Barry Green
Forum Replies Created
-
[brianluce] “you need a raid set up to capture dvcpro50? first time i’ve heard that. i haven’t even heard that about dvcprohd which has a much higher data rate right?”
This isn’t true though. I’ve done HD off an external 400 drive just fine. DVCPRO50 is twice the data rate of DV, and half the data rate of HD. You can easily work with DV50 in realtime on FCP off the internal hard disk or off of an external FW400 drive.
—————–
Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
If you intend to be streaming the footage out the firewire port, use 720/30P. If you’re shooting to the P2 cards and ingesting the cards into an edit system, use 720/30PN.
—————–
Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
[Chris Freilich] “We tested the capture process, and it worked fine for 720P/24P footage, but we had hoped to shoot in 720P/24PN (Native) mode to save space.”
Ah, but there’s the cool part — FCP does the “Native” thing for you. If you record 720/24p mode (“Over 60”) so it streams out the firewire, then when FCP 5.0.4 captures the footage it’ll automatically strip out the duplicate frames and save only the active frames. Exactly like 720/24pN.
So if you’re streaming, don’t worry about the “N” modes, just use the regular mode, and you’ll get what you’re looking for.
—————–
Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
[Eric Steinberg] ” I hope I’ve understood this correctly, but wouldn’t the streaming transfer just be video/audio without the mxf wrapper?”
Yes it is.
There are two different ways to get files out of the firewire jack of the HVX. There’s live streaming (which sends the data out in an AV/C-compatible data stream just like any camcorder or deck) and there’s file transfer (which uses SBP2 protocol to interface with computers and hard disks).
If the Axio supports firewire capture of HD data, then yes you could play your clips on the camera and have them stream into the Axio. That seems like a pretty limiting way to go though. As someone else pointed out, what do you do with footage that’s already been offloaded to hard disks?
One incredibly inconvenient workaround you could do is copy those files back onto the cards and play them through firewire, but that’s just silly.
The limitation is on Matrox’s side; they should certainly allow importing of MXF files especially if they’re charging $5,000 to $10,000 for their hardware.
Focus Enhancements sells a DV File Format Converter tool which can take DV files of just about any type and change them to any other type. It is anticipated that they’ll update that software so it can unwrap an MXF file and rewrap it as a .MOV.
On the PC, you can do this already with DVFilm Maker version 2.21 or later (although I don’t think it’s totally finished yet). Maker lets you import an MXF and it outputs a Quicktime .MOV, but it expects to be using the Avid DVCPRO-HD codec. I don’t know if that would work with the Axio or not. Try contacting Marcus and see if he has any plans to add Axio support to either Maker or RayLight.
RayLight is his other program for MXF/DVCPRO-HD; it gives you a custom DVCPRO-HD codec, and Raylight can unwrap MXF’s and rewrap as .AVI’s. Seems like it wouldn’t be that much work for him to make it support AXIO as well, but he’s a pretty busy guy so unless there are a lot of AXIO customers, I don’t know if he could/would fit it on his schedule.
But man, that Marcus van Bavel is one talented son of a gun. He engineered his own DVCPRO-HD codec just off the SMPTE specifications, and his is about 5x faster than the Avid codec!
—————–
Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
[Stan Timek] “I’m a bit confused, initially I thought that FCP could do as you mention, send HD back down Firewire to the 200 for recording (not recommended as you mention) or to monitor the image out the component outs. Then I read that FCP doesn’t send out HD over Firewire nor can the camera record a stream from the Firewire port.
Which way does FCP/HVX 200 work?”
FCP *does* send HD over the firewire, and the camera *can* record it.
But that’s not how you normally work with the camera. First, the component outputs don’t work during firewire input; the s-video and composite ports do, but the components don’t, so you wouldn’t really do that anyway.
Second, while you can “crash record” the footage onto the cards; why? Would it be for purposes of using the HVX as a portable field playback device? If so, you could do that, but it seems like a fairly expensive field playback unit. I would probably suggest authoring a WMV9 high-def DVD and playing that back on a laptop or desktop computer or in something like an Avel Linkplayer.
