| A Creative COW Real Time Report |
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Don Greening
Port Coquitlam, British Columbia Canada
©Don Greening and CreativeCow.net. All rights reserved.
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Article Focus:
In this Creative COW Real Time Report, Don Greening takes us along on his very first shoot with his brand new Sony XDCAM EX camera on location in British Columbia. Upon return to his nice warm studio, Don also takes us through his very first look at the footage on his plasma TV, and his first edit in Final Cut Pro. |
My wife and I walked out onto the Port Coquitlam river dykes in British Columbia, Canada to do some scenery shooting with our new Sony PMW-EX1. I've been shooting DV until now, with a Canon GL2, XL2 and Sony PD170. I bought the EX because of what it is: HD, 1/2" chips, pro-style lens, tapeless and all wrapped up in a small unobtrusive package for run and gun/event type shooting. There's nothing else like it in its class.
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We didn't spend a lot of time on our first trip with the EX because it was cold and I was a real wimp. We ended up taking about 10 minutes of footage. I didn't try any other picture settings other than taking the camera out of the box and changing the recording setup to 1080P 30fps. I used the highest quality setting of 35 mbps.
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Even though I was shooting with the default picture settings (other than 30p and a shutter speed of 1/60) I was impressed with the color saturation, the amount of increased latitude in the blacks and highlights, and the amazing shallow DOF. I'm so used to shooting MiniDV and protecting highlights that I ended up unconsciously underexposing just about every scene. This resulted in some picture noise in the blacks, but as soon as I exposed properly the noise disappeared completely.
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The double zebra bar function is wonderful, at least for me. Now I can set zebra 1 at 80% for faces and zebra 2 at 100% IRE to see what would be totally blown out if the picture is recorded. Both zebra settings can be active at the same time. The pro cameras have had this feature for years and I've been waiting a long time for a camera I can afford that has this function.
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The lens controls for manual focus and zoom are smooth, give lots of feedback and are repeatable for things like rack focus, etc. What I liked best is the iris ring on the lens. It's so much easier to adjust exposure than anything I've ever used in the past. And it's fast and smooth.
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One of my shots today was of a small boat on the river going by at a brisk pace. I zoomed all the way in (14x) and panned with the boat for several seconds. There were lots of bare winter tree branches in the foreground of the picture whipping by but the XDCAM codec powered right through the fast action without a hiccup.
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I have a new respect for the MPEG2 35 mbps VBR compression.
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The Big Screen
When we got home I immediately hooked the camera up to our 50 inch Samsung plasma TV using component in. I pushed play on the camera and it cycled through all the scene files on the card non-stop. I thought it would have stopped at the end of each clip but the camera just played all the clips in one go. Nice.
Anyway, the video is impressive. Huge amount of detail. And a big part of why I wanted to move to progressive HD is for the LCD and plasma televisions coming to market and to "future-proof" for the corporate markets our company is going after in the new year. Progressive shooting is the way to go when your delivery is for a client watching your product on an LCD or plasma screen. No contest.
Workflow
There is more than one way to transfer the files over but I elected to simply do it within the FCP log and transfer window. In order for this to work the software required is Final Cut Pro v.6.0.2, Quicktime Pro v.7.3 and Mac OS v.10.4.11, in addition to the free Sony Clip Browser and Sony XDCAM Transfer Tool v.2.1. Of course, for those who are already using OS v.10.5.1 you probably already have QT 7.3.
Once the camera was connected via the included USB cable I turned it on and waited for the camera device icon to appear on the desktop. When it didn't show up I looked into the camera's VF and discovered that it was waiting for me to say "OK" to its question which was: "Do you want to connect your EX via USB?" or something similar. Once I confirmed the request the device showed up on the desktop like a hard drive or disc image icon with the label "Untitled."
I started up a new project in FCP and chose a new sequence with the setting XDCAM EX 1080 30p 35 VBR because that's what the footage was recorded at yesterday. Once that's done you're ready for the transfer.
Now, logging in this instance isn't done in the traditional way like you would do if you were capturing tape. You don't use any of the log and capture controls. Instead go to the file menu and choose: "Import > Sony XDCAM." (Even though I had the log and transfer window open I'm not sure now that it even needs to be active in order to access the camera. Just a thought that others may want to look into when it's time for them to transfer video.)
Immediately the Sony Clip Browser window appears within FCP. From here, it's just a matter of highlighting each (or all) of those scene files and choose "Import" on the lower right side of the Clip Browser window.
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Before transferring each clip you have the option to add a clip name, metadata, etc. to give each clip a unique filename. BUT BEFORE YOU DO IT......I highly recommend that you change the default capture settings within the Sony Clip Browser window. Meaning, you want to change the place where the actual video files will be saved.
Why? Because the default location is on your startup drive, inside your Documents Folder. Even though you may have already created a scratch folder on your media drive(s) within FCP, these transferred files will not be there when you check later. They will instead be in the folder location that you have chosen within the Sony Clip Browser window.
Why Sony chose the startup drive as the default location is known only to Sony, but your media should not be saved to your startup drive, only a separate media drive or a drive array. Using the USB camera connection resulted in a transfer speed of roughly 15 or so sec. for each minute of media transferred. Choosing a lower recording bitrate will probably result in faster transfer times.
Plugging your SxS Pro memory card directly into your MacBook Pro's Express 34 slot will dramatically reduce the time it takes to transfer media, down to about 5 min. or less for a 16Gbyte SxS Pro card which is about 50 min of footage recorded at the HQ camera setting.
In the accompanying picture of FCP's Browser window you can see that some of the transferred clips are showing up twice.
Not too sure why this is happening but from what I've been able to find out it's not happening to everybody. There is a workaround. Folks here at Creative COW like Ben Kupfer and others have reported that if you delete your filenames from the Browser and import again from their folder on your hard drive there will be no duplication of filenames when they show up again in the Browser window. You DON'T have to actually re-transfer the video again from the camera.
Make sense?
Before you delete the actual video clips from your SxS Pro Memory card I recommend that you go to the clips on your hard drive and check each one, making sure they play okay. Just double -click each .mov file and it will play in the stand alone Quicktime Player window. Once you're comfortable with your workflow and have seen the reliability with it then you probably won't have to do this last step before reformatting the card, but for now I'd check first.
What's next
Today, we mostly shoot weddings, but starting next year we'll really be going after more corporate business. We'll be dramatically changing our web site to reflect that, especially pointing to the fact that we'll be shooting with the "uncompromising quality of CineAlta HD."
But that's our little secret, right? ;-)
Read part 2 of Don's Real Time Report here, a low-light shoot-out between the EX1 and the PD170.
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