Best FCP capture settings for HV20 ??

[Chris Poisson]

Nathan,

There is a boatload of info on this here and in the HDV forum, but the easiest and one of the best ways is to capture via FireWire as native HDV. Search the archives.

I generally use native HDV in an 8 bit or ProRes sequence, you only get one render hit, it works great.

I believe that camera has HDMI out, which you can use with a few devices, the cheapest is the BlackMagic Intensity, supposed to give great results.

[Nathan Sturgess]

I know I might sound like a dumb ass but.. what does “8 bit or ProRes sequence, you only get one render hit” mean?

Thanks,
Nathan

[Chris Poisson]

Nathan,

If you’re going out to a DVD, tape, or some other QuickTime or Windows format other than HDV, you will have to render at some point, also called conforming. HDV takes a notoriously long time to do this in many cases.

Many people out there capture their HDV material in another codec, often times DVDproHD. This removes the mpeg2 compression from the HDV and makes it a real 29.97 (or whatever) iFrame format. This works fine for many people, but it introduces another “render hit” to your workflow, because when you edit, add effects and go out to whatever you get another render hit.

If you feel the need to capture this way, say via component or HDMI (you will need a card for this such as a Kona of the Intensity I mentioned) I would recommend you go 8 or 10 bit uncompressed. DVCproHD doesn’t make sense to me as going to it from HDV is going from one highly compressed format to another.

If you check the archives, you will see tons of info on all of this.

[James Reid]

This Apple doc may come in handy: