720P50 playback over firewire – BR HD50 deck

[Arnie Schlissel]

You cannot do this with HDV. You need a capture card, like those made by AJA, Black Magic Design, Matrox or MOTU to play back live to your video monitor.

Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/

[Shane Ross]

#25 HDV external Monitor Viewing

Shane’s Stock Answer #25 – HDV external Monitor Viewing

To view HDV on an external monitor in high definition you are going to need to purchase a capture card, like the ones Decklink (https://www.decklink.com) or AJA (https://www.aja.com) offer. They will both play out HDV in real time. The catch is that you cannot view this on a regular TV or NTSC monitor. Since this is HD, an HD monitor will be needed. HOWEVER, both cards are capable of down converting the signal so that it can be displayed on an SD monitor. This won’t be color accurate

The real reason why you can’t monitor HDV through a Firewire camera is because Firewire HDV cameras don’t decode incoming HDV streams and route them to their outputs like DV cameras do.

Good options for you are the Matrox MXO2…$500…coupled with an HDTV. Or a Matrox MXO (DVI connection) coupled with an Apple 23″ display gets you good quality.

And there are the Decklink Intensity and Intensity PRO cards as well, and the AJA I/O Express…

You can, however, view HDV out via firewire as DV…lowering the resolution to that of DV, but still viewable. This is not full quality nor should it be used to judge the quality of your footage or used to color correct to. This is just a way to view the footage on a large monitor.

Here are some examples of some of the possibilities:

– DV or HDV sequence output to an SDI signal on a third-party interface
– An uncompressed NTSC or PAL sequence output to a DV FireWire output
– An HDV sequence output to a DV FireWire output

Sequence and output formats must have compatible frame rates. For example,
sequences with a frame rate of 60, 30, or 24 fps can be output to a 30 fps device,
but not to a 25 or 50 fps device.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Mike Simpson]

Thanks for your responses guys…much appreciated.

We already have an AJA Kona LH installed on one of our machines but annoyingly, and I have been pushing for this not to be the case for some time now, the mac is only a dual G5, and therefore not Intel, running FCP 5 and as far as i am aware is unable to run FCP 6 which has the capability of capturing and playing back 720P50 HDV material.

The machine we captured the 720P50 material on is an intel based laptop and so cannot be used in conjunction with out AJA Kona LH.

The strange thing is that our BR HD50 deck is really quite happy being used to pass the signal through to our HD plasma when we use the print to video option…so why can’t it be used as a viewing device during playback??? I don’t really understand that.

If we were to upgrade our suites this wouldn’t be the case!

Any more comments on the BR50 deck passing the HDV stream intput out through the HD component out would be interesting to hear.

Mike

[Shane Ross]

[mike simpson] ” the mac is only a dual G5, and therefore not Intel, running FCP 5 and as far as i am aware is unable to run FCP 6″

A G5 can run FCP 6 just fine. It’s FCP 7 that is Intel only.

[mike simpson] “he strange thing is that our BR HD50 deck is really quite happy being used to pass the signal through to our HD plasma when we use the print to video option…so why can’t it be used as a viewing device during playback?”

“WHEN USING THE PRINT TO VIDEO OPTION…” Because when you choose print to video, FCP conforms the footage for an amount of time before it outputs. Therefor it works when Print to Video is employed. But the format doens’t allow for streaming playback. FCP 6 and 7 will play it out as DV, but that is lower than full resolution. Just know that full quality playback of HDV via firewire (ANY GOP format really) isn’t possible.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Mike Simpson]

Aha…thanks Shane.

That makes sense. I’ve obviously seen the conforming prior to footage being played out but didn’t realise that HDV couldn’t be streamed out over firewire as i had previously presumed.

Mike