OT…Panasonic AJ-1200a and Sony M25U

[Shane Ross]

[Rich Rubasch] “Also, if you have the firewire card installed in the AJ-1200A is there a second slot for the HD/SD SDI optional card as well, or is it an either/or.”

Dunno the answer to the first question, but as for this, you can have both firewire and HD SDI cards on this deck. I rent one that has both.

BTW, how is the Aurora treating you?

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Walter Biscardi]

HDV to DVCPro HD is not an up-convert. It’s a codec change and no you can’t simply feed a firewire signal to the 1200A and expect it to convert the signal to DVCPro HD.

If you want the 1200A to record DVCPro HD, you need to feed it an HD-SDI signal.

[Rich Rubasch] “Also, if you have the firewire card installed in the AJ-1200A is there a second slot for the HD/SD SDI optional card as well, or is it an either/or.”

There are two slots in the 1200A

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Rich Rubasch]

But the Sony can output 720p HD via firewire, and wouldn’t that be the correct frame size for DVCProHD and the Panasonic would simply write DVCProHD to the tape?

Guess I’m wrong on this one….but in Sony’s case, what is the 720p HD it can convert to?

Shane…the Pipe is doing great!

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Walter Biscardi]

[Rich Rubasch] “But the Sony can output 720p HD via firewire, and wouldn’t that be the correct frame size for DVCProHD and the Panasonic would simply write DVCProHD to the tape?”

It will be HDV 720p going down Firewire, not DVCPro HD. The footage needs to be DVCPro HD before it gets to the 1200A or it will not be able to record anything. The 1200A Only records DVCPro HD via Firewire from a DVCPro HD source, such as an FCP timeline.

Frame size has nothing to do with it. It’s the wrong codec.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Kevin Monahan]

If you want to convert HDV to DVCPro HD, you’re making a mistake. You’ll have worse picture quality, according to Nattress. And I believe him. He says to stay native HDV for the record.

Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Workshop!
fcpworld.com
Pres. SF Cutters

[Shane Ross]

Well Kevin, it appears that there are two camps on this. Jerry Hofmann says that it is best to convert it to DVCPRO HD. Sure, there is a slight (very slight) quality hit, but working with the footage is 8x faster than HDV native. Faster in terms of rendering and prepping for various types of output. Plus the people at AJA recommend converting it to DVCPRO HD.

I happen to agree with them. But then again, I wouldn’t shoot HDV to begin with.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Rich Rubasch]

Ok, the client also wants to get an HDV clone of their source tape. So that would be a firewire camera to Sony HDV deck?

And if I did use the Sony deck via firewire into FCP coule I tell FCP to write the incoming Firewire stream to DVCPro HD and work with that on the timeline? Seems like that is a possible workflow into FCP if I want to cut everything DVCPro HD and have some HDV footage and the Sony deck.

Thanks for the dialog…

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Shane Ross]

Sorry man, you can’t do that. The only way to capture HDV as DVCPRO HD is with a HD capture card. And darn Aurora isn’t designing one.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Jeremy Garchow]

Graeme is a smart guy and I like what he does, but he also says there’s no reason to being in dv to another codec. While he may be right in a video sense (dv doesn’t suddenly look any better when digitized to 10 bit), I cannot agree with him from a timeline/graphics/color correction sense. Anything timeline finished in dv is much less quality than an uncompressed timeline. Since FCP can’t do multiple codecs in one timeline, I have to being in dv footage as uncompressed. I certainly don’t see a degradation. Mathematically and scientifically I think he’s proven there is one, but it’s a measurement that can’t be made to human eyes unless you stare and stare at certain parts of a frame and measure certain aspects of the signal. Now. Taking that into consideration, I’d certainly opt for an imperceptible degradation in transcoding to DVCPRO HD rather than wait 8 times longer to edit natively in HDV, but maybe that’s just me.

If Graeme is reading, please chime in.

Jeremy

[Jeremy Garchow]

The best way to get HDV to DVCPRO HD is get an AJA HD10AVA and an addenda lanc to RS-422 converter and feed your Kona/Blackmagic/1200A deck an HD SDI signal with embedded audio.