I have been playing with a Sony PXU-MS240 SxS backup device. It’s quite different to my NextoDi NVS2500 even though it essentially does the same job. I will be reviewing it in some detail very soon, but here are my first thoughts.
The key feature is that unit has a removable 240Gb hard drive module. Extra drives are readily available and the removable drives can be used as stand-alone USB hard drives without the main unit. Each hard drive cartridge comes in a sturdy box that is much like a Betacam cassette box. There is space on the drives for labels and the box has an insert sleeve that can be used to write on, just like a tape. Clearly this has been done so that as you fill up drives you can pop them on a shelf for longer term storage as you would with a tape. The beauty of the MS240 is that you never need to off load footage, you just add cartridges as you fill them up.
The main unit is 12 volt powered or can run off a standard EX battery. There is a slot at the front for a SxS card and a big Copy button on the top panel along with the power button and menu controls. There is also a small and very clear LCD display that tells you what the unit is doing. In the setup menu you can choose whether to simply copy the SxS cards contents or to do a copy with full verification in one pass.
Another way to verify your clips is to plug it in to an EX camera. The MS240 is supplied with a USB to Express card adapter. You plug the adapter into an EX’s SxS slot and the USB end into the MS240 and then you can use the EX to playback any clips on the MS240 in full HD. This is something the Nexto cannot do. It also means that you could use the MS240 to store finished edits for playback via an EX over HDSDi.
The build quality is good and the range of connectivity is also good with eSATA and USB on the main unit and USB on the cartridges. A 16Gb card can be copied to the drive in around 5 mins.
Ever since the release of the XDCAM EX cameras users have been having problems getting good looking SD pictures out of downconverted HD. Why is this and what can be done about it? This is an issue that effects all high resolution HD cameras and is not unique to the EX’s. There are two key issues. The first is the way basic software converters handle fields in interlace material and the second is the amount of information in an HD image that must in effect be discarded to get a SD image.
At first glance you would think that starting off with lots of picture detail would be a good thing, but in this case it’s not. Let’s see if I can explain.
Imagine that you have something in you HD picture that over 4 pixels goes from light to dark, in Hd you get a gradual transition from light to dark and all looks good. Now what happens when you take those 4 pixels and convert them to SD. The 4 pixels become just 2 and instead of a stepped change from light to dark the picture now goes instantly from a light pixel to a dark pixel. If these pixels were the edge of a moving object, as it moved the pixels would be switching instantly from on to off and unless the object moved at exactly one pixel per frame you will get a flickering effect. Clearly our nice gradual transition from light to dark has been lost and if there is any motion we may now be seeing flickering edges. Niether of these look good.
Take a look at these images:
The original frame with a box showing the area of interest.
Original HD image
Image down converted to SD then resized same size as original
As you can see the down converted SD is very blocky and there is some strange patterning (aliasing) going on amongst the bricks of the houses in the background. This does not look good and if there was motion the brickwork would shimmer and flicker.
So what can be done?
Well the best way to improve the SD down conversion is to soften the HD image before it is down converted to prevent this single pixel light to dark switch from happening. You need to end up with an SD image where you go from full light to full dark over at least 3 pixels to prevent flicker (Twitter).
How much you will need to soften you HD by will depend on how sharp it is to start with. Simply turning down the cameras detail settings can be a big help, but even then the best results are often obtained by applying some kind of blur filter in post production. In FCP I find the flicker filter works quite well. As you can see from the frame grab below the difference in the quality of the downconvert is quite striking.
SD downconvert with blur added to HD before conversion
I have also found that another problem is that the detail settings on an HD camera are not optimised for SD. The detail correction edges created in HD are very thin and when these are down converted to SD they all but disappear and can cause further aliasing. The solution is to make the detail correction edges thicker (on an EX turn detail frequency down to -60 to -99) but this then looks ugly in HD. The bottom line is that a camera optimised for HD works best in HD and SD will be a compromise.
