Hello Guys,
My first post here and not very familiar with camera terminology at all. I have read most of the entire forum posts on the FX1000. I have been filming high school football for the past 5 years or so with a DCR-TRV280 and just last week purchased a FX1000. Now i find myself lost in all the different settings and not even knowing if i should be filming in HDV or DV. My end result is always DVD's for the coaching staff and college scouts, also i convert the video to flv for the web.
One of my first questions is should i be shooting in HDV 1080/60i and then convert that to MPEG2-DVD 720X480? I have Adobe Premiere Pro, Encore and Sony Vegas 9 but have never used any of them, i had always used Ulead Studio up until now.
Some basic understanding of what my camera settings need to be to shoot the games would be greatly appreciated. I did film a scrimmage game the other night with the FX1000 and i didnt really know what i needed to be filming in, i think i had it at 30p 16:9 and that didnt really work out as well as i wanted.
Also, besides what settings i need to use, would it be possible for me to buy a dvd-recorder and record my film directly from the camcorder to dvd for the purpose of getting a disc out to the athletic director the same night as they do film exchanges with the coaches of the next opponent the following day.

You don't want 30p for sports. 60i will give you smoother motion.

The FX1000 is a great cam for field sports, especially at night. It can practically see in the dark.

Sony makes a standalone DVD recorder that can burn DVDs directly from tape. You downconvert in the cam as you output to the device. It takes as long as the tape is, so one hour of tape would take an hour to burn to DVD. The current version is the VRD-MC10, I think, but all the versions back to at least the MC3 can do this.

Always shoot in HDV. You can downconvert upon capture to your PC or you can do it later as you burn your DVDs. I do the latter.

Make sure you do a proper White Balance at night under the lights. For daytime shooting, just set the WB default to OUTDOOR (the little sun icon in the LCD). Leave everything else on AUTO until you're comfortable with the basics of shooting and feel like experimenting a little (but not during a game, obviously; play around with the settings during some non-critical shooting). Make sure you use a tripod at all times and get as close to the action as you can (unless you must be shooting from above in the stands).

Most of all, spend a couple of hours with the cam, the manual and a cup of coffee and read everything. Twice.

Premiere will do just fine for editing all this stuff, if you have CS3 or CS5 and a fast PC.

Thank you very much for the advice. I was unsure of whether or not i could capture in 1080/60i and then burn it to a regular dvd for viewing on standard tv.
I also didnt think of adjusting the White Balance under the lights. I shoot from above the press box and usually use a fishing pole ( i guess is what its called). I still have another 5 days to figure out what i need to do in Premiere or Encore, and yes i do have CS5.
Any other useful tips would be appreciated.

A fishpole? You mean like a boom or jib? For what? Holding the cam or a mic? You're better off using a regular tripod -- more control and more stable. Maybe I'm not understanding.

If you have only 5 more days on Premiere, that says to me you have the trial version, which doesn't do HD in any form. You'd need to convert upon capture using i.LINK CONV in the cam and setting up a standard DV Widescreen project in Premiere. Or just shooting in DV mode -- whether it's 16:9 or not is up to you. Not the ideal setup but it'll work.

From that far away it appears to me you'll be sticking with fairly wide shots to do play analysis. Because of all that small fine detail, I think you're going to want to shoot and edit in HD and burn to Blu-Ray for playback on a Blu-Ray player into an HDTV, so you can see all that detail. The difference is shocking. But of course that means the school has to have the right playback equipment and you need the full paid, registered and activated version of Premiere and a Blu-Ray burner. You can get the educational discount on Premiere if you're doing this for the school -- have them buy it for you. And BD players are really cheap these days, burners only slightly less so.

For short clips -- under 20 min -- you can burn as a data (m2t) file to a regular DVD and it'll still be in HD. But again you need a BD player which can play this type of disc -- not all do but a PS3 does -- and a proper HDTV to display it on. Or you can avoid the whole disc thing altogether and just render to your hard drive, copy to a laptop and output from laptop to HDTV if the laptop has HDMI or DVI outputs.

Sorry, i meant 5 more days to tinker around with the camera and Premiere beofre the first game i have to film.
The thing im talking about is what i would call a mono-pod, lol, it collapses and extends. its just a single pole, ive used it for the past 4 years.

Got it. Monopods are okay but for something as big and heavy as the FX1000 I'd still recommend a good heavy tripod.

ok, yes ive had a tripod for awhile now but just never used it. i will give it a try. i did notice the other night when i filmed the scrimmage game that the weight of the cam had me worn out by the time it was over.
i am going to film a couple of practices this week in HD and then do the cown convert to SD so that i can familiarize myself with what i need to do come Friday night.
I looked at the Sony recorder you posted also. I was looking at a recorder at Wal Mart that was 250.00 that had an input for iLink, but for 300.00, the Sony is probably a better one.

Tim:

Check on the manual for the DVD recorders. The VRD MC10 apparently does not allow live recording from cameras such as the FX 1000.

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=819855292

One of our local high-school music teachers has a setup where he uses an older disk recorder from Sony (can't find the model number right now) with an FX1 to do something similar with concert recordings.

I definitely agree with Adam about tripods. The FX1000 is a lot bigger camera than what you have been using. ANd, while I don't know where your press box is situated, you will likely be zoomed-in for at least the ends of the fields. These shots will be mucccchhhh steadier with a tripod.

I also agree about white balancing for night games. Get a large white posterboard, put it on the field under the lights and follow the instructions on pp. 37-38 of your FX manual. Then save that setting as a preset so you can call it up whenever you need it with the press of a button.

Here's another thought for something to use while you check on DVD recorders. Use Adobe On-Location with a laptop with a firewire port. This at least saves your the time for capturing from tape and so you only have encoding time to make game DVDs for the coach. You are in a fixed location and you can probably get an extension cord up over the press box. (I'd strongly recommend getting a UPS/battery backup; you never know when somebody might unplug your extension cord or stumble over it). I used this kind of set-up for theater and dance productions before I got tapeless recording units. I also used an external firewire drive because (a) most laptop drives aren't fast enough for video capture and (b) it was easy to put the drive on my main workstation to more quickly encode and burn a DVD.

Disregard the link I posted. For some reason the link doesn't work; I linked to the page with the reviews but the posted link takes you to a generic Sony page.

The link I was trying to connect to is the Sonystyle page for the VRDMC10 under the "reviews" tab. The first review describes the issues about the VRDMC10 not working with the FX1, FX1000 etc. for live recording.

The music teacher tells me that the Sony recorder he uses --- that works with the FX1 and presumably the FX1000 --- is a couple of years old and that thinks it might be an RDR GX300.

Yes, as I sort of implied in my first post, all of the VRD-MC series are really designed just to burn direct from tape that's already been recorded. I mean, I guess there's no reason why they shouldn't have been designed to record live as well but I've never heard anyone say they could. I suppose Sony wants to preserve that function for more expensive devices. Sorry I wasn't more specific.

The VRD-MCxxes are great when they work, but I've had a very high coaster to disc ratio with my MC3. Never once burned a coaster from my PC, for what that's worth.

I also thought about mentioning the OnLocation workflow as well, but wasn't sure how involved Tim wanted to get.

a. you NEED to shoot from a tripod.

b. you can buy a 'cheap' dvd recorder and simply supply it with a feed from the firewire out on the camera.

c. there's absolutely no point in shooting hdv in your circumstances.

Point (c) above couldn't be more wrong. There's absolutely no point in NOT shooting HDV -- it costs you nothing in time, money or effort and even if you think you'll never use your footage in HDV form you'll always have that beautiful sharp original if you need it, like for an end-of-year highlight reel that some may want on Blu-Ray. Or to actually be able to read the players' numbers from way up on top of the press box.

What's foolish is having one of the best consumer camcorders ever made and not using it to its fullest. I just don't understand people who have HDV cams but shoot in DV. You can throw detail away but you can never add it.

i agree. im actually thinking that there will be people that have blu-ray players that will want games in that format even if it will cost a little more.
i am still trying to ingest alot of the posts here....lol...i have never had a camera with so many options.

