[Mark Maness]

I put in a word for you, Walter! I always support the need to working software. I currently don’t work in the 720p arena yet but I’m sure it will come soon.

To add to this problem, I found one that is just as important. My company currently uses the XDCAM system (seroiusly looking at XD HD) and FCP claims to have full support for IMX and XDCAM. Not so! I just installed FCP 5.1 and found out that I have less support than I did in 5.0.4. Strange isn’t it?

I have a theory here as to what happened… I think Apple grabbed an earlier version of FCP and fixed the problems that people complained about. While completely forgetting that version 5.0.4 fixed other problems. I have started noticing the problem with 5.1 are the same problems we had with 5.0 – 5.0.3. I think Apple dropped the bomb on us with this one.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

I have one running 10.4.6 just fine. Backup everything necessary and give it a try.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Have you tried to capture it anyway? I know what you are talking about ever since upgrading to the lastest and greatest (not 5.1), I get a simliar message box. If i have selected five clips and I batch capture them it will say that I have ten clips to capture but it only captures the five clips I have selected. I’ve learned to just ignor that message and capture as normal

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Thanks for the reply, Jeremy. Here’s exactly what I am doing. I have footage that is shot with our XDCAM at 16×9 (which is 720×486). I have the capture settings adjusted for anamorphic to accomodate the 16×9 footage. I am then placing them into a 4×3 timeline beacuse this is for brodcast.

All are using the IMX50 codec, which is the codec of the XDCAM camera. I want to stay native so as not to translate footage to another codec for yet another compression. There are no field order issues other than compressing the 16×9 image to its natural state so that everybody doesn’t look tall and skinny (of which I’m sure my talent would appreciate that).

I’m sure that you know that 16×9 footage has an aspect ratio of -33.33 (this is true if it has been checked in the Browser window) under the Motion tab – Distort. Now, if you capture directly as anamorphic footage, this tab will say that the aspect ratio is 0. Gettting a little confusing isn’t it…

I have tried capturing both ways and I get the same results each time.

Capture Settings: IMX50 anamorphic
Sequence Settings: IMX50 4×3

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

The problem is a simple one… You are trying to capture and write to a drive on the same firewire bus. It doesn’t matter how many fire ports you have on your powerbook, they all use the same bus. Try adding a firewire card to your powerbook and hoo the drives up thru that. Then whe you are done, unhook your capture device and you can use any firewire port to edit with.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Are you editing in the HDV settings? If so, that is your problem. In order to edit in the HDV codec, you’ll need a capture card that supports HDV playback. Secondly, I would have to say that you computer is a little on the slow side for HDV. HDV in its native codec really needs a super computer to run. I would have to say that most of us using HDV capture it using our capture cards into another codec.

Sony even mentions that HDV is really a transport stream, not a playback stream. That’s why it doesn’t edit very well at all. It has to convert the video from data to video and back to data in real time – that doesn’t work very well. Ingesting it as DVCPRO HD or uncompressed 1080i works wonderfully with HDV if you have a converter box like the AJA HD10A or the Mirdana HDV-Bridge.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

I am aware of this and always monitor thru my AJA Kona 2 card only. It gets worse when I render the footage. I’m noticing a blurring effect that I am getting along with aliased edges. You really notice the problem with horizontal lines with objects in the picture. Downconverted HD footage is completely fine. This just happens with SD footage that is shot 16×9.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Yes… I am monitoring this thru my AJA Kona 2. That’s where I’m noticing the blurring effect that I am getting along with aliased edges. You really notice the problem with horizontal lines with objects in the picture.

And by the way, the HD footage does look alot better.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

You’re not wrong at all… HDV is a different format all together than anything we have ever seen. First of all, you need to know that HDV is a transport stream – not a video track with audio, therefore, HDV has to work differently. Its in a Log GOP structure that can create problems. Its extremely tough on the processor to encode and decode on the fly.

The best option for anybody doing HDV is to capture using a a capture card like the AJA Kona 2 or 3 or the Blackmagic Deklink cards. You can then capture into any codec you wish which is much much easier to deal with. Most people here use the DVCPRO HD codec because of its ease of use and savings on hard drive space.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Well, that’s easy. You can’t record to an external firewire drive and have your camera hooked to the same firewire bus. Let’s me explain… any of the firewire ports that are on your Macbook are using the same firewire bus – therefore you have a conflict here and on top of that, machine control typically runs at 100 mbits instead of the 400 mbits of standard firewire – which means your external drive is also running at 100 mbits. That won’t work.

Your only solution is to purchase a firewire adapter card for your notebook OR a better solution is to purchase a SATA card for your notebook and purchase an external SATA drive which has a better sustained throughput than a firewire drive.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions