Hi George,

Who are you calling a cowboy and amatuer?

I wouldn't describe anyone here like that, including you.

I mentioned that I want the best tools I can afford to create the best images possible. Regarding the EX that includes the DOF control, lens etc.

In my case, again, I moved to HD and crushed my competition with amazing images, demos, and marketing therefore seized a major portion of market share. The old guard just sat back and yelled "I have 1/2" chips!!!!"

How does that translate to a bride and groom? Better than we shoot HD?

We are talking about high end weddings right? Would you say that these same people who are in this bracket may be the upper crust that would be the first to have all the cool toys? Blu-Ray, HDDVD, plasma etc.

Mike

Hi Mike
 

Quote Mike "Who are you calling a cowboy and amatuer?" This has no specific reference to anyone here...the cowboy in UK terms is someone who does a disservice to an industry by pretending to be good, get paid and has no after sales service...they are less than the dirt off my shoe and get us all a bad name. An amateur is someone who aspires to be a professional but lacks the flair and edge of the pro and does not get paid for their work. There is nothing to be ashamed of being an amateur and I have seen some very good amateurs. Hope this clears things up.
Sadly in the UK the wedding video market is riddled with cowboys and people who think they know what they are doing as is the photographic side of weddings. Weddings attract the cowboy element as their subjects are easy prey..."How much is yir videos" and "how long do we get for that" these were frequent phone call questions and I would be polite by asking them their date and tell them "sorry but we are booked that day". That is how the cowboy survives.. A better analogy of the cowboy is low budget, no skill and a wedding DVD your 3 year old could have done better.
We have various "pro bodies" in the UK, some better than others who endeavor to "make good" some of the lesser skilled cameramen and women when they would be better served teaching the bride and groom how to weed out the cowboy element. How often do you loose a wedding video to Mr No budget only because the wedding couple have phoned round looking for the "best price" when as happens in the photographic side they all charge similar prices £1000 upwards so the choice is down to preferences NOT PRICE.

George: all the points you raised have been mentioned many times before, and people making high-end wedding videos shouldn't have any problems with those issues. In fact the EX1 is the camera some of them are counting on to distinguish them from HDV shooters, especially in terms of low-light capabilities. And as far as showing too much detail is concerned, there are ways to deal with that - including not zooming in on the bride's nose hairs. In two years of shooting HDV I've only had one older bride where I was significantly concerned about how her wrinkles looked and had to soften a few clips, which wasn't a big deal. When shooting in HD it's easy enough to soften detail as needed, whereas shooting in SD you can't improve detail when you might want to do so.

What I was referring to with that figure was the cost of upgrading to Blu-ray disc production, which is the best way of delivering HD wedding videos at this time. If you have any recent version of Adobe Premiere you can buy the upgrade to CS3 for $299, then buy a Blu-ray burner for $500-600 and be ready to go for under $1000. For those who have already invested good money in HD cameras new editing hardware and software and so on, spending this last $1000 to be able to actually deliver HD properly to customers is a reasonable investment. But if all the costs of converting to HD don't fit your business model or your clients' interests, then by all means keep producing in SD.

I don't do weddings unless specifically asked to but I've always found low-light to be the biggest challenge.

I'll take an SD image over an HD black screen any day. I've also noticed that HDV cameras seem to loose a lot of their resolution with the gain up. I was told that it is to do with the noise reduction processing. I wonder how the EX will compare.

F10 sensitivity should just about scrape by for weddings, although I'd prefer at least another stop on that.

Also, although it may save time on ingesting, my experience with P2 is that it takes LONGER by the time you have backed everything up securely. I also use my capturing time to create the DVD cases etc, so it isn't time wasted.

I think that the biggest asset of the Ex in terms of weddings is that it is small but still has 1/2" chips. I normally prefer to turn up to jobs with a full size shoulder mounted camera which really looks the part. At weddings, there is something to be said for being more discreet.

Blu-Ray burner doesn't do any good if your client doesn't have a Blu-Ray player. Most people with HDTVs haven't committed to either HDDVD or Blu-Ray playback. True, costs of the burner are now down around the $600 mark but at the moment it seems only those with Sony PS3s can play those discs. Then there are those who, if they've bought any player at all, bought HDDVD players.

I'm comparing price of SD delivery vs HD delivery. The entire HD workflow is both more expensive and possibly more time consuming . . . and the market one is selling to is currently smaller.

Commiting to the HDV camera is a very small part of the financial investment especially since one can stick to DV with nearly all HDV cameras on the market and jump only when the client is willing to pay.

XDCAM EX, the subject of this thread, is HD only so it's going to be a camera to get if one is going to commit to HD as your dominant workflow. Hence there'll investment in cards, XDCAM archival, HD monitoring etc. That's more than an extra $600 for a Blu-Ray burner for those who have BOTH HDTV and Blu-Ray playback. AND I would hope if you're doing multiple camera weddings you're not going to be paying those folks DV prices either.

The above additional costs are why I mentioned AppleTV previously. With AppleTV and your current compression software you can deliver to HD to ALL HDTV owners. That's a much bigger market that Blu-Ray or HDDVD players and might make the transition to an upscale HD target market worthwhile . . . since the cost of going with an HD workflow is several thousand dollars more before one even considers getting a burner yet.

But the good AppleTV costs almost as much as a Blu-ray player and can't play mainstream HD movies, plus the AppleTV quality is apparently rather limited and rendering times for H.264 output can be extreme for full-length wedding videos. The AppleTV solution is one approach worth considering for those customers not willing to invest in other options, but as things stand now it looks like Blu-ray will be the preferred way to delivery HD wedding videos in 2008...at least for those customers willing to spend anything for some type of HD video player.

It will be interesting to see the market penetration of Blu-Ray vs HDDVD. I agree about the limitations of AppleTV but with folks reluctant to buy HD disc player, AppleTV is a stop gap since it doesn't add that much more cost to the workflow.

I'd prefer Blu-Ray but I think people are reluctant to buy players until the format war advances a bit further. It would make life easier if this began to clear up in early/mid 2008.

Here's numbers as of April (already old).
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/9316.cfm

Interesting that Blu-Ray movies had been outselling HD-DVD by 9:2
but the player sales seem to be much closer, 844,000 to about 708,000.

The article points out about online sales and Walmart not being included and the above player sales may not include PS3 sales.

But this recent article (Sept 8) seems to say HD-DVD is now exceeding Blu-Ray
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/42004

One important quote that has bearing on the XDCAM EX potential users.
". . . , it really looks like consumers are not that interested in high-definition video formats . . . Given that overall high-definition sales are at or near an all-time low, something needs to change to make this market viable in the long term."

One HD format or the other will eventually break out but all this continues to point out the problem of demand, delivery, HD profit margin vs cost for those looking at XDCAM EX for weddings.

And one more article TODAY about the divide
http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/p...709160327/1003

It looks vague whether that was referring to players sold or movies, and I've seen a more recent estimate that there are ~1.5 million PS3s in use in North America. If the number of HD-DVD players is similar that would be ~3 million households who already have HD disc players, which would be remarkable considering how little time they've been readily available.

Agreed though that one should think carefully about cost versus revenue before buying a camera like the EX1 for shooting weddings. On the other hand, if you want to offer the best image quality you can (and who doesn't?), it's an intriguing camera for the price.

It was the April article that quoted the 844,000 number. Actually the last article link I posted did say 1.6 million Blu-Ray players if you include PlayStation3, much like the number you mention. The odd thing is recently (and only recently) HD-DVD discs have been outselling Blu-Ray discs.

This does bring us back to the Blu-Ray burner. You'll only be able to deliver to those with Blu-Ray players and not HD-DVD.

As per my thoughts with AppleTV, one might offer a Blu-Ray player (at the bottom price of about $499 at the moment I believe) to play the disc one makes (unless your client has one already).

I think the bottom line HDDVD players are down to $299. But where's the burners?

Basically, to boil down this whole thread in my perspective, the XDCAM EX is a reasonable camera to use for wedding regarding workflow in most aspects (IMHO).

