I’ve worked with some pretty rotten software, but management software is easily the most user unfriendly, so my vote goes to HPSM.

  • LazaroFilmEnglish
    56•9 months ago

    I’m a camera operator. I work with different cameras on every movie set. The Sony cameras are known to have the worst menu system of all. It’s extremely dense, organized in a manner that makes no sense when on set (the frequently used options are buried in sub menus) and the navigation is painful with a crappy clicky roller. Even the sales rep for Sony openly apologized for the menus. This is unacceptable for a $52,000.00 camera. On the opposite side, there’s ARRI Alexa which has the simplest menu of all. Just a few pages of organized items with simple names. And a lot of common options accessible on the main screen.

    Edit:

    here’s the Sony Venice menu simulator

    And here is the ARRI Alexa menu simulator.

    The differences may not be apparent on the simulator but they become critical when on set with a time constraint.

    • @Sequentialsilence
      16•9 months ago

      Same but on the live side. Interestingly Sony has it down pat for their live cameras. The global standard for camera control is a Sony controller almost everyone supports them. Grass valley on the other hand hot garbage software, really good hardware.

      • LazaroFilmEnglish
        7•9 months ago

        Yes I do live as well the P1 menu is great and simple, but live cameras don’t need as much controls on the operators side as it’s mostly via CCU. The grassvalley are the worst, it’s kind of impressive how bad they are.

    • @brygphilomena
      9•9 months ago

      I only do sfx occasionally, so I’m never near a camera. But those menu simulators are actually really neat. I didn’t know vendors had that.

      • LazaroFilmEnglish
        10•9 months ago

        It’s really useful. Not everyone can have easy access to a $50K camera to play around before their first job with it.