Here is the reason you shot HDV...
After the game you download the tape to your computer hard drive.
You do the NLE conversion to DVD and get it off to the coach the next day.
You spend the next four days marking and editing a high-lights video for that game.
Save the high-light file separateley.
Do this for each game.
At the end of the season, you combine the high-light videos into a single video.
Because it is HDV, you now have a hidef high lights video you can play through your computer on a HiDef TV before and during the end of season banquet for all the players and parents to watch.

well, i don't want to start an argument, but....

afaik, in the situation i painted above, you get out of firewire what you want, ie, hdv or dv to feed DIRECTLY into a dvd recorder.

i have no experience with your market, but i have a local shooter here who does the equivalent 'match' shoots for both footie and rugby. she shoots with a v1p.

to start with she shot hdv, etc., to produce dvd's for coaches and families. after about a year she decided that there was no market for hd dvd's (maybe we're behind the us in hd take-up?), and opted for the sytem i described in my last post.

she shoots, dupes, and distributes within a day with NO need at all for an nle - simply copying the necessary amount of dvd's from the 'live' recorded one.

adam's quite right, hdv has an awful lot going for it, but to my way of thinking, if i need to drive to the corner shop and i have a smart car and a 8 wheel truck, why take the truck unless i know i'm going to be buying more than will fit in the car?

but hey, if they'll buy hd, go for it.....

Hi Tim, I don't want to make your head spin but something you might want to look into is adding a broadcast of the game to the video, if the game is broadcast live by a local radio station. I've been filming our local highschool basketball games for over 8 years with the radio stations broadcast and the coaches and fans think its great. It makes it much more enjoyable to watch for the fans and makes it easier for the coaches to figure out the opposing teams players. Just make sure to clear it with the radio station. I would always make sure I gave the announcers a copy too.

I totally agree to shoot HDV. The FX is much better at HDV than DV, IMO

Make sure you use a good professional tripod/head and not one of cheapo's. You won't believe how much better your video will look.

Good luck with the new cam!

...you get out of firewire what you want, is, hdv or dv to feed DIRECTLY into a dvd recorder.... she shoots, dupes, and distributes within a day with NO need at all for an nle - simply copying the necessary amount of dvd's from the 'live' recorded one... Shooting in HDV mode changes that not a whit... the process is exactly the same whether the cam is in DV or HDV mode, so why not shoot the latter? No reason not to. All you have to do is turn i.Link Conv ON. Takes five seconds and there is absolutely no downside. At the very worst, they're equal.

Compared to DV, HDV (on the same cam):

--Uses the same tape
--Costs the same
--Takes the same amount of time to shoot and capture
--Does not change how or what you shoot
--Requires a better PC, but you can painlessly and seamlessly downconvert upon capture
--Has six times (roughly) better picture

The only scenario I could see where it would make sense to shoot in DV mode is if you are simply handing the tape to someone immediately after the shoot and they must play it right away and do not have any HDV gear to play it back on because you need your cam right away again and do not wish to lend it to them. Otherwise it makes no sense at all, and you've wasted your money on an HDV cam.

This same silly argument was made when color came in but everyone still had B&W TVs.

Now, if someone has a studio full of DV gear and it is serving them well and no one they know has (or ever will have) any form of digital or widescreen TV, and they were wondering whether to move up to HD gear... well, I still probably would tell them to go HD. But at least there the case could be made for staying with your old gear because of the expense of replacing everything. But to have an HDV cam and not use it for the purpose for which it was designed.... When I was an executive at Food Network way back in aught three, they were building a whole new studio and control room and had to buy all new equipment anyway. HDTVs were predicted to start reaching critical mass that year (they did) and I begged them to put in all HD equipment, but they refused because it would have cost about 10% more. Flash forward seven years and their HD channel is a joke... no one watches it because it's full of all the stuff they've produced since then in SD and has virtually no HD content at all, not even their flagship shows. And they're scrambling around wondering why.

And your huge truck uses more gas, is harder to park and pollutes more than your Smart Car, and for all I know may not be as comfortable or easy to drive. No such differences exist between HDV and DV, so the analogy doesn't work.

I'm sorry, but I just go nonlinear when I see someone advising someone else to shoot DV on an HDV cam. It's like telling someone not to wear a seat belt because the odds of getting in a crash are relatively low. Rant over... for now.

again, i repeat, in the scenario i described above where you shoot direct to a dvd recorder there is no point shooting hd - especially given the fact that a dvd recorder will only record sd.

as for the quality of the picture - i've no idea whether having the camera in hd and converting to sd for firewire is of any benefit in this scenario. if the picture recorded in sd is better then i stand corrected.

But what's the advantage of NOT shooting HD? At worst, they're equal. There's no benefit to shooting DV at all. None. Why wouldn't you want the best of both worlds? Why wouldn't you plan for the future? I'm just so perplexed by this line of thought.

If you could choose between two cars that were absolutely identical in every way, including cost, except one was five years newer and would go faster with no performance penalties, why wouldn't you choose the faster one? Even if you thought you never needed to go that fast.

The only disadvantage of shooting HDV to tape is 'HDV drop out'. In Tim's case with only one camera that could be a problem if it occurs at the wrong time.

@tim - i haven't actually checked any of my last years tapes (having shot tape and cf and simply archiving the tapes), but in the previous 3 years or so i i only ever experienced two drop-outs, both were on used tapes. i might add i was shooting sony 'premium' (the cheap ones!) - and that's shooting for a living....

@adam - i really have no argument with your opinion, other than in the case i gave, it would seem to make no difference if going direct to dvd recorder (i'm not talking tape at all). it would also make critical focusing (if needed) a little easier.....

all that said, i always shoot hd both to cf and tape (though as i wrote, only for archival purposes). the pics from my z5 and v1 are excellent, even though my end distribution (other than tvc's) is usually dvd or mp4 for web.

i shall now fade to black and enjoy the rest of a glorious end of winters day....

I shoot weddings with two FX's. For a 45 minute ceremony using new Panasonic 63 minute tapes I will experience at least one drop out per cam, if not two. The third cam is a Canon HV30 using 83 minute run once tapes, usually runs over an hour with no drop outs. I don't like it but just work around it for now.

Tim Akin (like me) is running a multi-cam set-up, so drop-outs are not as much of an issue as they would be for OP Tim Rogers who is shooting with only one camera. With multi-cams, you have other video to fill gaps (although re-synching can be a paid).

Many folks do not run into drop-outs when shooting HDV to tape. But many folks do. You do not know when it will hit you.

When I was multi-camming HDV to tape, I could count on having drop-outs from at least two cams but I never knew which two cams it would be. Except for my FX1000, which never had a drop out when shooting only to tape. Others, like Tim Akin, have had different experiences. Going tapeless avoids that problem. I use tape only as a back-up, and have had to resort to the tape only once. That was the result of a failure of attention on my part --- the third time I used my MRC units, I put a partially full CF card in one of the cameras. Although I ran out of space on the card, I still had the tape to fill the gap.

So, for Tim (Rogers), I'd suggest a couple of things while he sorts out DVD recording.

First, for the immediately upcoming game or two, switch your FX1000 back to DV (but shoot in 16:9) and follow your established workflow. The footage will be better than what you were getting with your old Handycam, and you do not have to try too many new things at once. Too many new things at once is too many things that can be troublesome under pressure. It is unlikely that many people will want a BluRay disk. Heck, our high school's game videos are still being shot with the school's D8 cam despite a lot of table-thumping and whining from the District's tech guy. When you get a bit more experience with the new workflow, then try a BluRay disk and see who is interested. Another game or two with the established workflow won't matter to the customers to whom you'll be delivering a regular DVD(or DVDs) anyway.

Even when folks know you can deliver HD disks, it will take a while for them to think they want a BluRay disk. Like you, I work in a pretty rural area. I've been offering Blu-Ray for almost two years now and I've had exactly three jobs where the customers wanted an HD disk instead of a standard DVD. It may pick up for me this fall. It may not. For ephemera like games disks, dance recitals, etc., many (if not most) folks will choose sharp and clear DVDs over more expensive BluRays.