The one concern is delivery. It would be a real shame (especially financially) of one ends up delivering the majority of one's work shot on XDCAM EX in SD.

A couple of comments here after reading this ongoing thread. I have an Apple TV and love it. It feeds my 65" HD RPTV. Although the AppleTV processes internally at 960x540, it outputs to your display at 1080i or 720P depending on user configuration. Mine is outputting 1080i. So you say 960x540 isn't really HD? Does that resolution sound familiar? It should, because it's the native sensor resolution of the lower end Panasonic P2 cameras. Most everyone seems to like the image they produce.

As to Kevin's post that I quoted. I have the Turbo.264 from El Gato and it chews through AppleTV renders very quickly. A dedicated hardware encoder using USB. I think it only works on the Mac platform at the moment though.

We've been saying it for awhile now, but the time to learn HD shooting is now. The time to acquire in HD is now. You will future proof your work this way. Tell your brides and grooms that for a modest upgrade fee, you will shoot in HD and deliver SD for now and provide an HD master when they are ready and able to play/display their wedding in HD.

-gb-

So AppleTV is a good match for the HVX200, but not so much for the EX1 with four times the actual recorded resolution. The most practical way to deliver full-quality footage from the EX1 will be on Blu-ray discs in the same format recorded by the camera, or using more compressed options like H.264 at full 1080p resolution.

I looked this up and it apparently only supports up to AppleTV resolutions at this time, so again not a good match for footage from the EX1. Hopefully we'll start to see more hardware-based H.264 encoders which can produce 1080p output in a reasonable length of time, but how much will that cost? Rendering finished HD projects out to MPEG2 format at 1080 resolution is inherently quicker than rendering H.264 unless you have a real-time encoder for the latter, and those currently cost several thousand dollars (at least).

As far as HD delivery for weddings is concerned, that's more a marketing issue than anything else at this point. Some videographers are doing quite well selling HD upgrades using various options including Blu-ray, AppleTV and WMV-HD on standard DVDs. And with maybe 2 million HD-capable players of various forms sold in the US in just the past year or so, I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss HD delivery as a trend far off in the distant future.

It's already pretty clear that Blu-ray has the upper hand, plus you can tell clients to buy a Sony Playstation 3 and no matter what happens they'll have a nice game machine with a digital photo player - something which will be useful far into the future no matter what happens with HD.

Here's another plan of action....

I'd get the Cineform Prospect to use with Adobe Premier CS3 and also
Sonic DVDit HDPro.......

Then shoot with the EX in HD, take the HD material and injest it to the computer using Prospect... Edit the footage and then output the results
in HD...

Injest the final into DVDit and create the menu's and output to both
Bluray and DVD....

Sell the package deal to the customer as, you get to play the DVD now and when you get a Bluray player you also have the HD version....

It takes the same amount of time, it will cost you $10 more for the bluray disk and you can charge the client for the HD version... your just giving them
the DVD version for free...

This way your moving forward to HD and the client is paying for the software and hardware as to go....

Are you referring to Cineform Prospect 2K?
I take it this does both SD and HD editing???

Great plan of attack btw!

The Prospect 2K is very nice but the Prospect HD will match the EX footage.

The thinking behind the Cineform products is that HD footage comes off of the camera in a compressed format with GOP...

If you injest the HD footage using Prospect it will injest the footage and convert the footage into an AVI file format (Cineform Intermediate). Its a lossless conversion and it allows your computer to be able to handle the footage for editing just as if it were SD.

After you edit the footage you just export the file back out of the editor and recompress it for burning a DVD or Bluray Disk.

Here is a link on the Cineform site for DVD authoring going from HD down to SD...

http://cineform.com/products/TechNotes/Export2DVD.htm

This would create your HD to SD authoring to DVD disks....

If you want to author HD and SD with menu support then you will need to use
DVDit HDPRO as it will allow you to burn both DVD and Bluray Disks....

This workflow pretty much flattens the idea that the EX cam is HD only...

Its just too easy to downconvert the footage in the editor to SD footage.

