[Gary Morris mcbeath]

David,

You are right: marking the in & out points on the timeline is the other way to do it; I did neither; one o’clock in the morning, I think my neurons were making gas. As in Brain F—s.

Thanks for your response.

Gary

[Gary Morris mcbeath]

Just had a friend tell me what I did: I exported from the timeline as the selected window, and not the viewer; thus I exported the entire timeline each time, not just the intended clip.

Livin’ and learnin’.

Gary

[Gary Morris mcbeath]

Jim,

Your idea is a valid one. I am only marginally computer literate (and a much better photographer), and I spend an inordinate amount of time going through manuals, reaearching the web, and reading every book and watching every DVD I can get my hands on to develop my own work flows.

When a new, and potentially advantagous app like Color comes along, giving us tools akin to a full color grading suite, well, I cant tell you how exicted I got at NAB when I first saw it. But when I first tried it out, the road blocks were popping up everywhere.

As a start, our wonderful Mr. Biscardi will soon have his DVD out. I will be one of the first to order it. I’m still waiting for my Apple Pro Training Series book on Color.

So, if a few of us got together, pooled our resources, and brought one of the experts to our area, or we go to them, we could maybe be up to speed in a short time, and benefit from our shared knowledge, as we do here on the Cow.

Gary
SaltAire Cinema Productions

[Gary Morris mcbeath]

Hi Matt,

The issue you are dealing with has to do with the MPEG-2 type recording this camera does, and the long GOP. The only way around it is to pre-roll and post-roll about 7-10 seconds around your take. Then, the few seconds FCP takes to lock on to the timecode (your lost seconds) will happen in the pre-roll or post roll. Fact of life dealing with HDV.

You can actually make yourself look and sound really cool on the set, by pre-rolling, then saying “speed” or “rolling” before you say “action”. heh, heh

Do a search here under JVC or HDV; you’ll find a wealth of info.

Gary

[Gary Morris mcbeath]

Stoneforest,

I’m not familiar with the i-Mac and its capabilities for editing. Perhaps there are others here in the pasture with more knowledge of that.

I shoot exclusively in 720 30p (since I’m not going out to film); I do everything on a G5 dual 2.7, 4.5 GB ram, Kona 2 card for running my evaluation monitor (it also does some acceleration of HDV processing).

Prior to this time, I captured, edited in HDV, then output to whatever format my end product required (like std def MPEG-2 for DVD etc.). Recently I upgraded to a new RAID in order to work in uncompressed, so I now plan to capture my footage as before, then use media manager to transcode to uncompressed 720 for all editing, color grading etc.

My settings are: Sequence – HDV 720p 30 (yours 24)
Capture – HDV
Device Control – HDV Firewire
Playback – depends on your system’s method of output to the monotor;
in my case I use the Kona 2 card’s settings.

There should be an easy-setup already in FCP that will work for you.

Regarding the firewire connection: you must connect the firewire cable to both the deck and the computer with both off, otherwise risk blowing the firewire interface in the deck or the computer; then start up the deck first, and then start up the computer; the computer should then see the deck. It’s not like USB, where you can just plug it in while hot.

Gary

[Gary Morris mcbeath]

Uli,

No audio sync issues; however, I don’t use the camera for capture; I use the BR-HD50 deck.

As an aside, I’m closely watching the development of the new generation of single chip, 2-4K cameras. Although the HDV cameras make decent pictures if used within their capabilities, and certainly is a lot of bang for the buck, and having worked for several years with an HDCAM, I am closely watching the development of the new single chip 2K-4K cameras; smaller, lighter form factor, and the potential of full raster HD and wavelet compression. I can hardly wait.

I guess we can all stay tuned.

Gary
SaltAire Cinema Productions

[Gary Morris mcbeath]

Welcome to the world of HDV. I have an HD100U, same issues. Yes, there was a firmware upgrade, but I think it was for the 200/250 series, but don’t quote me for sure. And I think it only made the problem a little better.

What FCP is doing is creating a new clip at every start/stop on the camera, and maybe at the occasional random other times as well. You will miss some of the clip because of the pre-roll time of the camera or deck, and the time it takes FCP to find the “I” frame at the beginning of the GOP; remember this is like MPEG 2 compression, with I frames, P frames, etc.

Here’s what you do: when recording on the shoot, pre-roll the tape at least 5 seconds (7-10 seconds better), then call “action” or whatever. Do the same after the take: post roll the same amount. Then, when you capture, you will assure yourself of getting the part of the clip between the pre and post rolls, that you really intended to shoot.

As an aside, I’ve developed an unusual workflow, since logging and capturing hundreds of small clips can be a pain; I have a separate small two disk RAID I use just for capturing HDV. I start the tape, select a representative clip name, hit capture now, and let it rip. FCP will increment the clip numbers. Seems to capture more of the shots, and I can walk away and let it run for whatever time I have on the tape. I then review all the clips in FCP (faster than using the tape, and saves wear and tear on the deck), select the ones I want, rename them and import them into the intended project. After a few tapes, I wipe the disk, to ready it for the next batch of tapes.

If you’re shooting something where you need to capture a specific but unpredictable action, like the 15 car wreck at an auto race, remember tape is cheap: just start the camera rolling, so when the action happens, you’ll get it.

Hope this helps,

Gary
SaltAire Cinema Productions

[Gary Morris mcbeath]

Thanks David,

Have a wonderful holiday.

Gary

[Gary Morris mcbeath]

Thanks David,

Another related question: when selecting the “recompress media using” codec, I’m given two choices: Apple ProRez HQ 1920 x 1080 60i 48Khz, and AJA Kona 2 1080i 29.97 ProRez 422 HQ.

BTW, this is HDCAM originated 1080i drop frame material, captured via HD-SDI to uncompressed 10 bit. G-5 dual 2.7, 4.5 gigs ram, Kona 2, latest driver. 10.4.9, 7.6.

Is this another case of basically the same thing? the Apple ProRez uses slightly less disk space, but I’m interested in quality.

I’m using Media Manager, because I find the Batch process in Compressor to be somewhat buggy.

Gary

[Gary Morris mcbeath]

This looks really intriquing; so if one changed prefs for a new project, (for instance changing from an HDV project to HD uncompressed, different easy set-up, different scratch disk etc.), then if one uses FCP Rescue, one would also have to back up the prefs each time you open the new project. But wouldn’t this defeat some of the purpose of being able to go back to the original uncorrupted prefs with FCP Rescue?

Wouldn’t it be something if an app combined the advantages of both of these programs? Being able to back-up multiple versions of your prefs? I’d surely pay a bit more for that.

Am I thinking clear here?

Gary
SaltAire Cinema Productions