-
Sony Z7 CF Card Workflow problems
Hello Cow Fans,
I recently purchased 2 new Z7s and have come across a “new” situation that I haven’t had to deal with – editing in native HDV.
A little background: In the past, I shot HDV footage with a Sony V1 camera and captured from tape with the following workflow: Sony HVR25 HDMI out into a convergent design HDMI to SDI converter box then into a Kona3 equipt FCP system. Settings in FCP video capture settings are typically DVCProHD. Relatively easy – no issues other than the time capture from tape. Obviously, I can still use the same work flow with the new Z7 cams.
I decided to experiment with CF Card capture on a recent project in an effort to bypass the capturing from tape process. I set up an HDV project in FCP on my MacBook Pro and the Log and Transfer process went smoothly. I had about 6 hours of interviews to produce a testimonial based promo video. After spending a few days making subclips of relavent sound bites and building a basic (but entirely too long at 28 minutes) rough cut of the story, I thought I’d send the client a compressed quicktime to get their input before I started to slash content into a much shorter draft.
I had heard about problems with how long it takes to output “long form” programs from HDV, but had never dealt with it since I always converted the raw HDV footage to DVCProHD via hardware. Using the “export using QT conversion” to create an H264, the 28 minute sequence is currently at 27% after running for the past 90 minutes and the estimated time for completion is showing 5 hours, but even that estimate is increasing as the export continues. At this pace, I suspect about an 8 hour export – which will be a ratio of approx 16:1.
I had tried earlier in the day to simply do a reference file export, but that too was taking so long, I aborted it so I could do other things and thought I’d let it go overnight instead.
So, after a very long set-up, here’s the question(s)
1) Is this typical for HDV or did I do something really dumb?
2) Is there a smarter workflow if I want to use the CF cards in my new camera?
3) Am I simply better off abandoning the CF Card (native HDV) workflow and capturing from tape like i have in the past?
Forgive the length of the post, but I wanted responders to have good picture of the situation. I welcome any and all comments, suggestions and ideas!
Many thanks,
Steve Martin
OMNI Productions
Orlando, FL -
4 Replies
-
If you change the sequence settings in FCP, under the render tab to rending with ProRes it should speed you up considerably. Also output to a ProRes file rather than HDV – encoding HDV is what takes the time. This is the way I always work, it seems to be quite fast.
-
I just shot a doc with the ‘color’ selection in the set-up on my Z7. No indicator showed up on the field monitor but in playing back the tapes via the vcr unit on the camera, the work ‘color’ appears on the screen, lower left corner. I haven’t loaded in the footage to FCP yet and wondered if that word is embedded in the video. If so, how can I get rid of it?
Anyone else have this issue?
Thanks
Bob -
[Bob Kelley] “. I haven’t loaded in the footage to FCP yet and wondered if that word is embedded in the video. If so, how can I get rid of it?”
I doubt that Sony would be so stupid as to embed that into the video. If they have you can’t get rid of it. I’ll bet it is only on the composite monitoring, not in the firewire data.
-
Thanks. I’ll be digitizing the footage into FCP tomorrow and let you know how it comes out.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up