—————–
Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
[hopperHD] “I would be directly transfering it into a 500GB external hard drive from the P2 card(s) out of the camera, and then bring it into FCP5 via fire wire. Is this the wrong workflow?”
I wouldn’t do it that way; you can only use a max of 60 or 120gb, so a 500GB hard disk is not the right tool for that job. Use small hard disks in the field; when you get back to your editing station (where you have the big 500GB hard disk set up) then just transfer the footage from your small hard disks.
—————–
Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
[hopperHD] “1) Is it possible to maintain a high quality workflow with the HVX200 without a Kona or Decklink and just import and export via fire wire?
Yes you can import and export through firewire in all the modes the camera records in. However, that’s not really how you use it. Normally you’d record footage on the cards, and then you would import the data off the cards (via firewire on a Mac, or via USB2 on a PC). You don’t really import or export footage per se; this is a tapeless workflow, so what you do is transfer files. You can transfer files off the card in a number of ways, including plugging the card into a laptop’s PCMCIA slot, or plugging the card into a dedicated card reader, or using the camera as a card reader. For the most part the old workflow of Kona/Decklink/Firewire capture is made obsolete by this camera.
2) Any recommendations on an external hard drive to directly capture from the HVX200?
Get something small and fast. The faster the better, and you don’t need a lot of size because the camera only supports up to 15 partitions on the drive (and each partition is the size of your P2 cards, so if you’re using 4GB cards, the most hard drive you can use is 60gb; if you’re using 8GB cards the most hard drive you can use is 120GB). Anything above 60GB (if using 4GB cards) or above 120GB (if using 8GB cards) is superfluous and unused.
Now, that’s for if you’re using the camera itself to control the drive. If you’re talking about offloading footage through a laptop, get whatever size you want of course.
3) I’ve heard that obviously when exporting miniDV from the HVX200 you never want to use the camera as the export deck to your hard drive, how about when exporting HD with the P2, is it ok to use the camera for that instead of using some sort of P2 deck to export?”
Yes you can do that just fine with no wear & tear; the thing is, you wouldn’t normally export HD like you’re used to. Think about it like copying files from one hard disk to another, because that’s what it really is. When the camera records footage on the P2 card, it records it as a file on a disk, not as “video footage”. You can copy that file from the card to another hard disk by just using your computer’s file-management tools (like Finder or Windows Explorer). You don’t export “footage” (although you can; but normally you don’t).
—————–
Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
I haven’t conducted extensive audio testing of my own yet, so I can’t answer this definitively and with comparisons yet. But there’s a report on one of the other forums; I don’t know how much I’m allowed to copy/paste so I’ll just quote the salient points:
“The audio. Oh my gosh, the HVX-200 has the best audio I have ever heard on ANY camcorder, even CineAltas and Varicams. The uncompressed 16 bit digital and the mic preamps and audio circuitry are exemplary, every manufacturer should take the hint and make their camcorders have audio this good. Even the ALC circuit is very good. The Z1 has decent audio but nowhere near the quality of the HVX-200. Same with the DVX-100A, while it has great audio, the HVX is superior. ”
This is quoted from forum user Dan Brockett. Ron, if copying a quote is prohibited, let me know and I’ll just point a link to his review; not sure of the etiquette of linking to a forum outside the Cow.
—————–
Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
I tested DV50 and DV, both from SD and HD origination (so, capturing in DV, or capturing in DV50, or downconverting HD to DV in-camera). DV50 looked noticeably better than DV, and the native DV looked a bit sharper than the HD downconverted to DV did.
HD downconverted to uncompressed SD looks better than DV, and it looks about the same as DV50 — to the point that I wouldn’t even bother with shooting HD for downconversion if I knew my end project was going to be SD; I’d shoot DV50 instead. If you know you’re going to want an HD version of your project and an SD version too, then shooting HD and downconverting works well; just don’t downconvert to DV; downconvert to DV50.
—————–
Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
Also when you play the footage back you can toggle the “counter” button to display frame rate as you’re playing back the footage.
—————–
Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db)