Shell Vacations - Hawaii

I usually don't use my soapbox (blog) to complain, but once in a while there's something I think people should know about, and avoid.

We recently took a trip to Hawaii, and stayed in Kailua Kona. While walking the boardwalks down by the beach, you'll notice LOTS of "discounted stuff to do" vendors, who will sign you up for a timeshare presentation in exchange for discounted things like snorkel cruises, helicopter flights, etc.

One of those, is Shell Vacations Club. When we signed up for the presentation, we thought, "Hey, we'll take an hour and a half and listen to what they say and at least think about it a bit." Especially in light of the fact that right on the contract it says "If you decide not to attend, you'll pay the difference between the discounted price and the full price of your chosen activities."

So we figured we could take a slight hit if we couldn't make it.

It also says in HUGE letters right in the office, TIMESHARE NOT REQUIRED.

Well, we ran out of time, and ended up going on one lame activity (the rest of our trip was much more satisfying self-guided stuff), and when we told them we couldn't make the timeshare presentation, they proceeded to to charge us full price for the activity we did go on.

This was a doubling of the price from what the contract clearly stated. When I tried to raise the point in person, then further over the phone to get them to honor their agreement, they refused.

When I wrote to their corporate office about what happened, they've refused to respond.

So, case in point, for anyone considering going to Hawaii, either avoid these guys altogether, or at least be just fine with paying full price for your activities if you choose not to go to the presentation. Shell Vacations Club will not honor the agreement you sign with them, and it can cost you.

Sony HDR-SR11 Workflow in Final Cut Pro Studio

Now that I'm working with the HDR-SR11 camera ingesting footage for editing and display on our home theater system, I figured I'd take a minute to outline workflow using this camera and FCP Studio for Blu-Ray compatible playback files.

A few things worth noting.

1. I record all files on the camera at (FH) or AVC HD 16M (which is 16mb/s). This is the highest picture quality this camera records, at 1920x1080i, and with their AVC encoding still results in over 300 minutes of record time for the onboard 60gb hard drive.
2. I'm using Final Cut Pro 6.0.4 and Compressor 3.0.3 running on a Macbook Pro 2.4ghz C2D with 4gb RAM.
   

OK, now for getting footage off the camera. Here's the single biggest design drawback of the HDR-SR11 and that is the fact that the only transfer option if you're using the onboard hard drive, is via USB cable.

FCP Logging
Once hooked up to your system, and USB connect enabled on camera menu, you can open Final Cut, and use File>Log & Tranfer to access the hard drive and select in/out points and do your logging here.

With the USB speeds, I found that the computer would consistently choke and crash if you are attempting to ingest footage from one clip while scrolling through other clips on the camera hard drive for logging.

The camera desperately needs a faster interface for getting stuff off the internal hard drive. Firewire 800 would be great, but I can see where the 9-pin connector of FW800 would be a problem to incorporate into the tiny camera body, so I'm not sure if there's a good solution.

Unfortunately, it seems that even if you record to Memory Stick, the Express34 card readers all run at USB2.0 speeds as well.

FCP Transfer

Now, once you've set your in and out points and are ready to drag media in the transfer queue, it's time to go grab a cup of coffee, or maybe the whole pot, because you're going to wait a while.

When ingesting into FCP, the automatic ingest settings (that I've not found a way to change) are to transcode all the 16mb/s AVCHD encoded footage into Quicktime files using Apple ProRes422.

The good news about this, is the resulting files look spectacular.

The bad news about this, is that it almost doubles the data rate from the originals.

The 16mb/s of AVCHD turns into roughly 25mb/s in ProRes 422. This means you'll need about 1.5GB of storage per minute of footage you'd like to bring into the system. Needless to say, plan ahead for how much space you're going to need.

UPDATE: 4/23/09 - Just to update this thread, I get a lot of questions from folks about bringing in footage, and have found one trick that improves speed significantly.

