[Adam Smith]

If you pick up Panasonic’s free P2CMS, it comes with a quicktime import plug-in, allowing you to view the MXF files directly in quicktime. It also allows you to import those files into FCP just like any quicktime movie – just drag and drop into a bin, with no re-wrapping – but you’ll have to import and sync the audio and video separately.

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Video Photographer / Avid & Final Cut Editor

[Adam Smith]

Sounds like you’re just delivering the raw footage… I’m thinking you could buy an inexpensive DV camcorder with DV-in… shoot in DV and then back at the office connect your camera’s firewire out to the camcorder DV-in and dub it off in realtime.

The only question I have is how much difference does the recording mechanism really make for DV?

-Adam

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Video Photographer / Avid & Final Cut Editor

[Adam Smith]

Wow, I accidentally answered your next question. =P

Checking Anamorphic in FCP isn’t going to help at this point as the 170’s footage isn’t shot that way. I’d say you either scale down the 2000’s footage and edit 4×3 letterboxed, or scale up the 170’s footage and edit 16×9.

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Video Photographer / Avid & Final Cut Editor

[Adam Smith]

Yup, my guess is the 2000 was set to Squeeze while the 170 was set to Letterbox.

One semi-off-topic note when shooting in SD – Squeeze gives you the full image, anamorphically squished to fit 4×3. Side Crop gives you the full image vertically, but crops the sides off to fit within 4×3. Letterbox does a Side Crop FIRST, and then slaps black bars over the top and bottom of the image. So while you might think Letterbox is the full 16×9 image scaled down to fit across a 4×3 image, you actually wind up with a 16×9 shaped window which has been knocked out of the middle of your actual 16×9 image. Bleah.

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Video Photographer / Avid & Final Cut Editor

[Adam Smith]

If you’re comfortable with the workflow so far, I’d say give it a while and see if you get used to the look. Shooting 50i won’t have the same combing issue, but on a progressive screen the interlace combing may be more annoying… you will likely want to convert to progressive when you output for the web.

Progressive video options:

Shoot 525/25pA (not sure if the HVX does this, but my HPX-500 does) The A stands for Advanced, this is a 25p recording over 50i signal, but the transitional frames are organized and flagged for removal on ingest. You’d need to have FCP to remove the extra frames to wind up with true 25p.

Another option would be to shoot and edit in 720p for a true progressive signal. You can pick 720/50p or 720/25p – but either way you’d set your sequence to 720/50p, standard 720p streams are always 50p.

And if you shoot 720p25pN (Native) you’ll get 25 frame progressive HD video with the same P2 card record time as if you were shooting DVCPro50. In this case your sequence would need to be 720p25, as this is a non-standard 720p stream.

Hopefully I’m getting this all correct for PAL, I live in NTSC land.

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Video Photographer / Avid & Final Cut Editor

[Adam Smith]

It sounds like you’ve got progressive video shown over an interlaced signal. If so, having edge combing on horizontally moving lines would be normal.

The PAL standard requires an interlaced signal, so shooting 50i would be the norm. When you shoot 25p, you’re going for the progressive look, but it’s still recorded in an interlaced signal. So you have 25 pairs of matching frames instead of 50 individual half-frames. Since there’s half as many temporal samples, as the video transitions between fields, half of the time you’ll be seeing a progressive image and the other half the time you’ll be seeing a blend of fields between two progressive images – which will be evidenced by combing on the horizontal edges.

You’re not doing anything wrong, it’s just the nature of the beast. It sure bugged the heck out of me when I first got my camera!

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Video Photographer / Avid & Final Cut Editor

[Adam Smith]

He’s saying that the intra-frame compression of DVCProHD could likely be a better choice for the type of fast action you describe.

HDV and other MPEG based codecs create smaller video recordings by storing a full frame of video and then only updating changes to that image for a specific number of frames (GOP) before repeating the process. This type of compression can be challenged by quickly changing content. DVCProHD stores every frame in it’s entirety, so this is not an issue.

The HVX-200 might be a better choice in regards to recording format, but I’m sure there are other variables you’ll want to compare before making a decision. For instance – keep in mind that the HVX-200 does not record HD to the mini-DV drive, HD is only recorded to P2 cards.

-Adam

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Video Photographer / Avid & Final Cut Editor

[Adam Smith]

I just watched an NAB interview where the spokesman said the 5 year life was assuming that you filled the card once every day.

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Video Photographer / Avid & Final Cut Editor

[Adam Smith]

I don’t know if it qualifies as “cheap”, but, I’m also very happy with my Panasonic BT-LH1700W…

I use it both in-house as my edit monitor, and in the field. The thing feels like a tank, very solid and not light. I don’t have the PortaBrace for it, I carry it in a padded pelican case. I also use a removable Plexiglas face plate and sun shade, and occasionally an Anton/Bauer battery adapter.

I don’t believe you have an SDI out on the HVX-200, but the monitor also has s-video, component and composite inputs.

One note, you can probably get by with something cheap in the field just for checking focus and rough color, but later in the edit station you may wish you had something accurate.

-Adam

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Video Photographer / Avid & Final Cut Editor

[Adam Smith]

[Shane Ross] “[Adam Smith] “1) Record in 720-24pN (native) mode, there by creating a true 24p (with no pulldown) movie. Any other 720p format will follow HD 720p spec and pad out the selected frame rate to 60 (59.94).”

Uh…no. Shoot that format and you are now cutting 23.98, NOT 29.97. Jeremy is right, if you want 720p at 29.97, then you need to shoot 720p 30PN. Only that format will get you 29.97.”

I suppose I wasn’t clear in my post… I’d actually intended my reply to answer two things, how to shoot 24p without getting 24-over-60, and how it made more sense to me to edit that footage in a 23.98 sequence, adding pulldown on output rather than working directly in a 29.97 sequence.

Indeed 30pN works well if you don’t require 24fps, but the additional combing bugs me. Maybe I just need to sit farther back from the TV, heh.

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Video Photographer / Avid & Final Cut Editor