[Andy Bissonnette]

Thanks for the help… I see your from Evansville; I go to school at Ball State in Muncie, IN. I don’t speak for everyone, but in my personal opinion, I feel my school is way behind with the “technical” side of video. We are supposed to have this great TCOM dept., however all of our money has gone to this new building, and as a result our equipment has become more than outdated… We mainly use PD150’s, which are normally good SD cameras, except our PD150’s really don’t have their heads anymore, they’ve been run into the ground. This is kind of the standard for all of our equipment.

Anyways I’ve been lucky enough to use one of the two newer Sony HVR-Z1U’s we have… So to answer your question my class doesn’t have a standard codec for HD since we mainly use PD150’s (DV NTSC 720×480). So I’m kind of without any direction and my HDV footage hasn’t been playing back in any of the classroom computers…

I am trying to learn all of this on my own. The teachers I’ve encountered here really don’t know much of anything when it comes to important things like compression, codecs, color spaces, or basically anything else “technical.” It’s all theory here, and it’s all really frustrating to me… I wish I would have gone to an actual film school where I could learn double what I am now for half of the price; but enough venting.

Thanks again for your help, I will check out that link you provided…

[Andy Bissonnette]

Why are you exporting – where are you taking the clip or sequence?
There must be something amiss with your workflow, 1000’s of others don’t have this problem, maybe your sequence settings are incorrect.

I am exporting so I can play the edited footage independent of FCP. As far as sequence settings- I’ve tried using both “current settings” and also scrolling down and clicking on HDV 1080 60i (the same settings I captured and edited with). The exported footage overall just looks different than the way it did in FCP (and I am almost 100% positive I exported with the same settings)

It’s designed to deliver HD 1080i at low datarates using a form factor people are familiar with.

What exactly do you want to do with your HDV footage?

Is it true that you need FCP or special software to play the HDV codec? I have read that somewhere (I don’t recall exactly where) and also it has been proved to me because none of my exported movies have played on other computers that don’t have FCP or similar software on them, Quicktime states: “Additional software is required to play this footage.”

As far as what I’m doing with the footage- initially I just want to simply be able to hand it in for class, but many of our projects are also used as PSA’s for local organizations and some are aired on TV. It’s frustrating because any that I shoot in HD seem to not be playable on the average person’s computer. What’s the safest codec to output to that any computer would be able to play?

[Andy Bissonnette]

Thanks, I will try that… Why should the front Port be used though? How is it different?

[Andy Bissonnette]

I see…

Any ideas on how to go about fixing this? I think it might be software based because my FW harddrive is still recognized.

(imovie and FCP both didn’t recognize the camera when following the steps you instructed)

[Andy Bissonnette]

Hey Rafeal,
I tried both and neither worked… The computer doesn’t see the camera anywhere…

[Andy Bissonnette]

Wow, I don’t have a chance to try this yet; but if it works… and it sounds like it will… Then thanks a lot!!!! This will save me so much time and stress….

[Andy Bissonnette]

Sort of…
The illustrator file was created at 720×480. I’m asking how to zoom into this illustrator file keeping its vector qualities to avoid pixellation as I zoom into it. For example when you zoom into a bitmap image of a circle in Photoshop, you see pixels, not the smooth curve of the circle; but when you zoom into a vector image of a circle in Illustrator, you don’t get the pixellation, it stays a smooth curve. How do I get this (vector, lossless quality) in Motion?