-
Sony HVR-M25U Connectivity with FCP
We’re breaking into the HD world with a HVR-V1U camera and a HVR-M25U HDV deck. I was looking at the deck, trying to figure out how this thing was going to hook up with the Kona 3 card to provide both machine control and HD monitoring.
Machine control….the HVR-M25U does not have a RS-422 port, but the Kona card does. Instead, the M25U has a LANC jack. How does this LANC connection interface with the Mac? Where do I plug it in?
Secondly, what’s the best way to interface the M25U with the Mac? We were planning to use the Firewire connection to output the HDV video to the Mac. The ONLY input I can find back into the M25U is the Firewire connection. Am I missing something?
Also, how do I hook up the HD monitor? I would assume that we can hook up one of the HD-SDI connectors out of the Kona card straight to the monitor. Is this right?
-
12 Replies
-
[Tim Allison] “Also, how do I hook up the HD monitor? I would assume that we can hook up one of the HD-SDI connectors out of the Kona card straight to the monitor. Is this right?”
Right.
[Tim Allison] ”
Machine control….the HVR-M25U does not have a RS-422 port, but the Kona card does. Instead, the M25U has a LANC jack. How does this LANC connection interface with the Mac? Where do I plug it in?”If you plan on capturing via firewire, then connect the deck to the computer via firewire. That connection provides deck control AND video and audio input. For input you avoid the Kona Card completely….IF you want to capture as HDV.
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
To further Shane’s post…
To connect the M25U to the Kona 3, you’ll need to purchase an AJA HD10AVA converter box. This will give you the option to convert your analog component video and analog audio to HD-SDI. This is what you need to connect to the Kona 3. It works very well. I use this every week and have done so since the converter came out on the market. Then, you use your firewire for machine control only. We capture everything using the DVCProHD 108060i codec for editing purposes.
HDV is not an editable format. Sony engineers will tell you this BUT it seems that Sony marketing has left this out of their ad campaigns. Well…. if you are only planning to edit one stream of video with no effects and simple titles… HDV will do just fine. BUT just wait until you have to conform your sequence when you want to send your timeline to tape… You’ll pull your hair out.
_______________________________
Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com -
Wayne Carey says
“HDV is not an editable format. Sony engineers will tell you this BUT it seems that Sony marketing has left this out of their ad campaigns. Well…. if you are only planning to edit one stream of video with no effects and simple titles… HDV will do just fine. BUT just wait until you have to conform your sequence when you want to send your timeline to tape… ”
Wayne, can you expand on this? Do you mean “uneditable” because it would be very difficult to stack clips upon on another and the render time would be out of control, or do you mean uneditable because it is impossible to log and capture the HDV footage like you would with regular say SD footage? I was just checking out my cart at B&H for the sony HVR V1U and the sony HVRM15U deck, and you got me all freaked out.
Please explain more!jesus
http://www.zeechproductions.com
G5 guad 2gigs FCP5.1.2 -
Wayne,
That is NOT what I wanted to hear. We just bought one of those AJA converters to connect our BetaSP deck to the Kona 3 card. That is an expensive converter. I’m going to take a little bit of a “prove it” attitude and try to edit native HDV before ordering another AJA converter. Hopefully, we won’t find the conforming process anywhere near as “hair pulling” as you have.
-
[zeech26] “Wayne, can you expand on this? Do you mean “uneditable” because it would be very difficult to stack clips upon on another and the render time would be out of control, or do you mean uneditable because it is impossible to log and capture the HDV footage like you would with regular say SD footage? I was just checking out my cart at B&H for the sony HVR V1U and the sony HVRM15U deck, and you got me all freaked out.
Please explain more!”Sorry, if I freaked you out… but here’s the thing about HDV. HDV in its native format is a transport stream, meaning, its used for carrying data from one source to another. The rest of the video world is an elementary edit stream, meaning, the data stream is used for video and audio, therefore, it is an easily editible format. HDV is for data only. HDV is in the Long GOP MPEG format. For every frame of video, there is one full frame of video and fourteen frames of interpolated video between these full frames. When you edit, you probably will not land on one of these frames, therefore, recapturing footage may mean that you video will not sync up properly or it may everytime. Its a hit or miss game. This is the reason why FCP has to recaculate the frame or conform the video when you export to video tape.
Please listen carefully… There is nothing wrong with HDV if you are going to edit simple programs or sequences. BUT for the rest of us who use HDV in a professional setting, we always capture our footage through a video capture card such as the AJA Kona 3 into a codec that is edit friendly. That could be anything. Most of us like to use DVCProHD. You might decide that you want to capture 8-bit Uncompressed, that’s fine, too.
Your choices for a camera and a deck are great… I’m just trying to educate you on the workflow inside of FCP. So, if you do decide to use a capture card, you’ll need to purchase a converter box for the analog video like the AJA HD10AVA unless you purchase the AJA Kona LH series, which can handle this.
