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FCP+Deck Control
Hi all,
I recently got hired on at an FCP shop. Currently in the edit suite I’m working in there is a Mac Pro running FCP 6.0. We are using a Sony HVR-M25U HDV deck for capture/output. At present, FCP is controlling the deck through Firewire; which frankly is sluggish and unpretty. There’s a noticeble lag from when the deck stops to when video in the logging/capture window stops (about 1 – 2 seconds).I -know- there has to be a better way to control the deck from FCP, but I don’t know what it is. In the last shop I worked in, we were using Avid’s with multiple decks and some form of serial control I think. It was much more repsonsive and not sluggish at all.
Is there a similar solution to my FCP deck control issues? Is there some sort of connection better suited for edit suites with FCP besides Firewire?
Much thanks,
RC Maples—
Doobie Doobie Doo
beware the penguins -
7 Replies
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I have been trying to find the answer to that question too. Not only do I have poor deck control response, but I also have spurious timecode breaks which shouldn’t really be there at all, and which sometimes occur right in the middle of a shot that I need to capture.
If you have a capture card which accepts HD/SD-SDI, one possibility is adding the Convergent Design HD-Connect MI. It ports the video from the M25 via HDMI to SDI on your capture card. It also runs a firewire cable from the M25 to the HD-Connect MI, to your computer’s 9-pin controller (again, probably via your capture card). Whether the deck control is actually better this way, I don’t know.
If someone has actually solved this I’d love to see the answer.
Bob C
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Capture transport controls most certainly has to do with the deck. If you want 9pin serial with speedy transport control, you have to get yourself a deck that supports 9 pin serial and has speedy transports, such as the HVR-1500. If you convert the ilink to serial, that’s all it is, a conversion and it might even slow the process down as you are now converting firewire to serial.
Jeremy
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[JeremyG] “Capture transport controls most certainly has to do with the deck. If you want 9pin serial with speedy transport control, you have to get yourself a deck that supports 9 pin serial and has speedy transports, such as the HVR-1500.”
Alright, so keeping in mind future expansion, what would I need to get full RS-422 control from an HVR-1500 and a FCP machine?
By future expansion I mean the ability to rack mount multiple decks (all rs-422) and have them synced together. For the time being though I would like to hook a HVR-1500 to the mac.
I’m new at designing edit suites and I’m trying to get information to write a possible proposal to my boss about our current situation.
I hope this makes sense to you guys, it makes sense in my head. 🙂
Thanks!
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[rcmaples] “Alright, so keeping in mind future expansion, what would I need to get full RS-422 control from an HVR-1500 and a FCP machine? “
And HD-SDI capture card with rs422 control.
[rcmaples] “By future expansion I mean the ability to rack mount multiple decks (all rs-422) and have them synced together. For the time being though I would like to hook a HVR-1500 to the mac. “
Bob Zelin has written about building machine rooms. There are little things you can get to make your life easier. One of those will be a patch bay. There are cheap deices that adapt your rs422 to ethernet (rj-45) then you run ethernet cable to your computers, and have the adaptor on the other side to adapt back to rs422. You can then have an rs422 patch bay in your machine room and patch in what deck you need to wherever you need it.
[rcmaples] “I’m new at designing edit suites and I’m trying to get information to write a possible proposal to my boss about our current situation. “
It might be best to talk to a systems integrator. Also, look up the Creative Cow magazine and find the article called ‘building a better machine room’ by Bob Zelin. It’s from a couple of issues ago or so.
Jeremy
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Actually, it’s from issue#4.
And it’s “building a professional machine room”
Jeremy
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Got the issue on my coffee table 🙂 I’ll take another looksie. Much thanks!
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Alright, I made a typo in my Original post. We’re not up to FCP 6.0 yet. We’re @ like 5.3.4? I think. I brought up the issue of firewire transport and deck control to my boss with a co worker sitting there.
They see our department (corporate video dept) being able to eventually produce long form shows for commercial TV (such as animal planet) and producing short form things for film festivals and the like.
I tried to explain to them that with the goals they have in mind, we need to upgrade our decks and ingest process considerably. When I mentioned the HVR-1500, my boss immediately took notice of the price tag and noted it was twice what he payed for our current decks. I explained that by breaking the video/audio into seperate signals from the deck control we would have faster/better response from deck control and get better quality video and audio instead of running all signals down 1 firewire cable.
My co-worker then jumped in saying that once we upgraded to 6.0 we wouldn’t have the firewire control issues that we currently have. IMHO, I found this to be a load. He says that FCP has included into the capture tool a delay for fixing the delay we currently see between the deck and editor. Having not used 6.0 yet, I bowed out of the conversation and said that we would have to wait and see but strongly urged looking into upgrading the decks and utlizing a patch bay. There are already plans for a patch bay to be used with a new whisper room we’re ordering… so We’ll have the bay, why not use it for more than 1 audio input to 2 rooms?
Does anyone have suggestions on how to convince my boss that with the goals they have for the department, we need to move to Serial Control without Firewire?
We already have AJA Kona capture card in the machines, and they aren’t being used b/c they don’t know how to implement them with firewire ingest.
>.< Getting frustrated with Firewire, rc
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