Paolo Ciccone
Forum Replies Created
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Yes, FCP has been always doing that for the HD100. Premiere Pro works just fine but you can use this system:
– Search for the Apple FireWire SDK. Don’t worry, you don’t need to mess with programming.
– Install the SDK, inside there is an application called DVHSCap. Very easy to use. It can capture the footage from the camera directly. You will end up with one of more .m2t files
– Search the web for MPEGStreamClip. This free program converts .m2t file to a QT file with you choice of code.
– In MPEGStreamClip set the frame rate to 23.976, uncheck “Interlace scaling”, uncheck “Reinterlace Chome”, select 12870×720 (unscaled) and save the file. You will end up with a QT clip.
– Import the clip in FCP, be happy 😉Hope this helps.
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Paolo Ciccone
Pret-A-3D
https://www.preta3d.com
https://www.paolociccone.com -
If you create a video at 720×480 and the watch it on a HDTV it will always look crappy unless you disable the upscaling. HDTV, depending on the model, is either 1280×720 or 1920×1080. On a 720p you have 921,600 pixel per frame, on 1080 you have 2,073,600. Your PS image has 345,600 pixels. There is a ratio of 2.7 times magnification for 720p and more than 4 times for 1080p. Upscaling always gives you pixelation. If you enlarge your image in Photoshop 3 or 4 times you will get the same result.
That’s the reason why all SD shows look worse on HD TV than on a conventional TV.—
Paolo Ciccone
Pret-A-3D
https://www.preta3d.com
https://www.paolociccone.com -
FCP has well known problems in dealing with JVC cameras via FW. I stopped using it a couple of years ago, among other things, because of this. Not trying to sway you away from FCP, but just FYI, Premiere Pro imports JVC footage natively just fine.
Working on a solution for you. You should use the Apple DVHSCap program to import the tape directly to a .m2t file.
Then use MPEGStreamClip (Google search) to fix the timecode breaks and export it to a suitable format (QT with the right codec). Both programs are free. For DVHSCap you have to search for the “Firewire SDK” from Apple. Install the SDk, DVHCAp is part of it. Curiously enough, DVHSCap is not as finicky as FCP when dealing with tape acquisition.Hope this helps.
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Paolo Ciccone
Pret-A-3D
https://www.preta3d.com
https://www.paolociccone.com -
Paul, here is a tutorial that shows that technique. Although the tutorial uses Blender, it’s a good example on how to do what you described. Hopefully you’ll be able to transalte the technique to C4D.
https://www.blendercookie.com/category/all/tutorials/modeling/page/4/
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Paolo Ciccone
Pret-A-3D
https://www.preta3d.com
https://www.paolociccone.com -
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I was going to ask the same question. I see that some forums have multiple hosts. If we can split the duties then I would feel more comfortable about doing this.
Thanks.
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Paolo Ciccone
Pret-A-3D
https://www.preta3d.com
https://www.paolociccone.com -
You can convert it to H.264 and play it back with a Flash player like Flowpayer (flowplayer.org). In this way even an .mov file can be played with Flash. One example of this is my latest tutorial, see
https://preta3d.com/wp/archives/208
If you look at the code of the page you’ll find that the clip’s file is indeed a .mov
Not sure about the conversion settings, ScreenFlow generates the right H.264 automatically but I believe that CS4 does that too.
It’s the best of both worlds.
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Paolo Ciccone
Pret-A-3D
https://www.preta3d.com
https://www.paolociccone.com -
You can download the free Blender 3D from https://blender.org and use it to create real 3D objects. Blender can extrude any TrueType fond and you can then render the animation using a sequence of images (PNG, TIFF,etc) with alpha channel and load the sequence in AE.
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Paolo Ciccone
Pret-A-3D
https://www.preta3d.com
https://www.paolociccone.com -
What about simply align the camera to a good flat screen and shoot the screen in HD? I did some tests with a 30″ Cinema Display with my JVC HD100 and it was very nice. In fact I like the look of it better than a straight capture because the computer’s output is a bit too crispy.
The trick is to align the camera carefully, to be “flat” front.
The othe radvantage of this method is that you can shoot close-ups of portions of the screen and you get optical magnification, which will look much better than any digital scaling.—
Paolo Ciccone
Pret-A-3D
https://www.preta3d.com
https://www.paolociccone.com -
Premiere project files are XMl file which means that they are just text. Save the file with another name, like myproject.copy.pprj, open the file in a text editor, not Word, something that only handles text. I’m on Mac so I don’t know what kind of free text editors are available on Windows. Anyway open the file and look for “weird” characters. I found that in some cases unprintable characters are added to file names. Remove those characters and save the file. If you want you can send me the project file via email and I’ll try to fix it. My address is phciccone at gmail dot com.
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Paolo Ciccone https://www.paolociccone.com
Hellriser Digital
Santa Cruz, CA