[Bob O’brien]

I’m pretty sure that iMovie does not support the XDCAM EX codec. It must be converted to something else in order to edit the footage in iMovie. (DV, AVCHD, HDV).

Bob

CAMERAS
Sony EX3 & Sony DXC637/PVV3 Betacam-SP

PORTABLE EDITING
*MacBook Pro – 2.33Ghz – 2Gb RAM
*Matrox MXO / 23″ Cinema Display

DESKTOP
*DualG5 2Ghz w/2.5Gb RAM
*UL4D SCSI Card
*HMV800 DualMax RAID0
*AJA IO
*Sony 2800

SOFTWARE
*OSX10.4.11, QT 7.5, FCP 6.0.4, Livetype 2.1.3, Soundtrack Pro 2.0.2, DVDSP4.2.1, Adobe CS3 Prod Suite

[Bob O’brien]

Ken Stone’s advice is good, but I do two things differently with excellent results:

1. After editing in an HD timeline with render settings set to Pro Res, when I create my SD timeline, although I do use an anamorphic 720×480 frame size with fields set to NONE, I use an Uncompressed 8bit compressor setting. (Why recompress your footage to the very lossy DV before creating M2V’s for your DVD?).

2. Instead of doing a copy/paste to get the HD timeline into the SD one, I drag my HD sequence from the browser into the timeline. (I don’t know if this makes any difference at all, but I remember reading that recommendation somewhere on the Cow that said this method was better).

Bob

CAMERAS
Sony EX3 & Sony DXC637/PVV3 Betacam-SP

PORTABLE EDITING
*MacBook Pro – 2.33Ghz – 2Gb RAM
*Matrox MXO / 23″ Cinema Display

DESKTOP
*DualG5 2Ghz w/2.5Gb RAM
*UL4D SCSI Card
*HMV800 DualMax RAID0
*AJA IO
*Sony 2800

SOFTWARE
*OSX10.4.11, QT 7.5, FCP 6.0.4, Livetype 2.1.3, Soundtrack Pro 2.0.2, DVDSP4.2.1, Adobe CS3 Prod Suite

[Bob O’brien]

Noah,

I have never shot 24P before. The judder has always bothered me. Perhaps I should experiment a bit with it.

I think my interlace thinking is just a hold-over from my 20 years of shooting betacam. Interlace SD DVDs just always looked better to me on CRTs.

I have only been shooting HD for a few years now – HDX900 and now the EX3 – and just about everything I shoot is destined to standard def. output. At first, I shot everything 1080i – thinking that it would be the best solution for those still watching on a CRT. Time after time though after shooting the project, I found that I had to create a progressive SD DVD for it to look good. So now, I shoot just about everything in 30P. (If it’s going to a progressive SD DVD, why not, right?)

I guess this brings me back to why I posted this in the first place. Are people still producing interlaced SD DVDs to cater to those who still have CRTs? I may have been a bit conservative in making the switch, but to me, it is just in the last couple years that the pendullum has clearly swung over to shooting everything progressively.

Thanks for your time.

Bob

[Bob O’brien]

My SD down-convert is always progressive.

I have spent hours trying to get a good looking interlaced down-convert from my EX3 footage in FCP and have had no luck. Regardless of whether I shoot interlaced or progressive, it always looks best as a progressive DVD. I am working on a MacBook Pro and do not have any external devices to try a hardware conversion, so it is always done in FCP or in Compressor.

Thanks.

Bob

CAMERAS
Sony EX3 & Sony DXC637/PVV3 Betacam-SP

PORTABLE EDITING
*MacBook Pro – 2.33Ghz – 2Gb RAM
*Matrox MXO / 23″ Cinema Display

DESKTOP
*DualG5 2Ghz w/2.5Gb RAM
*UL4D SCSI Card
*HMV800 DualMax RAID0
*AJA IO
*Sony 2800

SOFTWARE
*OSX10.4.11, QT 7.5, FCP 6.0.4, Livetype 2.1.3, Soundtrack Pro 2.0.2, DVDSP4.2.1, Adobe CS3 Prod Suite

[Bob O’brien]

Yeah, I agree. I was surprised when reading through the posts that some like to shoot sports at those higher shutter speeds.

CAMERAS
Sony EX3 & Sony DXC637/PVV3 Betacam-SP

PORTABLE EDITING
*MacBook Pro – 2.33Ghz – 2Gb RAM
*Matrox MXO / 23″ Cinema Display

DESKTOP
*DualG5 2Ghz w/2.5Gb RAM
*UL4D SCSI Card
*HMV800 DualMax RAID0
*AJA IO
*Sony 2800

SOFTWARE
*OSX10.4.11, QT 7.5, FCP 6.0.4, Livetype 2.1.3, Soundtrack Pro 2.0.2, DVDSP4.2.1, Adobe CS3 Prod Suite

[Bob O’brien]

Perhaps I have been wrong all this time… but I thought that when the shutter was off it just meant that the camera would shoot at the standard setting of 1/60. No?

Thanks in advance for you reply.

Bob

[Bob O’brien]

I accidentally left the steadishot on when doing a slow pan from a tripod. The steadishot made the pan jumpy. I immediately turned it off and repeated the pan – no jumpiness as all.

My 2 cents.

CAMERAS
Sony EX3 & Sony DXC637/PVV3 Betacam-SP

PORTABLE EDITING
*MacBook Pro – 2.33Ghz – 2Gb RAM
*Matrox MXO / 23″ Cinema Display

DESKTOP
*DualG5 2Ghz w/2.5Gb RAM
*UL4D SCSI Card
*HMV800 DualMax RAID0
*AJA IO
*Sony 2800

SOFTWARE
*OSX10.4.11, QT 7.5, FCP 6.0.4, Livetype 2.1.3, Soundtrack Pro 2.0.2, DVDSP4.2.1, Adobe CS3 Prod Suite

[Bob O’brien]

If picture quality isn’t a big issue while editing, you could also set your render settings to 50%. Renders will go much faster. When your done editing, set them back to 100% and render overnight.

Bob

CAMERAS
Sony EX3 & Sony DXC637/PVV3 Betacam-SP

PORTABLE EDITING
*MacBook Pro – 2.33Ghz – 2Gb RAM
*Matrox MXO / 23″ Cinema Display

DESKTOP
*DualG5 2Ghz w/2.5Gb RAM
*UL4D SCSI Card
*HMV800 DualMax RAID0
*AJA IO
*Sony 2800

SOFTWARE
*OSX10.4.11, QT 7.5, FCP 6.0.4, Livetype 2.1.3, Soundtrack Pro 2.0.2, DVDSP4.2.1, Adobe CS3 Prod Suite

[Bob O’brien]

I would definitely recommend making your render settings ProRes 422. Editing in XDCAM EX works fine here though… although, I’m on a MacBook Pro, running Tiger (10.4.11) and FCS2.

Best of luck.

Bob

CAMERAS
Sony EX3 & Sony DXC637/PVV3 Betacam-SP

PORTABLE EDITING
*MacBook Pro – 2.33Ghz – 2Gb RAM
*Matrox MXO / 23″ Cinema Display

DESKTOP
*DualG5 2Ghz w/2.5Gb RAM
*UL4D SCSI Card
*HMV800 DualMax RAID0
*AJA IO
*Sony 2800

SOFTWARE
*OSX10.4.11, QT 7.5, FCP 6.0.4, Livetype 2.1.3, Soundtrack Pro 2.0.2, DVDSP4.2.1, Adobe CS3 Prod Suite

[Bob O’brien]

Thanks for your thoughts guys.

Actually, I did not have my project open when I shut down FCP, so that wasn’t part of the problem.

I was not able to get my project file to open. Thinking that I had a bad media file, then, I ended up transferring all my media to a different drive, which allowed me to open my project. Then one by one I had to re-link my files until it crashed. Once I found that file, I got rid of it. All’s well now.

Thanks again for taking the time to help!

Bob

CAMERAS
Sony EX3 & Sony DXC637/PVV3 Betacam-SP

PORTABLE EDITING
*MacBook Pro – 2.33Ghz – 2Gb RAM
*Matrox MXO / 23″ Cinema Display

DESKTOP
*DualG5 2Ghz w/2.5Gb RAM
*UL4D SCSI Card
*HMV800 DualMax RAID0
*AJA IO
*Sony 2800

SOFTWARE
*OSX10.4.11, QT 7.5, FCP 6.0.4, Livetype 2.1.3, Soundtrack Pro 2.0.2, DVDSP4.2.1, Adobe CS3 Prod Suite