Evan Mcintosh
Forum Replies Created
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Yes, using the 23/24 setting on the deck will allow you to ingest 1080psf/23.98 HDSDI with a capture card (firewire will not work)–the HDX tapes can be standard pulldown or advanced. For 1080p30 use the standard 59/60 setting.
Evan McIntosh
McIntosh Productions LLC
Atlanta, GA
HDX900 owner/operator -
The 1400 records HD only, and only supports input of DVCPROHD over firewire. You could conceivably do a software upconversion to DVCPROHD (very marginal quality) or use a Kona 3 to upconvert and send HDSDI to the deck. No matter what you do, your tape will not be DVCPRO50–the deck can only play that format. If you need PRO50, rent a deck or make a self-contained quicktime and send on disk to a post house with a DVCPRO50 VTR.
Evan McIntosh
McIntosh Productions LLC
Atlanta, GA
HDX900 owner/operator -
Starting from factory defaults:
880 DIF SPEED S100
894 HD -> DIF OUT DV
883 DIF OUT CH 63Evan McIntosh
McIntosh Productions LLC
Atlanta, GA
HDX900 owner/operator -
I have a DSR-70 and there definitely is some magic for getting it to read the downconverted signal from the 1400. I haven’t noted the exact settings, but in addition to all the obvious menu items on your 1400, try turning DIF SPEED to S100 and set a custom DIF OUT CH (and possibly DIF CONFIG). Within a few minutes I usually figure it out. When I have a second to figure them out again, I’ll post the exact settings.
The DSR-70 is picky (won’t read FW video from FCP or Avid), but the nice thing is that when the 1400’s firewire downconvert is working it sends video, audio, and tc down the same pipe.
Evan
McIntosh Productions LLC
Atlanta, GA
HDX900 owner/operator -
>It’s important to note that if you shoot 24PA, digitizing over firewire
>is the only good way of removing the pulldown.…or use the 1400 VTR to send 1080psf/23.98 over HD-SDI. If you intend to ingest over firewire, definitely shoot 24pA.
Evan McIntosh
McIntosh Productions LLC
Atlanta, GA
HDX900 owner/operator -
Stan,
My experience is with the 1400, but the two decks are very similar, so hopefully this advice is valid. The deck will always lay down 720/59.94p. However, it’s possible for the VTR to lay down 24p flags that allow the recorded material to be easily further utilized at native 23.98 (just like a Varicam or HDX source tape). This works with both firewire and HD-SDI connections, and proper settings in the menu and EXT TC switch.
Evan McIntosh
McIntosh Productions LLC
Atlanta, GA -
Every country is different when it comes to bringing in gear. Sometimes it depends on the agent on duty when you arrive.
You might look into hiring a fixer. In Kenya, we’ve used View Finders.
https://www.viewfindersltd.com/Even so, I have still had gear impounded for a couple days on 1 out of 2 trips there. If the humanitarian organization is large enough, sometimes they will have contacts that can help you out as well.
Swaziland accepts a carnet, Kenya does not. I have not been to Swaziland, but FWIW, South Africa was no problem. If you choose to travel without a carnet, register your gear with US Customs on form 4455. This will eliminate problems re-entering the US.
Make sure your business insurance will cover your equipment in both of these places.
Also, as these are 50Hz countries, be sure to adjust the camera’s shutter to 1/50 second when under artificial light…or else you will get flicker.
Evan McIntosh
McIntosh Productions LLC
Atlanta, GA
HDX900 owner -
Hey Matt,
As long as you used the Cinema Tools Conform feature to change the speed to 29.97p, the artifacts you’re seeing should not be the result of the 50p originiation.
To help me understand, are you taking composite out of the Kona and feeding a settop DVD recorder? What happens if you connect composite out directly to a CRT–does the same thing happen? If not, try using compressor to make the DVD–using composite to create the DVD negates many of the benefits DVD affords you–and many people watch their DVDs on component connections that will suffer much fewer NTSCisms.
Secondly, in FCP, under View:Video Playback–make sure the setting is for Kona 720p 29.97 8bit and that the downconvert is happening in the Kona control panel.
It’s possible that what you’re seeing is just NTSC at it’s finest. HD origination in general can exacerbate that–with it’s increased detail. Filtering in the Kona downconversion should take care of a lot of that, but you might try blurring the image ever so slightly in FCP. A directional blur in the vertical direction or the flicker filter can sometimes help.
Evan McIntosh
McIntosh Productions LLC
Atlanta, GA -
The thing I found was downconvert over firewire would only work with FCP if there was an image ‘up’ from the tape when starting everything–not being in EE mode when opening Log and Capture.
So change menu 140 OUTPUT from 0000 EE to 0001 TAPE to automatically make this happen.
Evan McIntosh
McIntosh Productions LLC
Atlanta, GA -
Matt,
The good news is the material is progressive and they’re aerials. Aerials are often shot at ‘off’ speeds, usually overcranked, so depending on your material, it may even look better when conformed to a normal NTSC rate.
Try taking a 50fps clip into Cinema Tools (make a copy first–it will change the original file) and use the Conform feature to adjust the frame rate to 29.97 or 23.98. The clip will play in slow motion, which may end up smoothing the motion. If you like it, you can do a batch on all your clips. This involves no PAL to NTSC conversion voodoo–and would be perceptably lossless, except for the speed change. Alternatively, you could conform to 59.94fps (not sure Cinema Tools will do this directly, perhaps use Motion or AE) and the footage will be sped up 20%.
Another option is to drop every other frame (to get to 25p) and conform to 23.98. It’s more work, but the speed change would be minimal.
It all depends on the material what looks best (helo speed/height/shutter/mount/subject). Give it a try and report back.
Evan McIntosh
McIntosh Productions LLC
Atlanta, GA
HDX900 owner