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CAMS recommends students own an a card reader that accepts SD and CF card readercards.
Depending on how much footage students plan to shoot at one time, you may wish to buy additional Class 10 SD card(s) of your own in denominations of 16 GB or more from Lexar or Sandisk. To give a sense of scale, one hour of footage shot at maximum quality takes about:
-21 GB of space on SD/SDHC/SDXC card on a Canon 60D or
-11 GB of space on SD/SDHC card on a Sony HXR-NX5U (More about these figures in "tapeless workflow," below.)
Students wishing to buy their own PCM-based audio recorder might wish to consider a model with XLR inputs, such as the Zoom H4n available from the CAMS Production Office. IMPORTANT: devices such as the Edirol R-09 or Tascam [DR-05|http://tascam.com/product/dr-05/specifications/], DR-07 or DR-08 might suffice for homework assignments but not Comps projects. These devices have 1/8" mini phono plug inputs and not XLR inputs. It's possible to purchase XLR-to-1/8" adapters and physically connect a professional mic. However, one test made with such a device and several mics in a suitably quiet environment produced a recording with a level of self-noise accompanying signal that would be unacceptable in a professional production setting. The device fared much better using its built-in mics on stereo mode, with special care to noise generated by handling the device.
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i. Use File --> New Sequence (command+N) to create a new sequence.
ii. Click once on Control+click (or option+zero) on the icon for the sequence in the browser to select itopen its settings.
iii. Choose the following: HDTV 1080i (16:9) aspect ratio, 1920x1080 frame size, square pixel aspect ratio, upper field dominance, Apple ProRes 422, 100% quality; and under Audio Settings: 48 kHz Rate, 16-bit Depth, and Channel Group Config.
iv. transcode and import footage of both types as described above. Canon footage will require rendering; Sony will not.
V. other useful things
A. Cinema and Media Studies' Gould Guide, by Matt Bailey, Carleton College Media Librarian and Reference & Instruction Librarian for Arts
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