I was exited to get an email from Debbie Price confirming my place on the seminar “Final Cut Studio – Pro Techniques”, presented by Larry Jordan, this man is exceptional… what he doesn’t know about FCP is not worth knowing, a true Guru in every sense of the word.

Friday the 13th…of February 2009 in Glasgow city centre, Debbie “Bring pencil and paper and lots of questions!  There will be lots of material covered so be ready to take notes.  It’s classroom-style seating, so you have room to write or setup your laptop.  However, this is a presentation, rather than hands-on training.  Also bring some business cards, you never know who you might meet.”

The man is a joy, a master of his trade, I sat in the room immersed with everything he had to tell us. There were at least 55 people in this small room spellbound by Mr Jordan, his confidence and knowledge about Soundtrack Pro and FCP was like handing out chocolate bars to children.

If you ever get the chance to attend on of his seminars jump at it.

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

I love the new Panasonic HPX-301E but my main concern and it wont be the first time I have been down the P2 route is the cost and dated technology of the P2 cards themselves. If I were to produce work for television on HD the camera I would like to plum for is the 301 but Panasonic make this road very difficult with the price of the cards 32GB P2 card = £960 and the new 64GB card is £1708.

I would need two 64GB cards which would set me back a whopping £3416 !  If I sold the camera at a later date no one would pay any where near that price for the cards and I would take a big hit on it’s second hand value. I have always stated we only get these inflated prices because P2 is mainly Panasonic’s flagship broadcast kit, therefore we get inflated broadcast pricing !  

DV brought a lot of manufacturers to book in fact DV in my opinion killed of M2 and JVC’s D9, Sony’s betacam had a hand in this in fact the broadcasters were intrenched with betacam so much so they would not buy anything else giving Sony a great hold for many years. I remember years ago when I was at a trade show and Panasonic was showing off M2 and beside them was Sony with early DV footage and it blew M2 out of the water.

Sorry I digress, I find it very refreshing that Panasonic have brought out the 301 at a price of £8832 which is only £1589 dearer than the EX-3 but now the SxS cards are being sidelined by the MxM/SDHC card it’s takes the EX-3 to a new level of affordability. Knowing the video junkies as I am one of them we rook ourselves to get the best we can afford and forget about the ongoing cost of extra 16GB SxS cards putting us further into debt and sale close to the wind with our partners.

If Panasonic seriously want to make a dent in the EX-3 market they will have to re price the P2 card remembering that Sony will be on their heals with a 50mbs EX-5 full shoulder mount, 4 slot, broadcast 2/3 inch lens camera at a price of £8500…in my dreams.

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This is a great App for your iPhone it runs in real time, very useful if you are filming several locations in one day, type the persons name in the “dir” column and you have a record of the interviewee , date and time it was shot. This I might add is more useful for the editor who in many occasions is not with you on the shoot. 

Along the top you will find ROLL in my case this would correspond to what SxS or MxM card I was using, then you have SCENE which can be changed and lastly you have TAKE which changes every time you activate the clapper. You can change the FPS from 25 to 50 if you are filming 720 50P and you can also change the camera number.  

I love the concept and it works to a degree but it can be fiddly to activate the editing screen but for £1.79 it’s a snip for such and advanced pocket clapperboard.

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

I have 2 of these cracking lights they are produced in the USA by FloLight and are 5600K daylight balanced. I have seen them advertised by Prompterpeople.co.uk  in the UK and now come in 500W (£399) and 1000W (£699) flavors.

These lights are well built, sturdy and heat free. Remember the burnt fingers using the old Red Heads, a thing of the past and the best news is the ability to add velcro to the back of the barn doors and velcro your scrim or colour filters…NO HEAT.

Another nice feature is the ability to dim the lighting from 100% to 25%. I tend to bounce the lights if I have a white ceiling giving a smashing 5600K diffusion with no shadows. One further feature is the 4 pin 12v XLR allowing you to run these lights on 12v batteries, great for outdoor work. A word of caution I find these lights very harsh if used direct with no scrim if filming an interviewee, in fact I will go as far as to warn you not to use these lights direct into someone’s face without diffusion.

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

This is one piece of equipment that has been a god send and is a must if you do a lot of pieces to camera. We use an Apple MacBook Pro to deliver the script but a word of warning Apple change specs constantly as new flavors of laptops appear but to my horror the latest 15″ unibody version does not have a video adapter so the only way to get a composite picture out of the new MacBook Pro is to use the mini display port to VGA adapter and convert this using an AVerMedia AVerKey Lite (£29) to go from VGA to composite video.

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

Many of us with Sony EX-3s are contemplating jumping ship to the new JVC GY-HM700…why ? This will depend on a few factors but one of my sore points with the EX-3 has been solved with the introduction of the MxM (previously the MxR) SD-HC insert.

It makes what was previously a major hole in your budget having to buy a 16Gb Sony SxS card into a joy with the advent of the MxM card. Cost all in is about £70 per 16Gb against £500 for the Sony SxS card. So with the storage issue solved is it worth jumping ship the answer is not yet. Only a small handful of people have so called reviewed this camcorder but left us all with the same questions… how does the JVC perform against the EX-3 in low light and image performance?  I hope to answer these questions and more as soon as I get my hands on one.

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

User review of the Sony EX-3, a week with the Panasonic HPX-301E, review of the Sony HRV-Z5E and a user review of the new JVC GY-HM700 and how it performs in low light and it’s user friendliness in Final Cut Pro.

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

I was recently alerted to the existence of WeePurchase.com – a sort of web version of the Apple iStore – basically it’s a website that allows you to set-up a shop and sell electronic data (be it sound, video, text etc) for small amounts of money.

Check it out at:

http://www.weepurchase.com

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions