-
dvcpro firewire to adobe premiere newbie
Ok. I just need a little help on finalizing a small editing project.
I have a nice aj-d700 dvcpro cam, and a aj-d230 deck with firewire.
no sfx,no green screen, no fake explosions. maybe 1-2 sound tracks background music,typical master, closeup, closeup, new scene, very basic fundamental editing, might as well use windows movie maker but I’ll leave that for my sample youtube videos.
What am I going to need hardware and software wise to make this as simple and no frills as possible?
I will probably have footage scattered across 10-20 60 minute tapes.
Can I pick and choose which takes I want to import?
How much hard drive space do I need if I have to pull in a full tape?
Besides a computer with a firewire port, do I need any other hardware to bring in, edit, dump back onto a blank tape at the end?
Do I need a vtr controller software like decklink, or is that built into premiere?
Can i get away with an older version of premiere?
Just looking for someone who did this easily, or does it daily and has a “laundry list” of hardware do’s and don’ts.
I would want to end up with a dvd or bluray disk for distribution to cast and friends, and possible 16mm if it goes to a festival(insert pipe dream here).only a 30 minute short
Any insight much appreciated, I am in los angeles -
10 Replies
-
OK, I’m using the Panasonic AJ-SD255 (which is limited to NTSC and PAL standard video). It works great over firewire and I am ingesting with Adobe’s Premiere Pro version 1.5, so any version should work for you over firewire.
As to how much drive space you would need, I’m using a 1T external drive (WD MyBook) that I reformatted to NTFS (they come formatted to FAT, which limits your file size to under 2G). I cut a weekly news program and I try to keep the material from several weeks back so that I can revisit material as needed within the context of the show.
If you are in HD, you may need an array to play back a stream of video and there are 2G and bigger arrays that are very good. I particularly like Sonnet Tech’s SATA arrays because of their outstanding customer support.
As you begin to capture, Adobe’s Premiere Pro will tell you how many hours and minutes of video you can capture. Less if it’s HD, more if it’s SD.
In that you have a VCR, I would use that over using a camcorder (unless the camcorder uses solid-state recording), as I try to limit head wear on camera’s tape mechanisms.
You need a VCR that can record. You need a Firewire 400 card on your PC. If you get an external firewire drive, you need to make sure that ingest from tape is done on one firewire channel, while recording to a hard drive is done on a separate channel, so a two-port card needs to have two separate chips driving it (one port per channel).
Premiere Pro will control your VCR wonderfully, though I note that, with Premiere Pro 1.5, batch capture fails at least 50% of the time. I think that the problem is that when the application controls the deck, it does not initiate its search-to-cue properly. To the extent I have problems capturing (where it suggests I increase pre-roll) I hit the virtual stop button and it seems to find where it needs to go.
I did not answer your “how much drive space” question because I don’t know if you are in HD or SD and I don’t know how many tapes you have. For SD, I’m recommending a 1T drive to start. You should not capture to your C: drive. You will need an array if you are in HD.
Drives you buy need to be 7200 RPM with a 1M buffer or faster. HD arrays tend to be more expensive but worth the money.
I am not producing blu-ray disks and cannot help you there.
What if there were no hypothetical questions?
-
Good advice from Mark.
There are also some very useful primers here:https://www.adobe.com/motion/primers.html
footnote:
DVCPro is essentially DV with a higher bitrate (50 Mbps instead of 25 Mbps). A very good standard-def format. DVCProHD is, um, hi-def, and quite a nice hi-def format. By the way, as you delve into all this, an important distinction is bps vs. Bps (notice the uppercase “B”). A lowercase “bps” refers to bits per second. Uppercase – Bps – refers to bytes per second. There are 8 bits in a byte, so Bps is eight times “bigger” than bps. Makes for some extra math when calculating storage and the like. An example: DVCPro at 50 Mbps (megabits per second) is approximately 6.25 megaBytes per second.-Jeff
-
There really is no such thing as DV versus DVC Pro, unless you mean Mini-DV, which is a consumer-prosumer format.
As to the bitrate, mini-DV has a lower bitrate and lower chroma sampling. In NTSC, it’s sampled at 4:1:1, while DVC Pro is sampled at 4:2:2. Mini-DV takes advantage of the same characteristic of the human eye that S-VHS did: The human eye, having fewer cones than rods, tends to see less detail in color and uses brightness and contrast to determine resolution of an object. S-VHS captured 400 lines of B/W information while treating color with the same disdain that any cheap “color under” system would do.
With mini-DV, the black and white information is oversampled 4 times (allowing for very good resolution in B/W and the color channels are not oversampled.
This doesn’t seem to matter much, if you are shooting a well-lit talking head. But if you are doing green-screen work, you’ll have problems in the keys with 4:1:1-sampled video. Believe me, I’ve been there.
As Kevin’s working with DVCPro, he’s at least 4:2:2. And that can be good.
What if there were no hypothetical questions?
-
No, dvcpro is 4:1:1, dvcpro 50 is 4:2:2. dvcam, minidv is 4:1:1 and smaller tape, like a sony dsr1500 or soemthing
-
So are you saying I can output from my camera-an aj-d700 dvcpro via the composite bnc cable to my aj-d255 vtr, then firewire out from the vtr to an external drive, then from the drive to the computer with ppro?
Just got lost a little bit on that there.
Or were you saying record composite from camera to vtr, then once I’m done, record onto an external firewire drive via ppro via a 2 channel pci firewiree400card.
thanks -
ppro 1.5? or ppro creative suite 1.5.
kevin -
— thanks to all for clearing up my sloppy terminology (DV, etc.)
;>)
-jeff -
DV or miniDV is the same signal, just recorded to a different size tape = different recording lengths. A Full size DV tape can record 4 hours because there is the space for the length of tape. A mini DV is a smaller tape and only holds enough tape to record 62 mins.
Sampling is 4:1:1 in DVCPro. DV,DVCAM and HDV is 4:2:0. Beta is 4:2:2 SP or Digi. DVCPRO50 is SD res at 4:2:2 and DVCPRO100 is HD res (1280×1080) at 4:2:2.
Jon Barrie
aJBprods
http://www.jonbarrie.net -
Kevin, most probably your computer won’t have a BNC input for composite video or serial digital video input. Nor would I expect it to have inputs for professional audio. AJA and BlackMagic make cards with breakout boxes for that kind of capture.
What many PCs may have is Firewire. Almost all Macs have Firewire. The method of getting your DVCPro footage into your computer (and also back out to tape, once you are done) is Firewire 400, or IEEE 1394a.
If your computer does not have a firewire port, you can add one in one of the slots on your PC. If you have a laptop, there are Firewire solutions for laptops that will work (please note, this is not an endorsement of the company at the link).
Be aware that there are two Firewire speeds, Firewire 800 and Firewire 400 (IEEE 1394a and IEEE 1394b). Firewire 800 cables are not the same as Firewire 400 cables, so if your camera or VCR came with a Firewire cable it’s most probably a 400 cable, not an 800 cable. The only devices I know that use Firewire 800 are hard drives and they’re mostly arrays.
Be advised that Firewire 800 cards and slots will work at the slower speed with an adapter cable but, since you pay more for the faster speed it’s not worth, it in my opinion, if all you intend to do is video capture.
What if there were no hypothetical questions?
-
“What if there were no hypothetical questions?”.
Then there would be no hypothetical answers.
Hypothetical is defined as, not well supported by available evidence.
Thus not all questions are hypothetical.
Your question above, in itself, is hypothetical.
Therefore, if there were no hypothetical questions, I would not of had to spend my time right now answering your hypothetical question.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up