What We Learned From April’s LAPPG Meeting
Thursday, April 16th, 2009Chris Hart, an L.A. area editor and shooter, sends out a regular email to his industry contacts met through various events. Usually you get one reminding you about upcoming events that he might attend and sometimes one after events he’s attended to share information from the event.
Both Chris and I attended the April LAPPG meeting and here are our email notes from it:
Chris Hart:
“At the LAPPG last night I learned a lot about all the latest digital cameras, a little of which I share below, and I won the Duck. That’s right, a free Automatic Duck plugin with which to translate all my FCP timelines into AE timelines with a keystroke. WHOOOOOO!!!! I’m still stoked, as you can tell.
…
“Aaron McNally of Moviola gave a breakdown of all the latest cameras. Here are various interesting tidbits from what he said: The RED camera, on which Knowing was shot, can use a 16G card that will store 9 minutes of its 4k footage; it can also use a DLT tape which can store more. It produces 32-bit raw files that probably require serious color adjustment. In a discussion of cards vs tapes, Aaron remarked that some cameras can record and transmit the data wirelessly to a capture device! No card OR tape! Also, some 2k and 4k cameras can simultaneously record a low-res proxie on an SD card.
“Panasonic’s HVX200, which uses P2 cards, is getting a fair amount of professional usage: studio footage in Dancing with the Stars and certain Biography channel docs use it. It records @ 480 but can enhance that signal to 1080 @ 100 mbs. On the other hand, Discovery channel requires all its docs to be shot with a 1920×1080 native 3cc camera or better. Project:Runway shoots with 10 cameras simultaneously, using the HVX900 DVCPRO50, which uses cassettes, at 24p. An HVX900 is a $20,000 camera.
“Wes Plate then spoke about Automatic Duck, which translates timelines from FCP to Avid or Avid to FCP or Avid or FCP to AE, depending on the plugin. An awesome product, which as I mentioned I now own. Sweeeeeeet!”
My reply:
“WTG Chris! I was there too but all I won was a mouse pad…. lol
“I’d like to add a little more to that camera part you wrote, Chris. Here’s something else that I learned from last night’s talk. This is in regard to the compression rates Aaron spoke of. He basically compared Sony to Panasonic (as well as others) but it went basically like this. Sony can capture at full 1080 but it compresses the file down to like 30mbs and you lose a lot that way. Panasonic HVX200 is like you said and you lose less with the 100mbs compression of the file, but it captures at a lower (res?) and computes the rest to make up the HD.
“So, either way you lose something, it just depends on where you want to loose it. He also said that the Panasonic Cine-gamma developers were really good and in the computing of color for your shot came up with some nice end results.
“That’s where RED is different because it doesn’t compute any color to save to the image. It’s just raw and you have to create the color you want in post. (basically) The other cameras have to compute to create the color data to save to tape/data card or what have you.
“Also, the wireless transmitter still has to send to some sort of recording device but that it’s not on the camera.
“The other part I learned was that sensor size, 1/3″ or “2/3″ etc. determines depth of field. The smaller the sensor the less depth of field there is and the larger the sensor, the greater the DOF. And RED with their “Big Ass” sensor has a depth of field like film cameras, very shallow. (Which I have heard at various RED demos too.)
“Sorry to get all technical on you. I just really learned a lot from that part of the talk and sure wish I had recorded it for future reference! I definitely will call Aaron up at Moviola if I need to know any camera specs!
“I’ll just add that Wes Plate was very cool and funny and I did learn a lot about FCP and Avid and AE workflows from him. Good stuff.
“Also, shameless plug here. I was on the Digital Production Buzz tonight, should be archived soon for all to hear. Read my blog to get more of the info I wanted to say: http://wordpress.quintessentialstudios.net”
LAPPG is the Los Angeles Post Production Group and they meet every second Wednesday of the month at Allied Post Audio in Santa Monica. RSVP is required as space is VERY limited.
P.S. Don’t forget to call HD Expo to get a 20% discount on one of their two upcoming P2 camps:
Either April 19-20 in Las Vegas or August 6-7 in Los Angeles. Info here: http://wordpress.quintessentialstudios.net/?p=44