If you want to play around with the software you can download the Adobe Premier Pro CS3 and the Cineform Prospect from the Adobe site and Cineform site.....

you can get lots of HD footage from some of the forums here to play with. Some footage in the Sony V1 area and some footage on the Canon HV20 area too...

They list the footage at the top of the main page of the forum..

If you want to play out HD footage and don't have a bluray writter then you can also export to a memory stick and plug it into a Sony PS3.....

The file format for the Sony PS3 that would be M2T...

Great topic...
 

Hi. I have been working with prosumer camcorders last 20 years or so, the last years with HDV. If we decide to go for EX1 for weddings (and event) it would for sure distance us from someones uncle/cowboy with a HDV / PD150 on several points. At least if we know how to utilize the equipment.

Ray, I was actually thinking of bundling a PS3, but delivering on a Memory stick is (almost) purely genious - but makes new obstacles. How do you getto print on a Memory stick using your old (and now obsolete) SD DVD printer/duplicator... :-)

Mike Williams, I agree with you. The kind of people that would asks for HD, often have the option of playing it already. Sometimes they just have the screen but not the player. Should we bundle a player with the HD package to distnce the product even more maybe? Is price so important - if the total product package is state of the art.

George Johnston - I guess those that works and have been working with HD / HDV has experienced the focus and other obstacles many times. I would say 100% more than those just working SD. So who's learning to overcome the problems, and who's not?

The Sony EX only produces better pictures !
 

Ronny it's not the camera that should distance you it's your professional experience, a PD150 was a very good prosumer camera in its day. Having an EX will give a skilled operator a good crack of the whip but if the uncle/cowboy is earning as much or more money than you they can also afford the Sony EX camera. It's how you use a tool (camera) that sets a benchmark, I know very good cameramen who can't edit for toffee, but in my game (self contained production company) you not only need to film well but you need to be able to edit your own footage, add music, 3D graphics and know when to add an effect now that starts to set you apart from the competition.

George, no pun intended :-)

If we start using the EX1 and learning in the realm of real HD we would probably build a higher professional knowledge that further set us apart from the casual wedding videographer. I say probably becuase like some says, HD introduces several new issues that should be taken very seriously and some people would maybe just rely on the cameras improved picture quality as you point out.

If we take it seriously enough, you will gain new valuable information. And if you were highly skilled with PD150 or its like/HDV cameras, know editing and special effects. Then my point is - starting to use something like the EX1 will eventually add production value.

I am pretty sure that learning to deliver in HD will put you ahead of competition, at least for some time.

(BTW. English is not my primary language, and sometimes my writing are not entirely reflecting what's in my head. Sorry for that. (Including but not limited to wrong use of is and are:-)

The Prospect 2K is very nice but the Prospect HD will match the EX footage.

Are you saying that Prospect HD is all you need and that Prospect is overkill for HD? I take it Prospect does SD as well and is a swiss knife in this area?

If you injest the HD footage using Prospect it will injest the footage and convert the footage into an AVI file format (Cineform Intermediate). Its a lossless conversion and it allows your computer to be able to handle the footage for editing just as if it were SD.

Ok so lets say an hour movie at 35mbs at 1080P....could you estimate around how long would it take to convert the footage to an AVI format in Cineform.

After you edit the footage you just export the file back out of the editor and recompress it for burning a DVD or Bluray Disk.

I asked this question is a different forum and nearly got my head ate off by I suppose coders.
When do you think Programs will come out to enable us to do the cool menus seen in the Casino Royale James Bond Blu-Ray DVD?

If you want to play out HD footage and don't have a bluray writter then you can also export to a memory stick and plug it into a Sony PS3.....

The file format for the Sony PS3 that would be M2T...

This is a great insight to the workflow possible with the EX...thanks

I seriously dont think starting to use something like the EX1 will eventually add production value Ronny

Experience, Knowledge,Art of editing, Camera Skills, Presentation in my opinion they are the key elements in producing quality DVD's

Shooting with the EX or any HD camera i think is a bonus to anyones work.

Who's is controlling the camera and how now that's a high level of skill on it's own.

what about editing once again anyone can cut & paste but the elite can tell a story

rob.

What about Sony Vegas Pro 8? Edit the native EX files, then output direct from the timeline to Blu-ray or SD DVD. There is no need to transcode to an intermediate codec. There is no such thing as a lossless transcode, any re-compression will introduce artifacts. Cineform claim there process to be "visually" lossless which means you can't see the difference. However do several transcodes say from Mpeg to CFHD to Mpeg and you will get some concatenation. It may be small and in-significant but it will be there.

Cineform was developed as an editing tool for HDV at a time when PC's and the applications that ran on them really struggled to edit HD Mpeg. These days multi core PC's running applications such as Edius, Vegas and Avid can edit HDV and XDCAM HD almost as easily as DV. Mac users running FCP can also edit native HDV and XDCAM material with ease. Cineform still has a part to play especially with 2k and 4k but I'm not convinced that transcoding is of HD Mpeg material is necessary or desirable.

HD editing and 1hr of HD video
 

Alister the new FCP-6 timeline is great, you can edit anything from HD to SD on the same timeline but for reasons only known to Apple they updated all the apps in FCS2 but not DVD studio Pro, although you get a radio button for Blue-ray it has no effect...as yet their is... to my knowledge...no HD workflow from the Mac that allows you to output your final HD production to Blue-ray...
You can however...but I have not tried this, output 1 hour of HD video footage onto a normal 4.7GB DVD.

Just to play devil's advocate and keep in line with the thread topic -
Why choose the EX1 over, let's say, the V1 for weddings?

They're both HD, the V1 can shoot SD 16:9 and goes to tape and allows real time downconvert out of the camera.

The question is, will the client see the difference between V1 and EX1 video? I know us professionals can but we're talking about wedding clients here.

This is why I bring up the business aspect of HD. The EX is a more expensive camera, may require an offload procedure during the wedding depending on the number of cards you have, computer based downconvert instead of out of the camera, archival time and expense. In addition, both HDV and XDCAM require additional expense if one is actually going to deliver HD, compared to SD delivery.

This is why I don't think one can "sell" your work at DV or HDV prices . . . and why we can't simply talk about HD when talking about the EX1.

How does one justify the additional expense and workflow time of the EX1 over HDV . . . when most clients are probably still happy with SD (and yes I know that WILL CHANGE but the majority of TV sets out there are SD even though I suspect the majority of TV set sales are now HD)?

I have my own thoughts but will save that for another post. I mention this because so many posts in this thread are about HD (and learning it) but that's not a convincing reason to move to the EX1.

"The question is, will the client see the difference between V1 and EX1 video? "

And THIS is the fundamental question considering the fact ath at this time, its already a difficult ascertion for the general public to come to grips with HD 720 or 1080i/p
they DO NOT KNOW the difference save for afew well versed geeky clients, but at the end of teh day they WILL NOT ascertain the differences betweent the 2. THey wil simply see HD or SD.. they wont notice the difference between 1080i or 720p on a progressive panel and they certainly WILL NOT really care for the difference, so long as they "have it" in HD..

This is the first foremost point above everything else.

In regard to the camera itself, the EX in itself will make shooting HD a much more viable option FOR THE SHOOTER by offering elements of control, DoF, audio, codec etc. In turn, production values SHOULD increase on the shooting level, however i can already see the no brainer shooters out there hankering for this camera and expecting it to work miracles...
The point however is the camera itself wont change the way HD is percieved by the potential client, however it will change the way HD is percieved on an acquisition level.
On a tech level and on a media menagement level.

The client WILL NOT CARE if you shoot with a Canon A1 or with an EX .. if it looks good THATS what they care about.

If its tagged HD, even better. to them, they wont know the difference on the outset and as it stands, in todays current market, its difficult enough to sell good SD let alone upgrade said client into HD offerings.

"I know us professionals can but we're talking about wedding clients here."
To be honest, over half the pro's wont be able to tell the difference between HDV and XDCamHD. Straight out of the cam it might be considerably different considering DoF and dynamic range, but in a real world environment, I dont see it making al lthat much of a difference to the clients themselves.

Like i said, the clients wont care what you shoot with.. and looking at photography as an example, smaller cameras have proven to be as successful as higher end gear.

Fair enough this camera changes the way a company may work with media, and frankly, i can se how in the longterm it will benefit many companies, my own included, however as it stands, and with the lack of demand for HD, the EX will only make shooting HD a more viable option due to the control, CMOS performance and codec/media management.
These 3 elements are the TRUE differentials which keep the EX above tape based HDV.
To the client, these 3 elements mean NOTHING

Craig you are spot on but...
 

The half inch chips on hearsay seem to be far better in low light and if some of the weddingographers are already using HDV using the EX getting better low light capabilities does make sense. The only thing that bothers me is card space and an EX picture matching say an FX1. Weddings are very organic and never run to time so if one is to be a true pro using an EX camera you would take enough sticks of memory to cover 2 weddings, that may mean 4-6 sticks of 16GB. I will see the EX at the IOV show next month but it will be more important to see editing options and a working workflow, time is money to me and I can't afford to be stuck with a pig in the poke that takes far too long to render. The only other point is that some of our USA cousins have clients with HD players and looking at the small amount of reviews on the EX it seems to give a superb picture and that extra low light ability may make the difference between a mushy pixalated church service and one that looks fine.

George, I know about the FCS udates and DVD studio. The HD on a DVD option is supposed to create a HD-DVD player compatible disk but like you I have not tried this. I suspect the reason DVD studio was not updated is that they are waiting for suitable Blu-ray burners and possibly Leopard before releasing a DVD studio upgrade or patch. I hope they don't take too long as I am primarily a Mac user.

I believe it is Leopard that is the final piece of the puzzle for Blu-Ray output. As for HD-DVD on standard DVD's, it works, but you must use MPEG2 for compatibility with earlier HD-DVD units.

-gb-

Easy. Try sitting down with 4 or 5 hours of HDV to ingest. Next, do the same with XDCAM HD. You'll be getting started a lot sooner with the latter, and time is money. The ease of working with a non tape medium adds up in all the little things. Impervious to moisture and temperature, no wear and tear on heads, no need to rewind and eject for storage, instant random access to material, no timecode breaks, no accidental overwriting of existing material... and the list goes on. Placing shot marks around crucial points of your material will help locate and make subclips out of it in post. It just makes your overall work flow much easier to deal with.

Remember, the conversion process for editing is really just a re-wrap of the file container format. It's fast and painless.

Sorry to be such a cheerleader, but with XDCAM HD, I actually look forward to the post ingest process because it's so much easier to manage.

-gb-

To be fair, you could record HDV on HDD recorders (e.g. Firestore) and eliminate the capture step that way, but that's maybe not quite as convenient as solid state recording.

As far as whether the average person will be able to tell the difference between footage from the EX1 and the Z1U, I'd bet they could on any decent 1080p display. A better question is whether they'd care enough to pay extra for the better footage - some will and some won't. The EX1 will likely be a fine camera for high-end wedding videographers who want to offer the best quality they can afford, and everyone else will keep shooting HDV (or DV).

Keep in mind that the EX1 records in a format which can be delivered at source quality to the consumer on Blu-ray discs, so if you do that the delivered image should be visibly better than anything else most of us can afford to offer. Plus if the DOF and low-light sensitivity are better that should make a difference where resolution wouldn't, and that's the real appeal of this camera. The EX1 won't be for everyone, but for those who get it I suspect they won't be disappointed.

HDV is no different in regard to delivery at source quality. Hell you can even deliver SD in M2t format running at 25mbps... the near ultimate option for SD delivery... aside from Digitbeta and DV50... the PS3 will easily play sd back in 25mbps on a standard disc.... BlueRay is insignificant in this regard as AVCHD 5.1 has already proven to be a viable option.

Low light is all hearsay until we see the camera in a real world environment. Not controlled...

