Final Cut Pro and JVC GY-HD250 24f support – anybody know?

[Mike Curtis]

Doh – I meant 24 “P” support, not the 24f that I wrote – I realize that is a Canon only thing, not a JVC thing – just a typo on my part.

Mike Curtis
HD For Indies – Hi Def Filmmaking & Post for Independent Filmmakers

[Charles Roberts]

24P from the HD250 is just like 24P from the HD100 and is supported. Its the 60P, either in 480P mode on the HD100 or 720P mode in the Hd200 or HD250 that isn’t supported, unless you jam it out through DVHSCap and MPEG StreamClip.

[Tom Wolsky]

Support for this format was announced at NAB last year. It was supposed to have been implemented in the point release that came out shortly afterward. There seems to have been problems with this. The camera and all JVC HDV 720p support has disappeared from the FCP supported devices list. This appears to include 720p regardless of frame rate. No explanation has come from Apple, which is typical of course, nor any indication that the format will be supported in future. It’s a pity the company seems genetically unable to be forthcoming about their software and its performance, in marked contrast to other software producers.

All the best,

Tom

Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 2 Editing Workshop” Class on Demand “Complete Training for FCP5” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy” DVDs

[Gary Adcock]

[chawla] “24P from the HD250 is just like 24P from the HD100 and is supported. Its the 60P, either in 480P mode on the HD100 or 720P mode in the Hd200 or HD250 that isn’t supported”

Very true – I have been testing this for a couple of weeks so i am going to add a couple of things here.

JVC uses the RP188 flags just like Panasonic does so the flagged frame structure has been in use for awhile,

Now the cool part of this is that on the HDSDI out of the 250 you are able to capture the uncompressed data stream with flags correctly using Kona cards.

Holding true to form on Kona I was able to set the capture to my 23.98 varicam settings and then record only the needed frames with out redundant pulldown being adding to my video stream. This works for 24, 30 and 60p captures

IF I capture into the DVCPROHD codec over HDSDI from the 250 via Kona you are then able to run the software FRC in final cut to accurately slow the 60p footage down.

<< you cannot use the software FRC with HDV footage captured over FW>>>

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

[George Strother]

Tom –

Do you know of an edit solution that suports JVC 720p correctly? I have been having trouble with JVC HDV and FCP or months.

George
Light Images

[Charles Roberts]

I hadn’t had a chance to test this with a 250. That’s so great…

[Charles Roberts]

It has some wonkiness in the capture process that you have to prepare for before you capture, but other than that I’ve had no problems editing JVC at 24P natively. Make sure you put plenty of head and tail on every shot and then really log and capture rather than capture now and your problems will be rare if any. And take REALLY good care of your tapes as you transport them!

[George Strother]

I don’t generally have capture poblems, but I usually give 5+ sec preroll and postroll on all shots. Just habit from 20 years of BetaCam shooting and posting. I usually shoot 720p30 with JVC HDV.

The trouble I am having is jerky/skipping playback in QT or Compressor QT movies for computer desktop viewing. The footage from all of the HD100s and the HD250 I have tried skips and sticks when played in the viewer, canvas or digital cinema desktop preview while editing. Then these same sticky spots show up in compressed Quicktime movies.

QTs I download from several sites play fine on my system, but QTs I create from JVC HD-xxx cameras do not.

Here is a link to files I have made from test shots that show the skips/jerky playback –
https://briefcase.yahoo.com/bc/twosundogs/lst?.dir=/Skippy&.order=&.view=l&.src=bc&.done=http%3a//briefcase.yahoo.com/

Here are links to a few samples that play smoothly –

MontionZoneHD from 720p30 masters.
https://www.motionzonehd.com/product.php?productid=16718&cat=0&page=3 Seafood salad, constant dolly, zoom, rotate.
https://www.motionzonehd.com/product.php?productid=18620&cat=0&page=3 Skateboarding, good foreground motion.
https://www.motionzonehd.com/product.php?productid=18783&cat=0&page=3 Motocross, watch smooth background motion.
https://www.motionzonehd.com/product.php?productid=17593&cat=0&page=1 Camera work is spotty in the first half, second half is good reference.

Apple QT HD Gallery, probably film masters, 30/29.97p QT files. I was playing the 480p versions. The 720p versions overwhelm my office grade PC, but work great on my G5.
https://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/nasaspaceshuttle.html NASA space shuttle launch.
https://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/wink.html Avalanche skiing Last 2/3 is all pan/zoom and Are These People Nuts?
https://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/bbcmotiongalleryreel.html Last 1/3 all pan, zoom, tilt, foreground motion.

Most FCP users say HDV footage plays smoothly on their viewer, canvas or digital cinema desktop preview when editing. They also say the QT movies from their projects play smoothly.

What am I doing that makes these clips stick and jerk? What should I look for in settings for FCP or Compressor?

George
Light Images

[Charles Roberts]

if your 720P30 footage is sticking and skipping in your Viewer and Canvas then you’ve got something else going on. If your machine meets spec and you have plenty of RAM and not many apps running and you have lots of dedicated fast disks with plenty of free space on them, then other than OS problems, you shouldn’t be seeing spotty playback. Does any of the above not apply? If anything rings a bell, then that’s the first place I’d look.

Do the breakups always happen in the same place or is it random? IOW, is the captured media file damaged itself or is performance in playback causing the dropouts. I did have a client who had a lot of trouble exporting from an HDV sequence (sony 1080i) and her exports were giving her tons of spotty playback like you describe. She was exporting to QuickTime Conversion and doing her codec choice in that dialog box. Well, I put a stop to that immediately, had her export to File>Export>QuickTime Movie (self-contained but no recompression), then had her take that exported movie and run it through Compressor with the same settings and her problems vanished. In theory nothing should be different. But the difference between theory and reality is that in theory there no difference between the two, but in reality there is, ya dig?

Give it a try if you haven’t already.

Personally I don’t have much truck with all this web codec and low bandwidth business, so someone else will have to chime in if that don’t get it.

[George Strother]

System specs are in my profile and below, not state of the art, but well above minimums. Same symptoms with FCP only, or with other apps in background.

The sticky spots, playing FCP timeline or web compressions, move around within a few frames of the same spot on each playback, not the axact frame. Never any dropped frame warnings. Checking frame by frame with cursor keys shows all frames present and each looks OK when it gets a turn to play. No drop outs, no distortion.

My standard practice is FCP/export a QT movie/self contained, then take that to Compressor or other. Works fine on D1 or DV projects, not so great on HDV.

Here are my system specs –

OSX 10.4.8, Final Cut 5.1.4, QT 7.1.5
Compressor 2.3, Squeeze 4.5.5, VisualHub 1.22, Episode 4.2.2
PowerMac G5 DP 2.0, 4 GB ram, 4 matched 1GB sticks
ATI Radeon X800 XT, 256 MB ram
160 GB internal SATA system drive, OS and apps only
500 GB internal SATA data drive – tests 66 MB/s with Kona System Test
AJA Kona LS capture card
ATTO UL3D, latest drivers and firmware
Huge Media Vault DualMax 1.8 TB RAID – tests 185 MB/s with Kona System Test
Dell 30 and Gateway 2185W dual monitor setup or 2 Phillips 21 CRTs

I wish someone could help me find a cure for this. It’s made the HDV cam kind of useless.

George
Light Images