Chris Poisson
Forum Replies Created
-
Donato,
I don’t know what they do to it, but I just put things up at 480×360 in H264 at the original frame rate. So far I’m happy with the result. I’m gonna put another movie up this morning with the above specs, we’ll see how it looks later.
-
Take a look at Vimeo.
-
Shawn,
It is specific but somewhat hidden in the manual, what you need to do is put the camera in VCR mode, unplug the FireWire and go into the setup menu, set the playback standard to HDV. It won’t work on auto. Then plug in the Firewire and FCP will see it.
-
Depending on the shot, Smoothcam’s great or it sucks. The other day I was stabilizing a shot from a 29 second master clip, it took over an hour in an SD timeline, it was so slow, I took the clip into AE while it was analyzing, stabilized the shot, and added a moving track matte for an enhanced sky, rendered it out and put it in my project, and the smooth cam still had a half hour to go. So much for progress. BTW the Smoothcam stabilize was okay, but I just can’t wait that long.
On shots with a lot of motion blur, it puts a horrible ghosting on some of it, which is unacceptable. Unless of course you like the effect, in which case you can say you meant to do that.
-
Ahh the fields issue, good point Bruce. If you use 60i footage with this method, FCP 6 will automatically put the shift fields filter on it, I forgot about that ’cause everything I’ve been shooting is at 30p, so it does not add the filter as it doesn’t matter. It’s 60i, yes, but both fields are the same. Great look too.
Good point also from Frank on framing, I didn’t know about viewfinder guides on the A1, thanks for the tip.
-
I totally agree with Shane. I have been shooting EVERYTHING at 30p for going on 3 months now, and I just love it. You get the progressive look without the BS of dealing with 24fps.
BTW, before I had my Canon A1 I shot a lot of 30p with my DVX100, and I was fond of that look as well. It’s funny, but even when using Nattress film look filters on 29.97 footage over tha past few years I was using the 30p option in there as well. I just like it better than 24.
-
Shawn,
I researched the hell out of this exact topic, and here’s what works for me. I capture from my A1 native Firewire. Set your playback standard to HDV, and FCP will see the camera. Put the native HDV files in an SD 8 or 10 bit or ProRes timeline, it will automatically letterbox it. Scale it up to fill the screen top and bottom, you can pan and scan or zoom in if you want, add whatever filters you like, render and go to tape.
This workflow comes from a lot of smart folks on the FCP and HDV forums including Graeme Nattress. I use it all the time and it is just great. Only one render hit doing it this way, if you conform your footage before you edit you get two hits, not good.
-
Those $1200 prices are for the body only. I got my complete A1 kit at BuyDig.com for $3400.
-
I totally agree with Bret. A roundtrip to Motion for this is a waste of time. VERY easy in the motion tab.
-
You need to set up your playback options in FCP AND in your Kona control panel. I play back HDV through my Kona LH every day.