Editing avccam footage from hmc150 (long gop issues?)

[John Christie]

[Jonas Hansson] “1. I’ve heard that you can’t cut on every frame while editing hdv long gop format, avccam is also a highly compressed long gop format – so won’t this also be a problem with hmc150 footage, even when transcoded to ProRes 422?

Once the footage is converted to Prores, it’s no longer long GOP, so there are no long gop issues.

2. How does the PH 21Mpbs mode handled fast motion compared to hdv? (which I’ve seen some really bad results from)

So far, I haven’t seen any issues with fast motion. PH 21 Mbps is way more efficient than HDVs 25 Mbits per sec.

3. What are the transcode times for ProRes 422?

I’m guessing here, but I’d say 2 or 3 times real time on my 3.06 Ghz Intel Imac.

4. Will the 4.2.0 color space hold up to extensive colorgrading?

I haven’t put any footage through Color yet, but I’m guessing that it will hold up better than HDV and way better than DV

5. Coming from a dvx100a (which I loved), what other issues or concerns should I consider before getting the 150?
“

I’m not a shooter, I’m a post guy. I just bought an HMC150 for a few of my own pet projects and I’m blown away. The fact that my ingest VTR is a $10 card reader and my living room VTR is a Playstation 3 is amazing. At work I deal with HDX 900 footage mostly and while the HMC150 isn’t in the same range as that 900 it’s an amazing camera for the price. Shooting on SD cards is cheap and efficient. With the price of 8 and 16 GB cards now, you can afford to archive your material on the original cards, something you can’t do with P2 or SxS

Cheers

John Christie

[Jonas Hansson]

Thanks for the reply john.

2 or 3 times real time seems like allot though.. I was hoping that going tapeless would result in a faster workflow, have you tried this or was it a pure guess?

[John Christie]

Hi Jonas

I just did a quick test and loaded 3 clips that totalled 2:56 in 1:24. So twice as fast as real time. Beats any tape format I’ve ever worked with! That’s with a external card reader, I haven’t timed an import from the camera but it seemed to me that the card reader is slightly faster.

Also, this is with Class 4 SDHC cards, the minimum you need for the PH mode of the camera. If you use Class 6 cards your transfer times will improve.

Cheers

John Christie