How to capture HDV from Sony Hard drive, very stuck

[Ed Cilley]

Brendan,

All you need to do is import the m2t files.

With a bin open, File>Import, then browse to your drive, select the files and adjust your settings.

This is different than FCP because it will create new media files (which will take longer). When you are ready to spit out a file, you will go to (I think) Output>Device>HDV.

Hope this helps.

Ed

Avid and FCP Preditor
_________________________________________________
Anything worth doing at all, is worth doing well.
– Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield

[Brendan Maghran]

Hey Ed,

Thanks for the response, I didn’t think it was something as simple as importing. However, when I try to import the m2t clips I get the message “exception- mpeg import- edit rate of clip does not match project rate.” I shot the HDV video at 1080i 30p, so I’m assuming it should be those settings? And do I change them through the media creation? Right now, my capture settings are 1080i MXF, my import and mixdown/transcode settings are DNxHD- TR 120 MXF, media type MXF.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Ed Cilley]

The project settings are established when you start your project. After the project is started, you can click on the Project tab and confirm that your project is 1080i 30p. Your project may be 60i, or some other flavor so you’re getting this error.

If all else fails, try starting a new (maybe temporary) project and look for the 30p option when starting. Once everything is imported, you can transcode to other frame rates, but if all the footage is 30p you shouldn’t have to do that.

Avid and FCP Preditor
_________________________________________________
Anything worth doing at all, is worth doing well.
– Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield

[Brendan Maghran]

This poses a bit problematic, there is no 30p option for 1080i. There’s only 50 and 59.94. I suppose I could just transfer it all in FCP and import it into avid if all else fails. Maybe because I’m on the academic version of mc 3.0 HDV 1080i/30p isn’t available? I have a hard time believing avid doesn’t offer this setting though.

[Ed Cilley]

Sorry for the bad post on my part. 1080i refers to interlaced (i). 30p would be progressive, so we will never see 1080i 30p. So I guess the question is, is it 1080i or is it 30p?

When starting a new project you should have the option for 1080p/29.97. This is what you want with 30p.

Ed

Avid and FCP Preditor
_________________________________________________
Anything worth doing at all, is worth doing well.
– Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield

[Ed Cilley]

Opps, sorry. With 4.0 you have that choice. On my Mac, MC Software 3.1.3 does not have that option.

Avid and FCP Preditor
_________________________________________________
Anything worth doing at all, is worth doing well.
– Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield

[Brendan Maghran]

I guess I could just import all the quicktime clips into Avid. Not sure what else I can do.

[Brendan Maghran]

Ed,

If I transfer all my footage into FCP with the Pro res 422 codec, then import into avid, do you think I should still transcode in Avid to DNxHD 145?

Thanks,

Brendan

[Ed Cilley]

Brendan,

When you import to the Avid, you will have to choose what type of file you want to create. So DNxHD 145 would be a good choice. Avid doesn’t handle the raw file like FCP does. It will create it’s own media clips from your ProRes files.

The problem with this workaround is that you will lose timecode. All clips will start at whatever TC setting you have set in your Avid, such as 1:00:00:00 or 00:59:30:00 or whatever. So this really sucks if you have TC logs.

I’m wondering if you have a short (small in terms of file size) clip you could send my way so I could see where the problem is? If you want, send me an email – ed at jumpcutpictures dot com It would be great if you could just bring the clips straight into the Avid.

Ed

Avid and FCP Preditor
_________________________________________________
Anything worth doing at all, is worth doing well.
– Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield

[Birger Saetre]

Hello all,
I’ve worked with the DR-60 for a few years now and it’s a very handy little device which works perfectly with avid MC.

Just to blow a few things out of the water here… do yourself a big favour and ditch the idea of going via FCP and ProRes4:2:2, it will take forever, screw up the gamma settings and no doubt cause endless further problems. The DR-60 works in many ways as a VTR but records a native HDV Mpeg-2 Long GOP stream as .M2T files… fortunately for us avid supports nativly HDV material and therfore it needs NO transcoding on the way in to avid, only a simple rewrapping into avid’s own MXF structure..this allows for much faster than realtime ingest into avid, ie, you dont need to transcode into DNX-HD145 or whatever… altough there is a small hit on response of the avid while working with HDV native material,but any reasonalbe machine now will make it worth it for hard drive space to keep material native till you get to finalizing you project, where you can transcode your final sequence to DNXHD or standard def 2:1 depening on how your delivering…

to import into avid start a HD project at 1080 59.94i, attached the DR-60 to firewire port, create a bin in avid and select import. In the import box there should be access to the spotlight search and put .m2t which should bring up all your clips on the dr60 (you might have to tell the spotlight to only look into the “Video” partition of the DR-60) select all clips and hit import… depending on amount of material, make yourself a cup of favourit brew and wait for the import to finish (should be about 4 times faster than lengt of material)…
once done all your clips should be ready in bin and you can start editing, no more transcoding required…