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Capturing 23.978 HDCAM material from a Sony J-H3 deck and down converting it to DVCPRO-HD 1080 24pA?
So, I took a job capturing a bunch of greenscreen stuff shot in 23.978 in HDCAM and they want the deliverables to be in DVCPRO 1080 24pA quicktimes. I borrowed a Sony J-H3 deck to do the capture, a deck with which I am next to clueless in it’s operation and set up regarding capture.
FYI, I have a 2 x 3 GHz dual core intel machine, five gigs of ram, 2 TBs internal Raid 0 hard drives and a Kona LHe card and break out box.
First off, I’m not sure what sort of audio/video set up I want to use to capture the material. I can’t seem to get Final Cut to see the deck while I am in batch capture mode even as I have tried a number of seemingly logical settings. For a brief period of time I was able to capture material (I don’t remember the settings) and attempted to “real time” down convert it but after a bit Final Cut stopped the capture telling me to “check the deck” and it aborted the capture. Then when I reviewed the material that I captured, the audio was off by about 12 frames. I assume this had to do with the “real time” down conversion.
So, does anyone know…
1. how to set up the deck, the kona control panel and Final Cut’s easy setups/video capture settings to work with this deck and tape format?
and
2. how I would then down convert to DVCPRO 1080 24pA quicktimes?
I’m assuming the second step would be using compressor, but I’m not sure what the settings are to convert to DVCPRO 1080 24pA.
Thanks for any help you can provide.
Regards,
Michael Escher
PS- Does anyone know if there are any compressor websites for downloads of home brewed pre-sets that weren’t included with the program? Seems that we could all benefit from something like that.
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9 Replies
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Wow, Michael. Let’s get the semantics straight here so we can all make sense of what needs to happen.
First of all, if the footage is 1080 23.976, why do they want 24pA? That makes no sense to me. Why not just deliver 1080 psf 23.98 with no pulldown? Call them and ask right now.
Capturing 1080 to 1080 is not a down convert. Capturing to DVCPro HD from HDCam is not a down-convert.
You don’t need to think about compressor presets quite yet.
First we figure out if they truly need 24pA. If they do, write back, if they don’t simply choose the 1080psf 23.98 DVCPro HD easy setup and off you go, as long as the deck is set for 23.98 frequency (with no PD).
Jeremy
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Hi Jeremy and thanks for your response.
The company I am doing the work for has been contracted by another client to do the work, so I don’t have direct access to the final user of the video files, but I do have an email of what they requested. They want the HDCAM material converted to DVC-PRO quicktimes. Since my client, who was contracted by the original client, is a PC based editing and conversion company they called me, “Mr. Macintosh” to to the work.
The specs that they requested of the DVC pro material follows: “Format: DVCPRO HD (1080i60), 1280×1080 (1888 x 1062) millions, 16-bit integer (big endian), mono 48.000 kHz, 16-bit integer (big endian), mono 48.000 kHz, FPS: 29.97”. Then, in a further email they ask that the material be “created using the 1080/24pA setting if possible”.
So, it doesn’t seem mission critical to deliver the work in 1080 24pA as long as it is 24 fps DVC-PRO HD with discrete right and left audio channels. I just need to get the deck and the computer to talk to each other in the right way.
FYI, I have been connecting the computer to the Kona LHe using the SDI in cable and had set the audio in on the Kona control panel to embedded audio.
Anyhow, any suggestions on ways to make the deck and kona card talk and make nice?
Thanks again for your help,
Mike Escher
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Email your client who will email their client and ask them if they will take 23.98 movies.
If yes, make sure your deck is set to the 23.98 frequency (look it up in the manual).
If no, you can set the deck to output 23.98 with pulldown (or PD as the deck calls it) and capture the 1080i stream. Or you can set the Kona to add pulldown on capture.
[Michael Escher] “Anyhow, any suggestions on ways to make the deck and kona card talk and make nice? “
If you open the Kona control panel with the deck turned on what format is displayed above the “SDI In 1” icon?
Jeremy
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I just spoke to my client who told me that they would indeed take 23.98 files. And then I called Aja who set me straight on the capture settings for the material.
FYI, when I spoke to the tech at Aja, he said that he’d provide me with a file to install into my FCP settings that would take care of the problem that I had when trying to get FCP to capture from this deck. I got a error message that said that the “deck speed” was out of whack. Supposedly FCP has trouble communicating with the Sony J-H3 deck and the file he sent me would solve this issue. I mention this for future readers of forum. Call Aja for more info or write me at michael.escher@gmail and I will forward you the file called “disable alt polling”.
Thanks again,
Michael E.
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Yep. You are all set.
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One other thing. They asked for the material in 1080p24. I captured using the “AJA KONA LH- 1080psf 23.98 DVCPro HD” easy set up. Is the material that I captured in the same format as they requested, 1080p24?
Thanks,
Michael Escher
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Yessir.
Did it go alright?
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Yessir, it went just fine. I had to do a “save as” in quicktime pro and change the checkbox that said “little endian” to convert them to big endian as they requested, but with that file that Kona provided, the capture went just fine.
Thanks again for your help Jeremy!
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You are most welcome.
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