HD settings. Am I doing this right?

[Bob Zelin]

Reins –
I will give you a rude answer in a moment, but first to answer your questions – YES, you are doing everything correct. Simply use the EASY SETUPS instead of the manual Audio/Video settings, and everything will match – including your sequence presets. You can use DVCProHD, and it will all work. If you are working in HD 29.97 IS 59.94. It’s just a name game (29.97 x 2 = 59.94 – this is 2 fields).

NOW for my rude answer. Reins- do you know how you figure all of this stuff out – YOU SIT THERE AND DO TESTS. You just dont start your project – you TEST – don’t tell me you are busy, have a new baby at home, and a sick mother – you SIT THERE AND DO TESTS, and try it. Open up a TEST sequence, capture some footage, drag it into the time line and see what happens. Your questions come across as – “I have a million questions, and I never did this before, and I want to make sure that this will work, so can you help me”. You should certainly ask lots of questions, but I can see that you have not tried anything yet. SIT THERE NOW and capture the footage, and drag it into your timeline – does it play back ?
Can you see it on your TV monitor ? Can you output it to a regular VTR ? TRY IT. FORGET YOUR LIFE – this is your life – you sit in front of the computer, and use FCP, AJA, Adobe, etc, etc. until you die.

So far, you are doing just fine. Ask as many questions as you like, but try some stuff first.

Bob Zelin

ps – you can shoot your footage any way you like – you don’t have to shoot at 59.94 – you can shoot at 23.98 (for the film look), and have the VTR do the 2:3 pulldown for you, so it will enter the AJA card at 59.94. I didn’t see what VTR you are using (this won’t work if you are stuck with the HDW-M2000, but everything else will work).

bob

[Kevin Reiner]

Why is it that rude answers always take up 3-times more space than nice answers? 😉

Thanks for the info bob. I didn’t mean for my post to sound like a typical newbie request for “teach me everything I need to know by tomorrow please!”. I’ve been working in video for 11 years now, and definitely understand the testing and trouble-shooting and the wife wondering if I’m still alive stuff. However, in the market I’m in, it’s all been in SD. I keep up with industry news, but I don’t learn anything thoroughly until I deal with it in real life. So I’m plunging rather quickly into HD. I have been testing and researching for the last 2 weeks and I came to the conclusions that I posted. It being my first venture into HD, I wanted to check my findings with my friends here at the cow. The only conclusion that I can totally be sure of right now is that HD is a headache.

Lets all take a deep breath now.

Reins