Just a quick reminder that Sony will be running a Power of Images event at Gibson Hall in London on Wednesday and Thursday. All the latest cameras will be on show including the PMW-350, EX1R, PDW-700 and PDW-F800. I will be there both days if you want to drop by and say hello and see any of the amazingly clean footage I shot with the 350.
Next week I will be running a EXperience event at Jigsaw in Leeds on Tuesday and a then a further EXperience event CVP in Glasgow on Thursday. These are all free events so log on to the Sony POI website or contact the dealers directly.
I have written a brief review of the Sony Digital Audio Shooters Kit to go with the Sony Youtube video of the same. It’s a great kit that has been developed with a lot of input from cameramen and end users. Really nice, but at a price. Click Here for the review and video.
Hi Folks. As promised I have written up a full review of the rather impressive NextoDi NVS2500. The “Magic Box” as it has become known is a one piece backup device for SxS, P2, compact flash, SD and memory sticks. It’s very fast and simple to use. Click Here for the full review.
I have been giving a lot of thought to the PMW-350 and whether it fits in with what I do. I’m really, really torn. While I love my PDW-700 and the optical disc workflow I also really liked the PMW-350 package. Now to bring my PDW-700 up to a similar package would mean purchasing a colour viewfinder (C35W £6,500) and a new ALAC compatible HD lens (£8k +). The cost of these options is around the same price as a PMW-350 kit with lens. The 350 has a wonderful colour VF as standard and is very nice to use. It has much lower power consumption than the 700 and weighs a lot less, which would be very nice for me with all the traveling I do.
Convergent Design NanoFlash on Sony PMW-350
The downside to the PMW-350 is the 35 Mb/s data rate and the use of CMOS sensors. The 35 Mb/s issue is easy enough to get around as I have a couple of NanoFlashes which can record at higher bit rates, making the 350 suitable for HD broadcast without any issues. The CMOS sensors, for most people would not really be an issue, especially now Sony have incorporated flash band removal into the clip browser software, but for me it’s important because of the amount of lightning I shoot. Certainly I can get good results with my EX1 and EX3 but I really don’t know yet how the 350 will perform.
While thinking about all this, it occurred to me that the 350 would probably make a really good camera for Indie Films. The use of 2/3″ sensors means that it’s easier to get a reasonably shallow depth of field compared to 1/3″ or even 1/2″ cameras, without having to resort to 35mm lens adapters. The very high resolution images with very, very low noise would certainly look good projected on to a big screen. If you took the HDSDi output and record it on a NanoFlash at 100Mb/s or higher then it will grade very well. The lack of camera noise (59db) means that you can really push and pull the picture very hard during grading before it will degrade. Even if you only record at 35 Mb/s this low noise floor is going to help with grading as less noise means less stress on the codec in the first place. On top of all that the supurb sensitivity means that you will be able to use very minimal lighting rigs, perhaps just using practicals to light a scene, which should really give you more scope in your composition.
Further PMW-350 advantages include the use of Sony’s Hypergammas, step gamma and multi-matrix. These settings are normally only found right at the high end of the product range and give you excellent control of the look of your images. Add to that 24P (23.98P) and the ability to overcrank and undercrank and it all adds up to an extremely capable camera.
So, will I be getting a PMW-350? Well if I didn’t have my PDW-700 I would certainly be getting a 350. At the moment I’m still undecided….. if only I could work out a way to afford both.
JVC are offering 0% finance on their professional product line up. The GY-HM700 and GY-HM100 both record using variants of the XDCAM codec. The HM100 is particularly interesting due to it’s small form factor, making it suitable for covert shooting and those that travel a lot. Click Here for more details of the offer.
Well we have just completed the first 3 days of shooting in London and so far all has gone very well. We have been at the mercy of the weather and the short daylight hours but so far everything has gone very well. The firsts days filming was around the City of London, primarily focussing on the buildings and overall cityscape. For this I used my usual side-by-side camera rig comprising of an EX3 on the left with the zoom handle and grip removed and then an EX1 on the right. The rig has a sliding rail for the EX3 to allow inter-axial (separation) adjustment and a convergence adjuster for the EX1.
