SONY XDCAM PROFESSIONAL DISC SYSTEM AND VEGAS 5 SOFTWARE CAPTURE SHERYL CROW CONCERT IN THE SKY
Launch Event for Sony's Connect Online Music Service Provides Perfect Showcase for Sony's End-to-End, Acquisition through Editing & Delivery Workflow
PARK RIDGE, N.J., May 14, 2004 - The launch of Sony's "Connect" online music service featured Sheryl Crow as the main performer, but two of Sony Electronics' newest stars also shared the spotlight: the XDCAM ™ Professional Disc ™ System and Vegas ® 5 video and audio production software, which captured and edited the singer's performance last week on a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Los Angeles.
Providing textbook examples of "on-the-fly" acquisition and editing, five XDCAM PDW-530 camcorders were positioned at separate angles, including a Steadicam ® rig, to shoot approximately 40 minutes of footage. The footage was recorded onto the camcorders' Professional Disc media and handed off to freelance editor and veteran Vegas software user Tim Duncan, who was standing by with the Vegas 5 software loaded onto his laptop ready to receive the content and start editing.
Only one hour passed from the time the camcorders started rolling to when Duncan presented the finished product for approval to Crow before the plane landed: a four-minute video that was ready to show to attendees at the after-party in Sony Music's Santa Monica facility. According to the team, the combination of the XDCAM system and Vegas software was the key to the event's success.
"The PDW-530 is a great-looking camcorder," said director of photography Brian Pratt. "It handles varying degrees of light very well and it's an extremely fast camera. Plus, I knew turbulence wasn't going to be an issue. The day before the event, I literally was jumping up and down with the camcorders and the movement didn't affect them at all."
Pratt used the PDW-530s in their 50 Mbps MPEG IMX ® mode (the camcorder also records 25 Mbps (in DVCAM ™ mode) and the image quality far surpassed his expectations.
"I've worked on a lot of reality programming where 50 Mbps IMX is a commonly used format and the image quality we achieved with this camcorder was as good as I've ever seen." Pratt pointed out that several of the PDW-530's features such as 12-bit A/D conversion were key to making to adjustments during the event to achieve the cleanest images and signal.
Pratt noted that the random access capabilities of optical technology not only made editing easier, but also made browsing through potential B-roll material much simpler. "Each time the camcorder is started, a new scene marker is created, which helps an editor locate points on the disc fast and easy," he said.
The use of optical disc versus tape also provided a logistical advantage. "Discs were easy to use in the cramped environment of the airplane," Pratt said. "Transferring the content was simply a matter of ejecting the disc from the camcorder, loading it into an XDCAM deck and loading it onto a laptop for the Vegas software to take over."
The 50 Mbps footage shot on the PDW-530s was first run through the XDCAM PDW-V1 portable deck, where it was down-converted to the DV format and then captured on Duncan's laptop. But even before this point, he had already made some pre-production preparations within the Vegas 5 software that included setting up a multi-camera view to accommodate the five camera angles. This ability to plan ultimately proved to be critical, especially since the concert began almost an hour later than scheduled.
"The original plan was to transfer the discs after the first two songs and have me working all along," Duncan said. "But they waited until after the fourth song which made the pressure more severe."
Duncan added, "I pre-set a Vegas software project to show me five angles at once. Then, all I had to do was digitize the footage from each of the five cameras and sync everything. I was able to watch all five cameras, drop markers down and tell the software how to make the cuts. I never even played it back, since I flew through the whole project."
Duncan also used a third-party script program called Excalibur that allowed him to streamline the multi-cam edit by automatically creating edits based on the timeline markers. "The built-in scripting language of Vegas software allows so many functions to be automated," Duncan said, adding that third-party scripts like Excalibur take advantage of the open-source design of the Vegas software, greatly enhancing its versatility and creating a huge benefit for the user.
Duncan's work didn't end when the flight landed. The Vegas 5 software came in handy on the cab ride from the airport to Sony Music, allowing him to perform color correction on one of the camera angles.
He also used Sony's SoundForge ® digital audio editing software to normalize the audio levels, as well as DVD Architect ™ 2 software, which is part of Sony's Vegas+DVD Production Suite, to create a DVD that was played back at the party.
"Had it not been for the multi-cam capabilities of the Vegas software, there was no way we could have edited this project so quickly," Duncan said. "The Vegas software allowed me to view each of those five cameras simultaneously and play them back in real time. I could make my decisions as quickly as I could go through that timeline. Because I had my multi-cam pre-set, all I had to do was drop files onto the different layers I had named in advance so I could instantly begin editing. I don't know of any other software that could run on a laptop that would enable me to do this. Under super crunch time, being an hour later than expected, everyone was just amazed at what we were able to produce in just minutes."
Editor's Note: For more detailed product information, your readers can visit www.sony.com/professional. To find the nearest Sony authorized dealer or service location, readers can call 1-800-686-SONY. For additional press information and digital images, please visit Sony Electronics' news and information web site at www.sony.com/news.
