quickest conversion to mov.
 

I have a client asking me to shoot some 1 and 2 hour corporate events which is easy. The hard part is he wants his clients to be able to walk with the footage almost immediately in an idiot proof format which can play in any computer from a thumb drive. My EX1R seems better suited to this type of shoot than my FS 700 so I guess my question is what is the quickest conversion from EX xdcam native to mov. that will play anywhere.

mb

Re: quickest conversion to mov.
 

Just conversion to .mov isn't enough. XDCAM Transfer and the FCP plugin do that. However the video data remains in XDCAM format and requires the Sony CODEC to be installed on the playback system. So you have to transcode the video data as well as the file format.

One possibility is to look at shooting in DVCAM albeit this won't be in HD. Another is to shoot it in XDCAM and then transcode it to DV format. Other than that, it's time to experiment with your computer and see what formats are of adequate quality and can be transcoded in the time you have. This is actually where the smaller 8GB SxS cards would be handy so you can rollover to a second card, pop out the first to get the transcode going and hot plug the card back into slot 1.... rinse and repeat. Of course you can always sway cards manually ... maybe during recording (I've not tried it)

Re: quickest conversion to mov.
 

The whole problem with transcoding is that it simply won't be done in time for your clients.

Blackmagic has a H.264 live encoding USB stick that might work for this situation. This would mean you'll have to capture on both your EX1R and your computer, but this might work for your situation.

Blackmagic Design: Video Recorder

Re: quickest conversion to mov.
 

Not a thumb drive but cheap and idiot proof: Hook the cameras composite output to some DVD recorders. They cost next to nothing and playback is idiot proof.

Clients walk off with a copy that is easy to duplicate and you also have the recording on cards which you can later transcode to a better quality format.

Re: quickest conversion to mov.
 

I appreciate the replys, but it is starting to look like the only way this can be done and maintain a good level of HD quality and speed is with a camera similar to the EX1 which records avchd and then send it through clip wrap and then onto another card or drive. I didn't purchase the MainConcept Conversion pack but it looks like there is nothing there that would help in this situation either. The EX series are great cameras but the footage was meant to go directly to edit rather than straight to consumers and I think the fact that video can be shot on a dslr and then viewed almost anywhere has made that hard for many to understand.

mb

Re: quickest conversion to mov.
 

Any of the Matrox MXO products connected to a half decent PC or Mac can encode live to H264. Otherwise remember you can hot swap cards on the EX so have a laptop handy and pull your cards as you shoot every 15 mins or so and get your files transcoding on the computer. A good laptop and Adobe Media encoder should encode around real time provided you don't do any scaling or anything fancy with the encode. Media encoder is nice as you can keep adding new files to the encode queue without interrupting on going encodes.

Re: quickest conversion to mov.
 

These are low $, one man band jobs, so I wouldn't feel comfortable stepping away from the camera to transcode. The best thing I can think of is a nanoflash which I know plays easily on my mac, not too sure about a pc. Since I already have a pix240 I am reluctant to go this route so I may pass on this particular opportunity and suggest a camera for the client to buy.

mb

Re: quickest conversion to mov.
 

I don't know if this will work or not. But why not include a program such as VLC player along with the rushes. Or any player that can run the video files.

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/sony-xdc...e-pmw-ex1.html

Re: quickest conversion to mov.
 

Thanks Donald. That is a nice looking playback with VLC player on my pc desktop and much easier to navigate than the pc version of clipbrowser. For years I have included a file called XDcam EX programs when I dump footage to clients drives. This file has included both flavors of clipbrowser along with the log and transfer plugin xdcam transfer and all the helpful pdfs. I've gotten pretty good at talking people through the steps needed but this might be simpler. Don't know if this will work for this particular client since it requires loading a program but I will give it a shot. I appreciate it.

mb

Re: quickest conversion to mov.
 

You can't convert in camera quality and there are really restrictive bitrate limitations on VLC. Plus, there is no guarantee files coming out of VLC will be read properly on all devices.

Live Capture via the H.264 USB stick from Blackmagic is the best bet for this kind of thing. Have a laptop beside your camera and there is an option for full-resolution video in the software for the stick.