So, why shoot in HDV? Well, one reason is that, when you make edited highlights and presentation DVDs at the end of the season, you have a lot more room to fiddle with the pictures. When you've got a wide shot (and with you using only one cam, I'm guessing that most of what you shoot will be wide shots), you can use your NLE to zoom in and manufacture a close-up or, at least, a closer-up. The HDV that the FX1000 shoots gives you a lot of room for this when you are delivering SD DVD video.
Where you may find that folks want Blu-Ray disks will be for end of season Highlights and

My second suggestion is that you test out the Adobe On-Location program that (probably) came with your copy of Premiere Pro. If you've already got a laptop with a firewire port (or one that you can borrow), you only need an extra firewire cable and an external firewire drive (which are rather inexpensive). You are in a fixed location where you probably have electrical power available via extension cord. Recording to disk speeds up processing --- no more hours of capturing the tapes and, even if its a borrowed laptop, you can move the external drive to your editing machine. You also avoid the possibility of drop-outs when shooting HDV.

Good advice Jay. One thing I didn't mention is I have never had a drop-out in the first 15-20 minutes of tape, so if Tim pauses for stoppage of play, drop-outs may not be a problem. Heck, may not be a problem with his FX anyway, yours sound like there a lot better than mine.

I really appreciate alll the input and ideas. I dont consider myself a videographer but the people in this small town think that i am. i started out helping the school with their website and from there i went into building my own just for the sports. i create highlights for each weeks game and the dvd's for both the coaches and the college's that send out scouts during the season to check out prospects.

I dont know if any of you have ever heard of the State Farm Contest held for the past 3 years called "Friday Night Feats", but the first year that it was held, i submitted a few videos i had taken and won the school the grand prize of $15,000. Last year, one of the videos i submitted won $2500.
I am hoping that with a better camera and the chance of another great play i can capture another grand prize winner this year.
Hootens.com (http://www.hootens.com/Articles/ArticleViewer.aspx?ArticleID=451cee51-6f96-42ee-a56f-a9a56d8d79d0)

Most of the videos i have taken of the games over the past 3 years with the old handycam are on my website, they arent the best i have ever seen but they give the community a chance to come back and watch the games at any time. they are in the video vault.
BeardenSports.Com | Home of Bearden Bears Football (http://www.beardensports.com/home.html)

I understand that most of you here do video for a living and know alot more than i do, thats why i wanted to post here and get some ideas from you guys. I am hoping that by following some of the things posted here, that i can learn to become better at filming the games as well as producing better output media.

Good advice Jay. One thing I didn't mention is I have never had a drop-out in the first 15-20 minutes of tape, so if Tim pauses for stoppage of play, drop-outs may not be a problem. Heck, may not be a problem with his FX anyway, yours sound like there a lot better than mine.

Nah, I suspect I was just lucky with a new camera, I didn't have any dropouts with my XHA1 in the first year I had it, either. I went partially tapeless using On-Location (I was able to keep using my old laptop with CS2 and my new one with CS4, so I could record from two cams.) When I started seeing drop-outs on the tapes from my other, B-roll cams -- some in the first five minutes of recording -- that pushed me to going totally tapeless with Sony MRC units.

These may be a bit expensive for Tim Rogers's budget. Last time I checked, an MRC1k unit costs $750 and you also need to buy a battery(ies) and CF cards. I had a number of spare NPF batteries from the VX2000 cams I was retiring, so I avoided some of this expense. (Maybe the batteries for Tim's Handycam would work?)

It seems to me that On-Location might be the most economical solution for Tim if he has a firewire-equipped laptop computer available. Almost anything built in the last decade would work when equipped with an external firewire drive. My old laptop was a vintage 2001 Gateway unit. I ran it with OnLocation CS2 while running a later version on my new laptop, enabling me to record from two cameras. Although editing would have been implausible on the old laptop, I only needed it for recording and it was fine for that.

