PDW F350 & Vegas 7

Peter Burn wrote on 2/22/2006, 8:42 PM
Douglas & company:

I was at an XDCAM HD Seminar today and am seriously considering the PDW F350 (not the lower end PDW F330) as a means of breaking into HD market without mortgaging my house. Sony suggested Vegas 7 "would probably" support the camcorder. What are your thoughts? I realize this is a SOny forum but I am going to ask if Adobe PPRO 2 supports the XDCAM HD format and does anyone think there will the an XDCAM HD compliant version of AVID XPress Pro HD coming out.

thanks,

Peter

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 2/22/2006, 8:46 PM
I can't comment on whether Vegas 7 will or won't support XDCAM HD, but if history serves....But it's safe to say that at this moment in time, no one knows if future versions of Vegas will support XDCAM HD.
If memory is correct, Avid already announced support for the format. Question is whether they'll support it right for the MXF files, or is that SXF? Or PXF?
MXF, whether it's Sony's, Panasonic's, or Grass Valley's is here to stay...so I expect that at some point, everyone will support it. It's the future.
Peter Burn wrote on 2/23/2006, 4:37 AM
Douglas,

How do you rate the PDW F350 as compared to your F900? A long term HiDef shooter at the seminar told me his company did a side by side comparison of their F900 and the F330 (the lower end XDCAM HD with a "professional" lens attachd, rather than Broadcast) and couldn't see much difference other than a bit of blooming which he attributes to the cheap Fuji lens mounted on the F330.

I'm a bit bothered that the F350 is limited to three HD modes and DV25 but then no one has ever asked me for IMX footage. Up here customers tend to ask about DVCAM, "real" HD and BetaSP. The latter is a sore spot because our ancient BVW 50 is getting terribly tired and EBay isn't my favourite place to buy gear.
farss wrote on 2/23/2006, 5:43 AM
Correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that the MXF issue isn't Sony, Panasonic and Grass Valley each doing their own thing.
Rather it's Sony being first out of the gate and then Panasonic and Grass Valley. Panasonic and Grass Valley used the SPMTE Op Atom standard and Sony stuck to their own subset of the spec.
So anything that can correctly read the SMPTE standard can also read Sony's MXF.
The only recalcitrant is Vegas, by design. Sure the others that say they can read the SPMTE standard might be making a mess of it but that's not by design.

Bob.
Spot|DSE wrote on 2/27/2006, 7:54 AM
Farss has it right, MXR is *supposed* to be universal, but Sony and Panasonic have some differences, hence the semi-joking designations of "PXF" and "SXF."
We don't have a 900, we have a 700, and I didn't get to shoot the two cams side by side, as my time with the camera was limited to 48 hours in Montreal. I chuckled when I saw the Canadian customs stickers all over the camera saying it couldn't be sold and couldn't be sent out of Canada, so even had I been allowed to take it home, I couldn't have gotten it past Customs in Montreal. I shot with the upgraded Fuji lens, and it was very impressive. A Sony guy told me that the image could improve slightly if I had a 2/3 lens with the adapter on, so I'll just take him at his word.
That all said...in a few ways, this cam *appears* to be at least equal or superior to HDCAM, but of course, I wasn't shooting in a test environment (just a damned cold environment). At those resolutions, mathematically the 4:2:0 works out to be more robust than the 3:1.3:1.3 (which most call 4:2:2 but it really isn't at HD res) It certainly did well in the conditions in which I shot with it. Hopefully I'll be able to post some stills shortly.
jkrepner wrote on 2/27/2006, 8:48 AM
So it's about 20K? What does a lens for this set you back?
farss wrote on 2/27/2006, 1:44 PM
That's a bit like asking what does a car cost. At a guess I'd say from $10K upwards.
winrockpost wrote on 2/27/2006, 1:55 PM
lets see 25K for the cam, 30 bucs a disc, 15 k for the player, hmm,, not sure i have that much equity in my house, Thank goodness for that silly HDV format.