[Michael Sacci]

One thing, you are out of focus most of the time.

But you are expect way too much from your camera. I HD Camcorder like the HVX would even come close to this image.

T2i should be kept at ISO 800 or lower, but if these were in focus it would be usable. There is no white light on the subject, unless you go up to a 5D or the 1D you are not going to get much better.

What lens are you using, for this type of stuff you really need fast lens, even faster than 2.8. Then for handheld you need a brace or IS, the problem with IS lens that are not faster then 2.8

[Michael Sacci]

sounds like you have a bad hard drive, they do go bad.

Disk Utility doesn’t do much, other than to repair permissions on the system drive I only use it for formatting a drive, not to repair it. For repair I use Disk Warrior, which repairs the directory and not bad sectors. If there is any physical damage/issues with a drive the files are offloaded asap and the drive is NEVER used again.

[Michael Sacci]

I would find the aspect ration of the 3 screens combined. Lets say each it 1920×1080, so the total is 5760×1080 or 1920x 360. I would mark my viewfinder with tape that covers A third of the height of the image from the top and the bottom, leaving the middle 3rd (360 pixels) this is the image that would fit into 3 screens. Your camera is fixed to 1920×1080 so you have to shoot that, you just have to worry about your framing.

[Michael Sacci]

The big difference between the two lenses it the IS on the II can be used on a tripod. It was a $400 difference. I would differ to others on the sharpness/moire issue. I would kill for either. There are a lot sharper lenses out there being used (Zeiss Primes for example) so I’m not sure I would pass on the better IS in the II version.

One key to help minimize moire is to shot flat color and turn the camera sharpening all the way down.

[Michael Sacci]

It would be better to conform all your clips to a single setting.

You want to match codec, resolution and frame rate which you said is the same.

Bitting the bullet and going all the encoding up front will save you a lot of headache and time throughout the rest of the project.

You don’t say how much footage you have. But I would go back and re-transcode the 1440 to full raster 1920x. But ProRes is what I would match everything to.

[Michael Sacci]

[Rebecca Salzer] “3) For the 30p footage, I am planning to sync it with its external audio and then export to Quicktime conversion using compression type HDV 1080p24 (????).”
Why would you introduce HDV, you are talking about ProRes all through the post, keep the codec the same. LT version is more compressed then reg ProRes, it is not wrong to use it, personally I would keep it ProRes unless you really need to save on the drive space.
If you have 24p and you want to edit with a 24p sequence I would conform the 30p to 24p in Compressor at the same time as when converting to ProRes (or LT). For the best quality you turn on the Frame Control and set it to best. In the video tab setting you change to frame rate to Custom 23.976. Do short test to make sure you like the results. There will be some mixed frames, no way around that.

[Michael Sacci]

If you have external Mics on 1 and 2 it pushes the internal camera mic to channels 3 and 4. When playing back P2CMS all 4 channels are mixed together.

If someone knows how to mux the internal Mic I would love to know.

[Michael Sacci]

try coming out of the TV with composite (single for video) into the standard RCA jacks.

[Michael Sacci]

[Roli Rivelino] “set the 1394 control to ON”
You are not controlling anything with FW you are just passing the video data on.

You should be hooking the VHS to the camera via the RCA jacks, Camera should be set to record 480i/30i, It should matter if it is in P2 or Tape mode. But is Tape mode the camera has to be in SD DV25, that is the only option so I would probably leave it there.

With the camera in the VCR mode you should see the video on the LCD, if you don’t you need to get it to show up, FW setting at this point don’t matter.

So the main thing I see is to start with the VHS to the Camera connection.

[Michael Sacci]

I think most people agree 800 is the usable limit on this camera (higher on others) but the noise really shows up if you underexpose the frame and then try to lift the blacks and mids in post. A well exposed frame will give you a better chance of getting it so it is usable.

I would say that a properly exposed frame at 800 will look better than a corrected frame of 400 that was underexposed.