I’ve got some video together from our little camera test on Friday. The “shoot-out” element of the test is more or less lost unfortunately. I can only get the first 30 seconds of any given XDCamHD clip (trial limitation of Flip4mac MXF), which means most of the footage is of me focusing the shot. The footage off the XL-H1 is largely over or underexposed, as the viewfinder was, as previously mentioned, “gone wonky.”

In any case, I’ve pulled some of the better footage, and have my thoughts, after the jump.

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We just reviewed a Sony HVR-M15U HDV deck. I’ve only used it for a short while, but it looks to be just about what I expected – a DSR-11 that happens to play HDV tapes. If you’ve used a DSR-11 in the past, you’ll immediately be familiar with the form factor and the control layout.

You get full playback for both small and regular sized tapes, HDV/DV/DVCam support and that’s about it. Standard analog outputs are all you get, as it’s quite clear that Sony is incredibly paranoid about stealing sales from higher end Studio decks in the XDCam/HDCam line. Which is stupid.

The M15U will play 1080i60 and 1080i50 – sorry Canon and JVC shooters, no 24 frame or 720 support is available.

As I said, it’s a DSR-11 that happens to play HDV tapes. If that’s all you ask of it, it does a fine job. Just don’t ask too much and everyone will be happy.

Went out shooting with Gary, Adam and Mark today, with the idea of doing a little camera comparo.

We shot with a Canon XL-H1, a Panasonic HVX-200, and a Sony PDW-F350 (XDCam). Thanks very much to Steve at Z-Systems for the XDCam, and thanks to Adam for the Panasonic. We also shot some 16mm (color reversal), just so that we could say we did.

I’ll get more substantial information up Monday, but I wanted to post a quick note. Results so far are:

1) One of our Canon XL-H1s is broken. The viewfinder is jittery and jumping all over. Ugh.

2) Nobody in the Twin Cities has P2 cards for rent on short notice.

3) Final Cut Pro only supports XDCam footage at 25mbps.

4) The Sony XDCam system is really, really nice.

I finally get XDCam. I finally understand why we need to drop about $100,000 on XDCam hardware. I’m ready to shill for Sony. I take back everything bad I’ve ever said about them. Well, no, not that last one.

More next week!

(Stealing from DVguru) StudioMonthly has a little review of various lowcost dolly options. I’ve played with all the ones listed I believe, with the exception of P+S Technik’s Skater Dolly. A good read if you’re in the market. I’ve always really liked the Microdolly Indie-Dolly as it seems robust enough for student use, while still being pretty portable.

I’ve been working on cutting together a short trailer of some material shot in 1080i60 HDV using Final Cut Studio on my Macbook. I’ll post a link later today when the final cut is ready, but I wanted to make note of a few things I experienced.

First off, I’m cutting with the Apple Intermediate Codec, because somebody can’t be buggered to add quicktime support to their product (“It’ll ship in April! No May! No June!” … ). This means I’m working with 100mbit footage instead of 25mbit HDV. This seems to be right on the edge of what the Macbook drive can reasonably stream at a consistent framerate, and things go a bit stuttery when you start adding in multiple streams. But things have stayed stable, which is good.

The next thing I’ve found is that all is not well in the world of Motion. Some effects, particularly some of the glow effects, don’t seem to display correctly. Presumably this is due to the integrated graphics not supporting the needed features. What’s interesting is that the program keeps on working without complaint.

Soundtrack Pro, as always, was flawless to work with.

I haven’t noticed any other glitches that I can attribute to the Macbook. In fact, I’ve been a bit surprised at how stable the whole suite has been – no crashes or significant hiccups over 30+ hours of use.

I’ve finally had a chance to spend some time with Final Cut Studio (5.1) on my Macbook. A reminder, my Macbook is the black 2ghz with 1 gig of ram. I’ve also poked in Aperture a bit, but I haven’t had a chance to actually use it to process a whole shoot.

Final Cut Studio installed without complaining, and all the applications launch just fine. Aperture complains about the screen resolution but then continues and seems to load alright.

More after the jump…

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Everyone should check out the 4 HDV camera shootout results at DV.com. I’ll post my thoughts on Monday, but if nothing else, I hope the tests get the “HDV isn’t really HD” folks to quiet down a bit.

I was recently shown a program called Celtx, a free (but not OSS) script development tool. It’s based on some of the backend stuff from Firefox and gives the commercial scriptwriting tools a pretty serious challenge. I highly encourage folks who are interested in script development to take a look – not only will it help you collect your ideas and write the actual script, but it will also help with scheduling, budgeting and a number of other tasks related to your production. It runs on OSX, Windows and Linux and seems relatively production-ready. Anybody have other preferences in script development tools?

(Not really video related)

I’ve recently had a chance to work with the new iWork suite as part of a presentation I’m putting together. I must say, it’s come a long ways. I wanted to mention some of the highlights, because I think it’s becoming a usable alternative to the 800lb Gorilla of Office.

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