A DVD recorder set-up seems like a great thing to the extent it works with live recording --- you'd have copiable DVDs immediately after the game and would only need to make copies to hand out --- but, if live recording doesn't work so well, then you would be stuck playing the video from the camera to the unit. That would be real time while it burned DVDs, My editing system will encode video to DVD format in less than real time. Plus, encoding on my system allows me to use multi-pass variable bit rate (VBR) encoding. Most inexpensive hardware encoding --- what you find in stand-alone DVD recorders --- encodes on the fly with constant bit rate (CBR) which tends to give motion artifacts when encoding high-motion high-contrast action like a football game.

Will On Location work if im pausing and restarting the record? I always pause at the end of the play and restart as they line back up.

Yes. You can slave OnLocation to your camera so that every time you hit the record button on the camera, On Location also starts recording, There is a little button in the "field monitor window" for toggling recording on and off with the camera if you have a tape inserted. (If you do not have a tape in the camera, you have to start and stop recording by pressing On Location's record button.) When you do this --- starting and stopping recording whether via the camera or the On Location button --- you will get a separate clip each time you restart. They will be sequentially numbered or named so it is easy to import them and drop them en masse onto a timeline in PPro (for editing) or Encore (for going even more quickly to DVD). If you do this in Encore, you'll get a chapter point for each play which may be handy for the coaches to skip ahead and back. PPro also lets you select all your assemble your clips, put chapter points where you want them, and then pass the whole thing over to Encore, too.

If you are starting and stopping like that, you definitely do not want to go live to DVD with any of the units we discussed above. They are made for continuous recording. Maybe somebody knows of a different kind of unit?

When i capture the HDV video from my camera in Premiere, it captures it as a mpeg. Is this correct? Or should it be as an avi? I dont see anything to change the capture format.
I am capturing using the 1080/60i.

HDV is MPEG2, so that's the format it captures in.

You could convert to a form of HD AVI with CINEFORM, but Premiere doesn't do this natively.

oh ok, thanks adam. i am still trying to figure out the best way to output the video to dvd. i cannot for the life of me figure out what settings i need to have it exported as. then in encore, i am trying to figure out how to make the dvd just autoplay but cant figure that out either. i dont have a need for a menu at this time as its just one ballgame.

CS3 used to have a button when you went to File > Export to Encore that you could check that said "Direct Burn without Menus." That's gone now and there's no mention of it in the Help Files. The nearest I can figure is if you simply don't add a menu it doesn't add one. You still might have to push Play on the DVD player, though.

So with Premiere you simply go to File > Adobe Dynamic Link > Send to Encore. Set your preferences on the boxes that come up and then Encore will open with your project imported into it. I have a hunch that if you look over to the Properties panel on the upper right, if it says First Play: and then your project name, it should start playing as soon as you pop the disc into the player.

Questions like this probably ought to go into the Adobe Forums as they're really not related to the FX1000.

I shoot local rugby league with my FX1. So far very good.

I shoot a local high school's games for parents wanting college recruit videos.

Definitely shoot in HDV. I shoot Progressive (30F). The image may be a bit choppy/strobed for some but i find that it is much more crisp and the slow mo and freeze frames are superior in clarity. It's much easier to grab a still export it, cut an alpha channel in PS and bring it back and lay it in for some cool effects.
I shoot at the highest frame rate possible given the variable lighting of each venue. I take a white balance off of anyone wearing a white t-shirt or my default is 5400k setting. My biggest problem is that shooting at 120 shutter requires a wide open ap and when i zoom in the exposure is darker than wide, so i have to slide the ap ring quickly or adjust in post (keyframe CC - major pain).

I haven't tried the OnLocation workflow, but i would think that it would require too much time to encode and burn as compared to the sony dvd box which finalizes in 2-3 minutes - i've seen other shooters use them. The coach's disc - created by the sony dvd box by the other shooter - seems to be an immediate one pass encode which leaves a lot to be desired. It's fine for the coach's that require immediate discs; although, i keep trying to tell them to convert to 720p downloads of my footage as i think it would be much better for them if they could just wait a day for me to cut and post them.

Best of Luck - and market those College Recruit Vids!

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