Original EX side-by-side rig with NanoFlashes.
The minimum interaxial with this setup is about 4.5″ (140mm) which is OK for scenics and the kinds of wide cityscapes we need for this shoot. A rig with closer spacing would be needed for working with any subject matter closer than around 15ft (5m) from the camera. With EX’s this would mean a mirror rig and mirror rigs introduce a whole host of extra problems. Problems such as differences in polarization (and thus reflections), white balance and exposure introduced by shooting through a half silvered mirror with one camera and shooting the reflection in the mirror with the other. On top of this you have to work with one image that is upside down and back to front!
So why do I use an EX1 and an EX3 and not a pair of EX3′s I hear you ask? Well the viewfinder on the EX3 cannot be removed and it’s design means you can’t get two EX3′s close together, the viewfinder gets in the way. However you need Genlock to keep the cameras in sync and only the EX3 has this. As the picture quality from the EX1 and EX3 is identical you can use them together for 3D shooting. The EX3 is Genlocked to the EX1 by connecting the EX1′s Y channel of the component output to the EX3′s Genlock in connector.
I am also using a pair of Convergent Design NanoFlashes. By using these I can record at a higher bit rate and in 4:2:2 as opposed to the EX’s 4:2:0 color space. Using the NanoFlashes brings several advantages, as well as improved picture quality.
The guys at CD made up a custom remote that triggers both NanoFlashes together and in sync. This makes editing the stereoscopic material much easier. By setting the left NanoFlash to use the embedded timecode from the EX3 and the feeding the EX3′s timecode out to the right NanoFlash both recorders have matching timecode. A single button put’s both NanoFlashes into record and the button flashes red to signal recording is taking place.
The second day of the shoot was an evening and night shoot around London’s West End. For much of this I shot using the EX’s slow shutter and timelapse to give those wonderful streams of lights and people as they move through the darkness. I can’t post any footage yet, but as soon as I can I will. During the night shoot I found my 3D rig a little awkward and cumbersome so I made some adaptations and had the Mk3 rig ready for the 3rd dat of shooting which took place at Canary Wharf.
XDCAM EX Stereoscopic rig Mk3 on Stedicam
For the much of this part of the shoot my new rig was used on a Stedicam operated by DP Dave Crute. Dave is new to 3D shooting so I acted as mentor and helped him with framing and understand what would and would not work in 3D. Dave is a very experienced Stedicam operator and I think between us we were able to get some really dramatic stereoscopic images of the modern buildings at Canary Wharf. The new modified 3D rig worked very well. The principle changes being to mount the two NanoFlashes in a tray under the rear of the two EX’s. A single V-Lock battery is mounted at the front of the rig under the camera lenses. The arrangement is more robust, easier to transport and the the center of gravity is right under the middle of the 2 cameras which makes it easier to use with the stedicam.
I was just about to walk out the door this morning to continue my 3D shoot when the post man arrived with my new NextoDi 2500 backup device. So I shoved it in my flight case and took it on the shoot.
All I can say is wow! How did I ever manage without this? While packing up at the end of the days shoot I used it to backup 4x 8Gb SxS cards. I can’t get over how quickly it did this. I used to take a small netbook with an express card slot and a USB hard drive. This works well, but the Nexto box is soooo much faster, simpler, smaller, lighter, easier…… if you get the impression that I am impressed you’d be right! To backup a full 8Gb card takes about 3 minutes, it’s incredibly fast and what’s more you can even play back clips once they have been backed up.
I’m flat out shooting at the moment so being able to back up so quickly is brilliant, however it does mean that I don’t have time for a full review right now. As soon as I get time I’ll right a full review of what the crew came to call the “Magic Box”.
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