Defining “Native”

[Jeff Carpenter]

You’ve got it right. It means that if you input the video and do cuts-only editing, the video will be EXACTLY the same as it was on tape. Adding effects and color correction changes things, of course, but up until that point you’ve lost nothing.

You will need some kind of capture card (like Blackmagic’s) in order to monitor your footage on an external monitor. It doesn’t go back OUT the firewire in real-time like DV does.

[Scott Witthaus]

so dissovles, effects, etc effect the entire piece or just that area? I would have to render down to go out to Dbeta, of course, but when you say cuts-only, what are the pitfalls of effects?

Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
Greybox, LLC
Richmond, VA USA
http://www.greybox.cc

[Jeff Carpenter]

It only effects the area where the effect is taking place. And it doesn’t mean that area is ruined or anything…just that it’s been altered.

For any compressed format like DV or HDV the computer has to un-compress the video, create the effect, and then re-compress it to the original format.

Imagine that you took a JPEG photo with a still camera but you had a photo editing program that can only edit TIFFs. You’d have to convert the JPEG to a TIFF, edit it, then re-save it as a JPEG to display it on your website. It’s pretty much exactly like that.

The quality will be fine, this is just a “how-it-works” kind of explination. If you were turning this video into a feature film or something it would be worth figuring out ways around this, but if you’re mastering back to HDV it’ll be just fine in the end.

[Scott Witthaus]

Thanks Jeff –

25 years in the business and learning yet ANOTHER format…and so it goes…

Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
Greybox, LLC
Richmond, VA USA
http://www.greybox.cc

[Rj Miles]

I just finished importing HDV “native” from a Sony HC3 HDV camcorder.

I was able to choose the Easy setup for HDV-1080i60 and I was good to go. The project/sequence and settings for device/capture were all ready to roll.

You have the option of converting to Apple Intermediate Codec on capture, but you can not create a batch log, rather you end up with a wild “grab” of the HDV source.

I set FCP to split the capture into 2gb files sizes to make it easier to re-import portions of the HDV source if needed.

Make sure you you uncheck (Create new clip on start/stop) in the clip settings menu of the log/capture window. Otherwise you may end up with lots of little 50MB clips as you import from the camera.

I’m not sure how I’m gonna work with the HDV footage I captured. I may batch process it to uncompressed 8bit or p-jpeg to continue my edit, for near term use on DVD. Eventually I’ll be going back and conforming the HDV files for HD output to ?.

Make sure the camera is properly setup to HDV output, disable HDV -> DV conversion.

Figure about 12gb/hr of video, which is what I am seeing from the Sony camera.

I’m sure I’m missing something.

Grab some short clips and drop them into a sequence just to confirm you are good to go.

Good luck

RJ
…

PS… I had some “pre-roll” challanges with my clients source footage. I found I could capture with only 2 sec preroll, setting the tape start time at 00:00:02:20. On occassion the attempt to catpure took sever tries, but eventually made it. I could do anything shorter. In a pinch of you need somthing in those 1st couple of seconds, going to the Apple Intermediate Conversion route works. You simply roll the tape back to the head, and everything from 1st video is converted. 🙂 I did this on one tape when the talent started into his dialog just a tad before FCP could capture. 🙂