Sadly, IMO, judging from spec and my experience with these tools over the last 8 years, I believe it will be in between the DVX100 and the Z1 in regard to response. DoF is a given, however bear in mind that many weddings clients are indifferent to DoF... if the shooter still has no clue, they're still left with unusable HD footage. It has been proven time and again that clients only want good clean imagery and frankly anyone can attain this. Its why so many cookie cutter companies have made a fortune in this industry and setting low end precedent of quality, in turn, setting an example against those of us who actually take pride in the cinematographic artistry of what we do. To be honest, not many clients care for the art. Its a sad fact. If they DID care for the art, not only would demand for it increase, but costs would inherently follow that demand. Yes there are those few discerning clients, but they're few and far between.

However we are still in the dark ages when it comes to acceptance from brides. Consider that a "lowly" photographer shooting with a Canon 20D n easily make $6k a pop. For video, not only must we stop the world but we must also justify the costs to the client. its no longer a simple matter of "this is our work and this is how much it costs."

For photography it works that way, for video, and HD to be specific, we must educate the clients as to what these differences mean to them.
In the end, they will only hear "SD or HD" Is it HD? Yes? Good, ok...

THAT'S ALL. They wont appreciate the differences as we would.. Not yet..
Trust me if they did, we would have been pumping out HD on every package for the last 2 years... but it hasn't happened and wont happen for a while. So the panic in the belief that this camera is the bees knees for weddings is a lil premature IMO considering that ANY HD capable camera can offer results for the client which are perfectly satisfactory considering the budget.

DO not EVER believe that a client will be happy to pay $1500 bucks on top of their package simply because you are using THIS camera as opposed to a HDV camera.

If a client can save $1500 bucks they will, and they do. If it's HD, that's all that matters. What KIND of HD is another issue and frankly, that issue is not important to the client. Simply because this industry, despite its evolution, still keeps its clients in the dark...

V1U vs EX
 

I don't like 4 lux ratings for my biz. The A1U has CMOS and a 4 lux rating and it suxs for low light.

Having to baby sit the capturing process!!!

Greg summed it up but I thought I would back it up again.

Mike

I'll back up what Greg says. I purchased my F350 XDCAM HD camcorder for the balance of quality and cost. At the time of purchase I didn't really care that it used disks instead of tape. Now, 18months on I WOULD NEVER GO BACK TO TAPE! I have not seen a drop out or picture glitch since switching to file based. Transfers to and from the disks are quick and never fail. I had to write back an hour long programme to HDV the other day, it was a painful process and when I reviewed the tape there was a glitch in the middle so I had to repeat the process again. Things like this just don't happen when you are file based, it's just like copying any other data file on your computer. With FCP the transfers take place in the background so you can carry on editing while your material is ingested or exported in the background. With the EX1 editing with Edius and Premiere you can edit directly from the cards, no need to transfer anything, transfers are amazingly quick when you do need to do them.

The EX1 is noticeably more sensitive than the Z1/V1 and has very very little noise. It has wonderful creative tools that you can use to enhance your productions. Maybe a timelapse sequence of the wedding venue being prepared, slow motion of the bouquet being thrown and so on.

The lens on the EX1 has fewer aberrations than the lens on my Z1, so when the iris is wide open the pictures still look sharp and clear. It has no smear and very low haze when shooting into bright light. An proper manual focus, zoom and a full size iris ring. For me the lens alone makes the EX1 a no-brainer.

While the Z1 and V1 do produce good pictures the EX1 is a quantum leap ahead, not just in terms of picture quality but in terms of workflow and creative tools. I have used a couple of demo EX1's for some test shoots and the single biggest problem was handing the cameras back to Sony. I have my order placed.

Well, mostly the operator. Real lens for a more true manual focus. The option of shooting 720p or 1080i. Overcrank or undercrank. And the most useful feature would be better low light performance.

A lot of professionals are not jumping on the tapeless bandwagon. I just heard that the ABC affliate here in Tampa will outfit their news photographers with JVC 250 cameras. The Newscast just went High Def and currently still shoot on Beta SX, which is SD. Since ABC 28 is a Scripps Howard owned station, the company most likely will purchase the 250s for all of the TV stations in their broadcast division. This is a broadcast TV giant that is staying away from tapeless for news gathering anyway.

