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1. First Footages ~ Sony HDR-XR520V
2 years ago
Here is some footage from my first few days with my Sony HDR-XR520V.
My previous camera for "home" kind of stuff was a Sony A1 which I just sold on eBay. A bit over qualified for that kind of stuff, but I liked the (low-end) professional features it has over a high-end consumer model.
These are some shots from around the house - mostly outdoors shooting off the deck. Every shot is auto-exposure (except the very last one) using available light. Also, every shot is auto-focus except for one shot of a subject that is many miles away. The faux rack focus transition is actually just being in manual and then pushing the auto focus button. White balance was also auto on every shot.
I did all of this "auto" business to see more how the camera does doing its thing compared to what I could make it do. To give it a good chance of success, most all of these were filmed within ninety minutes before or after sunrise and sunset.
To keep it simple I edited this in iMovie '09, and the only adjustments were clip length and the audio levels (from the built-in mic) on most of the clips. While the active stability function of the 520v is great, I also got a little help from iMovie's stabilization feature on a couple of the handheld shots that were all the way at the telephoto end of the (optical) zoom.
Do I already miss a few things from the A1? Sure. But for what I'll end up using the 520v for, it makes a whole lot more sense, and my wife is much more likely to take it to the park or the zoo than the A1.
Thanks for viewing.
My previous camera for "home" kind of stuff was a Sony A1 which I just sold on eBay. A bit over qualified for that kind of stuff, but I liked the (low-end) professional features it has over a high-end consumer model.
These are some shots from around the house - mostly outdoors shooting off the deck. Every shot is auto-exposure (except the very last one) using available light. Also, every shot is auto-focus except for one shot of a subject that is many miles away. The faux rack focus transition is actually just being in manual and then pushing the auto focus button. White balance was also auto on every shot.
I did all of this "auto" business to see more how the camera does doing its thing compared to what I could make it do. To give it a good chance of success, most all of these were filmed within ninety minutes before or after sunrise and sunset.
To keep it simple I edited this in iMovie '09, and the only adjustments were clip length and the audio levels (from the built-in mic) on most of the clips. While the active stability function of the 520v is great, I also got a little help from iMovie's stabilization feature on a couple of the handheld shots that were all the way at the telephoto end of the (optical) zoom.
Do I already miss a few things from the A1? Sure. But for what I'll end up using the 520v for, it makes a whole lot more sense, and my wife is much more likely to take it to the park or the zoo than the A1.
Thanks for viewing.
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What happened at 1:15 ? Did you use a wide angle adapter or something ? Looks like chromatic problems around the tree (i see purple thingy).
Not sure about that purple haze. That was the only manual focus shot in the whole montage. The limbs were only about 15 feet away and to get the moon it was set on infinity focus. The sun was about 10 minutes from rising so who knows what all the light was doing.
When looking at that shot I was more concerned with the moon not being totally blown out and never noticed the limbs except that they were way out of focus. I can totally see the purple now looking here at the quicktime version I uploaded.
I didn't have a wide angle on and, moreover, the camera was all the way zoomed in on the moon.
Thanks for looking. -Michael
I just bought this camera and your videos were a big reason why I liked the camera so thank you for positng them.
How did you retain such good PQ with your videos? I used PMB to convert to mpeg and the de-interlacing is terrible, not sure what's going on. What do you suggest I do to make my file editable, but retain its quality?
Do you recommend a certain video editing program?
Thanks!
George
Thanks again,
George
My process is fairly simple, but not too easy to replicate if you're not using a Mac.
I imported the video off the hard drive on the camera right into iMovie. Since AVCHD is mostly a consumer format, iMovie handles this quite well and it is a pretty easy process.
After editing, I then use the "Export to QuickTime" option in iMovie and use most of the settings recommended by Vimeo. I let the QuickTime export handle the de-interlacing. I used most of the Vimeo recommendations, but I set the bit rate, I believe, at 8000kbps which is about half of the bit rate of the original files.
You might want to make sure your camera is recording at the highest quality (~16 Mbps). I forget the initials they use for this highest quality mode, but I don't think that the camera defaults to that setting out of the box.
That process spits out a .mov file that I then upload to Vimeo. I guess Vimeo converts it to 24fps when it makes the flash/streaming version, but most of mine have held up ok even though they are 30fps when I make them.
I hope some of this helps. It can be a trial and error sometimes with best settings, but at least Vimeo lets you replace the same video with a newer version when you want.
-Michael