[Michael Gissing]

Yesterday’s post might help. Searching this forum will often answer such questions

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1057917

Also check the manual about the distort settings in the motion tab.

[Michael Gissing]

Or make a Qt file of the keyed shot and then apply CC

[Michael Gissing]

Is the banding on the I/O card output to a proper monitor? The FCP viewer is not the place to make technical judgements.

Also why ProRes HQ? There have been a lot of posts here advising against using HQ except for 2K projects and that standard ProRes is best for all other frame sizes.

[Michael Gissing]

[Dave Richmond] “I did not mean to offend anyone by lighthearted codec bashing. Forgive me.”

Forums are often difficult places to convey light hearted remarks. As a lot of young program makers and editors look to the Cow for sage advice, we have a responsibility to make sure clear and accurate information is out there.

Nothing personal Dave, but I felt it necessary to reinforce the positives about HDV but certainly encourage them to plan and involve post people in pre production. All workflows have quirks.

[Michael Gissing]

Anyone want to buy my old G5? I just upgraded to FCS3 on a new 2.9 nehalem dual quad screamer – 16 gigs and straight to Snow Leopard ready for the exciting world of 64 bit, which I can be pretty sure won’t run on the old G5.

Like Walter, I don’t charge for advice on this forum, but my time is money and I will pay for the new machine in productivity improvement alone long before this box is close to obsolete.

I have no problem moving on from the G5. I have had five years of use from it but the past year has seen savvy clients wondering why renders take so long and why Color won’t perform on my old graphics card.

[Michael Gissing]

80% of my work is grading and onlining HDV docos, going out to HDCam and digi beta. Most projects are ingested, edited and handed to me as HDV.

I always set the render to ProRes and playout to tape (using a Decklink in my case). Calling an HDV workflow ‘satans codec’ is an inaccurate bias and reminds me of the cries of horror when DV codec and firewire capture first appeared. We all got over it so lets do the same with HDV and recognise that it has meant lower budget projects have been able to make the jump to HD with some great results.

Last year, two of the four nominees for best cinematography in the AFI awards (Australia)were shot and post produced in HDV on FCP systems. The winner was the one I graded and I can tell you that with pre production planning and a positive attitude, great results can be had with this codec and workflow.

[Michael Gissing]

I think you will find the problem is due to the fact that the Canon is 30 not 29.97. So when you convert the Canon footage to 23.976 it is .1% slower than the corresponding ‘real time’ audio and pictures from the EX1

So if you expect to be able to sync two cameras to the one audio, you will always have drift. If you are using the Canon in short shots as a cutaway source, you will hopefully not notice the drift over a shorter shot. Otherwise you will have to slow the audio .1% and sync that to the Canon footage.

[Michael Gissing]

When using smoothcam to stabilise, it will try to do the whole clip as captured, not just the shot length on screen.

I am guessing it is the clip length that is the problem and nothing to do with codecs. I have smoothcamed HDV before and it is not a five hour job.

Make a quicktime of the shot plus handles and then apply smoothcam to that.

[Michael Gissing]

My experience with HDV is that it is better not to use too much gain in the camera as this is often noisier than pushing in the grade later. As Rafael said, use the mid gain as well as highlight gain in the 3 Way CC.

Check out Lyric’s shadow highlight plugin. It is free and does a great job of lifting detail in the dark areas.

[Michael Gissing]

Jeff, I remember that when I used to capture from the H1 into FCP vers 5, I used the HD SDI output and controlled the camera via firewire but I had to set it on downconvert via firewire to control the camera.

I wonder if proper ingest via firewire for this camera came after vers 5.1.4?

It isn’t ideal to be capturing as DV, but as you are capturing off tape with timecode control, it will be possible later to recapture as HD if needed.