[Liz Smith]

Yeah, the portable player is a nice idea. But I wasn’t sure about it.

Is there any reason to get the M25U? I read that some folks really appreciated the on-board LCD screen b/c of lag time on the computer window viewer – but perhaps that was just a problem with firewire capture.

[Liz Smith]

OK, third question:

Michael Palmer over on the HDV forum just noted: “I use the M25 deck together with a Convergent Design MI (HDMI-HD-SDI converter) into my Kona LHe card and it works great keeping the original timecode during the transcode.”

Are you able to keep the timecodes for re-capture going the component/M15U route?

Thanks!
Liz

[Liz Smith]

oops – I meant component. And right on about Aja/Leopard! It stills says on one page that they are working on it.

Alright! One last question – at least until I get the darn things and have to make them work…

I saw the AJA HDAVA10 – pretty nifty. Is there any reason (besides the LCD screen) to get the M25U?

Or – someone else mentioned getting the GV-HD700… it’s got HDMI as well, a big screen, and I could use it’s portability. It only plays back HDV w/o recording, but I have a hard time imagining what I would need that for anyway. It appears to have all the I/Os that I would need, including firewire. Any reason you didn’t go with this one?

(OK, that was two questions.)

[Liz Smith]

Great! But… the Aja site is telling me that Kona LHe is not compatible with Leopard yet? What’s up with that?

For HDV, do you use the HD-SDI or analog composite in from the deck? It seems weird to go digital-analog-digital, but it would be cheaper in terms of HDV decks. A lot cheaper.

[Liz Smith]

Thanks Walter…

It’s looking more and more like a Kona card is the truly smooth solution. All of the posts and articles I’ve read so far seem to suggest that importing HDV via firewire and getting to another format for editing is kind of a nightmare. (And by nightmare, I mean all of the transcoding, rendering, and re-naming? clips… and capturing entire tapes at once? That’s madness.)

I’m a fair-weather editor. I want to log-and-capture individual clips and edit immediately.

[Liz Smith]

OK. So I’ve got the easy setup on DVCPROHD 720/24 and I’m capturing 24p footage off a Panasonic HD deck. Capture goes fine. When I play the clips back in the computer, a third of my clips have audio sync problems (roughly 7 frames off.) The other 2/3rds of the clips look and sound great.

I dumped the master clips that had sync problems and re-captured them as a batch. 2 of 8 came back recaptured in sync. The other 6 are still off. Any ideas as to why its doing that?

Also, I have the sequence and project set to DVCPROHD 720/24, but I just noticed that the Device Capture Preset is set to 29.97. Do I need to duplicate this set-up and change the rate to 24? to 23.97? Could that be causing the audio to be off as it captures many clips over an entire tape?

Ahrg.

(Hey Shane, I’ll say hi to Bill. Koester was my sound professor, but he left get his masters in Hong Kong 2 years ago. Oh, and my DP shot everything in 24, but there’s other stock footage I have at NASA I want to include that was shot in 720/60 – our standard here.)

[Liz Smith]

Good advice – I usually have the “be prepared” attitude, cause you don’t know about the future….

However, I have additional footage shot in 720/60p and 720/30p that I need to bring in as well. What about that?

[Liz Smith]

Shane-

I noticed you went to Montana State… rock on! This Varicam project is for my MSU graduate thesis/MFA in Science and Natural History FIlmmaking. Bill Neff is my advisor (I think he’s been around the department for a long time so maybe you remember him…)

Anyway, thanks for the help!

Liz

Liz Smith
WorkinSync Productions
workinsync@hotmail.com
240-678-8326

[Liz Smith]

Thanks for the help! I got some other advice from the FinalCutCow page, too. So, let me replay the workflow back to make sure I’ve got a good one:

1. Open a project in FCP with easy setup: DVCPRO HD, 720/24P
2. Log and Capture all the footage into FCP.
3. Open a new project in FCP with easy setup, DVCPRO HD, 720/30 (should this be 29.94? and does it need to be interlaced?)
4. Bring in all the capture scratch footage off of the drive into this new project. (I can add other 720/60p footage from the HVX-200 at this point, yes?)
5. Edit the project as 720/30P DVCPRO HD.
6a.Crunch an mpg out for DVD from this HD timeline in FCP.
6b. Print the final product out via firewire to an HD tape – Use the deck and tape to do an SD downconvert.

Does opening a new project and importing the captured footage off the drive really take care of the 3:2 pulldown? I don’t have to do any special rendering? This seems way too simple.

Also, when I change project timelines/settings, am I still protected if the data disappears off the drive – ie, can I still go back and do a batch capture off the original tapes if I have to because of lost clips?

Thanks again!
Liz

[Liz Smith]

Thanks for the help! I got some other advice from the VaricamCow page, too. So, let me replay the workflow back to make sure I’ve got a good one:

1. Open a project in FCP with easy setup: DVCPRO HD, 720/24P
2. Log and Capture all the footage into FCP.
3. Open a new project in FCP with easy setup, DVCPRO HD, 720/30 (should this be 29.94? and does it need to be interlaced?)
4. Bring in all the capture scratch footage off of the drive into this new project. (I can add other 720/60p footage from the HVX-200 at this point, yes?)
5. Edit the project as 720/30P DVCPRO HD.
6a.Crunch an mpg out for DVD from this HD timeline in FCP.
6b. Print the final product out via firewire to an HD tape – Use the deck and tape to do an SD downconvert.

Does opening a new project and importing the captured footage off the drive really take care of the 3:2 pulldown? I don’t have to do any special rendering? This seems way too simple.

Also, when I change project timelines/settings, am I still protected if the data disappears off the drive – ie, can I still go back and do a batch capture off the original tapes if I have to because of lost clips?

Thanks again!
Liz