_______________________________
Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com -
I think you misunderstood me. If you have this converter, you don’t have to go through ANY conforming process. Just edit and output like normal.
Are you converting BetaSP to HDV?
_______________________________
Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com -
I re-read your post. First off, it is good news to see that the DVCProHD codec has a 1080/60i flavor. I was under the mis-assumption that anything DVCProHD would always be 720p.
Secondly, we are just now breaking into anything HD. For the past 15 years, we have been shooting and working exclusively with BetaSp. Over the course of that time, we have built up an extensive and valuable video library on Beta tape. We decided on the Kona 3 card mainly because it offered up/down/cross conversion features to help us get through the next (maybe painful) 2-3 years when we might be forced to use Beta footage in some of our HD productions. However, the Kona 3 does NOT have any analog inputs, so we had to buy an AJA HD10AVA converter to hook up the BetaSP deck. In order to use the component outputs of the HVR-M25U deck, we would need to buy another converter, and that’s approximately $800 I don’t want to spend.
And finally, the last consideration…..I’m trying to avoid having to purchase new storage RAIDs for our 3 FCP systems. We presently use G-RAID Firewire drives. They work great for 8-bit uncompressed BetaSP video on our FCP systems, and can even handle a single stream of 10-bit uncompressed. They should be plenty fast enough to edit native HDV video. I know they will NOT be fast enough for uncompressed HD. I just looked around the Internet trying to find the bandwidth for the DVCProHD codec, but I couldn’t find it. However, I’m pretty sure it is not a very demanding codec, at least as far as bandwidth goes.
-
All very interesting. So I am getting down to the short srokes here conforming an HDV project (having captured it FireWire native froman HVR-M25U), re-connecting it to an offline FCP edit — and I wouldn’t say it was a simple cuts-only project — far from it — motion changes, stacked opacity dissolves, text supers… and you’re saying I should not be able to do this?
What made the workflow really function, though, was MediaManaging the project (after picture lock) to eliminate unused reels/footage, then uncompressing. Then I was free to pick individual frames for still export (you can’t do this for sure with native HDV — because unless it is an “i” frame it DOES NOT EXIST), do some pretty nice “Shake” interpolated super-slow-mo’s, FinalTouch colour correction, and its ready for release.
The overall data rate of HDV is attractive, and doesn’t require a fast RAID — what it DOES require is a honking fast processor to synthesize all those predictive frames, so that it looks like you were shooting 60i rather than 2p. Yes, that is what you are shooting. The rest are made up out of difference frames — and the format is particularly vulnerable to falling completely apart if anything fast happens in your frame — a flashbulb, a flag waving, somebody waves a hand in front of the lens — just watch what happens there!
No such thing as free lunch.
JPO
-
[JP Owens] “I am getting down to the short srokes here conforming an HDV project (having captured it FireWire native froman HVR-M25U), re-connecting it to an offline FCP edit — and I wouldn’t say it was a simple cuts-only project — far from it — motion changes, stacked opacity dissolves, text supers… and you’re saying I should not be able to do this? “
Oh, no…. not at all, JP. I am talking about the fact that HDV has to go through a very lengthy conforming process before you output to tape. Most of use here don’t have that kind of time. And… have you tried to go back to an old project and recapture the HDV footage? Did it work for you?
[JP Owens] “The overall data rate of HDV is attractive, and doesn’t require a fast RAID — what it DOES require is a honking fast processor to synthesize all those predictive frames, so that it looks like you were shooting 60i rather than 2p. Yes, that is what you are shooting. The rest are made up out of difference frames — and the format is particularly vulnerable to falling completely apart if anything fast happens in your frame — a flashbulb, a flag waving, somebody waves a hand in front of the lens — just watch what happens there!”
This is what I was talking about as to the native HDV video itself, but there is always work around to this… Tim was asking about the data rates for DVCProHD. It can run just fine on a firwire drive. Data rates around 15 mb/s so any firewire drive will handle this with ease. Now, you can go to http://www.digitalhaven.com ans download a data rate calculator that will help determine your drive sizes.
_______________________________
Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com -
…editing in DVCPRO HD might mean you have to MASTER in DVCPRO HD aswell…
Those DVCPRO HD decks don’t come cheap.On the other hand mastering on HDV might not be the best option. Tough call.
A 38 min piece with loads of effects, slo-mo, CC and grafics took us 23 hours
to render when we choose “export to tape” (before we could acctually record
it to tape). This was on a dual 2.5Ghz G5 with 3Gb ram. Something wrong that
you notice while recording to tape….call me in another 23 hours…
You got the time and don’t want to spend the $$$$$ on a DVCPRO HD deck, maybe go HDV.Other way could be you edit in native HDV, copy master HDV sequence to DVCPRO HD
prepered sequence and render…DVCPRO HD is less datarate then uncompressed SD 8bit, so no worrys on G-raid drives
if going that route.fwiw,
Robert
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up