[Jerry Alto]

JNeo25-

We had something similar. In our situation it was a reference issue. Our quick fix was to do a hard record (not assemble edit) with the Digibeta.
Hope this helps.
Jerry

[Jerry Alto]

Morten- Two recent workflows for us;

1. Digitize the HDV 8-bit uncompressed SD using the analog component downconvert from the Sony Z-1 into your aja IO. Edit normally within FCP with matching 8-bit uncompressed SD material. This worked great for us and the digitized 8-bit SD video looked better than digitized Betacam SP. Then normal workflow with your Digibeta.

2. If you’re running FCP5 you can edit HDV native and export back to HDV. Then use the analog component out of the HDV deck into the component inputs of the Digibeta. We learned going this route that you need to do a hard record on the Digibeta (not assemble edit). The advantage of this approach is that you have a high defintion master (albeit HDV) should you need it down the road. The downside for going HDV native is the converting process for non-HDV material and the extensive rendering time if your doing lots of compositing and effects. HDV post also has an addtional step (conforming) that takes place before going out to HDV tape which took about 15 minutes for a 25 minute show. Doing HDV native with minimal effects and compositing was both fast and the results impressive.

Hardware wise you’ll need an HDV deck if you don’t want to use the Z-1 for digitizing and a separate PCI firewire card for machine control (your AJA-io takes up the internal firewire bus).

Hope this helps.
Jerry

[Jerry Alto]

Tom- Don’t give up. You can be as close as a mouseclick (as jbrad2 suggests). I have gone through the same thing. FCP system settings can be very frustrating. They have to be perfect. Once you have them set correctly everythings fine but watch out when you change formats. And then you factor in an HDV deck with all of it’s menu items you double the possiblities of a simple switch being off.

You said that you can capture DV fine. That sounds an alarm for me. That means your deck AND FCP are set for DV.

Did you use the HVR-M10U as your deck for the DV project? If you are capturing DV from your HDV deck then you have to change the deck settings when you plug in an HDV tape. Is the HDV light on on your HVR-M10U? Is the iLink-DV down convert light off? Are your capture settings in FCP set to HDV (not HDV intermediate)? Is your machine control set as HDV firewire?

Be sure your closed out of FCP and disconnected from the computer when you make your deck changes.

I think its worth another shot. Many times I’ve stumbled onto my mistake and had to shake my head and ask myself ‘Why didn’t I try that earlier.’ I hope the solution is a simple fix and you are on your way again.
Jerry

[Jerry Alto]

Tom- I think you have a setting off somewhere. It sounds like you have been thru the menu on the deck a bunch of times so it must be in FCP. I would suggest boot down the computer and turn off the 10U. Turn on the 10U and plug in the firewire cable. Boot up the computer and before launching FCP go to to the Apple icon in the upper left corner and select ‘get info’. Select firewire and if things are working right the deck will show up as a firewire device. If there is no deck then you have a deck menu issue. If the computer sees the deck then open FCP and go to audio/video settings and make sure your settings are 100% correct.

You might want to relaunch your succesful project (you’ve probably dumped the media but thats ok) and check out the A/V settings that were correct and hey make an EASY SETUP of the settings that worked and save the setting where you can find it so you can reset your new project correctly.

If that doesn’t work it might be a ‘dump your preferences’ issue. There are a bunch of threads in the Cow FCP archives on how to do that. Hope this helps.
Jerry

[Jerry Alto]

AG- Had similar problem with FCP5 and ajaLA. Traced it to corrupt render file. We broke timeline down to three parts and finally found the culprit file. Original problem was the render drive was reaching capacity. Remember that once drives are approaching capacity they slow down. It would be nice to get an error message that said ‘render drive too full’ but its not to be.
Hope this helps.
Jerry

[Jerry Alto]

Nora- This error is usually caused by a corrupt render file. To isolate the problem in our situation we broke the sequence into three parts then zeroed in on the culprit. A bit tedious but we finally found the problem, fixed it and were able to move on.
I’ve also read on the forum that these render errors can often be caused by the render scratch drive not having enough space.
Hope this helps.
Jerry

[Jerry Alto]

Ann- Had a similar situation on a 28 min QT movie. We finally figured out that it was a corrupt rendered graphic. To find the problem file we broke the segment into about three equal parts on new timelines and exported in three chunks and narrowed it down from there. Tedious but we found the culprit. Ours was bailing from the export (General Error 34) at the same point every time (about 1/4th of the way thru the export). And guess what, the bad file was 1/4th of the way through the timeline. My guess is that your problem file is right at the end or close to it. Hopefully an easy fix.
Hope this helps.
Jerry

[Jerry Alto]

Dave- FCPHD5 does HDV native. FCP4.5 doesn’t do HDV. I just ran an HDV movie with my QT 7.0.2 and it played fine. I guess QT could be using a codec from FCP. I know iMovieHD plays HDV. At least you may be able to watch it there.
Hope this helps.
Jerry

[Jerry Alto]

Chris- I think I can address what you are looking for. I edit on a show that has been shot on Betacam SP over the last 10 years. The last two years we have edited on FCP 8-bit uncompressed going thru an aja ioLA card and have been really pleased with the results. But the old 400A Beta SP is getting a bit old and tired and our cameramen feel much older after lugging the camera and batteries to the mountaintop (its a hunting show).

So we bought a Z-1 as a second camera to test for this hunting season. On the first shoot we shot on HDV with the 4:3 screen safe bars on the viewfinder. For post we went out edgecropped analogue component directly into the aja 8-bit uncompressed so it would match all of our existing prebuilt media and work seemlessly in inside FCP (no rendering).

The footage is flat out BETTER than Betacam SP. Period. AND way, way better than DV (we had used a prosumer DV camera as our second cameras (ie. Sony 150). The HDV footage had more color depth, more exposure latitude and cleaner picture.

We are dealing with the hassles of no machine control and no timecode from the original tapes. Hopefully there will be a beefier deck out soon with 422 machine control and (can I say it) SDI out!

To summarize…. we have now purchased a second Z-1 and guess what…. the crew is out with both Z-1s and the 400A is sitting here behind me in the editing room.

[Jerry Alto]

Le Coyote- If you make sure NOTHING is selected (click in a blank area of timeline) it’ll zoom to the playhead.
Jerry