Need some serious help with DVCPRO HD

[Chad Denning]

I was exporting them because they are P2 files that needed to be synced with my DA88 tracks. There are gaps of black between some of the clips where the cameramen shut down to change batteries or whatever. I figured if they were just one clip each I could multicam them all. It’s all working now. Between the audio issues and 5 formats of media, and the wonky P2 handling, I cannot wait to rip open FCP6.

I’m in a little better frame of mind now… although I was still here at the office until 1:30 am cutting away. Thanks for your help guys. This was our first foray into DVCPRO HD. 95% of the HD we do in house is HDCAM, and we have that work flow down pretty pat.

I lurk on these boards quite a bit but never really chime in because it seems 99% of the problems are covered 2 ways to Tuesday. Thanks for the hand!

[Chad Denning]

And just clarify for posterity’s sake, in case someone else is in this boat: I didn’t export using conversion. I used plain ol’ “export QT movie” and left it with sequence settings. That’s what was driving me nuts. It would export out of there as 1280×720 instead of 960×720 like all of the other footage I conformed. A big ol’ head scratcher if you ask me.

[Chris Borjis]

I’m about to place my order for the upgrade.

[Brian Newell]

Hey Peace Frog et al

We were intrigued with your post, as we have had the same problem here, although under simpler conditions, at our post house here. When we have HVX recorded p2 footage combined with Varicam footage on the timeline, and make a self-contained Quicktime, it exports to 1280X720 and then has to render when we drop the quicktime back in a new timeline. If we export just varicam or just p2 footage alone, it exports fine out to 960X720 and the quicktime does not have to render in the timeline.

Using the QT Conversion and specifiying the specific frame size works, but QT Conversion takes much longer to export than a regular “export to QT”, and this is a situation where time is of the essence at the end of the day, so we are trying to still use the regular, fast QT export but without having to render the whole QT in FCP after the fact.

Running on PPC G5s with Final Cut 5.1.4 (and no, we cannot upgrade to FCP 6 right now. Hopefully this will solve the issue when we upgrade eventually, but not for now)
Shooting 720p23.98 DVCPROHD on Varicam and HVX