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A bullet dodged….
Talk about a near miss! I recently took the plunge with a tapeless camcorder, of the choices on offer I ended up picking the JVC HM100. The unit seemed to do what I wanted (I understand that other buyers have been disappointed by some of the features eg. no manual zoom, but for me it does the trick) and it’s support of FCP and mov format files seemed to be kinda cool.
Roll in the real world…. a client asked me to produce a video of a workshop training session that had proved popular with their students. After days of nagging they finally sent me (on USB stick) the camera AVCHD files and a PDF of the presentation. The idea being that the slides could be integrated with the footage of the presenter giving the lecture. After several days of net-surfing, trying numerous permutations of disk images, dvd burns and swearing (MUCH SWEARING) I gave up trying to get FCP to ingest the camera files (Yes, I did have the original directory structure – no joy!) and just used Voltiac to transcode the MTS flies into AIC mov format and I was away.This has all been for one job for an interstate client, if I had actually bought a similar (Panny) camera myself and had to go through this rigmarole every time…. no way!
Thank you JVC for saving my wrists and my sanity. I really appreciate just popping the sd card into a reader and dragging off the mov files. Sure I could USB the camera (either the JVC or Panny) and ingest that way, but just wrangling the cards is soo much easier for me (and means in some situations that the camera can still be out in the field recording while I am back at the Mac editing)
Charles.
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5 Replies
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Charles.
Good Work!
I dont know if its hype, or if it actually has merit, but one nameless software manufacturer (i am not hypeing here) has said that unless you copy tpaeless media using a specific tapeless media copy tool, which they make, or even the manufacturers, you run a “sizable” risk of getting corrupted media ie its not a good idea to copy these media files using Finder. Perhaps this is waht happened? your client simply dragged and dropped the files from his cards to the USB drive? It may be worthwhile to ask 🙂
Also, are you running the right versions of FCP and such?
I am only commenting not to disparage your efforts and outcome (it seems we are all in the format conversion bizness these days! dodging bulletts left and right!) but to note that my company have been dealing with various flavors of tapeless media for some time now, and by using these tools, whether the manufacturers or third party, we have been successful.
thanks for your info. good luck in the future.
“I like video because its so fast!”
Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc. -
Which version of FCP are you running? AVCHD files are easily ingested using Log and Transfer in FCP 6.0.6 and FCP 7 supports them natively. We’ve used AVCHD, P2 and EX / XDCAM files sent to us on a variety of hard drives here with no issues.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” now in Post.
Creative Cow Forum Host:
Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Apple Color, AJA Kona, Business & Marketing, Maxx Digital. -
Or maybe You have G5 PowerPC-mac. AVCHD works only in Intel-Macs!
“By doing it yourself you get exactly as it happens to outcome.”
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Hi Guys,
I am running FC 6.06 on a quad core MacPro with 8 gig of RAM. I recently installed snow leopard (which has caused a few QTKITSERVER issues) but otherwise it’s clean. My best guess is that the client did indeed drag copy the files to a dual layer dvd (maybe even a couple of times given the number of hands it passed through until I received it).
Even so – a simple mov file transfer seems a lot cleaner.C
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Yes, there are people paranoid about dragging files to the Finder or HD.
We do that dozens of times a day and the files (QT, JPEG, Words, etc) do not get corrupted.
JVC have simplified the EX-1 workflow for the Mac users, skipping the MP4 step of SONY cameras.
The MP4 enveloping complicates things some times.
rafael
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