and you may want to get a spare battery or two so you've got power for the full day.

I recommend using SDI instead of HDMI to record with, but that means you'll have to turn SDI OUTPUT to ON in the menus on the AF100.

It's not hard, but read the manual (it comes on a CD so it's electronic) and configure the NF beforehand.
 
Thanks Barry...I plan to use AC to it so hopefully I will have long hours of usage.

I saw somewhere that one has to be sure to turn the VF info off or this will be recorded. Any truth to that?

Also, someone told me that it records ProRes. I thought it was just a MPEG2 QT.

By the way...your book it pretty awesome...can't read it fast enough.
 
Yes turn off external monitor info or you will be very sorry. But it is OK to have it on the VF and LCD on the cam.

You can choose MPEG 2 at several different rates (my favourite is 100mb/s) it is very clean. These are wrapped as .mov or .mxf your choice.

You can also choose intra frame compression up to 280mb/s. It is all in the manual. And you can download the manual for the NF here:
http://www.convergent-design.com/Portals/58/Documents/nanoFlash_Manual.pdf

If you are looking for a neat way to mount it I have a bracket system that offers 2 positions, you can contact me if you are interested, or if you have questions on the NF use with the AF100, I have it all set up and it really does improve the picture quality, see this thread:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...in-the-AF100&p=2231187&viewfull=1#post2231187

Here are some photos of my bracket for the NF:
AF100_NF3.jpg
AF100_NF11.jpg

AF100_NF6.jpg
 
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Yes, should have mentioned that -- you must turn VIDEO OUT OSD to OFF. Otherwise yeah, that'll be recorded all over your image!
 
Dear Coco,

I provide support for our nanoFlash users, and potential users, 24 / 7.

Please send me an email at CDSupport (@) Convergent-Design.com and I will respond with all of my phone numbers.
 
Hey guys:

thanks for all the info. We just rented this Nanoflash and if we like the results (which I think we will) we will go ahead and purchase one ASAP.

My question is, should we record LONG GOP or Iframe if I am going to edit this on FCP?
 
Doesn't really matter, for editing purposes, although iframe is easier to edit. The thing is, you want to keep the quality up, and long-gop can provide better quality >at the same bitrate<. But if you don't mind having bigger files, you can get better quality out of iframe; Convergent says that 280mbps i-frame is the highest-quality mode the nano records in. But, then, you have to consider that you're only going to get 10 minutes of recording out of a 32GB card, so the filesizes would be huge. Lots of people seem to think that 100mbps long-gop is about the sweet spot for quality vs. storage space on the Nano. I wouldn't go below that.
 
Be aware, that as of 3 days ago, per my support call with Dan, the Nanoflash will NOT record 720p at 24 fps from the AF100 SDI output. It WILL record 1080p/24 PsF. At this time, according to my tests, the Nanoflash is unable to detect the pulldown in the 720/24 signal. The resulting 59.94 signal shows up in my Avid as a 59.94 fps clip, and you would need to remove pulldown frames through a render.
 
bhdfield said:
Be aware, that as of 3 days ago, per my support call with Dan, the Nanoflash will NOT record 720p at 24 fps from the AF100 SDI output. It WILL record 1080p/24 PsF. At this time, according to my tests, the Nanoflash is unable to detect the pulldown in the 720/24 signal. The resulting 59.94 signal shows up in my Avid as a 59.94 fps clip, and you would need to remove pulldown frames through a render.
Click to expand...

Is this true? You have to have PsF enabled on the AF100 for the Nanoflash to record 1080?
 
Billygoat said:
That's the only way I tested and found it to function.
Click to expand...

Well that is no good at all, several things get disabled when you enable PsF. Have you tried not having PsF enabled and removing the pulldown in the Nanoflash? Is it just the 720 flags the Nanoflash can't read or the 1080 flags too?
 
The shoot went well...the AF-100 performed incredibly....the Nanoflash not too well though. The Nanoflash had a hard time connecting to the AF-100. It kept on giving us errors of "source not detected". We did everything we could to make that box connect with the AF-100. Sometimes it would see it and we would record with no issues...sometimes it would see it and start recording and ten halfway it would stop with the same error...and sometimes it would not see it at all... You know how it is, we had a 16 hour studio shoot, a Nanoflash that refuses to co-operate and a client that is trying to understand why we are not rolling...frustrating. We did everything according to the book.

At the end of the day we blame no one...it is what it is...just production hell! :)

One thing I will say is...the footage that we got from the Nano, as spectacular as they were at 220M, did not beat the images produced by the AF-100. We had two HD broadcast monitors and we could not tell difference between one or the other...Everyone was impressed by the AF100. We are more than happy to have gone that route.

As soon as we can get clearance from the client we will post something...its a hush hush project.

P1010932.jpg
 
Would it be possible to do a grading test? I keep hearing that the native footage vs nano look identical until you start the grading process.
 
we've heard that too...this is why we went with the Nanoflash because we are going to be grading the footage...only post will tell
 
Yea, it all looks good until you push color correction. I've worked with red and 7d multicamera footage, and they look fine until you try to correct something. The red holds up, the 7d breaks down very quickly.
 
Here are 2 comparisons of AF100 CF versus NanoFlash Footage:
CF_NanoComparo.png


The second one is CF on the left and NanoFlash on the right, this one the NF is 100mb/sec long gop.
1to1_AFleft_EXright.png


Both shots are blown up, so we are pixel peeping here but there is a big difference.
 
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