[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

[Steve Eisen] “The signal is still 8 bit out of the HPX-170.”

Yes but this will still offer greater possibilities if you don’t want to record DVCProHD or don’t want to use P2. The HyperDeck Shuttle is $345.00 and SSD’s are coming down to a price where they don’t sound crazy as recording media. Worth investigating if you’re looking for alternatives. Go from there to Cineform and you’d have a sweet set up.

Panasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
Matrox MXO2 LE with MAX
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of WIlliam and Mary

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

HD-SDI will let you record uncompressed HD signal out of the camera to whatever recorder you choose with HD-SDI in. Additionally, it can record SD-SDI (uncompressed SD) to an external recorder as well. This lets you bypass the cameras compression system (DVCPRO HD) and record to a codec of your choosing on a recorder such as an AJA kiPro mini or, Panasonic HPG20, or a Nano-Flash, just to name a few. Recorders are endless these days.

An external recorder would be the only way to record HD to something other than a P2 card. You would use whatever media the recorder requires and use the recording settings on the recorder, not the camera. Unfortunately P2 is the only way to record onboard the 170. But keep in mind, the tape deck in the 200a only records SD. It does NOT record HDV. So if you are looking to record standard def DV, then the 200a may work for you. But if you want to record HD, then you will find much more options in the 170. Also, SD to the P2 cards can be much higher quality using DVCPro50 than it could ever be in DV to a miniDV tape. Not to mention the feature set I described before.

I know P2 cards are expensive, but if Panasonic is where you want to go (and I do like Panasonic over Sony or Canon), then they are bomb proof and well worth the investment.

Panasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
Matrox MXO2 LE with MAX
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of WIlliam and Mary

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Also, the lens is wider on the 170, another ND filter, 3 user programmable buttons, built in flip for 35mm adapters, built in waveform, vectorscope, more frame rates, HD-SDI out! Hugely improved ergonomics, and much more.

You can’t go wrong on the 170 and especially with HD-SDI out, your options are always open while the 200a limits you.

basically, the chips and the recording is the same. Everything else is very different. You get a lot more power in the 170 than you do in the 200a. The fact that the 200a is more expensive is an advantage for you, and just plain wrong.

Panasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
Matrox MXO2 LE with MAX
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of WIlliam and Mary

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

I have Cineform Neo and yes, it is fantastic. But I don’t believe that there is a way to mark Ins and Outs in FirstLight. The pre-editing stuff is really more primary color grading, white balancing, framing. There is a huge quality gain though, for what it’s worth.

I was trying to find a work around for this and I was thinking maybe something in On Location? Just kinda pipe it from the absolute front end. But there doesn’t seem to be a way of actually making adjustments to P2 footage. It will play back fine but then it says that the clips are locked so it won’t add Ins or Outs or anything of the sort. Maybe I’m wrong?

On Location seemed to be the most logical place for this workflow to begin so I gave it a shot. Still worth to continue to investigating as I would like to be able to do this as well. Listening Adobe???

Panasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
Matrox MXO2 LE with MAX
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of WIlliam and Mary

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Yes, you always have to wait to copy all of the media to the hard drive. But this is for ALL applications. Believe it or not, FCP is the slower and disk hungrier alternative…

Log and Transfer is copying all of the footage to your hard drive, it’s just doing it in Final Cut. But even so, this is not how you would actually ingest P2 footage to FCP off the bat. If you want to be reliable for backups, use in other NLE’s etc., you need to have the full P2 card structure in its original form. So, one way or another, either P2CMS, ShotPut Pro or a finder copy, is going to take the time to copy your P2 cards to a drive of your choosing.

Only once that is done would you then use Log and Transfer, which will then copy all of your files and convert to quicktime format in the process. So in reality, if you’re following all the steps, FCP takes twice as long to get the footage reliably in and ready for edit, and uses twice as much space when copying and converting the files to quicktime as it does not replace your originals but writes a duplicate .mov set.

On the other hand, if you use P2CMS, SPP or Finder to copy the card to any hard drive, you’re done and ready to edit. No waiting. In Premiere, all you do is navigate to the files in the Media Browser and Import From Media Browser and organize in whatever bin you want. Even Media Composer uses AMA to import P2 files natively from any source, card or hard drive copy. But there is no copying or transcoding of media.

Hope that helps!
Matt

Panasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
Matrox MXO2 LE with MAX
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of WIlliam and Mary

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Does your client only have QuickTime X on his new Mac? If he bought it with Lion, than that would be the case. He may not have the pro codecs supported. You on the other hand would be playing out of QuickTime Pro/7.

Try having your client download QuickTime 7 to his Mac via this link: https://support.apple.com/kb/dl923

Your client can then buy a QuickTime Pro license if he wants that flexibility and for $30, it may be worth it.

Also, once he has QuickTime 7, download Perian and gain access to a much greater wealth of codec support within QuickTime. Available for free here: https://perian.org/

Following these steps should allow your client to view XDCAM without any issues, and would future proof them for similar situations.

Converting to H.264 usually gives pretty good quality but it is a fairly significant compression on top of being CPU intensive. Two things that could add to your playback woes. Also could be seeing interlacing.

Hope that helps!
Matt

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Yeah…

It’s a shame too because it runs on FCP so well! I can’t possibly imagine what makes it so different in Premiere. It’s a great box with great tech, and seems to offer more than the AJA and Blackmagic, especially with the MAX, but if I can’t get it to work properly than it doesn’t really matter.

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

John-Michael, Thank you so much for all of your help!

Jeff and John-Michael – I’m able to get sound now but only through the HDMI cable out of my TV rendering my studio monitors useless. This is not happening in FCP7 where I can simply select to use my audio interface without any issues at all. What’s worse, while I can get sound from the HDMI cable on my TV, it only comes out of the timeline and the Program Monitor, never the Source Monitor. So this leads to think it is a Premiere issue.

But because when it rains it poors… I’m noticing that all Matrox driven players jump frames when I pause. It is especially bad when I fast forward or rewind. This does not happen to the Source Monitor if I have the Monitor Settings on Adobe Player, but as soon as I switch it to Matrox Player, it becomes every window I have – Source Monitor, Program Monitor/Timeline and my CRT and HDMI screens. Needless to say, that pretty much makes cutting something pretty difficult.

I have not seen any fram skipping in FCP.

I called Matrox today and was supposed to get a call back from Engineering – no call. I will try again tomorrow.

I really do appreciate all of your help! Thank you so much!

Panasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
Matrox MXO2 mini with MAX
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of WIlliam and Mary

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Okay, so this is getting oddly complex…

When I now go to Playback Settings, it only gives me Matrox Playback which only gives me a single window asking to report dropped frames on playback.

Here’s what I’m looking at:

Thanks for all your help!

Panasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
Matrox MXO2 mini with MAX
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of WIlliam and Mary

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

John-Michael,

Where is this setting? I went through the Matrox Audio section in System Preferences and I do not see this option. I don’t think this is strictly a Premiere issue as the same thing is happening in FCP7.

Thanks!

Panasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
Matrox MXO2 mini with MAX
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of WIlliam and Mary