Phil Balsdon
Forum Replies Created
-
Ian, do you use the Firestore DR HD100 hard drive? For me this has alleviated all the problems with connectivity to Final Cut Pro with my 111E, just set whatever format you shoot to record as a Quicktime.
Tape simultaneously recorded in the camera becomes an archive and/or back up. Timecodes match and no lost frames at all.
Cinematographer, Steadicam Operator, Final Cut Pro Post Production.
https://www.steadi-onfilms.com.au/ -
I’ve noticed a few reports lately about FCP 6 not seeing the JVC cameras especially from people who were okay and didn’t have the problem until recently. I wonder if this is something to do with the Quicktime 7.5 update. General opinion on the Final Cut Pro forums is don’t do this upgrade, it was designed more for things like iPhone and iPod.
Anyone having this problem with Quicktime 7.4 or earlier?
I don’t understand why footage from the camera looks good on a monitor and not in FCP, unless for some reason you need to render your timeline in FCP. Unrendered footage will look slightly blocky, it is an indication that your settings may not be quite correct. Footage recorded on the Hard drive is identical to footage on the tape, the drive won’t recognize the camera otherwise.
I’ve been using JVC HD Pro cameras for over 2 years and the only problems I’ve had were related to the loss of 8 seconds off the head of takes when importing from the camera tape. With FCP 5.1 the solution was to reset FCP preferences for the minimum 1 second pre roll. This doesn’t seem to work in FCP 6 but importing as Apple ProRes does, with the added advantage of a a codec that is almost lossless in quality.
The only other issue I’ve had has been human error, that is forgetting to set the hard drive to record in Quicktime format after reformatting the drive, it reverts back to M2T or AVI as it’s default, in which case I use Mpeg Streamclip to reconvert but trials with ClipWrap seem a better option.
Camera: JVC HD111E (but occasionally 251E)
Format: 720p 25p, (720p 50p with 251)
Tape Stock: JVC ProHD.
Firestore DR HD100 80gb hard driveApple Power Mac Dual 2.7Ghz. 4.5Gb RAM. 2 X 250Gb internal drives.
OSX 10.4.11
Lacie 4 x 250Gb RAID, FW800
FCP 6.0.3 (FCS 2)
Quicktime 7.4.5No problems.
Most of your problems seem related to Final Cut Pro, perhaps you need to also search that forum.
Due to development of so many recording formats it is essential to carefully establish a workflow and when you find one that works stick with it. Don’t let Apple updates download and automatically install themselves, set them to ask first.
Basically if ain’t broken, don’t fix it (until it’s established the upgrade won’t break something).
Cinematographer, Steadicam Operator, Final Cut Pro Post Production.
https://www.steadi-onfilms.com.au/ -
Are you importing the footage as HDV720p. If so try importing as ProRes. This seems to resolve problems for most people and retains the timecode. You may lose a few frames (about 5) at the start of each take. It also speeds up any rendering you may have to do in your timeline.
Another solution is to import the footage as m2t using DVHSCap. This can then be rewrapped as .mov files using Clipwrap, from https://www.clipwrap.com/. Clipwrap does not recompress only rewrap, so it does not affect the quality or timecode, it’s very quick but costs US$49.95.
Cinematographer, Steadicam Operator, Final Cut Pro Post Production.
https://www.steadi-onfilms.com.au/ -
Try a CBR setting at 7 bps in Compressor. The doco is fairly short duration so you don’t need to worry about file size.
I’ve been doing exactly the same thing this week with a 10 minute presentation and with experimentation found this to be much better quality than the VBR settings, in fact the “high quality” settings were the poorest results. Don’t go too much above 7 as some DVD players may not be able to play the quality.
Ahh the black art of video compression! (not as painful as the stock market though).
Cinematographer, Steadicam Operator, Final Cut Pro Post Production.
https://www.steadi-onfilms.com.au/ -
The Canon XH-A1 can be set to shoot 24F or 30F in HDV which is Canon’s “Progressive scan mode”.
You say your final output is web based so it may help your final output quality to shoot with one of these settings as computers are also progressive scan.Cinematographer, Steadicam Operator, Final Cut Pro Post Production.
https://www.steadi-onfilms.com.au/ -
5600K refers to the colour temperature of the light. 5600K is about daylight colour temperature. If your fashion show is indoors and you are lighting with studio lamps it will probably be about 3200K. These figures have nothing to do with the amount of light. Your camera will white balance to either setting.
Tell the stills guy who is no doubtably using a digital camera to do the same.(Or shoot RAW and fix it in Photoshop)Cinematographer, Steadicam Operator, Final Cut Pro Post Production.
https://www.steadi-onfilms.com.au/ -
Either way G5 Dual or Mac Pro Intel it should work fine for your “smallish projects” requirement.
I’m running the full FCS2 (including Motion and Color) on a G5 Dual 2.7 with 4.5Gb RAM. Occasionally I use the second internal E-Sata drive as my media drive but most of the time it runs fine on Firewire 800 external RAID. Motion runs a little slow but is okay if you follow all the rules.
Most of my work is with Uncompressed 8 bit PAL, DV PAL or HDV 720p which I import as Apple Pro Res SQ.
Cinematographer, Steadicam Operator, Final Cut Pro Post Production.
https://www.steadi-onfilms.com.au/ -
I can also tell it was the work of FCP because i noticed that there was a certain fuzzyness to the edges of the “widescreen” effect bars, whereas using slugs gave a sharper edge.
Would this not imply it was not the work of FCP. Where did FCP find some fuzzy edged widescreen effect to apply to your original “unbacked up” files?
As has been said many times by experienced users in response to your post “FCP cannot do this”.
The fuzziness could be the edges of the telecine gate or full frame camera gate. You may not have noticed this looking at a widescreen monitor during grading, it could however have been saved as such after the grade. There is the possibility that this is how the original file was delivered to you and the error occurred prior to you loading it to your media drive.
Cinematographer, Steadicam Operator, Final Cut Pro Post Production.
https://www.steadi-onfilms.com.au/ -
Importing the footage via firewire as HDV720p ProRes seems to resolve the dropped frames and broken clips problem this camera is notorious for. You also retain timecode using this method.
Cinematographer, Steadicam Operator, Final Cut Pro Post Production.
https://www.steadi-onfilms.com.au/ -
The 200 / 250 series cameras also have improved processing systems (14 bit) and a process path that totally eliminates the SSE effect, so you will get a superior quality image from the 200 / 250 cameras. The addition of 720p 60 is also a definate plus.
Cinematographer, Steadicam Operator, Final Cut Pro Post Production.
https://www.steadi-onfilms.com.au/