The trick is to simply COPY the AVCHD folder from your camera hard drive, to a folder on your computer, THEN use that folder to import footage from.

Otherwise, data has to come off the camera and go to transcode from the USB connection and that takes a lot of time. Transferring AND transcoding can take 4 to 5 times real-time via USB.

If you transfer straight over, it'll take maybe 20 minutes for 30 gigs of material, and then transcoding locally will run close to real-time.

Don't forget to delete your AVCHD folder after you've successfully transcoded everything you need:) (unless of course, you'd rather archive it off to DVD or have room to keep it...)

Editing in FCP

Now, for some more good news. Once ingested in this manner, your files will NOT need rendering once placed in the timeline. FCP 6.0.4 works flawlessly with dropping ProRes clips into the timeline, and even plays back simple transitions and reversed frames without rendering.

Edit as usual:)

Compressor Output for Blu-Ray compatible playback

Our home theater setup is built around a Sony Playstation 3, connected via component cables to a Panasonic TH-50PHD7UY.

While Compressor only comes with settings for HD-DVD compatible file output, as noted in the threads over at Apple's FCP boards, there's a simple check box in the Inspector that will change the file suffix from .m2v, to .m2t, which is all that is needed to create an MPG2 file format with HD playback rates on the PS3.

Here are a couple of screen grabs of the settings I use in Compressor.

Since most of the stuff I'm editing in tests is fairly short, I'm using really high bit rates to get the most out of it.

These will be the .M2T files I'll post later in the week that you can download and test for playback on your PS3 (or other compatible device) and for checking out the image quality from the HDR-SR11.

Under the "Extras" tab is where you'll find the option for "Multiplexed MPEG-1/Layer 2 Audio"; checking this box will change the file type from .m2v, to .m2t - Voila!










I have not yet figured out if there's a way to encode Dolby Digital 5.1 in this file type, though that's something I hope to experiment with soon.

At any rate, there's the way to do it, check it out, and if you have anything I got wrong, or a better way to get through it, feel free to drop me a line!

Update on the Timed Power strips

Well, as per an earlier posting, we installed CFL's and timed power strips to completely shut off components of our home theater that were supposed power-suckers in "standby mode" and I don't think we'll really get an accurate picture for a while.

We just got the power bill from the last month of using these, and compared to the prior month, our bill was actually more - due to higher AC usage. Sooo it's pretty tough to figure out if they're saving us any electricity or not.

Ah well - tis a good effort.

Sony HDR-SR11 - almost obliterating the consumer/professional line

Well, I didn't think I'd be dumping my trusty Panasonic DVX100B camera that has served honorably and well in Standard Definition, shooting things that have ended up on Broadcast television in more than one place.

I especially didn't think I'd be dumping a semi-pro-sumer camera for a *gasp* consumer-grade camera.

But I did.

Just after going on vacation, we found a deal we couldn't beat at Costco (in Hawaii, where everything is supposed to cost more, but didn't - even gas was a full 20-30 cents/gallon cheaper than in Los Angeles...) on a Sony HDR-SR11 HD camcorder.

It had a great zoom (that only got better), and so that I could maintain some semblance of pro-gear interface, it has a line mic input that I can hook up to a Beachtek DXA-6VU and add two balanced XLR inputs with level meters.

In the next few weeks, I'll post some video from the camera for folks to download and check out. For a vacation, I did manage to put the camera through it's paces in some challenging lighting conditions including underwater shooting (using the Sony SPK-HCD, which worked reasonably well; also look for more on this later), capturing lava eruptions from a long distance in total darkness, shooting fireworks, and using it's HD nightshot as well.

Upon returning from the trip, it was with some small bit of sadness, but lots of enthusiasm as well that I ditched the DVX kit on Craigslist after looking at the footage coming off the HDR-SR11.

I can say I haven't seen footage look this good off a consumer grade camera... well, ever. At any rate, if you're in the market, these cameras can be had for under $1k, and they're worth checking out.

Proof forthcoming in other posts.