Matt James
3
COW Coins
2
Premiere Pro Coins
Forum Replies Created
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It’s so nice to have a forum like this, isn’t it!
I REALLY could have used a Kona 3, but the client only has a Kona 2 and an “old” G5, which was the fastest in the world not that long ago. So what I did was I had to up-res all the footage using Compressor, from DVCproHD 920×720 to 1920×1080 24p. Obviously it was huge files sizes so I had to transcode about 15 minutes at a time on one G5 and then bring it to an X-raid on another G5 FCP system, which was hooked to the HD recorder. I had over 5 hours of raw footage that needed to be backed up so you could imagine how fun the processs was. It took me all night long, literally, but it worked out just fine and didn’t look that bad at all! I was impressed with the outcome.
As for the back to tape issue, I have tried. I totally agree that we are all going away from tape and just dealing with data here and there. But this client has plenty of money and is still nervous about keeping a drive on a shelf. So I agreed to do what they wish. I am excited about DVCproHD and using P2 cards. Such a great looking codec for so little space and processing.
I had to help an old client today that had a project that was in DV. Isn’t is funny how bad the image looks in DV when you’re used to working in HD? I can even tell a BIG difference between DV and Beta now; when it was harder to see before experiencing HD images regularly.
Thanks again for all the posts,
Matt James
Freelance FCP Editor
Denver, CO
Peacejames@aol.com -
It’s very confusing, especially to the client. They have a JH3 HD player, but no recorder. And they do not have a DVCproHD deck. This is the first project with that kind of footage. I have the original footage from the P2 cards stored on a firwire drive, but they also want a tape backup, just for backup sake. They will be able to play the footage with their JH3 deck later on if they need to.
Thanks again for the help.
Matt James
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That’s what I thought. Even thought the Kona card is able to playback 720 stuff, the HDW-500 Deck can not see anything but 1080.
So I will up-res the footage using Compressor and dump it out that way. Has anyone had a client mention a quality difference in this practice? Obviously changing the frame size will smoosh out the resolution, but how bad is it? I didn’t have time to do any tests before I left. I know they’ll be really happy with me if I can’t transfer the footage to tape with this deck. It was a $1400/day rental.
And when I play the 720p60 footage in the FCP 23.98fps timeline, I am actually seeing the 24 frames, not 60 fields or whatever. And when I play it in the viewer, it shows me all 60 fields, not giving me access to all of them, but it does count differently. That makes up or the time difference in the i/o time window and the location time window in the canvas. It was like an hour off of each other at the end of the timeline!
Thanks a lot for all your help,
Matt James
Freelance FCP Editor
Denver, CO
peacejames@aol.com -
Walter, I heard it from a producer or maybe even an another editor. I thought it was last week or so. But I can not confirm that info and don’t have that manual. I just heard it in one of the many edit suites I’m in while waiting for a render and gabbing.
Matt James
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Hey all! Thank for all the posts. It’s nice to have a forum like this where we can talk about new technology and what people are doing. Sorry I haven’t been able to post a reply until now. I have been working a ton!
As it turns out, there was a setting in the Sony HD 1080i deck that was set wrong. The deck was taken out of the rack and used on a shoot, then put back in it’s place with its settings all different, unknown to me. The signal I was talking about that looked good was the Kona LHe board upconverting the signal from FCP and sending it through the EE of the HD deck. The SDI connections were what I was seeing. However, the deck did not record the signal because of a genlock setting issue. This gave me a green grid on tape and still gave me the audio through the Kona card.
So in the end, the Kona card was doing exactly what I wanted it to and giving me a full 1080i signal to a real HD deck for our masters. VERY COOL! I really love DVCproHD and think it will be something like when DV showed up. Last year, I edited video game trailers for a local game developer, that we recorded in HD. They played the game on a PC and we sent it through a DVI to HD-SDI converter, then into a Kona2 card on a G5. Being computer geeks themselves, they built their own SATA-Raid tower that was a little more than a terrabyte. However, when we tried full 1080i uncompressed HD, it coughed and crashed all the time. So I started recording the game footage through the Kona2 at 1080i DVCproHD and it looked great! The game people didn’t notice the difference at first until I told him that it wasn’t full res HD, but DVCproHD, which still looks incredible and I had no problems with their Raid at all! Now I hear the Discovery Channel is accepting it as a master format as well. How cool is that!
Thanks again,
Matt James
Freelance FCP Editor
Denver, CO
peacejames@mac.com -
Thank you very much. That was exactly where the problem was.
Matt
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It’s funny you ask, because I have been experiencing some weirdness between the two kinds of exports as well. I use DVCproHD sequences and media, on a Dual 2.0 G5, running FCP 5.0.1, QT 7.0.1 and OSX 10.4.1. When I export a sequence to compressor and have it make an uncompressed 8bit master, it is pixelated and looks like crap. When I do the same thing straight out of FCP using the QT conversion export, and put in the same settings, it comes out nice and beautiful! Better than the original footage. Not really sure why or how this works, but I’ve just accepted that to upconvert and make a final master, I need to use the QT Conversion export straight out of FCP.
Matt James
Freelance FCP Editor
Denver, CO
peacejames@mac.com -
I reasearched a lot before I bought a Dell 24″. I edit on it every day and love it! The only thing is that it takes about 30-60 seconds to fully warm up, but then it’s big and beautiful!
Matt James
Freelance FCP Editor
Denver, CO
peacejames@mac.com -
I would try making new project files, in both Final Cut and Livetype. DO Livetype first and just open the problem file there, and resave it as a different name. Then open your FCP project and save it as a different name. Then try to import the new Livetype project file. IF that doesn’t do it, I’d try trashing your FCP preferences and seeing if that works.
Matt James
Freelance FCP Editor
Denver, CO
peacejames@mac.com -
I can’t tell you how FCP figures it out, but you can have your time marker on the second frame of the clip in the sequence, and it will replace it with what’s in the viewer. Just try moving over one frame if it says there isn’t enough content.
Matt James