Adamo P Cultraro

Cloverfield.

As far as SxS goes, here it what Barry Green has to say on the matter:

"kay, now onto my main gripe: SxS SuXS! It was infuriating to use; for anyone used to P2 I don't know how you could stand this. It's like they totally missed the point on what solid state is supposed to be. It's so slow to actually work with the system, it's like using a tape camera, only worse. Okay, look, I've gone around the globe teaching people about the HVX and P2, so I'm used to talking to a lot of shooters and showing them how to use the system. One thing I do is I show how quickly you can go check your footage -- just pop into playback mode and play your clips. Takes about a second, maybe two. On the EX1 the same process takes 14 SECONDS. Count that out, folks. Think about it. "Let's play back that clip", the director says. Okay, count it out: one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand... all the way to 14 one thousand. Now, the camera's rebooted into playback mode and you can play a clip. 14 seconds? On a tape camera like the DVX I could toggle over, REWIND THE TAPE, and be viewing footage in less than 14 seconds!

Okay, another thing I point out in training seminars is that even in the middle of playing back HVX footage, if something started happening that you need to record, you can just punch the record button and the camera will automatically jump into camera mode and start recording. Takes maybe 2 seconds. This is part of the revolution of tapeless, this is part of what makes going solid-state so darn cool, right? I mean, if you're fooling around showing off some footage outside the courtroom and suddenly the doors fly open and the defendant is marched out, you can punch "record" and by the time you point the camera at the scene, it's recording, right? On the EX1? Not possible. It takes about 12 seconds to go from playback mode back to record mode. Again, that's crazy. 12 seconds? The defendant would already be in the cop car and driven away in 12 seconds! How are people supposed to use this for ENG? You're setting yourself up to get screwed.

Okay, here's where it gets worse -- let's say that you decided to show your friend a clip so you push to "playback" mode, and three seconds later the door bursts open. The camera's barely started booting up into playback mode, so you push the switch to camera mode -- guess what? You're out of the game for a full 25 seconds. It has to *finish* booting up in playback mode before it'll even register that you swapped to camera mode! So, you've waited three seconds, now you have to wait 11 more seconds for it to finish booting up, and then you have to wait another 11 seconds for it to re-boot in camera mode. 25 seconds, round trip. Ridiculous. 25 seconds is a long, long time to not be able to shoot. Makes that 7-second tape spool-up time seem instantaneous, doesn't it?

Granted I was swapping back and forth a lot in my testing, so I experienced these delays proportionally more than an average shooter might, so it irritated me more than it may irritate you. But I wanted to drop-kick the thing after a while, and I seriously don't know how an ENG/news guy would put up with it. When you need to go, you need to GO, not sit around waiting for the camera to dawdle around for up to 25 seconds...

Okay, more on SxS: it took 4 minutes and 20 seconds to offload an 8GB card. An 8GB P2 card takes 4:25 on this same laptop (Sony laptop with both ExpressCard and PCMCIA slots). So any claims of how the ExpressCard SxS system is "so much faster" are just marketing nonsense."

Well, the HVX carried it's weight. Not bad for a 5k camera.

Not sure it's that simple. The HVX is recording twice the color information after all. I've marvelled at how Sony fits such long record times into small spaces. Not sure if the Sony is more efficient or just more compressed, which is no bueno.

Too bad about axium. I look fondly upon those paystubs. They were a decent company.

Who cares about 3D. Not I. They are such a gimmick. As David pointed out, the much of the film industry is struggling with two dimensional photography not to mention writing a decent script.

I'll see this flick cause I see just about all of them, but I'm not looking forward to another dark, washed out color Tim Burton Epic. He really needs to find a new look or at least try something different.

I'm a buyer for a few of the ideas David mentioned.

Something about good, basic 3 point lighting and lighting control would be great. I don't want to have to rely so much on my DP.

John - I've read many of your posts in the past. You're a great resource here. It takes a big man to admit he was wrong and I respect you more for that. Yes, I'm serious.

> which doubles the effective sampling sites

 

Obviously, it doesn't.

 

It allows you to do somewhat better than just blowing up a smaller image.

 

It does not have as extreme an effect as doubling the effective photosites.

 

Phil

Why doesn't it? Serious question.

A pretty good explanation of how the HVX achieves 1080 was posted by Barry Green on DVXUser a while back. I'm not qualified to discuss it in depth; he's the local brain trust on the matter.

