[Jeff Carpenter]

I’ve always been fond of putting wireless receivers on my body. Either attached to my belt or in a suit coat’s inside pocket. Get the exact right length of XLR and you can un-plug from the camera and stuff that in your pocket whenever you need to walk away.

After that, make sure you’re using the large NP-F970 batteries that Sony makes. They’re bigger and should help balance out the weight of any light you get, keeping the camera pretty well balanced.

For lighting, I’ve always used this:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/162282-REG/Sony_HVL20DW2_HVL_20DW2_20_watt_Video_Light.html

Softening has to be done by cutting small squares of diffusion and just taping it onto the light. It sounds like you’re looking at bigger and better things than this, but I thought I’d mention it.

[Jeff Carpenter]

The only way to do what you want is to simply export a self-contained Quicktime file using the “Current Settings” option.

Then burn that to a DVD using the finder.

Ok, that works, but you can only fit 20 minutes of DV footage on a 4.7 GB DVD. With a dual-layer 9 GB disc you could get almost 40 minutes.

Obviously, with footage with higher rates, you’ll get even less time. I’m guessing that DVCPRO HD, for example, would get about 5 minutes of video onto a 4.7 GB DVD.

So it’s tough, unless you do things like 30 second ads or short news packages. But if most of your stuff is under 20 minutes, it works fine. And you can always split things into 2 videos if you need to.

[Jeff Carpenter]

I’m a little confused. Are you using Flip4Mac or Squeeze? Or you’ve tried both? And neither gave good results?

What’s the $600? Flip for Mac is either $100 or $180 depending on if you need HD. I’m not too familiar with Squeeze, does it really cost that much?

[Jeff Carpenter]

Why use Pro-Res and not AIC?

I’m not trying to be difficult, I’m just saying that it never really crossed my mind to worry too much about which one I was using since they seemed so similar.

Yes, Pro-Res HQ is better, but it takes up more space. From what I can tell, regular Pro-Res and AIC are pretty much the same in terms of space. And since all my output is SD DVD, I can’t tell any difference between the final product when using one or the other.

Heck, I can’t really tell the difference when it’s still HD, either. So what I’m saying is, they seem to be about the same for what I do, so the fact that I picked one over the other was more of a coin-flip kind of choice.

[Jeff Carpenter]

It’s a 2-part answer. Yes, the Dells tend to be pretty much the same as the Apple displays when it comes to image quality. So you can save some money there.

But no, I doubt your $400 monitor is as good. I don’t know what you have, exactly, but for that price I’m guessing the specs are not as good as the Apple or the Dell.

[Jeff Carpenter]

I capture to Apple Intermediate Codec over firewire. AIC is like HDV, but it fills in the GOP structure with all “i” frames. It takes up more drive space but is easy to edit once you’ve got it in there. And because the conversion isn’t too complicated it can do it live from firewire.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Well, Perian will get it to play in Quicktime.

https://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/perian.html

But I wouldn’t really want to edit it in Final Cut. I guess you could try it, but I have a feeling everything will work much better if you convert it to something Final Cut is used to working with.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Are you sure you have a widescreen sequence? It doesn’t sound like it is. Find the sequence icon in the bin and scroll to the right (past the time-code) and find the column called “Anamorphic.” Is there a check-mark there? If not, click one on.

Report back on what happened then and how everything looks. I’d suggest starting with a new sequence and dragging the clips in again to test it. You’ll have to manually scale the DV footage larger (try 133%) and then use the motion tab to move it around. Make sure the x and y positions are whole, even numbers. (So, something like 22, 12 and not 12.22, 44.22).

[Jeff Carpenter]

Forgot I had this article from back before Final Cut supported this in version 6:

https://digitalcontentproducer.com/hdhdv/depth/edit_v1_final_cut_052907/

Might be useful.

[Jeff Carpenter]

What version of Final Cut?

If it’s 6.0.2 it should recognize the footage and remove the extra frames during the capture. Right click a clip in the bin and select “Item Properties” and “Format.” Does the frame rate say 29.97 or 23.98?

If it’s 23.98, you’re already good to go! If it’s not, then use this Easy Setup:
“HDV – Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i60”
Then re-capture.

It should do everything for you by itself and you’ll end up with 24p files.

If you’re not using 6.0.2 then disregard this information and maybe someone else can help you convert your footage.