-
Digitizing HDV SD 60P with firewire on FCP 5.0.1
Ok, so here’s the whole story…
I’m doing this compositing job for a videoclip. They’ve shot the artist on a green screen using the JVC GY-HD100 camera in HDV 720p30 and I had no problem digitizing that whatsoever. On the other hand, I’ve done some miniature scenery including water which I shot in HDV SD 60p. I used the 60p because I thought I could slow motion it without having the frame blending look on the water and camera movement. But when we tried to digitize it, FCP is completly unable to get the shot. I just get a black frame every time. Using a firewire like mentioned in my subject.
For now, I’ve called JVC Canada 4 times, I’ve visited or called most of post-production center I know of and the best answer I’ve come up with is transfering my stuff via a DVi (?) connexion from the camera to a DVD recorder… Since I’m doing a compositing job I’d rather have a solution that doesn’t imply such a great loss of video quality… But for now I guess a tranfer of format is my only solution…
Any inputs on that?
A desperate guy
Blame CANADA!
-
2 Replies
-
A quick search tells me that HDV SD60p is a JVC maverick format that uses mpeg2 to shoot standard def at 60p. I am not surprised that FCP doesn’t recognise this at all. Frankly, I am not sure if any system do either, so capturing and rendering a QT file using another system is going to be tricky.
What do you get out of the camera when you play the tape back? Can you take the analog monitor out and see pictures on a screen? If so is it playing in slo mo (ie 29.97 frames?). If so then I would suggest capturing this signal via a capture card with component input. The DVI output might play on an LCD screen but again, at what frame rate? Recapturing that as a new mpeg2 on a DVD recorder is not a good solution. How are you then going to get the mpeg off the DVD and into FCP? A better solution is to convert the DVI to SDI (Blackmagic make a box for this) and then recapture into FCP as SD 10 bit uncompressed. But all of this depends on what frame rate the camera plays this footage back at.
With the benefit of hindsight, a test might have saved a lot of heartache.
-
Thanx for your input Michael…
Well since the only player I’ve been able to put my hand on is the camera itself using it’s intern converter, the LCD screen and analog monitor plays it fine… Well, I get a weird noisy image in the analog monitor (apparently caused by the converter) but not in slo mo. The Blackmagic box sounds like a great idea… Actually you should work at JVC Canada :P. For the anecdote, one guy there even told me that shooting in 60p was impossible. I later understood he was talking about the image size. Whatever.
Your right about the test issue but if you had a look at the budget of the production you’d understand why it wasn’t done. Of course on the other hand I’m loosing way more time trying to get my output…
Blame CANADA!
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up