Don Greening
Forum Replies Created
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I would recommend Final Cut Pro and then purchase Graeme Nattress’s FCP standards conversion plugin for your NTSC to PAL conversion. Graeme’s stuff is inexpensive but exellent quality.
– Don
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Try trashing FCP prefs if you havn’t already done so. Can’t hurt and may solve the capture problem.
– Don
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Try trashing your FCP preference files. If that doesn’t do it then run DiskWarrior on your media drives to make sure the disk directories are in good shape so FCP can see your media files properly.
– Don
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Okay thanks, Chris. Doesn’t sound too promising, does it?
– Don
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Capture with the same codec as the material you work with. With MiniDV your capturing and exporting codec should be DV NTSC in and out. The reason your picture is blurry when running and crisp when paused has to do with your FCP playback preferences. If your playback is set to best quality then it will all look the same regardless of whether it’s paused or not. This setting takes much more computing power, however.
– Don
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If you haven’t done so yet, go to the link below and read Graeme’s article on the various methods of aquiring and editing 24p. After reading it myself I feel much more confident about the process. But as far as I know, you need to get a standards conversion plugin like the one Graeme sells in order to successfully convert 60i footage to 24p footage. Also, to get the best looking de-interlaced footage you need a ‘smart de-interlacing’ plugin instead of the one in FCP. And yes, you guessed it: Mr. Nattress sells one of those, too.
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/24p_in_FCP_nattress.html
– Don
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[Todd VanSlyck] “Will the obnoxious ‘stuttered’ look that I see in the xl-2 viewfinder be removed in FCP?”
As far as I’ve been able to find out, the stuttering ‘in-camera’ look you’re referring to is due to the short delays while the audio is being synced to the video, and will not be present in the final project. Since I haven’t had the need to shoot in 24p with my XL2 yet, I’m just going on the info I’ve been able to find out so far.
– Don
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Jerry,
Have you noticed any quality differences between Compressor 2 and version 1? Better – worse – the same? No, this isn’t an opinion poll at the mall or anything (grin) Just curious.
– Don
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[azn] “what is sd dvd resolution?”
This refers to a standard definition DVD, which is half the resolution of high definition video, that being 1080i.
[azn] “what exactly is “Uncompressed 8bit sd 16:9″?”
this refers to the codec you should be using to export your video sequence out of Final Cut Pro for use on your DVD. Export your Quicktime .mov “self contained”, quit FCP and start Compressor and use it to encode your video for the DVD.
[azn] “dvdsp? i’m guessing its a pc program. so I encode on a mac, and firewire the finished master for PC to burn?”
DVD Studio Pro is a mac program. If you don’t have it you can use iDVD which may already be on your powerbook, as this program comes with mac computers.
– Don
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If you’re going to use your theatre audio system for your camera audio you’ll need to pad the signal down to something the camera can deal with. Most mixers peak at +10 dBu and DV cameras peak at -12 Dbu. Even if you’re not an audio guru you can plainly see the huge discrepancy between the two. The other principle rule is that you can’t afford to clip a digital signal because once you do the audio instantly turns into hash, unlike the analogue days where you had more latitude: you could have a hotter signal and it would still be somewhat usable because of the nature of how analogue is recorded. The audio tracks on a Mini DV tape are about the size of a pencil line, so there’s not much room for error and even less available headroom. You also need to practice proper gain staging, starting with the house mixer and adjusting the volumne of the camera lastly to get the proper signal to noise ratio.
With your GL1 it’s imperative to record using the mic ATT setting which you’ll find in the camera’s menu. You’ll also need a couple of adjustable inline attenuators to reduce the signal from the house system even further. Since your GL1 has only a stereo miniplug for external audio you need to go from XLR cable to the miniplug.
Have a look here for the pro way of bridging that gap:
Here’s another link to the type of inline attenuators you’ll need to do this right:
https://www.audio-technica.com/cms/electronics/a05620466ab0ce16/index.html
Mr. Vanderbilt, you could also hook up your own mixer between the camera and the house system but the above method will be the quickest setup and the way I would approach the situation you’re faced with. The above way I’ve described is probably not the cheapest, though. But like they say in the car racing world: “speed costs money, how fast do you want to go?” Also, monitoring your incoming signal with a good set of headphones is absolutely critical to achieving good sound, but you probably already knew that.
– Don