"The "pixel shift" system is not "uprezzing". Uprezzing is a digital interpolation; that's what Sony does with its V1U. "pixel shift" is not actively "shifting" anything, it merely references that one chip is spatially offset by half a pixel, which doubles the effective sampling sites (960x2 = 1920, 540x2 = 1080) to give the system a theoretical max of 1920 x 1080 sampling sites. Juan says that he gets 2K out of it because there are more active pixels on the chips; he's reading an actual 2048 x 1105 out of the system.

To take matters further, the "pixel shift" system isn't really all that different than a bayer pattern system. Look at the Silicon Imaging SI-2K chip -- that's a 1920x1080 chip system, right? So is it "true" 1920x1080? Well, it has a bayer filter over it, which means that 1/4 of its pixels are covered with blue, 1/4 of them are covered with red, and 1/2 are covered with green. And that means that its red and blue resolutions are (guess what): 960 x 540. Its green is better, at 960x1080-ish (but "ish" because it's not an actual 960x1080, it's a zigzag pattern of half-size 960x1080 pixels). You cannot read the system as discrete pixels, because no individual chip pixel works on its own -- each blue pixel must be used in concert with a nearby red and green pixel, for example.

So does that mean that the "highest resolution" you can get from an SI-2K is 960x540? Try making that claim to them and they'll laugh you out of the room. Look at the footage -- it's obviously 2K res. So how can this be? It's just the way it is.

And spatial offset works largely the same way, but instead of having all the pixels on one big chip, they're separated out onto three separate chips (one red, one green, one blue). And the total surface area of the three HVX 1/3" chips is about 75% as large as the total surface area of the SI-2K's single 2/3" chip.

You've got to divorce yourself from the mentality that "one pixel = one pixel", because it just doesn't. For example, each pixel in the target YUV frame is made up of 60% green, 29% red and about 11% blue (or thereabouts). How does that work for a 1:1 relationship? It doesn't. Because there isn't a 1:1 relationship. It's too bad that sensor designers chose the same term ("pixel") as the RGB graphic frame people did, as that just adds an unnecessary layer of confusion."

Because I own the camera, and it is obvious the 1080 setting is sharper. Besides, Barry Green has run res tests back to back and there is a clear difference.

Panasonic sells 2000 HVXs per month. Don't you guys think there would be general uproar if the 720/1080 modes were identical?????

Which is a conundrum because the 1080 mode is sharper than the 720 mode as proven by Barry Green and countless resolution charts freely available online and still we continue to have this inane argument about whether the camera does 1080 or whether it's real 1080.

Some one will trot out Nyquist right away......gag me with a spoon.

So who is he? This is exactly what I was saying in the other "name requirement" thread. A guy posts under some generic name just to make trouble, and there's no way to weed them out.

I'm kinda ambivalent about the whole deal. I don't mind using my full name, but this forum has no real way of knowing if the name used is real or not. I'm sure there's a bunch of posters who really aren't using their real names here for various reasons.

The irony in your intern's academic habit is that Hollywood is no respecter of degrees - never has been, never will be. It is the last great bastion of apprenticeship. A famous screenwriter once said - "Getting an MBA at Harvard will get you a $100K per year job. Getting a degree in film from the Peter Stark film program at USC will get you a job in the mail room".

The guy you are describing sounds like a career academic. I say that pejoratively.

I would also look hard at the Panasonic HVX200, which is a lot less money than the JVC. I think the new Sony XDCAM EX looks promising and if I was in the market I'd be looking hard at it. I have an HVX among others and it produces beautiful images and I'm very please with it as well as the solid state workflow, which is undeniably the future.

Kevin,

I agree 100%. I own all my own gear outright (3 ton lighting / grip, HMIs / tungsten, jibs, dollies and grip truck), no loans, paid cash. I do not however, hire the gear out, which is a totally different topic, but I agree you should never borrow for this type of stuff.

That, Walter, was one of the most pessimistic diatribes I've ever read. Let's keep the original question in context: The guy wants to take out a loan to buy a camera so he can become a DP.

It seems like you're telling him not to even bother being a DP. Not sure if that lugubriousness was tongue in cheek or genuine, but I personally have a hard time dissuading someone from doing something they ASPIRE to, like he said. Getting a loan for the camera is a bad idea, aspiring to be a DP is this guy's dream. Why bring out statistics? Let him keep aspiring!

I don't think you get that, since you also used the term "wannabe filmmaker" like it was some sort of crime to 'want to be' a filmmaker. Or perhaps we should all aspire to make something "practical" like infomercials. Sheesh.

