My First FX1E tests

Alan Mills · #1 (**permalink**) 03-12-2005, 07:11 PM

Been playing tonight with my new toy. Did some tests. Shot some dusk footage in 1080i and standard DV mode. Captured as 1080i, DV and also used the camera to downconvert the 1080i and captuired it as DV. Results were good.

Exports are large. I already got an error trying to upload the WMV files. Imight try again if anyone's interested. But here are a couple of exported still from the 1080i capture and the downconverted DV capture. the chances of them being the exact same frame are about zero but you can see the difference.

the other footage is of a vertical pan up the side of a neighbouring house ending on the sunset. The difference between Dv and HDV is astounding. You can even see the texture of the housebricks!

DV_Ed · #2 (**permalink**) 03-14-2005, 01:13 PM

In camera downconverting does add quite a few artifacts (This is a known fact of the downconverting encoder) If you film in native DV then the same thing in HDV and downconvert to DV the origional DV would be better. The extra information in the origional HDV footage can infact overload to an extent the DVcompressor, causing unwanted effects

DV_Ed · #3 (**permalink**) 03-14-2005, 01:15 PM

I forgot to say how are you finding editing? What machine spec are you using?

Alan Mills · #4 (**permalink**) 03-14-2005, 03:50 PM

Haven't done any real editing as such.

have upgrade to Premiere Pro 1.5.1 so can capture and edit in High Def. Seems to work pretty good. Of course everything seems so slow but I put that down mainly to the fact that I normally work in Matriox RTX100 mode and so evrything (almost) is realtime. I've been spoilt you see.

In plain vanilla Premiere Pro 1.5.1 I can scrub in real time with no problems.

Exporting is a drag - but only as I've been spoilt by normally doing it in realtime. A 30 second clip with half a dozen real cheesy transitions and effects (just to priove it all worked) took 15 minutes to export as a WMV9 in 1080i.

Basically, I'm ready for a better camera, something in the Prosumer range. My little Sony TRV33E is great but I think I;m ready for more now. So, as I expected to spend abotu £2K on a prosumer model, the FX1E came along just right and at only a couple of hundred quid more I thought I would future proof myself into the bargain.

I'm now hunting for a suitable case to put it in. Any ideas?

edit: (forgot to answer about my kit)
My rig is pretty much as follows. 3GHz P4, 1 Gb Ram, GeForce 5700 graphics, 2x80Gb IDE for OS and capture/export. 200Gb SATA video drive and to round things off it's got a Matrox RTX100 in it. Editign on Adobe s/w.

DV_Ed · #5 (**permalink**) 03-15-2005, 03:07 AM

Interesting! This may be asking too much but if you ever end up with a pile of nonsense spare HDV footage would there be a chance of throwing some onto a DVD so I could have a go with native HDV editing? I would quite like a few mins of actual HDV to have a play with and see how my machine copes with it! Ill pay for media post etc

and im not in a hurry

Alan Mills · #6 (**permalink**) 03-15-2005, 08:14 AM

email me.

DV_Ed · #7 (**permalink**) 03-16-2005, 02:03 PM

Have done so...

Alan Mills · #8 (**permalink**) 03-16-2005, 03:10 PM

Originally Posted by DV_Ed

Have done so...

It must have gone to me at work. I'll not likely pick that up till next week now.