[Michael Gissing]

[David Roth Weiss] “HDV, because of its use of so called long GOP MPEG encoding does have certain limitations with regard to accurate recapture”

The last HDV doco I recaptured was digitised on an AVID, Automatic Duck to FCP and then recapture of over 1100 edits, every one of them frame accurate. I don’t believe for a minute that it has anything to do with GOP structure as I have done the same process with DV downconverted edits, recaptured as HD uncompressed. I have actually had more errors recapturing HDCam but no-one says it has anything to do with that codec. Again they are nearly always operator error on the original capture.

I have tried this many times and many ways and I can tell you that it is as accurate as operator error allows. I am yet to find a case that wasn’t operator error in HDV. That’s over the last ten HDV docs that I have recaptured, probably in the order of 7,000 cuts.

I heard the same mantra in the early days of DV so forgive me if I don’t agree.

[Michael Gissing]

[Ted Griffis] “The only problem I have with going this route is not being able to reconnect if need be with the source tapes as it appears that you do not have that flexibility if you go this route. Or am I wrong?”

Yes you are wrong. If you have device control then the timecode on tape is accurate if you need to reload. The master tapes are your backup if the RAID gives you grief.

I hope your job is small or your RAID is absolutely huge because capturing rushes even in ProRes needs a lot of space.

I would recommend you capture as HDV via firewire and render your final edit in ProRes. Even if you want to recapture your final edit later, then using firewire as a device control and capturing as HDV is frame accurate. I have recaptured many HDV docos and the only sync trouble has been due to editors ignoring real timecode breaks, so capture carefully – as if it were any other tape format.

Others may have alternate workflows.

[Michael Gissing]

Setup here is Decklink HD PRo card with Canare HD SDI patchbay. Never had a problem with SDI in/out (SD or HD) from a variety of machines – DVW 500, DVW 2000, J-3, DSR 1500, HDW 500, HDW 2000, HDW 1800 JH-3 – all into FCP with no issues.

The Canare uses the tube style connector and all my cable is uber quality HD SDI thanks to so quick salvage work by a mate when the Sydney Olympics were being rapped. They were cutting up this cable and melting it down for copper. Such a waste.

[Michael Gissing]

I have successfully captured uncompressed off the Canon H1 with a Decklink HD Pro SDI card.

The trick was to start with an Uncompressed setup and then change the device control to DV – not HDV. On the Canon I set it downconvert via ilink which gave me frame accurate machine control but the HD SDI out was uncompressed 1920 x 1080. The difference for you is that you are using a slightly different card and capturing ProRes via HDMI.

My current workflow is to capture HDV via firewire and render ProRes. This saves a load of drive space and still looks great. I changed largely because many clients were capturing rushes as HDV and it seemed silly to recapture when the ProRes render option became available.

[Michael Gissing]

Betamax dead! No way. I still have a huge collection of location PCM F1 recording from 1984 to 1988. Recently I had to find some Chinese opera and I remembered recording some in Taiwan in 87.

Checked the log, fired up the betamax and PCM decoder, spooled to the timecode and played. Perfect, no dropouts no mould – pristine stereo digital recordings. If only we got this quality and reliability today.

I have always spent extra on good media. It always pays in the long run, unless you don’t value your work.

[Michael Gissing]

I should report that I have another drive with Vers 5.1.4 on and so I fired that up instead and the older Cinema Tools was able to make the file conversion. It let me select the edl files that vers 6 wouldn’t.

Perhaps this is a bug? I am on V6.0.1 (please don’t suggest I upgrade as I am in the middle of two long form jobs). Can anyone else verify this behaviour in any of the vers 6 flavours please.

[Michael Gissing]

[Neil Ryan] “Why ask us?
I would think the best person to ask is your client.”

Re-read the thread. He is not asking us what the client wants. The client asked for DV 50i. Ernie is asking the best workflow to achieve that.

[Michael Gissing]

DVCPro50 is not DVCam but a different codec. DV is DV. The DVCPro easy setup is probably designed to drive a Panasonic machine but the raw codec is DV. Choose that codec and all is well.

I have a Decklink and the setup is “Decklink DV PAL”.
I don’t know the Kona setups but the standard Apple DV setup is looking for firewire so you will need to find a Kona equivalent to the Decklink I use.

[Michael Gissing]

Firstly the process of editing HDV in DV codec and then using FCP Media Manager to create your online sequence to recapture is a process that I have used many times.

The real issue for you is understanding the technical requirements of recapturing video as uncompressed. The RAID you speak of is highly unlikely to support HD uncompressed. Typically people are using large external RAIDs with many drives and fibre channel or SCSI connectors. This can cost more than the editing system.

It might be worth searching posts on the Final Cut forum for workflows using HDV firewire capture and rendering your sequence in ProRes codec. This will require an upgrade of your FCP to version 6. but means your capture is in HDV so no need to recapture but rendering he final using ProRes which is a compressed HD codec that still needs fast drives, but not nearly as taxing as uncompressed.

[Michael Gissing]

With no info on the edit system or file format you are looking at, the short answer is that Decklink cards correctly display interlaced images whilst a computer graphics cards DVI is not interlaced.

Therefore if your footage is interlaced, the DVI is not displaying it correctly whilst the Decklink is.