NEX-VG10 & Vegas Pro 10

Rory Cooper wrote on 5/27/2011, 12:43 AM

Geoff it’s a very nice little cam and I am very happy with it.

A mate of mine bought his at the same time and hated it and sold it, some gripes are

Bad pan judder = use rail system on your tripod and offset the cam forward or back. because it’s a small cam it tends to swivel on a small centre point, the sensor being about centre of tripod = having a tight circumference on pans causing judder. so move the cam away from centre point of tripod as far back or forward as you can and a longer handle on your tripod will give better control of pans
you may find will want to use a mattbox and some ND filters which I use anyway so it’s not an issue for me at all

The 17–200 lens is a set up lens and is a bit slow for me. The lens trying to accommodate every aspect = outdoors ok but too low indoors

I have a 10-20 mm1:4 5:6 Sony alpha lens for wide angles and pans on this cam is faster and good shots
Also have a Sony 150-500mm 4.5 works well for zoom shots, Nikon 50mm 1.2 this is a good combo for low light and a Nikon 75-300mm 1.4.5 -5.6 also a nice lens on the cam

Audio = it’s ok for general sound = no control = so you have to use external add on like a zoom mic and Nady or Beachteck etc for controlled audio.

Editing….it’s like all other AVCHD may want to batch convert to make it easier and quicker on your PC.
What do you want to display the finished content on?

Geoff Edwards wrote on 5/27/2011, 9:47 AM

Hi Rory,

Thanks for the reply and some good advice. I will be using this for a variety of projects some commercial web work right away. Vegas has a good codec for Internet 1920x1080.

".it’s like all other AVCHD may want to batch convert to make it easier and quicker on your PC"

Pardon my ignorance but what do you batch convert your footage to?

Cheers.

Geoff

Duncan H wrote on 5/28/2011, 6:04 PM

Hi Geoff,

Thought that I'd have a go at helping out. There are a number of options and individual's preferences regarding conversion of AVCHD to an intermediary to make the workload considerably lighter on the CPU and therefore, make the workflow more efficient. There are third party programs to facilitate this, such as Gear shift (from VASST) and Neoscene(Cineform). Some use the free Proxystream plug in for Vegas (simply do a search on this forum re any of these and you'll find lots of discussions). Personally, I've used Proxystream combined with the Sony MXF format (which is a rendering option already included with Sony Vegas Pro.) Works well on my system, although I do not have the depth of expertise that many others in this forum have re this workflow. Here's an article re using Proxystream in Vegas, hope it helps.

Duncan

http://eugenia.queru.com/2009/04/13/proxy-editing-with-sony-vegas-part-ii/

Rory Cooper wrote on 5/30/2011, 8:00 AM

Geoff before you convert everything try editing with AVCHD it might be ok for you, especially if you don’t have many files to convert

Proxy files work well but this workflow doesn’t suite my needs

I use TMPGenc Express 4 to batch encode to MOV DNxHD to 720p it also does auto 709
720p is very close to 1080i even though 1080i sounds a lot bigger.

wandering journalist wrote on 5/30/2011, 8:12 AM

Hi, this might be off track a bit, sorry if it is. I've been looking at this rig for a while now. Curious how people feel about it. I currently have a Sony HVR A1U and was wondering if this would be a decent replacement, slight move up for it? I was mostly intrigqued by the interchangealbe lenses and the shallow depth of field you can achieve. Nagging at me, the AVCHD and the lack of xlr inputs...

Thanks,

Dale.

Geoff Edwards wrote on 5/31/2011, 9:35 AM

" try editing with AVCHD it might be ok for you"

I can edit the AVCHD in the Vegas timeline. It helps if I turn off the thumbs in the project media view.

Geoff

Geoff Edwards wrote on 5/31/2011, 9:39 AM

wandering journalist said: "the lack of xlr inputs"

The lack of good mics was an issue for me when considering a DSLR that shoots video. I'll admit thislack is a concern for me too. Handling noise is a potential issue as well when going hand-held. I might need to bring out my little digital recorder and clap-board to mic up an interview subject.

Geoff

Laurence wrote on 5/31/2011, 10:01 AM

microphonemadness.com has some terrific DC-bias powered mics that work great with 1/8 inch mic input cameras that have DC-bias like the Sonys and the Kodak Zi8 and Playtouch.

http://microphonemadness.com/categories/lapel_lecture.html
http://microphonemadness.com/categories/mini_binaural_stereo.html

Geoff Edwards wrote on 5/31/2011, 10:48 AM

"microphonemadness.com has some terrific DC-bias powered mics that work great with 1/8 inch mic input cameras that have DC-bias like the Sonys and the Kodak Zi8 and Playtouch."

Hi Laurence,

I will have to look into whether the NEX-VG10 mic input supplies the bias voltage of between 1.5 to 10 volts D.C., that these mics require. I am still new with the camera and don't have all the details yet.

Geoff

wandering journalist wrote on 6/1/2011, 12:09 PM

I also did some digging around and found that Sony has a shotgun mic that is purpose built for the NEX series and works with this camera... wonder what the sound quality is like on it? Price was around $300 Canadian for the mic.

wandering journalist wrote on 6/1/2011, 12:13 PM

How has the footage looked to you? How would you say it looks compared to tape? Always was told that AVCHD was more of a "consumer" format. Not slagging anybody, just wondering, because while most of my stuff is for display on large displays and multi-media for heritage sites, I still pump out the odd thing for the local PBS affiliate and want to know if this camera would be up to snuff. I know the footage I have seen on-line looks mighty pretty ;)

Dale.

Geoff Edwards wrote on 6/7/2011, 12:10 PM

The detail in the footage is what you would expect from a DSLR. The lens is flexible I have watched some of my footage on my Sharp monitor and it is really good. Things I like about this camera: it's size, it easily fits in the same back-pack bag I used to tote my Sony Alpha DSLR in. I also like the fact that it is not sold and marked as a professional camera which means I will not have trouble crossing boarders with it. Of course there are times when we will need to hire a shooter with a larger format camera with xlr inputs. But for a lot of shooting this is a versatile tool to add to my kit. I just shot a low budget web commercial on it and when its client approved I may post it if there is interest?

wandering journalist wrote on 6/7/2011, 6:35 PM

Sounds like nice-looking footage so far Geoff. There's also an external monitor you can get for the camera from Sony that mounts into the shoe....

Dale.

Rory Cooper wrote on 6/8/2011, 1:41 AM

Please post it, Love to see it Geoff

Spot on it’s a small cam and easy to lug around, I bought a 100 battery for the cam and that’s supposed to give me 8 hours of filming.
I was on a golf shoot yesterday where the players had fine horizontal stripped golf shirts on, so this might create problems with some shots so I might have to crop till the banding is reduced, not sure will see.
If I shot with a DSLR it would have been worse. I will post some stuff tomorrow so you can get an idea.

I love this cam with the manual Nikon lens

This was shot in bad light used a 50mm 1.8 the 17 – 300 standard lens was very dark

I tried a sigma alpha 10 -20mm 3.4 much better for pans and image than the Sony standard lens

wandering journalist wrote on 6/9/2011, 7:19 AM

Rory, this is nice looking stuff... assuming from your post that this wasn't with the stock lense that came with the camera? Either way, looks richer than what I can get with my A1U!?!? Clearly this was some low light conditions and I'm not seeing any noise... do you like it for low light conditions?

Laurence wrote on 6/9/2011, 12:16 PM

It seems like if you didn't want to use a mattebox, at least you would need a twist style variable ND screw on filter for this camera because of it's total lack of built in ND filters. Any observations on this?

Laurence wrote on 6/9/2011, 12:25 PM

I will have to look into whether the NEX-VG10 mic input supplies the bias voltage of between 1.5 to 10 volts D.C., that these mics require. I am still new with the camera and don't have all the details yet.

Virtually every Sony camera that has an 1/8th inch audio that I've seen has the DC-bias voltage that you need for a powered mic, even if they don't explicitly mention it in the specs. The audio quality of the DC-Bias mics from microphone madness.com is superb. I use stereo mics with one on the interviewer and one on the interviewee. Here is a little thing shot with a Kodak Playtouch, no extra lighting, and using MicrophoneMadness mics:

http://vimeo.com/24632478

The video quality is just barely serviceable, but the audio quality is just fine. On the church's SD projection system it looked only slightly worse than what I do with my much higher end camera and lighting system.

Rory Cooper wrote on 6/10/2011, 3:09 AM

@wandering journalist
Those shots were “see and shoot” at an event so you have to be quick, check the composition, quick focus, shoot as quick as you can ,the manual 50mm lens is quick. I have to get used to the 50mm lens as those clips are a bit hot and I could have set the exposure compensate a lot lower on the cam, every cam is different and you get a feel for the cam and lens through a lot of practice and use.

When I first got the cam my feelings were that I wasn’t going to be able to use it on low light situations and the pans had a lot of judder even on 250/150
When I changed to other lens those issues were solved. So for the price of the cam and some cheap lenses, it’s a good cam all round. Not a problem with low light because you can compensate with lens.

For audio I use directional mics and audio recorders anyway so the lack of audio control on the cam is not an issue for me, but ….it would have been awesome… if Sony put levels, xlr’s etc on the cam

This is some very early morning shots with a Sigma 10-20mm lens. You have to keep the horizon line off centre because with a 10-20 mill lens the pans horizon tends to curve up or down off centre so the lake shot I had to compensate but the golf course shot is above
and that is it. Makes the golf bunker look enormous.

Geoff Edwards wrote on 6/10/2011, 3:06 PM

Nice footage thanks for sharing it in this thread both of you. Tell us about your render settings. Did you guys go with the stock render settings in Vegas? Or did you tweak the settings any way?

Cheers.

G.

Steve Mann wrote on 6/10/2011, 5:26 PM

"How would you say it looks compared to tape?"

It's DIGITAL - it doesn't matter what medium that the data is recorded to.

AVCHD is a delivery format, but it's even finding it's way into the low-end prosumer cameras. Your best bet is to shoot some test footage and take it to the PBS station and ask their air engineer to evaluate the quality.

Rory Cooper wrote on 6/13/2011, 1:05 AM

Actually Broadcast standards are low as standards go. Engineers don’t care for many things you and I find important.

AVC H.264 codec is 2-4 times more efficient than MPEG-2 and AVCHD handles stressful encoding better than HDV.
I have seen comparisons and AVCHD wins hands down over HDV which is considered “PRO” I am very happy with AVCHD.

AS for a standard to be a real standard it has a be across all boards, without hypocrisy, for example SD digital is worked in ITU 601 colorspace but monitors are calibrated with SMPTE phosphors. BW between HD ITU 709 and SD ITU 601 are very very close. Apple RGB Trinitron, CM RGB, P22-EBU, SMPTE-C CCIR 709 , sRGB are so very close that many producers go with SRGB because it can be applied across platform so they end up going with looking good rather than being confined to an irregular standard.

Geoff The clips I rendered are very low in bit rate for the web so I render out to whatever the end content is going to be used for, I am not a big fan of MPEG2
But when I render content for broadcast I use the templates provided by Sony Vegas no problem, for private stuff and big functions I render out Quicktime DNxHD and then use TMPGen. to render to different formats and bit rate.

The above clips are very low but it’s good enough for you to get the point illustrated.