An EX-3 Review In Process, Part 2

In the previous post of this series, I was introducing the Sony EX-3 to the Wisconsin Public Television community, and pointing out some of the potential advantages the SxS-media-driven workflow optimizations might lend.  Yesterday it was time to actually try some out.

With the help of our Avid specialist, we tried to ingest some footage and actually edit it.  So we started out working on the system at his desk.  He downloaded EX-3 Clip Browser, which is essential to converting the EX-3’s files to .MXF, the standard format the Avid speaks.  (If I confuse some terms here, don’t shoot me - I’m not the most knowledgeable Avid guy around.  Ask me about Adobe Premiere Pro - that I can do.)  Problem #1:  EX-3 Clip Browser will only run on Intel Macs, not the PowerPC we are working on.  OK, change of venue to one of our PC-based Avid Adrenalin hi-def bays.  Problem #2:  While Clip Browser runs great on the HP chassis, the software in Edit 6 is several years old, and will not recognize anything Clip Browser will spit out.  Back to the desk, where our Avid guy is working with Media Composer 3, in advance of rolling it out to all the suites in the near future when Avid Interplay is supposed to be installed in our plant.  The files work great there…but there’s no hi-def monitor or scopes to really examine the footage.  So here we have meta-problem #1:  Since so much of our editing hardware and software has been acquired over the best part of a decade, versions vary from room to room.  The installation of Interplay is supposed to alleviate this, but is still some time in the future.  So, short answer:  At present, using EX-3-acquired footage in our plant will be very difficult.  Ask again in six months, though, and things may be totally different.  One very pleasant surprise is the speed with which the EX-3 footage downloads off the SxS cards via USB2 - what I had figured would be a hair-pulling long time was in reality only a little less than twice as long as using the native ExpressCard slot on my Lenovo netbook.  And re-wrapping the files once downloaded was a pretty fast process as well.

After that experience, my buddy (and assistant chief engineer) Paul Stoffel asked me to run outside and see how the EX-3 handles faces, motion, and snow.  Since we have a foot of the white stuff on the ground, it is pretty easy to find a white balance source.  I happen to wander out directly into class-passing time on the University of Wisconsin campus, so finding faces in motion was easy.  Unfortunately, in my zeal I get the roll/stop thing backwards, and come back with great footage of my feet trudging through slush.  So back out I go, shooting faces, cars driving by, long shots of campus landmarks, the State Capitol in the distance, flashing traffic lights, the whole nine yards.  Since I didn’t bring a tripod with me, I had SteadyShot engaged.  Truth be told, I have always found Sony’s SteadyShot rather lacking; it’s electronic approach to image stabilization just doesn’t seem that effective, especially when compared to Canon’s excellent optical stabilization on so many of their cameras.  In any event, in the interest of reducing the “queasy” factor on playback, I engage SteadyShot, and it seems to work OK.  It’s only on playback in video control (with an excellent Sony HD monitor and Tektronix scopes) that I see how much detail you lose when it is engaged.  Paul points this out, and seems rather unimpressed, so I go out again and shoot more footage without SteadyShot.  It does seem crisper, if jumpier - the tripod is a magic invention, isn’t it?

So far, it seems that the EX-3 is holding it’s own.  No camera is ever going to be perfect, and trade-offs will always have to be made.  In the next weeks I hope to get it into the hands of many more of my colleagues, including on a shoot this morning in Neenah, Wisconsin, which I have to get ready to leave on.  Have I mentioned it’s 3:30AM?  I just can’t sleep before an early depart.  Arrrrrgh.

By the way, my Kensington ExpressCard34 adapter arrived from Amazon last night.  Once my Sandisk 16GB SDHC card gets here, I can start testing the alternative media for the EX-3.  That promises to be a lot of fun.

More later.

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