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Best monitoring for JVC ProHD 720p 25?
Hello,
I am researching I/O and monitoring options. I quite like Kona cards, but from their specs it looks they don’t support 720p 25. That is mostly the sole format we shoot to.
Is there any comparable I/O and HD monitoring solution that you guys would recommend for JVC HD110? We don’t have HD deck, as they are prohibitively expensive for us (yet anyway). Now, we do a simple “Capture Now” HDV to ProRes capture. I wonder if Kona or similar cards can help us with batch captures, because FCP itself cannot BC from HDV to ProRes.
Thanks!
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3 Replies
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Jiri
I have the JVC-HD110U, which is the 24/30 FPS version of your camera. I think your referring to the 110E, European version.
Our normal workflow is to shoot at 30fps, capture via Firewire in HDV, keep it native mpeg2 for post, since we mostly compress to make SD DVD’s, and the occasional ‘print to tape’, or stock footage upload. While we do use the BR-50 deck, we have used the camera on occasion for capture.
I know a lot of people go ProRes for HDV, but for our workflow we have found no real advantage, possibly due to the small (6 frame)GOP of the JVC camera.
For video monitoring I use the internal scopes and a GeForce 8800 driving two Apple Cinema WS displays.
The system is a 8 core 2.8Ghz w/16GB, 4x1TB HD’s non RAID, the system is a Hitachi, and the video drives are WD Blacks.
While this is not the typical system set-up or workflow you will see here on the board, it’s worked great, plenty fast even with a ton of filters on the clips and we haven’t had any complaints.
One of my partners has an identical system, including camera with the exception of a AJA I/O card.
IMHO, the card seems to slow the system down compared to my system, and the external output to a waveform and broadcast monitor, are not worth the trouble. We mostly use the card to get Beta in. The internal scopes and system monitors, compared to a external scope and a blue channel calibrated monitor are so close it doesn’t seem to be worth the extra expense.
I think the monitoring situation is really dependent on the type of clients, budget, and your own personal experience, but this is what is working for me.
So far my only real complaint with the whole system is that on long continuous recordings, like you would do to make a time lapse, you get ‘start/stop’ clip breaks, where there are none. This is a know JVC/FCP issue that has been around for a while, and is really just a minor annoyance. -
Thanks for your exhaustive answer, Scott. I would still like some kind of monitoring for 720p 25 (from 110E, as you rightly guessed), because we do more and more color-grading intensive work and occassional broadcast. Otherwise I am happy with our standard HDV to ProRes workflow (even on a lowly C2D iMac with 3 gigs of RAM!). On longer-form projects, though, I would like to be able to batch-capture HDV to ProRes, which is not possible now (even in FCP7).
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Jiri
My answer was probably TMI for you, but I thought it might be of interest to other 110/FCP users.
Best of luck.
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