[Mark Maness]

I think the question you need to ask is…. how much money am I going to make off of this and can I afford to expand my equipment on this project? It sounds to me like you need to invest in more drive space.

I think the earlier idea of editing in PAL with a PAL monitor is a valid solution for you. Then the problem would have to be to convert your program into NTSC with Compressor2. If not, then I think you’d have no choice but to have the footage converted for you.

What capture card do you have? That can make a difference for you in the HDV realm. If you have a AJA IO or IO LA, you can capture all of the HDV using the machine downconvert to DV so that will eleviate that problem.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Are you recording in DVCAM? If not, but I don’t think that DV is capable of closed captioning. I’m not sure of DVCAM but I would have to say that its ok for captioning.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

No…… I have a dual 1 gig Titanium system in the other room and it will not even look at. You’ll need a fast system to capture since HDV is very processor intensive.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

It sounds like its an mp3 file…. if so, you need to convert it with Quicktime or iTunes first. Either way, you’ll need it to match your sequence settings.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Again….. FCP is no capable of handling another thing that everyone else can handle. Sorry, bud. You’ll have to convert them in iTunes or Quicktime.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Well, if what you are saying is correct, and you’ve digitized all of your footage (sounds like it was dubbed in letterbox) in the 16×9 format and you want to edit in 4×3. Do you want the footage to be full frame or letterbox? If you want it to be full frame, then use these settings below:

Motion Tab: Distort:

Upper Left: -480 -240
Upper Right: 480 -240
Lower Right: 480 240
Lower Left: -480 240
Aspect Ratio: 0

This will convert all of your 16×9 footage to full frame 4×3. You have tow ways of doing this. One, edit in 16×9 without graphics and create a new timeline that’s 4×3 and drop your 16×9 timeline onto it and use the settings from above. OR, two, you can edit in a 4×3 timeline and drop the motion favorite (the setting from above) onto each and every clip.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Well, guys…. I’ve been doing it for a year now… I, now, capture all of my footage in the IMX50 codec. My primary source is XDCAM but we do use HDV cameras are a secondary source. So, I’ve setup my capture of the HDV to IMX50. Now, keep in mind that you can only do this with something other than firewire. i use the component outputs of my HDV machine so that I can transcode to IMX50.

To me, a $1000 AJA IO LA was well worth the time to rerender or to transcode DV to IMX50. Maybe, just maybe, Apple will jump of the bandwagon and join the other NLE programs that can mix any format in real time. Until then, firewire is for DV editing only! Apple has mandated this for us.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Well, after emailing AJA tech support, I found my answer by accident. Its a software bug. If you boot your Mac “without” your tape machine powered up, the Kona2 serial port does NOT work. But if you power your tape first, then boot the system, the Kona2 serial port works fine.

So….. if you would try this and see if you get the same problem. You can use VTR Exchange to check this, so you don’t have to start FCP each time.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Well, you can use HDV with an IO if you downconvert your footage with the machine. I have to say that it looks better than a stardard def DV tape when downconverted. But I would have to go with the rest, get a Kona LH or LHe and use it to downconvert if necessary. Besides, you’ll be able to work with HDV in any HD codec which is much much better than the HDV codec.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Sounds like you’ve answered your own question… So I have to ask…. why did you digitize in photojpeg?

Well, you can set your sequence to DV and render it out, then you can write it to DV tape. But the best suggestion is to re-batch everything to DV in the first place. What format is the original footage in? The reason I ask is if its DV footage and you finish in 10-bit, then all your doing is wasting drive space since 10-bit DV doesn’t look any better than straight DV footage. If you are going to finish DV to anything uncompressed, it might as well be 8-bit.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions