Don Greening
Forum Replies Created
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Thanks for the link, John. At the time I’d posted this I was only able to find the regular MC7 upgrade page.
Cheers,
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com -
[Michael Slowe] ” Any ideas on pricing?”
Reportedly less than $10K in USA dollars.
https://blog.abelcine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Sony-PMW-300-camcorder-press-release-FINAL2.pdf
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com -
Thanks for your recommendations, Matthew. I have since bought a program called R-Studio (https://www.r-studio.com) and it works as advertised. It’s a slow scan as well (7+ hours on a 1.5 Gbyte array) but I guess faster doesn’t necessarily mean better. Thanks again.
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com -
The Sony transfer applications are programmed to search for the original folder that the XDCAM EX cameras generate when clips are recorded. This folder is called the BPAV and it must remain unaltered for the apps to see the MP4 files within the BPAV folder. These applications are not able to see individual MP4 files unless you choose to use the “Import MP4” command to look for individual files.
Normally, as soon as any of these apps finds an unaltered BPAV folder they will immediately display thumbnails of all the indiviual clips contained within. So as you can see, copying individual MP4 files from the BPAV folder is the wrong way to transcode MP4 clips to MOV files, plus it’s a lot of extra work that is not needed.
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com -
[Eric Jamison] “will I answer my own post by suggesting i shoot everything at PAL standards and just convert the footage to NTSC when I return?”
You have chosen wisely. The reason for shooting PAL in a PAL country is because the electrical system is 50Hz unlike North America which is 60Hz. If you shoot NTSC with PAL lighting you’re going to get rolling shutter artifacts big time because of the difference in how the alternating current in the lighting pulses. You can’t see the pulsing just by looking at a light because it alternates too fast but it’ll be very noticeable in your shots. If you’re sure you’re never going to do your shoot with artificial lighting then you’d be safe to shoot NTSC. But only if you’re sure. Our sun just happens to be frame rate agnostic 🙂 The alternative is to shoot 24p (23.98) because the alternating 50Hz is way less noticeable in the shots.
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com -
You can use QT Player 7 for this. I use it to export H.264 movies (with an MP4 wrapper) from ProRes movies all the time and it does a superb job. Just use it in reverse to do your job. I haven’t heard about TC issues bringing native H.264 stuff into FCP 7 before, though.
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com -
The preferred method would be to first export the media using the same program that created it: in this case it’s PowerPoint. You can choose to display the individual slides then export each piece of media for use in your NLE. Sometimes not everything would export properly using earlier Mac versions of PowerPoint but more recent versions would probably work better. Exporting using a PC version is the best then transferr the results back to your Mac. You can try importing the PP show into Keynote and export from that but often things won’t export properly because of the “Lost in Translation” issues. But at least Keynote will advise you when that happens. I haven’t tried the latest versions of Keynote because I haven’t needed to do this job for a couple of years. Using the Mac version of Sorensen Squeeze would also work the best to do the transcoding as well.
Hope this helps.
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com -
1. FCP is changing to the correct sequence settings when you drop a clip into it. JVC uses the same MPEG2 codec that Sony uses, and that’s because Sony actually licenses the XDCAM EX codec to JVC.
2. if you’re also utilizing DV NTSC footage in the same HD timeline as everything else then it’s going to look awfully pixillated and blurry I would think. Editing Long GOP MPEG2 footage natively is really processor intensive. I’m an XDCAM user as well and i always transcode to ProRes before any editing is done for that very reason.
Another option is to let FCP change the sequence settings to match the footage as per usual but once your first clip is dropped in try changing the compressor setting (in the sequence setting dialogue box you’ve provided in the picture) to one of the flavours of Pro Res. Then when you render anything it will always be a Pro Res render file.
You can also choose to stay with the XDCAM timeline but set the render codec to be Pro Res. That setting can be found in the Final Cut Pro menu > User Preferences > render control. Using Pro Res for rendering means FCP doesn’t have to “conform” any edit point which takes forever it seems.
4. You can also try trashing the Quicktime Player preference file because FCP is basically using QT as its playback engine. See if that makes a difference. Even with my older 1st gen Mac Pro 4 core I never saw anything weird like you’re describing the odd time I edited native XDCAM footage.
6. I highly recommend you drop a few seconds of JVC footage into a Pro Res HD timeline, render, then play it back and see if the weirdness goes away. If it does, then there’s obviously something about your system that doesn’t like MPEG2 video. If you play back some NTSC footage in its proper DV NTSC timeline with lower field first do you still get the weirdness?
Depending on what the final product will be used for will determine whether or not you’re recording interlaced or progressive. If used for the web then shooting 24p or 30p is a must. Consumer LCD displays handle interlaced much better than they used to, so there are times when that’s preferable, especially for fast action and sports because 60i has smoother playback because of higher temporal resolution.
Let me know how you’re getting on.
Cheers,
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com -
Okay well I’ll ask some basic format questions, now that I know you’re practicing preventive maintenance on your machine.
– remember that interlaced HD has a field order of upper first, and interlaced SD is lower first. Make sure your field order is correct for what you’re editing.
– Have you tried to play back any other type of camera footage that’s not JVC? Specifically, do you have anything progressive you can try?
– You should even be able to output ProRes 422 Proxy and still get an acceptable result, let alone ProRes HQ which, as you know is way overkill for a codec that is Long GOP 4:2:0 to begin with.
– Has your FCP always had this issue or has it happened only recently? if it’s the latter then can you think back to when this started and what, if anything, has changed in workflow?
– if you bring in footage that’s clean and output the same untouched footage does the quality stay the same or does it go south?
– Have you tried transcoding the original footage to ProRes using Compressor and using the transcoded footage instead of the original? ProRes is a lot easier on the processors and GUI than the original Long GOP stuff. And your render times will be reduced too.
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com -
The very first thing I would do is trash FCP’s preference files. You can get a free program to do this for you at: https://www.digitalrebellion.com/prefman/
The next thing I would try is to do some system maintenance on that computer, especially if it’s never been done before. If your machine is acting very slow then there’s probably a ton of old cache files etc. that are plugging up your system. The one I use is here: https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11582/onyx
It’s also a freebie and there’s different versions depending on which version of OS X you’re using. System maintenance should be done on a regular basis, more frequently the more you use your machine. The Mac OS is basically a shell program to interface with the basic OS which is UNIX. UNIX was originally developed to run 24/7 and it has scheduled a maintenance program that is supposed to run in the middle of the night when there is minimal use by a user. The trouble is, most people shut their machines off at night so the UNIX maintenance program never gets a chance to run. Hence the need for 3rd party software such as Onyx and others.
Normally one doesn’t have to go to such great lengths within FCP to get decent output quality, so it must be something else. Your issue could also be because of corrupt render files, depending on how old your project is and how many times you’ve re-rendered. Use Media Manager within FCP to delete all your old render files and start again from scratch.
That’s all I can think of for now until you can give more information about your system.
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com