Tech Tip

As we are all aware, more and more of media production is being digitized.  It started back in the mid 90s with digital Non-Linear editing systems like Avid and Media 100.  Shortly after digital, film-less, photography became the norm, now we are entering the digital tape-less video recording era.  Through all of this computers and Hard Drives, particularly portable, external drives, have become a necessary tool in any media-maker's tool bag.  We use them for editing, archive storage, transportation and more and with the variety of computers an operating systems, trying

BMC has added a camera rain jacket for each of the Sony camera kits.  This rain jacket completely covers the camera but still allows you to shoot when conditions are less than ideal...rain, snow, dust etc.  I would recommend that if you are are planning to use the camera is such conditions that you practice putting the rain jacket on the camera before heading out, that way doing so in the field is quick and easy.

Come on down and check them out.

USB thumb drives can be a great little tool in our digital tool kit but an inherent security flaw makes them (and the systems they are attached to) vulnerable to viruses. 

Converting to tapeless recording media in our camcorders has been a learning experience for all involved.  We are continuing to find quirks of the medium and solutions to those quirks.

One such quirk was known that when recording long clips (longer than 12  minutes for HD, 30 for SD) the camera creates new clips when it hits this time limit.  I discovered its not actually a function of the camera but of the way that the media cards are formated. 

When moving the studio cameras around the studio floor or moving the tripod head (pan or tilt) please make sure you are using the tripod handles and not the zoom/focus control handles.  The zoom/focus handles are not designed to take the stresses of moving the entire camera/pedistal unit around the floor or moving the head.  The tripod handles are marked with glow-in-the-dark tape so they can easily be found in a darkened studio during production.