Thanks spot! How can you check it? I mean do you already have some EX1 files to try it with? Could I try it myself somehow?

Sami

My first thought on this is "why spare the cost of upgrading Vegas if you're paying for an EX?" It's that old proverb about not spoiling the ship for a ha'penny of tar. But I guess you have good reasons that aren't transparent to me.

lol, that was my thought exactly Serena, a 7 - 8k camera and Vegas 6. Not puttin ya down Sami, just doesn't make sense to me.

- Ray
www.undergroundplanet.com

You two beat me to it.
Then again there'll be FCP users moaning about the clip browser only running on Intel Macs.

But in some small ways it does make some sense. I regularly hear from people running all manner of old edit systems and I guess the reason is they're comfortable with them, some of them probably spent a lot of time tuning them and getting them stable and more to the point their brains are tuned precisely to how that system works. I don't hear that so much from Vegas users but certainly in the Avid world it's very common, sort of "it works, it cost me serious money and I'm still making a living using it".

Now there is one thing about V8, it will not run under Win2K.

Bob.

yeah, i know, i dont actually pay for any of this equipment and I dont have much say what editing programs are used..

I found some clips that are shot with the EX1.
http://www.vecomvideo.com/pages/test_ex1.htm
Couldnt get them to open in V6 or Quicktime either. VLC media player played them fine though.

Sami

In fairness to Sami, it was a question about "playing" in V6. There was no chat about camera-investment spend? Sami is attempting to do some thoughtful research on what the EX1 can offer, by downloading some clips and attempting to play them in "some" any software - this is a good thing to do.

Thanks for the heads-up on VLC!

Grazie

I am enjoying all topics related to the EX1. There will, I hope, be many more such topics as we await these little beauties .....

I downloaded the footage essami linked to above, managed to convert it to mxf with the Sony Clip Browsing software, and drag it to the V8 timeline.
The footage wasn't anything special, but the first experience of following MP4 clips through to the timeline was valuable.

Some playback peculiarities in V8 - two of the three downloaded clips previewed as if they were double or more speed. Could this be to do with Project Properties - the clips are 25p, but there's no 25p preset in the Properties drop down.

Still early days ...

You're doing better than me, trying to export the 1920x1080 25p clip I get an Unsupported File Format error and a read through the documentation says only 50i and 60i are currently supported. I'm downloading the 'official' version of the clip browser just in case I'm trying this with an old build.
The 25p should play OK as I believe it's 25PsF but even in the clip browser it seems to play at the wrong speed.

Bob.

"two of the three downloaded clips previewed as if they were double or more speed"
Looking at those clips I'd say as they were recorded at 720p25 they were more than likely undercranked. Finally got it all working in V8.0a, must have had an old build of the Clip Browser.

Only thing I don't see working is getting any markers on the T/L. Most of them wouldn't be all that exciting however knowing what fps clips were shot at could save no end of confusion. Checked media properties as well and no additional info there either.

Bob.

NO 25p in Vegas? I have these pics on my HD monitor they look very very nice. Even if Vegas doesnt have the correct settings. The files wont play in AE.

Haven't tried the mp4 files in PPro CS3 myself but according to reports from elsewhere they just drop straight onto the T/L and play. Reports from sometime back were that Sony changed the XDCAM container for Adobe's benefit so it'd be pretty wierd if it didn't work.

But aside from that, yeah Vegas doesn't have a 25p template. Not a big issue to create one though but I think the MC encoder will not encode a 25p stream, only 25PsF.

Bob.

After effects error : retrieving movie from file "058B0102_01mp4"--invalid QuickTime movie (-2010).

(10 :: 21 )
===========================================
Thats what happens when I try to import with its MPEG4 wrapper designed for Adobe? into AE. Media player doesnt seem to recognise it.. A codec problem? Anyway Im sure Sony will have the answer either with the camera or an update. Main concept wont encode this in 25P Pretty big problem I would have thought?

"Main concept wont encode this in 25P Pretty big problem I would have thought? "

Well the argument seems to go that nothing will play 25p so what's the point anyway. I was able to edit on a 25p timeline to keep everything progressive and render that to 50i which in reality yields 25PsF however from memory there's no flags preset to say it's progressive. I could in Vegas change the media properties of that resultant file so that Vegas would treat it as "P" though. This could be an issue if you want to write it back to XDCAM.

Bob.

Edit Re AE: As far as I know you'd at least have to have the MC codec installed and that has to be purchased. Like I said I haven't tried this myself but there's at least one post on DVInfo indicating that the mp4 file will drop directly onto the PPro T/L. Keep in mind that the mp4 is just a wrapper, the actual video is still the same flavour of mpeg-2 as all the other XDCAMs use. Others are also saying the mp4 will play in WMP, again I expect this is because they have installed the full MC codec.

Sorry Bob You've lost me? 50 interlaced IS 25 Progressive? How does that work?

EDIT
Just looking at the prices for the main concept encoders
H.264/AVC Pro $2290
H.264/AVC $590

Hope there is a cheaper alternative!

Very simply.
The 50i stream can carry (not only can, in PAL land probably 60% of the material does!) two fields with no temporal separation. These two fields can be merged to give you back the exact original frame, no pulldown is required.

If you shoot progressive you cannot "make' that into real interlaced video, it's physically impossible as you only acquired 25 images / second. If you shoot 50i then you have 50 half res images / second, i.e. double the temporal resolution. You can split one frame into two fields and carry the information that way. This is how film is handled in PAL land.

To clear up possible confusion 25p in 50i video is denoted as 25PsF, thats Progessive Segemented Fields. 25p technically means not segmented into fields. 50i means acquired at 50 fields / second. Think I got all this correct :)

Bob.

OH OK so you have to de-interlace it to get progressive.

I seem to remember a while back on the forum we copied a codec and pasted it into another application? could this be done here? with Sonys MC codec?

Well it's not strictly de-interlacing, it's simply merging the two fields which is trivial. I guess that technically is de-interlacing but to me that means doing something when there's a temporal difference between the frields which is much more complex and never totally lossless.

Not I think the MC codec we get with Vegas only works with Vegas.

Bob.

So if you wanted to do a transfer to film then you could simply merge the 50i footage to make 25p before slowing down 4% and that would be OK?

Absolutely.
In fact in PAL land a lot of footage is shot at 25p and then sped up that 4% for transfer. This avoids one nasty problem with 24p in a 50Hz country, flicker from lighting. Not a problem if all your discharge lights use electronic ballasts but anything with iron ballasts will give you this slowly rolling bands in the image.

Bob.

Thanks Bob!

That's another thing I noticed in two of those shots - background flickering, as if the room lighting was near a ceiling fan. Might that be do do with 50/60Hz power supply?

Yes, were they the ones that playback offspeed?
Using odd framerates during recording could do some wierd things with flicker problems too maybe.

Bob.