[Alex Elkins]

When I did it through FCP it took about a third of the time – much faster than realtime, and it converted it to ProRes, although I believe you can also convert to Apple Intermediate Codec. It probably also depends on your processor speed I suspect. You can’t do this with FCP5 though – I think there are various long-winded workarounds, but I’ve thankfully not had to try any.

[Alex Elkins]

I think you’re talking about the Frame Viewer – just go to Windew>Layouts>Color Correction and it’ll appear. Or go to Tools>Frame Viewer.

[Alex Elkins]

[Carlo Zoratti] “if you know how to get mac connection, please some help is needed here”

Hi Carlo – I just used a card reader that my boss bought from eBay. It worked fine. Doesn’t the camera have a USB connection? Try plugging that in, then in Final Cut go to File> Log and Transfer… that should then open a window where you can see all your clips (you may need to point Final Cut to the folder where the clips are). Once you’ve done that you can transfer them all into Final Cut ready for any editing, colour correction, re-encoding for web viewing etc. It sounds like you can’t just ‘grab’ the clips straight off the card, but AVC-HD isn’t a particularly effective format to be viewing the clips in anyway. FCP converts them to ProRes, much better for editing.
The camera also has an HDMI connection, so you can capture the video through that as well if you’ve got the relevant i/o card in your computer – Blackmagic do a couple that have HDMI.

[Alex Elkins]

Thanks Anne, that’s all good advice. Much appreciated.

[Alex Elkins]

Hi John,

I’m not an expert on this matter, but as you’re going from HD resolution to SD, I’d suggest that you use the default DVD best quality setting, but turn frame controls on and under ‘Resizing Filter’ change that to Best (Statistical prediction). That’ll give you the best translation from HD to SD.
You may also want to increase the bit rate settings to around 7Mbps average, and Motion Estimation to ‘Best’.

Good luck,
Alex

[Alex Elkins]

Thanks Anne,

Could you clarify for me then whether any or all of the systems I mentioned in my original post are indeed hardware RAIDS? I don’t know how familiar you may be with any of them, but if you can shed some light that’d be great.

Many thanks,
Alex

[Alex Elkins]

[Bob flood] “it makes a true, bootable clone of the system drive that you can simply slide in, or restart with, and you are up
and running.”
So kind of like you tell it to copy the contents of your boot drive when it’s working ok in case there’s a failure five minutes later? A bit like Preference Manager??
So presumably the benefit of doing that is you don’t need to buy a backup internal drive, is that right?

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Jack,

Considering the cost, the Panasonic really is a decent camera. I recently did an editing job for a client who was filming their own interviews on this camera and I was worried that there’d be huge issues with picture quality and the import process. Actually it was fine – importing is really straight-forward and a lot quicker than capturing from tape. Of course, the media does take up a lot of space when you capture ProRes, but if you’ve got enough storage then it’s the perfect format for most editing jobs in my view.
Picture quality was better than I expected – you don’t specify what you’d be using this camera for, but you’d get away with low budget music videos, short films, anything for the web etc, especially if you’re able to use a bit of lighting creatively, and it’s ideal for the family videos.
Sound wasn’t great, but you seem to imply you’d be using a mic input anyway, so that’ll help a lot. I couldn’t tell you anything about the surround sound capabilities of the camera – I wasn’t even aware that you could record surround sound in the first place, I’ve just assumed that any surround mixing was applied in post.

Couldn’t tell you anything about the Sony, but personally I’d choose a Panasonic over a Sony camera as a rule. I find that Panasonics (and Canons) have a much softer feel, which is ideal for films and music videos. Sonys tend to be favoured for more corporate work, with their really crisp colours and sharp focus. It’s not something I’m keen on though.

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Omar – sorry, what I said about compressor settings may have been misleading. I’m not talking about Compressor (the software) I’m talking about your actual sequence compressor/render settings. Go to Sequence>Settings (or press CMD+0) and under ‘Compressor’ change it from HDV to ProRes (personally I don’t use ProRes HQ as I don’t see enough difference in quality to justify the higher file sizes, but it’s up to you.)

[Omar Estrada] “… means, rendering/exporting from my HDV 720p, 23,98 sequence using ProRes HQ”
CORRECT.

[Alex Elkins]

Thanks for all the feedback, Bob.

[Bob Flood] “I would add a third internal drive and use it as a “mirror” of your system drive, and any valuable data on the second drive.”
That’s a sensible idea, thanks.

[Bob Flood] “My second drive, which i affectionatly call “Internal Secondary Drive”
holds all my project data, like FCP projects, DVD projects, autosave vault, waveforms and thumbnails, etc. I also use it for exports, dvd media, some sound files like music and sfx, and the like.”
This is actually what I tend to do, but I’ve often wondered whether or not you should keep your project files etc on the same drive as the media. Is that generally considered a bad idea? If so, why?

[Bob Flood] “i am working on “Ghosting” my system drive so i can get up and running faster”
What does ghosting a system drive mean? Why does not doing it mean you’re up and running more slowly?

Thanks for all you help Bob and everyone else.