[Isaac Brillant]

OK, thanks everyone.
Noah – when you say “I would save all of the HDV captured footage and the DVCPROHD footage as it was captured- using Media Manager” are you talking about the “copy” option in media manager (as opposed to the recompress option)?

thanks again

[Isaac Brillant]

Hi,

So, if the majority of my project is HDV, and I shot a few extra shots of B-Roll in DVCProHD, what is my best option? In order to use those shots, should I move the HDV sequence into a ProRes sequence instead and render it all to ProRes?

I just want to clarify that I’m talking about a situation where I would have been totally fine to begin with in Long GOP in 4:2:0 color. For this particular project all the greatness of I-Frame and the 4:2:2 color space isn’t necessary.

But I see now how converting it from I-frame to Long GOP and then converting it BACK again would be a bad thing. But you’re saying that even if I were to convert DVCPro to HDV or XDCam – and keep it as HDV or XDCam – it would still look WORSE than the original HDV or XDCam because it’s undergone its DVCPro compression and now is undergoing another layer of long-GOP compression?

Thanks very much for your time

[Isaac Brillant]

Hi Noah

I’m not sure I understand what you mean – “DVCPROHD is already more or less on par with decent quality H.264 in terms of data rate.” Doesn’t it have a much higher data rate than H264 and thats why it takes up so much space? It looks like it takes up twice the space…

Say I have a project that has both DVCProHD and HDV footage (from a Canon XHA1s), and I want to convert the DVCPro to HDV (rather than having FCP have to render HDV to DVCPro or vice versa, within the sequence).

If I do this, and convert the DVCPro to HDV in compressor or media manager, will the new HDV footage, for all intents and purposes, be the same quality as the original HDV footage – or will it “fall apart” if I do any color correction or the like?

thanks again

[Isaac Brillant]

Thanks for the replies.

I often end up with a lot of footage that I know I don’t need, but I only realize which clips I dont need once I start editing. Since I can’t alter the P2 file structure, as I’m editing I just delete (or mark to delete later) the DVCPro Quicktimes that I dont need, or if there’s only a 10 second clip within a 5 minute quicktime, I just open the quicktime movie in Quicktime, trim it, and save as a new independent movie (and delete the original Quickktime.)

I dont know if there’s a way to do this in the original P2 folder once it’s off the card, for clips or portions of clips that I know 100% that I wont need. (I’m on a mac book pro and Final Cut 6, BTW)
I dont like to delete clips off the P2 card during a shoot because its too easy to make a mistake.

But back to the other thing – converting DVCProHD to another codec– I know its not “best practice” but if I were to do it, what would be the best codec to convert it to? I’ve intercut HDV and DVCProHD in projects and it worked OK. Or, would XDCam be a better codec to compare with DVCProHD.

Another way to look at it – for these types of projects I’d be just as happy using an HDV camera or an XDCam camera or a 7D. I just happen to have a HPX170 for other projects. So if I convert DVCPro to one of these codecs in Compressor or through Media Manager in FCP, will I get the same result in terms of compression as I’d end up with had I originally shot on one of the other cameras? Or do the cameras compress it differently internally and it’s only the same codec in name?

Thanks again guys!

[Isaac Brillant]

Thanks for the replies.

I often end up with a lot of footage that I know I don’t need, but I only realize which clips I dont need once I start editing. Since I can’t alter the P2 file structure, as I’m editing I just delete (or mark to delete later) the DVCPro Quicktimes that I dont need, or if there’s only a 10 second clip within a 5 minute quicktime, I just open the quicktime movie in Quicktime, trim it, and save as a new independent movie (and delete the original Quickktime.)

I dont know if there’s a way to do this in the original P2 folder once it’s off the card, for clips or portions of clips that I know 100% that I wont need. (I’m on a mac book pro and Final Cut 6, BTW)
I dont like to delete clips off the P2 card during a shoot because its too easy to make a mistake.

But back to the other thing – converting DVCProHD to another codec– I know its not “best practice” but if I were to do it, what would be the best codec to convert it to? I’ve intercut HDV and DVCProHD in projects and it worked OK. Or, would XDCam be a better codec to compare with DVCProHD.

Another way to look at it – for these types of projects I’d be just as happy using an HDV camera or an XDCam camera or a 7D. I just happen to have a HPX170 for other projects. So if I convert DVCPro to one of these codecs in Compressor or through Media Manager in FCP, will I get the same result in terms of compression as I’d end up with had I originally shot on one of the other cameras? Or do the cameras compress it differently internally and it’s only the same codec in name?

Thanks again guys!

[Isaac Brillant]

Hi,

Nope, i didnt keep the P2 masters… This is for a high school open house video, not very high end, so its not like I’ll need to reimport or whatever other benefits there might be from keeping the P2 masters. It just all adds up: If I have the P2 masters, the DVCPro quicktimes, and a backup of those quicktimes on another harddrive, thats tripe the space.

What made me think of H264 is that I recently did a project with the Canon 7D and 5D which capture as H264, so I was wondering if I could convert my DVCPro footage into the equivalent of what the 7D captures as, and then if I ever need to use it I’ll do what you do with the 7D – transcode it to Prores.

Is the way the 7D compresses H264 very different from the way Compressor would convert a file to H264?

thanks for your replies

[Isaac Brillant]

Hi,

I just used pluraleyes on a new project. It was such a time saver. Thanks for the tip.
Question – I noticed that it creates an aiff file called “clipname”.mov_synctemp.aiff for every clip.
Do I need to keep these or were they just created to do the syncing and I can get rid of them?

Thanks again

[Isaac Brillant]

Thanks guys. I wasnt able to use plural eyes, or maybe it was multiclip I couldn’t use – because the 2 cameras used different codecs. But I’m going to try it next time.

If I understand it correctly, it just uses the audio waveform to sync up all the clips?
Do you know if you can put multiple clips / takes on the same timeline and it will sync A Cam’s Take 1 with B Cam’s Take 1, and A Cam’s Take 2 with B-Cam’s Take 2? Or can you only have 1 clip per track?

Thanks

[Isaac Brillant]

Thanks for the reply…

I’m in a situation where the 3 cameras didnt always start and stop at the same time.

So I want to line up all the cameras on a timeline and get them in sync manually, and then click a button to sync them, so that now if choose to move a section of the clip on v1, the corresponding sections on clips on v2 and 3 will go with it.

thanks

[Isaac Brillant]

Thank you both.

Jeremy – when you say to use the raw footage, you mean before it has been ingested into final cut and wrapped as a quicktime?

Do I have to check clip by clip to see if compressr chose “lower first” and change each one clip by clip, or can I just check the first clip in the batch?

Also, is there a way to tell if something was shot in 24P or PA?

Does it make sense that my footage looks fine when opened in Quicktime, and only shows the interlacing when I open it in Final Cut?

thanks