Can blackmagic capture at 29.97 in final cut?

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Herb,

I looked at the manual for the Panasonic AJ-HD1200A deck and couldn’t find anything suggesting that it supported 720p29.97. I did find that it supports 720p59.94 and would recommend you try a Blackmagic HDTV 720p59.94 easy setup in Final Cut Pro and see if that works for you.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Herb Sevush]

Luke –

Of all the responses I was expecting yours was one that never occurred to me — mostly because it is so wrong.

Basic concept – Varicams shoot DVCPRO HD in 3 speeds – 59.94, 29.97 and 23.976 (60,30,24). The 1200A plays back all 3 types of video – always has – all DVCPRO HD video is shot at 59.97 and then data flags within the signal tells Final Cut which frames to use.

Look, I can easily import 29.97 video into Final Cut via firewire – which would seem to indicate that the 1200A can handle that speed. I prefer HD-SDI for a number of reasons and have successfully used my decklink card for 59.94 input – you guys even have 720P29.97 video presets for 8bit,10bit and RGB input. I thought it would be easy to use the Decklink card for standard 29.97 DVCPRO HD input – but if you guys don’t even know it exists I guess I was mistaken.

As for the idea of using the unmodified 59.94 preset – the reason I went to 29.97 was to save on media space and avoid some of the difficulties of 60 frame timelines. Your suggestion puts me back in the 60 frame world. I’ll stick with Firewire if I have to.

But given that the 1200A – 1400 model decks are the most popular models of the most popular pro HD acquisition format, I’m rather surprised that you know so little about it.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Kristian Lam]

Herb,

We don’t have the preset for it but you can easily create on of your own based on the BMD 720p23.98 DVCPRO HD presets. Just change the FPS option in the Capture Preset Editor to 29.97. You’ll also need to create a new sequence preset although Final Cut Pro will do it for you if you drag the captured clip into the a new timeline that doesn’t match the format of the clip.

This will read in the full full 59.94 HD-SDI output from the output of the deck and just grab the varicam flagged frames.

regards

Kristian Lam
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Sorry Herb,

I read your posting as meaning native 720p29.97 and not as a Varicam question. Kristian’s response is spot on. Our list of Blackmagic easy setups is already very long in Final Cut Pro and so we don’t include easy setups for every conceivable Varicam format as the list just becomes annoyingly long. You can just modify one of the existing Blackmagic HDTV 720p Varicam easy setups as Kristian mentioned.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design