[Joel Peregrine]

Hi Chris,

Just personal experience – I don’t do clean installs unless problems arise. I updated to Snow Leopard and FCS 3 on two computers and both have been great – no crashes. I do run lean systems already though – no additional capture cards or third party hardware that might be broken by updates.

[Joel Peregrine]

Although it may not apply to your workflow I still use a G4 Powerbook to capture HDV when the two other intel machines are tied up. No problems.

[Joel Peregrine]

Been there. Shooting with an A1 (same chips) I deal with the trade off between noise and brightness every shoot. There is a compromise with event videography because you don’t want to ruin the ambiance with your lighting but you still want a clean image. As has been mentioned working with a slightly underexposed source rather than using more gain in the field seems to give an overall better result with the right filters. If the shot is color-corrected properly I can do wonders with two filters:

Dominik’s Contrast (free) – adjust gamma and contrast with a built in cap on ire levels
https://tr.im/BUda

and Neat Video’s noise reduction plug-in ($99)
https://tr.im/BUec

Below is what Neat can do to a noisy shot.

The motion characteristics are very good too – the area with removed noise blend very well with detail areas.

[Joel Peregrine]

Hi Pedro,

I wore a wrist brace when the pain started. That helped alleviate the pain while I was still mousing, but made it awkward to hold a camera, so I had to come up with a different fix. I found the trackball helped and after about a week with it I was pain-free.

[Joel Peregrine]

Hi Pedro,

I had the same symptoms – actually radiated up to my shoulder – and found a trackball completely eliminated all the discomfort in my wrist. After trying a bunch I’ve been using the Logitech TrackMan Wheel for 7 or 8 years now. It took a day or two to get used to but I couldn’t do without it now. Your wrist maintains the same angle so there isn’t any muscle fatigue or stress on your tendons.

https://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/mice_pointers/trackballs/devices/166&cl=us,en

Other places have it cheaper and with free shipping. Check buy.com

[Joel Peregrine]

Hi Nate,

Transcode from the 5DM2 footage to ProRes. You’re shooting yourself in the foot by going to HDV. Even though you’ll be using a lot more drive space the time saving when both rendering and exporting (there is no conforming necessary as there is with HDV) will be worth every extra gigabyte. And you can use QT if you just export your timeline as a reference movie and encode that with Quicktime. That allows you to move on to another project in FCP.

[Joel Peregrine]

Hi Christopher,

I don’t own an FX1, but its my understanding that it doesn’t shoot 720p, and won’t play it back for capture. You may have to get one that can. Was this shot on a JVC?

There may be more info online:

https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/sony-hvr-z1-hdr-fx1/93512-play-jvc-720p-fx1-capture-pc-firewire.html

[Joel Peregrine]

Hi Kerstin,

What camera? HV20-40? XHA1? What have you heard that its not compatible?

I’ve never been impressed by Canon’s down-converting quality. Ick. Mush. If you need to output SD you’re going to be much happier with the end results if you edit native HDV (and render to ProRes) then down-convert in Compressor for the DVD.

[Joel Peregrine]

No problem! We’ve all been there!

[Joel Peregrine]

Hi Jon,

I feel your pain. The variations in formats is confusing. You don’t need to recapture the footage though. Regardless the settings that were in place when you captured there is only one way the files can be captured (unless you captured to ProRes during capture, which you didn’t). The flies you have are exactly as they exist on the tape – there is only one capture preset for HDV material – HDV. The settings come into play when you put those files on a timeline. (Although – does the everio shoot HDV?) Here’s what I would do in your situation:

I’d take all your footage into Compressor and transcode it to ProRes 422 (or ProRes 422 (LT) if you have FCS 7) and either 60i/1440×1080 or 24p/1440×1080. If HDD space is a limiting factor transcode to HDV rather than ProRes. The advantage of ProRes is faster rendering and no lengthy conforming process on output. For this situation – SD DVD – the quality difference between HDV/ProRes won’t be noticeable to untrained eyes. I just did a test with some 29.97 A1 footage transcoded to 23.976 and then different footage shot at 23.976 transcoded to 29.97. 29.97 to 23.976 looked choppy, but 23.976 to 29.97 looked great, so maybe changing that one 24f angle to 29.97 is the way to go. Do your own tests though with a sample of your footage.

I shoot 24F 1080i (1440 x 1080) on Canon A1’s (same as 24P on cameras with CMOS sensors). I capture full tapes as a single file and keep them in their native HDV. In FCP 7 I set up a timeline with the following sequence settings:

Frame Size:
1440×1080 HD (1440×1080) (16:9)

Pixel Aspect Ratio:
HD (1440×1080) (Leave Anamorphic 16:9 unchecked)

Field Dominance:
Should default at None

Editing Timebase:
23.98

QuickTime Video Settings:
Apple ProRes 422 or Apple ProRes 422 (LT) if you have FCS 3

Audio Settings:
48 kHz, 16-bit, Channel Grouped

Render files will be in the ProRes 422 (LT) format. If there is any native HDV on the timeline that hasn’t had a filter applied or a speed or motion attribute changed it will also need to be rendered (conformed) before exporting for the DVD. When editing is done I place and name the chapter markers before exporting a reference movie with current setting left as the default. That file is taken into Compressor for SD DVD encoding. In Compressor I max out the bit rate to fill the disc (but don’t go beyond 7.5 MB/sec for the MPEG-2 file) And leave everything else on automatic. Those assets are in imported to DVDSP. Make sure to set the menus to 16:9.