Sony GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Let's start this post by saying that there are two companies that I have an all-consuming white-hot hatred of. Apple is one, and Sony is the other. I'll leave Apple alone, namely because they owe me $500 right now, and I don't want to get iScrewed out of my refund. They already iScrewed me for an extra $130 plus $8 in fees this week. Once they sort out the financial hoo-hah, then I'll proceed to rip on them. For now, let's turn our focus on Sony...

Sony has built a reputation on making over-priced gear that only plays nice with other Sony equipment/software. Going back to the days of Beta vs. VHS, Sony has been trying to make the world see that Sony alone will solve all of our technical problems/needs. I've owned TVs, Discmans (should I put a copyright on that... I'm sure Sony would want that,) gaming platforms, and countless other little doodads. They have usually been over-priced compared to other similar products, but there was always some kind of implied quality to a Sony product. For some reason, Sony products break down more for me than any other brand, so the quality may not be so great. Granted, I'm a little bitter because I own an HDDVD player, but that is not shading my opinion too much. I understand that Sony was angry over losing Beta (still,) and that they basically just paid the movie studios MONDO amounts of money to make themselves successful. I admit that "buying friends" sucks in real life, but it sure works in business. I digress...

I am the proud owner of a great little HD camcorder from Sony. It was a very generous gift to Melissa and I shortly before the birth of our daughter. I have spent countless hours of my life with video camera in hand, coupled with a good amount of time with both linear and non-linear editing systems from broadcast tapes to DV. I don't do it for a living, but I'm the guy that often gets tapped to assemble and edit things when people around me have footage. That said, I fell in love with our camera because the video looked so fantastic. When hooked up to ye olde HDTV, this camera rocks! Unfortunately, it comes with some serious caveats.

The first thing that I noticed about shooting in HD was that if the lighting was perfect, the shot was perfect. Daytime light means good HD footage. Conversely, "poor" light (anything less than a bright sunlit day) means that the footage is so noisy that it is almost unusable. I would love to have a film crew setting up lights around me as I document the everyday awesomeness of having a child, but that isn't practical. Having a camera to catch the first time that one's child does this hugely random and monumental leap in development is great. Having to have a professional lighting setup to come out with decent looking footage is impossible. I shot our proceedings last weekend in the studio in pretty low-light conditions. Studios are dark places. The footage shot looks grainier than if we had shot it on 8mm. Now that seems like a great effect, but when it's not intentional, I get angry. Grr.. Hulk no like camera noise!

The straw that broke this camel's back is the fact that Sony wants to shoot video in its own format which is incompatible with EVERYTHING except for the piece of shit software that comes with the camera. I have thousands of dollars worth of editing software, and I have to use something that looks like it was designed for Windows 95 . All that it allows is looking at the footage... not editing it. Also, I have a pretty beefy rig to watch the video on, and the included software cannot even run the video from an internal hard-drive without choppiness and audio mis-matches. When I found a plugin for other media players, they did just fine. Even Windows Media Player can do a better job than the software made for the camera. Put that aside, and you're stuck with footage in some Sony-only format called m2ts. They will allow you to convert it all to Mpeg2, but the audio is still in some exotic Sony-only style, so all that can be done is to watch the footage (hopefully) and not edit it. Thank you, Sony!

Having a mountain of footage means that I need some kind of slick workflow to get it ready to be edited or archived. Having to convert each file (thereby doubling the space it takes on the hard-drive) means countless hours wasted waiting for the footage to be "ready" to use. Sony refuses to let go once again, and the consumer suffers. I feel sorry for the people who bought cameras similar to this and have no clue as to what to do with the footage. Even backing it up to a DVD to watch on the TV requires hours of internet research, experimentation, and technical know-how. Mom and Pop America are not going to have the patience for that. They suggest that you plunk down big bucks for Vegas, their own editing suite. Of course, they fail to mention that Vegas does not work with the format particularly well. Sony drops the ball just to be totally in control once again. Whether it is their penchant for making goofy Sony-only batteries (that are impossible to find,) or their love of walling themselves off from the rest of technology land, it is time for Sony Corporation to stop being cocky assholes about their proprietary hardware/software. Even Apple, obsessed with locking down every piece of hardware and software it makes, still bows to the public now and again. Sony just doesn't get it.

Don't get me wrong, I dearly love the camera when it works. It takes breathtakingly great HD video. It has outstanding battery life, a HUGE hard-drive, and hooks up to my television with ease. Even the built in mic sounds good. It's just that when I shoot some footage, I would like to know that it can exist outside of the camera it was shot on. I would like to load up my copy of Adobe Premiere, and be able to use said footage.


Aside form the doom and gloom, I've edited together about 20 minutes of "making of" from the sessions. I'm intending to get about 50 minutes of footage into some kind of cohesive film about this new album that we are doing. The eventual plan is that we are going to rent out the Jewel Box Theater to show the film and then play a private show for friends and family. I would love it if we did some sort of formal dress-up affair. Sounds fun, right?