Jim Hyslop

My biggest concern would be a film chip breaking off and scratching the rest of the roll. If you're cool with that then go ahead and shoot it. And DEFINITELY make sure the lab knows about the damage. You still have the risk of a chip scratching not only your negative but everyone else's neg in the batch. If that happens and you haven't warned the lab they will be VERY unhappy with you. -- Jim

What an ugly workaround :-( I usually copy the entire card to an external hard drive, then use the Log and Transfer within Final Cut. It requires you have the appropriate plugin installed, which is available here.

What with all the positive feedback on Visual Products, and the explanation from Mr. Benton, I hereby withdraw my suggestion of filing a complaint, and my allegations of underhanded tactics. My apologies to Visual Products.

Which is probably why he co-wrote a book on the subject :-D

I'm interested in this because I too use an EX1 with FCP. Which version of FCP are you using? How did you import the clips - Log and Transfer, or Import via the XDCAM browser? Did you try re-importing the clip? When you first put the clip on the timeline, was there a number in a red box, like this: BTW, once you unlink the clips then manually sync them, you should be able to mark them in sync. Select the audio and video, then "Modify -> Mark In Sync." -- Jim

The Letus site recommends keeping the shutter speed below 1/120. I suspect you'll be OK at 48 fps, but you should probably test to be sure.

This raises an important point which has not been mentioned yet in this thread (unless I missed it). Your eyes will automatically adjust so that the dominant light source appears white - even if the light is a highly saturated colour. I had a striking demonstration of this when I saw a play lit by a student lighting designer. The designer used a lot of very saturated lavender gels through the first act. At intermission, I looked at the lobby display, which had black and white photographs. My brain had adjusted its "white balance" so that the lavender lights were considered "white" - and thus all the photographs looked green.

Sounds like a bait-and-switch tactic - which is illegal in many countries. File a complaint against them. I would consider their tactics fraudulent.

That's when you hang up. No "goodbye", just "click".

That is one of those well-known "facts" which have no basis in truth. White and black are both colours. Colour is how we perceive the effects of the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, and in particular the three primary colours of light, red, green and blue. White is a mixture of all three colours. Black is the absence of all three. Another definition I like is that light is the property by which we can distinguish two objects which are otherwise identical. Consider a set of snooker balls. They are all identical (without resorting to high-precision measuring tools), except for their colour.

I presume you mean one of each type, not one of each brand :-) Wouldn't you also use a spot meter to measure the contrast in the scene? Read the darkest part, read the lightest part, and make sure the difference doesn't exceed your film (or video) latitude (unless you want it to, of course).

See, that's why you get paid the big bucks! Thanks for the suggestion. I'll experiment with that. -- Jim

Oh, sorry, I should have provided that info up front. The footage was captured on a Sony EX1, 1080-30p, edited at full resolution on a Macbook Pro using Final Cut 6.0.5. The NTSC version was created using FCP's export to Quicktime Movie, and selecting Custom settings: Aspect ratio: hdtv720p... and, uh, that'll be the problem, I bet. Yep, I just re-exported using Quicktime Conversion and settings much closer to NTSC, and it's MUCH better now: Thanks for forcing me to review the settings (which I should've done before I started this thread. I'll get me hat.)

Hi, I shot something in HD, and when outputting it to NTSC, I get a lot of jaggies. Is this normal for an NTSC downres? I've uploaded snapshots to flickr. Here's the original: and here's the converted: The rails on the porch show it the best (worst?). Any suggestions on how to minimize the artifacts?

I just tested and got similar results, but I measured pretty consistently about 1/3 stop lower than Art Adams. The difference could be because my meter (Sekonic L398A) only measures to 1/3 stop, and I don't have a waveform monitor, and the EX1 only reports aperture to 1/2 stop. The significant difference I got was in the 1080i modes. I only got an ISO reading of 400. My meter showed 64 footcandles incident reading, and the camera chose an aperture of f/3.4, which works out to 400. How does that compare with your readings? Any thoughts on why my readings for interlace modes is so far off?

The best archival medium to this day remains black-and-white film that's properly stored. So for best longevity, do a three-colour separation film-out onto black & white film, and store the films in a climate controlled archival vault. But I'm assuming you, like me, don't have the budget for that :-) I wouldn't use a RAID device, or any magnetic media for that matter, for long-term storage and archiving. Hard drives are subject to mechanical failure if left powered up, and apparently no hard drive manufacturers have actually tested data longevity if the drive is left unpowered for long periods (see this discussion for details). All magnetic media lose their information over time. I did a quick google, and the figure I saw quoted for DVD lifetime is only a year and a half. Not great for archiving! I don't know about Blu-Ray, but I believe it also uses organic dyes, so I suspect it's probably about the same life expectancy. I like Peter's suggestion about using flash memory. Like he suggested, they're fairly cheap, small, and have very modest environmental requirements. It appears flash card data retention is about 10 years. The card itself is still good, so you can copy the data off, erase the card, then copy data back onto it and you're good for another 10 years. The better the quality of cards, the more likely they will retain data, so it's definitely worth spending the extra bucks to safeguard your footage. The biggest danger I can see with flash memory is the format becoming obsolete. 10 years from now your CF card may still have great data, but will you be able to find something that can read a CF card? Who knows what formats will be around in 10 years? Mind you, that danger is present for all digital formats, so I guess it's kind of a straw-man argument. So, at the moment the best strategy I can see is to copy the data onto flash cards, and to re-copy them every 7 or 8 years (just to be safe I wouldn't wait the whole 10 years - you never know how much the manufacturers might exaggerate their claims). Keep an eye on flash memory formats, and if it appears your format is becoming obsolete get some cards of the new format and copy the data over, even if it's only been a couple of years since you last copied the cards. Whatever route you choose, I'd make at least two copies, stored in different geographic areas.

Well, I don't know about that, but I do know for my first production class, we used Bell & Howell 16mm cameras. Rumour had it that the model was used in WWII, and the combat soldiers' instructions were that if they ran out of ammo, they were supposed to throw the camera at the enemy. -- Jim

What did you originally write? Four letters, starts with "S" and ends with "hit"? -- Jim

Oh. Good thing I was only 2nd AC :-) Thanks for the info. I've downloaded the manual but haven't had a chance to read through it yet. So, the consensus seems to be either a bad tube or the cold. Is there any kind of test we could have run before shooting? BTW, the flicker was fairly subtle - most audience members probably wouldn't notice it. Thanks for all the replies!

Actually, having your script passed around is a good thing - that means that the people who've read it think it's good, and worth having someone else read. You never know what might come of that (chances are extremely small it'll lead anywheere, but you never know...)

I forgot to mention we were shooting on an Arri SR3, which has a fixed shutter. Yes, only the Kino was flickering - the tungsten lamps were fine. A couple of other factoids that may affect things: it was just above freezing, and we ran into problems with the battery later that day. Could the cold or a low battery voltage have affected the camera speed?

Hi, I was 2nd AC on a short film a while back, and we shot a scene on location. One of the lights we used was a KinoFlo. Power was provided by a diesel trailer genny. When I watched the film, I noticed the Kino was flickering. Could that have been caused by the genny not generating exactly 60 Hz, or by the camera being slightly off-sync? Or would you have to see the shot to be able to comment? -- Jim

I wouldn't. There was a discussion about PCB on RAMPS (Usenet group rec.audio.movies.production.sound) a few weeks back. One person said he'd signed up and came to the conclusion that the PCB people were in it for whatever ad revenue they could generate. Fortunately for him, there was no signup fee at the time. There were two people who claimed to have had great results, but I'm extremely skeptical about them - both of them were anonymous, neither of them had ever posted to the newsgroup before, neither provided any details about the jobs they got (not even any kind of hint), and one of them claimed to have used PCB in both New York and LA, but his email address was from an Ireland domain. So, until I see something from a real person with details about jobs they got - or at the very least, interviewed for - I would stay away from PCB. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a scam, but it certainly doesn't sound like it's worth investing any money into.

Red Green and "high brow and arty" in the same sentence? Run! The Apocalypse is nigh!

Hi, My usual workflow when dealing with Panasonic P2 or Sony SxS cards is to copy the entire card onto my external hard drive, then in FCP perform "log and transfer", then back up both the raw card data and the ingested .mov files from the hard drive to another drive. Is it worth keeping the P2 or SxS card data, once I have the clips ingested and backed up? -- Jim