HDCAM via JH3 to FCP6 macbook pro is it possible?

[Jerry Hofmann]

I’m 99% sure that you cannot capture uncompressed HD through FireWire. That’s why the Io HD is designed to send ProRes to a MacBook Pro… The guys at AJA said it wasn’t possible to capture uncompressed HD. The bus just won’t support a data rate that high.

That said, if you could get to a system that can capture uncompressed HD, and you have an external SATA raid that’s fast enough for the data rate, you can work with it.

Jerry

[Ben Insler]

Jerry’s right. However, if you’re setting up the deck to downconvert to DVCPRO HD (which it sounded like you might be doing since you mentioned DVCPRO), you can capture that through firewire, but you should still invest in a FW800 external drive and not capture to your internal drive. Let me qualify this too by saying that I’m not sure you can capture 1080i DVCPRO HD via firewire, but I’m sure you can do 720p.

-Ben

[Quin Bisset]

Thats right I’m downconverting via the J-H3…I just received this post on another forum whats your opion, do you think this could work…is it as simple as a firewire bandwith thing? I hope so.

cheers
Q
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You have to get a Firewire card for your card slot. I got one I love from WiebeTech. Here is what you HAVE to do to record to a laptop, in a nutshell:

1- Don’t capture to system drive, use an external FW800 drive, it’ll exceed the data pipe bandwidth. Capture Scratch disk HAS to be an external drive.

2- Don’t plug camera/deck and hard drive BOTH into laptop’s FW ports, it’ll exceed the data pipe bandwidth.

3- Plug cam/deck into the laptop’s ports, and the hard drive into the card slot port (or vise versa), this will free up the limited bandwidth of both data pipes so that you can capture without dropping frames.
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[Ben Insler]

Yes, I’d agree that this approach is best. I wouldn’t say you CAN’T capture without the additional FW card – I’ve captured 720p over firewire on my Macbook Pro and it worked fine. But it’s true that you can run the risk of maxing out the bus capabilities if you are receiving video and writing over the same firewire controller, and I believe all the ports in the Macbook are on the same controller. This is especially an issue when pushing the bus capabilities towards the limits of its data transfer rates, as you do with HD, as well as when a consistent transfer rate is necessary (there wouldn’t be any problem if you were just copying data and it slowed down for half a second, but obviously this is unacceptable for video). Do as recommended: Get a second FW800 card, plug one device into the laptop’s ports, and the other into the additional card’s ports. It’s a good investment and will stabilize these types of tasks on your system.

-Ben

[Quin Bisset]

Thanks guys for the prompt response. I think in the short term I’m going to try for the firewire card and hopefully that will get me through this job.
For the future would you have any solutions on the best setup both hardware and FCP for working mainly with HDV and occasionally HDCAM footage? Baring in mind the majority of my work ends up on the web and DVD…although in saying that they want to be able to supply some as full broadcast quality.

cheers and thanks again

Quin.

[Gary Adcock]

[Ben Insler] “However, if you’re setting up the deck to downconvert to DVCPRO HD (which it sounded like you might be doing since you mentioned DVCPRO)”

NO sony deck can down convert to FW.

the J3s only do SD over FW.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

[Misha Aranyshev]

What you mean is no Sony deck can convert to DVCPRO-HD. It is plain DV over FireWire from J3.

[Gary Adcock]

[mishka] “What you mean is no Sony deck can convert to DVCPRO-HD. It is plain DV over FireWire from J3.”

correct.

DVCPROHD is Panasonic’s compression scheme, and no Sony will never support that internally on their decks.

That does not mean that 3rd parties like AJA have not stepped in to fill that void.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

[David Smith]

[gary adcock] “That does not mean that 3rd parties like AJA have not stepped in to fill that void.”

Gary,

Are there solutions other than the io-HD that would allow a laptop to record DVC-Pro HD from a HD source? I’d like to be able to record footage during a HD truck shoot. They can supply me with HD-SDI feeds, and I need to record three of them. Three towers with HD-SDI cards just isn’t feasible. Not enough room in the truck, and not enough money in the budget.

Thanks,
David

[Russell Lasson]

Nope. That’s why the IO HD is so cool!

-Russ