If you want to buy a camera so that you can hone your skills and practice at your leisure, do it. I think to go borrow money to buy an HVX is a pretty poor idea. You should save and go buy an HV20 which is sub $1K. You can practice framing, blocking and lighting with that little camera. Never make a purchase based on it's return to you - it's false economy. Besides, I don't think the rental of a naked HVX will be too popular. I have an HVX and with all the gear that's on it, it pushes $15K. That's what I'd expect to rent if I wanted one.

As for all the philosophers out there, if the guy wants to buy a camera, let him buy one. You can't learn if you don't have the right tools at your disposal. And it's hard to rent on a low budget - usually you need insurance to rent.

Walter - Don't take my word for it. How about this quote from Barry Green (Yes, THAT Barrry Green - the one who wrote the HVX book):

"Here's my biggest complaints about the FireStore:

1) it's big and cumbersome

2) it's fragile (it's a hard disk, after all)

3) it's noisy (has to have a fan... it's a hard disk, after all)

4) it's tethered (needs to have a firewire cable, and you have to pay attention to make sure it doesn't come detached)

5) it requires its own battery to manage, with its own charger, etc. To me that's just an additional point of failure to have to worry about.

6) You can't play back the clips via thumbnail, so playback in the field is about 6,000 times less useful than it would be from a P2 card

7) You can't see your clips in high def. Not the FireStore's fault, as the HVX doesn't pass an HD signal from the firewire port out to its component outputs, but still, it's a workflow issue that you have to face. If you want to review your clips in high-def, it's impossible to do so from the FS-100.

8) If you use the "PN" simulation mode, you cannot review your audio at all! It mutes the audio on playback. To me that's absolutely unacceptable (wonder if they fixed that in version 4?)

9) The only way to get at that audio is to run the "organize P2" command, and then play the clips from your NLE. Which is fine and dandy, except that now you can no longer record on the FS-100. You will have to copy over the entire contents of the hard disk to the computer, and format the FS-100, before you can use it again. So if the director says "Hey, can I hear playback on that clip" you're basically screwed for about an hour.

10) I don't think the camera metadata gets recorded by the FS-100, does it?

The P2 cards suffer *none* of those drawbacks.

Now -- in the Firestore's favor, it does do a couple of things the cards don't:

1) It can record directly in QT format. Used to be a major advantage for FCP users, but now with Raylight it's a nonissue.

2) It has larger capacity and costs less per gigabyte than the P2 cards.

So the FS-100 serves a purpose. If you needed the cheapest way to record a continuous four hours, currently the FS-100 fills that need. But the P2 cards kick the FS-100's patootie in usefulness and workflow all over the place. The FS-100 claims "DTE"? The P2 cards are the embodiment of DTE: you can edit six streams of high-def straight from the card. The FS-100, you'd get one stream, but I don't think you'd ever get two.

Already you can get two 16GB cards for the price of a FireStore, which gives you unlimited hot-swap recording capability. And two 16GB cards = 80 minutes of 720/24pN footage, likely enough for all but the most demanding of shoot days (without offloading; if you can occasionally put a card in a computer you can keep shooting infinitely).

I confidently predict that as the P2 cards get bigger and bigger, products like the FS-100 will fade into irrelevancy.

Until that point, it does still serve a valid purpose. But this isn't the old days of 4GB cards; we've got 32GB cards coming out in about 8 weeks, and 64GB cards next year, maybe April? The idea of needing to put up with all the limitations of a hard disk recorder is far less palatable now that solid state is large enough to handle just about any job. For those jobs that solid state isn't large enough (yet) to handle, there is still the FS-100."

The FS100 is junk, and with 32GB cards out by years end, has numbered days. Besides the quirks with variable frame rates, it's got issues endemic to all hard drives. I've heard of people losing data when the cam and drive are swung on a jib arm. On DVXuser you will always find an open thread complaining about the Fs100.

The P2 is a reliable, safe recording medium - with no moving parts.

So where can you purchase a gasoline put put with all of this already done?

"Profitable" when used in the case of a short film is extreme hyperbole considering that generally speaking, short films never even generate a penny. Even using the term profitable implies that there would be income which would offset the production cost when in fact there will be no income at all.

Not sure what you mean "Could one person do it all". You will still need a crew to operate a RED unless all you do is static shots where nobody moves. A first AC is a must on any cam with manual focus lenses. Probably I'd have a dedicated data capture guy as well as this person would more or less take the place of a loader.