Sorry for excerpting but I'd though I'd focus on key points of your response.

If the client can't tell the difference. We need to address the other factors. The EX will generally have a higher cost of ownership than HDV. There's the cost of cards and XDCAM archival vs improved work flow (faster ingest).

The challenge of doing multi-camera shoots. They'll be fewer EX1 owners out there, The cost of hiring a 2nd shooter should fairly be significantly more.

If the customer won't see the difference and there's the additional cost of ownership and the cost of the 2nd camera (whether hired or owned outright) means one has to pass that cost on to the customer unless the workflow (fast ingest) means you can increase productivity (number of jobs).

One may be able to buy outright 2 or maybe 3 Sony V1s for the cost of 1 EX. WE KNOW the EX is better (for many reasons obvious to us) but if the customer can't see it/pay more for it then is buying going to be a profitable or competitive decision in the wedding biz?

Yes, it's obvious to me that someone with good DP skills will clearly have more control and produce better work with EX1 but there does seem to be a point where customers just aren't that discerning as you suggest.

Does the changed (improved?) workflow and increased cost of ownership (plus cost of hiring additional cameras) combined with customers who can't really discern the difference between a V1 and an EX1 translate into making more money?

BTW whether doing weddings, local cable spots or corporate work, NO ONE has yet ASKED me if I shoot or deliver HD. So I've had no motive to move to HDV (EX1 is a different story - see below).

What attracts me to the EX1 is that I think HDV has horrid workflow issues, the current HDV cameras have low light issues, the HDV encoding itself has issues with motion. The EX1 improves all the above.

1) Workflow - faster ingest (but one should add the time to archive and XDCAM discs are much more expensive than tape).
2) Better (best?) low light performance for a "handycam" sized HD Camera. Customers WILL see that. They often ask questions in that area.
3) Better encoding - 35mbps VBR doesn't seem to have the issues 25mbps CBR (HDV) has. Shooting 60p in XDCAM may yield nicer slo-mos that customers may see especially compared to slowing down the "artifacted" motion shots visable in some HDV shots.

But the increase cost of ownership and hiring additional cameras have to be offset by more income to make the EX1 viable business decision.

OT for weddings but - I have signficant experience with BetaSX (CRINGE!).

I bet I can guess their reasoning for going with the JVC 250 and it's not because they love HDV. Probably they want shoulder mount, maybe interchangeable lenses (but do news crews really change lenses?) and SDI output. My guess it's that unique combo they feel they need for their workflow. I don't think there are a lot of HDV decks that can play JVC HDV 720p60 short GOP from what I understand. I certainly can't believe they expect that tape format as useful archival.

Locally I see lots of HVX200s used for news. I believe they're shooting DVCPro50 to P2 though. Fast ingest and a good 4:2:2 I frame codec. They can use the same cameras in DVCPro100 mode when they jump to HD.

XDCAM is also (330, 350 and others) popular for ENG work. My guess is when those stations move to HD they'll be getting EX1s and I think Sony is banking on that (just my guess).

ENG is one of the best market niches for tapeless since fast ingest is key. Those stations that use tape often reuse them (e.g. BetaSP) several times so there's often no thought about source tape archival as a tape vs non tape issue.

Much easier to put accesories on a JVC250 and still end up with a package that's relatively easy to handhold - everything from on camera lights, radio mic receivers, Firestore etc. And using pro 12 volt batteries, no problem with powering it all either.

The V lock and SDI output even makes it fairly straightforward to put a radiocam transmitter directly on to one of these cameras, something not really feasible with most cameras in this price range.

Alister, how would you compare the F350 noise levels to the EX1?
I realize the F350 is a $25K camera. I see the specs for the F350 are:
F9 @ 2000 lux , 54dB(S/N)
I believe the EX1 specs are 54dB(S/N) with F10 @ 2000 lux.

I imagine you've seen this EX1 frame grab (rename to .tif):
http://www.dvinfo.net/media/xdcamex/...g%20720p25.tix
There appears to be a lot of noise in the sky. The 24P wakeboarding image
appears to be a lot cleaner, but has more light.