I recently posted about a neat little "point and shoot" camera that has great video capabilities - the Sony DSC-HX9. Although I didn't mention the potential input of its video into a Gen3 Cassie running Bogart, the fact that it records in AVCHD format to a flash card implied that it would work fine with Bogart.Since then I have discovered a small "quirk" regarding its use with Bogart.
Like the Sony HXR-NX70 that I reviewed here recently, the HX9 has a 60P mode. That is, it collects 60 full frames per second rather that a 60I mode that collects 60 interlaced fields per second. Since it takes two interlaced fields to create one full frame, a 60I format is the equivalent of a 30 frame per second recording.
When I import 60P video from the NX70 into Bogart it plays back normally. The system seems to recognize the the 60 frames per second video should be played back as if it were 30P video.
I had anticipated that the 60P video from the HX9 would play back within Bogart just like the NX70. The cameras are both made by Sony and the modes are labeled identically by Sony. HOWEVAH, this is not true.
When one plays imports and plays back 60P video from the HX9 with the current version of Bogart (V4.1C), one hears normal audio playback but the video is slowed down by a factor of two! So...the 60P mode of the HX9 when played within Bogart acts like a 2:1 slow motion mode. This might be fine if you've always wanted an in-camera "over crank" capability similar to that of some film cameras but most of the time you just want the improved image quality that a 60P mode is supposed to provide.
I know some of you Bogart users may have purchased an HX9 based on my recent blog posting and recorded in the 60P mode and found the slo-mo situation described. If any of those recordings happened to be important, I have discovered a way to recover them for normal playback.
Since the HX9 is collecting twice as many frames as needed for normal 30 frame per second video but recording audio normally I decided to try the following: I stripped off the normal audio of the clip and then sped up the video clip by a factor of two. I then trimmed the audio clip's out point to make the audio clip the same length as the video clip. I then added the shortened audio clip back to shortened (sped up) video clip and voilà, a normal speed clip with normal audio.
Here are the specific steps:
- Use the Scene -> Sample function to create a separate audio clip
- Use QuickMotion with Acceleration = 2 on the video clip
- Add the accelerated video clip to the Sb
- From the Audio Record screen trim the Out point of the audio clip such that the clip's length equals that of the shortened video clip
- From the Audio Mix screen Add the shortened audio clip under the shortened video clip; Mute the video clip's audio.
- Make a Scene of the combined shortened video and audio clip.
That's it. You now have video clip that will play normally within Bogart and can be used for normal editing purposes.
MSUS has been notified of this situation and we can only hope that the situation will be remedied in some future version of Bogart. It is weird that the 60P mode of the NX70 works fine but that of the HX9 doesn't. Go figure.
Yes, it is indeed "weird" that SONY makes a cheap camera difficult to use with professional equipment but its more expensive camera more readily compatible. This is just a "proprietary game" racket, played by SONY and the other manufacturers (Panasonic, JVC, Canon, etc). It is done to encourage people to spend more money that they need to, in order to get satisfactory results. Thanks to you, you helped publicize an inexpensive fix to this. What I am finding out is that the cheap point and shoot cameras could probably be re-designed, for just a hundred or two hundred dollars more and be just as good as the NX 70. The imaging chip just needs to be a little better and an outboard contraption to allow XLR or mike inputs and maybe a lens shade, is about all it takes to make shooting a little better. As time goes on, I suspect that mini-DSLRs can be made to match or exceed the quality of small lens point and shoot cameras, with little outboard attachments to improve either sound gathering or lens capabilities, as needed for specific assignments. It would be very convenient to have outboard attachments for memory or AC power capability as well. You could gather a "talking head" seminar for 2-3 days with a point and shoot type camera aimed at the main speaker's head. If you had AC power, that would get around power requirements. If you could add on extra memory, fine. Then you could simply run a backup camera or two for emergencies and cutaways. There could probably even be a way to have the cameras "talk" to one another, to share time codes, for insert edits, for cutaways, save lots of time with syncing cameras later. Basically it would be identical time code values preceded by a prefix, for Camera ONE, camera TWO and camera THREE. If and when you needed a substitute shot, you'd go to those and plug in the cutaway shot. If only USA companies could get in on manufacturing or designing something like this, American workers and the American economy could strike back at the "proprietary racket scheming" of Japanese electronics giants (who are already themselves using lots of Chinese and other Asian subcontract labor for manufacturing).
ReplyDeleteGood ideas, Kit!
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