My next Hotcakes purchase
Ah dammit. I just spent 45 minutes writing a huge post about filming issues, and how to fix them, only to have my post erased.
Take two (the much much much shorter version).
In filming the To-The-Rescue music video, Dave and I have run into a few technical snafus that caused some issues for us.
1- Monitoring: The best way to shoot this type of production is to have a director watching the full-resolution large monitor while someone else is filming. This allows the director to ensure the footage is well acted, well framed and lit, and in perfect focus. We had a monitor on set, but it was not color calibrated, nor was it a 1:1 pixel ratio. We also had issues with the crappy RCA component cables unplugging from the extended coupler. I have already taken steps to eliminate some of these issues by ordering some BNC connectors (they “lock” into place). But there’s still the color calibration and aspect ratio issues.
2- Recording time: The camera we use records HD footage to memory cards. I have two 4GB memory cards (which is all I could afford when I bought it). That allows me only 20 minutes of 720p footage, or only 8 minutes of 1080 footage! Once the cards are full, we have to stop production while I dump the cards to hard disk. Dumping the cards takes 25 minutes! This is a severe workflow problem and a serious hindrance to our final product. Bigger memory cards sell for $2000, and would still only allow for 40 minutes of recording (and take 50 minutes to transfer!).
3- Audio: This was not an issue for our shoot this past weekend, but will be an issue for the rest of the video shoots. The camera’s built-in microphone is woefully inadequate, and a camera mounted shotgun mic is not ideal except for documentaries (the person needs to be facing the camera to be heard… everything else gets blocked out. Using a shotgun mic on a boom pole is extremely awkward as the cable running into the front of the camera weighs down the lens and interferes with camera movement.
4- Editing: Even the most powerful systems have a hard time keeping up with HD content. My monitors are not big enough to display a preview window and a timeline window at full resolution, so the software has to do some converting to make it fit my screen. This eats up CPU and graphics power, and lowers quality significantly. I often get a stuttering (lowered frame rate) or blockiness (lowered resolution) to compensate. This is less than ideal when working with HD footage, as it’s important to see all the details.
Can one single product fix all these issues? Yes. Yes it can. Meet the Matrox MXO2: http://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/mxo2
It comes with a laptop card, and a desktop card, so it can be used wherever it is needed. It allows video input (from a number of sources, including my current camera’s component cables, as well as future camera’s HDMI and HD-SDI) and also has video out for monitoring. You can plug in a standard monitor with HDMI (just about any modern LCD monitor) and it will color calibrate and do 1:1 hardware accelerated pixel mapping. It can record 10-bit uncompressed or compressed video directly to the laptop, so no more need for small memory cards and low bitrates. It has 4 XLR mic inputs for live monitoring and recording of audio. It accelerates HD video and is capable of scaling HD footage in real-time to allow for crystal clear editing. And it does a whole lot more too (like accelerate compression, output audio monitoring for 5 channel sound, Genlock, RED camera support, video upconversion, and more).
That will be Hotcakes New Media’s next purchase… as soon as we secure a bit of funds. Anyone got a paying video job to send our way?
Gnite.
A7
Tags: hd, hotcakes, hotcakes new media, matrox, production, video