AJA ioHD or Motu V4HD?

[Devin Clarke]

You have been using it? I have a question for you then. I just rented the unit to capture Canon HDV 24f footage shot on a XL h1. The video is ok but the audio never matches!!! I’ve been up all night trying everything I know and just random stuff.
The audio is out of sync, and how do I know its converting the 23.976 24f to what I want. When I put it in Format and Gen lock it tells me to do 1080i 29.97, but I know it has to be 3:2 converted. Can’t I just capture it in 23.976?
Do you have any suggestions?

I have a Macbook Pro Dual 2.5 Intel. FCP 6.05, a Canon Xl H1 connected via SDI and XLR, and the MOTU V4HD connected to the computer with FW800.

Thank you for your time, any suggestions would be useful

[Mark Spano]

I can offer suggestions, but I haven’t used this workflow, so I can’t vouch for any of this working. As far as audio being out of sync – not sure. Maybe there’s some camera delay between the XLR outputs vs. SDI. Why not capture both audio and video over HD SDI? I don’t know the camera’s capabilities in this regard but it’s worth looking into. As far as your capture workflow, here’s how I would try to set it up. I assume you’re not capturing to HDV via firewire, so you’re probably capturing via HD SDI to a full raster codec. In FCP, choose easy setup “V4HD – Apple ProRes 422 1080 29.97 (1920 x 1080)”. In the V4HD control panel, under Setup, choose HD SDI as input, Auto Detect=Format and Genlock. This sets up FCP to capture the video on the tape as it is recorded (23.976 over 59.94i). I do not believe the V4HD has the capability to remove the pulldown on capture. The manual is confusing in this regard as it says certain conversions are supported, but in trying out a 23.976 capture setup with HD SDI feeding the V4HD at 29.97 doesn’t seem to give me the option to remove the pulldown. Perhaps there is a setting in the camera to remove the pulldown prior to output over HD SDI? If so, then you’d use the 23.976 easy setup. Otherwise, you will have to either edit at 29.97 or find another way to remove the pulldown. Perhaps FCP’s menu option will take care of this, or the reverse telecine option in Compressor? I don’t know for sure, but there are things you can experiment with. Hope that’s helpful.