[Nbrazzi]

I’ll take a shot at this.

You should capture using the DV NTSC standard settings. Capturing with no compression, or with any other setting is a bad idea. Essentially, the video is compressed on your DV tape with the DV CODEC. So, you want to edit a DV project. Setting your capture setting to match your footage means your getting an exact digital copy of your material. Sure, its compressed, but your not recompressing or converting or anything, your just taking what’s on the camera.

Now, the blurry when playing issue is related, but stick with me. When you apply effects or add video to your timeline that needs to be converted somehow, the footage will need to be rendered. Essentially, your creating new video based on changes to video in your timeline. If you need more explanation on rendering, ask – I don’t want to over-explain.

So, if something needs to be rendered, but hasn’t yet been rendered yet, you can usually watch it play back as a “real-time preview”. The computer is playing un-rendered footage, so its making it up as it goes along. This often results in a low-quality playback. But don’t complain. A few short years ago, unrendered footage wouldn’t play back at all. Anyway, once you’ve rendered something, its done and it plays back fine. The way to know if something needs to be rendered is, look above the footage in the timeline. If its got a light grey bar above, it doesn’t need to be rendered. If its got a green, red, orange or any other color above it, then it needs to render.

So, what I think is happening is you’ve got a sequence that has the standard DV settings (Check your sequence properties – its in one of the menus). Then you captured some footage with some wacky uncompressed setting or something. When your footage settings don’t match your sequence settings, that’s a case where the footage would need to be rendered. Your converting your footage to a different type of video codec.

I bet if you capture your footage with the proper DV-NTSC setting and make sure your sequence is set up with the same DV-NTSC setting, your problems go away. Your footage settins should match your sequence settings, and you shouldn’t have to render your footage. That is until you apply some effect to your footage that requires it to render….in which case, you just render it.

[Nbrazzi]

Thanks for your comments, Ed.

I would still like to hear what other people have to say about full uncompressed SD. I really hope somebody can offer some insight on that.

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Regarding the DV50 solution, would that mean I could monitor the video using a DV device over firewire to feed my monitor for Color Correction. That would mean I (the editor) would not need the AJA.

Also, I have to wonder if working with DV50 is acceptable for broadcast. Seems like it would hurt the video quality.

[Nbrazzi]

Thanks for your response, that helps a lot.

I still have some questions with DVCAM. I pulled out the PD-150 today to do a little testing in DVCAM mode. I shot some stuff in DVCAM mode, but was surprised to see that it played back fine in a cheap Mini-DV handycam. Does this mean that I didn’t successfully record in DVCAM mode or does it mean that that handycam has a DV-CAM playback mode? How can I check to see if the tape is recording DVCAM format?

Am I right in thinking that there is no difference in FCP when I’m editing DVCAM versus DV? The settings are all the same, right?

In which case could I use a camera like PD-150 or PD-X10 for capture, editing, and recording back to DVCAM from FCP? If I’m buying an $1800 DVCAM capture deck for a short term project, I might as well buy an $1800 camcorder with DVCAM mode (PD-X10), right?

[Nbrazzi]

Sorry, forgot to post links:

JVC SR-VS30U Mini-DV/S-VHS VCR with MiniDVCAM Playback

https://pro.jvc.com/prof/Attributes/features.jsp?feature_id=01&tree=&itempath=&model_id=MDL101333

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=250896&is=REG

[Nbrazzi]

That’s it exactly. Thanks a lot.