At this point I'm going to seem like a Sony shill based on my Blu-Ray comments from earlier on, but I did happen to get a hold of Sony's new PMW-EX1 this evening, and Jesus Christ is the picture amazing.
Being a poor student, I only have the money for a shitty standard definition camera, but now, more than ever do I want to just dump the format. This camera can do 1080p/24, which is all I've ever wanted (not that other beautiful cameras, such as the Panasonic HVX-200 -another one of my favorites- don't), but can even over/undercrank for slow motion and fast motion.
Again, the HVX-200 can do this already, and just like this new XDCAM, records to solid state media (P2 Cards in the HVX's case)... The other similarity between these two cameras is that their media is expensive as fuck. Oddly enough (for Sony mostly), the price of the camera is similar, at around $6500 if I recall, which isn't too much different than the HVX-200's $6k. Obviously I'm guessing these numbers, and I haven't even checked in a while, but I'm only making this post because I've been simply floored by the demonstration given.
And no, it wasn't Sony's demonstration, nor was it on a huge scale. A local pro video store was demoing the camera, and merely took some test shots early in the morning, and played them back for the small crowd to watch. Despite looking fucking amazing, I have one problem with this camera though:
It encodes in MPEG-2.
Don't get me wrong, it still looks amazing, but as if the editors of the world out there really wanted to deal with this thing. Who the fuck wants to deal with long GOPs and terribly lossy codecs (not to mention really friggin old)? Admittedly, the codec didn't break up at all, which was impressive. The person shooting the clips even tested this out himself on several difficult shots, such as streams, rain, and various forms of trickling water. Even on a 50" 1080p display, there was nothing noticeable, and that's coming from a guy who hallucinates so much in a movie theatre as to see interlacing...
C'mon Sony, I gained a little bit of respect for you with this new camera, as it really is something else, but did you really need to use MPEG2? Actually here's some specs on this thing:
Recording Time (approx.): HQ 35Mb/s VBR | 50 Mins (8GB flash card)
SP 25Mb/s CBR | 70 Mins (8GB flash card)
Not too bad I suppose, those bitrates are higher than HDTV, but isn't there another format that uses 25MBit MPEG2? Oh right, HDV!
HDV is a piece of shit by the way.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
MOVE THE FUCK OVER, STANDARD DEFINITION!
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3 comments:
Look man, you think you are bad? I had a job interview tomorrow which would be encoding VOD work to MPEG1!!! Blatant, mpeg1 is the daddy. You know it to be true!
Hahaha, I'd be disgusted to have to use MPEG1... Is there any reason why they would do that? And is this VOD stuff that is just being put on some other medium (VCD?) in MPEG1, or is it actually being streamed out for VOD services in MPEG1?
Hahahaha. Actually, that place was doing VOD encodes for airlines. You know the small screens in the back of seats? That's why they're using mpeg1 -- shit and easy and good enough for those seat TVs. Apparently there's slightly larger TVs (16:9) appearing on some airlines now, and they use mpeg2 for these ones.
Didn't get that job anyway -- shame, sounded easy as hell :(
And yeah, I'd have been disgusted too, but money is money xD
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