Pierson Jacquelin
Forum Replies Created
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[Shane Ross] “What sort of inputs does the camera have? There might be a loss of quality if you have to go over a composite or even S-Video wire.”
Sony Z-1…my guess is that is has an S-Video in…but it’s a guess…
Another guess is, “will it upconvert to HDV from an S-Video input” if it has one…
The non-HDV source tapes are DVCam.
-Pierson
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[Shane Ross] “HDV is more of an acquisition format, not a mastering one…”
I know, I know, but the client REALLY REALLY wants to work in HDV all the way.
…any converter boxes out there? How about dubbing to an HDV camera and then importing?
-Pierson
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Nope, I’m trying to adjust the clip level as a whole.
-Pierson
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I did, but there’s not a section that really spells it out. For instance, there’s no flowchart or write-up about how to convert HD video to DV for your offline. The manual mentions it can be done and ultimately gives you info on how each aspect of the panel works, but no: “If you want to do this, then do this…”
You are right, this is a very complex process, and while my method (arrived at logically by reading the manual) will get the job done, it isn’t exactly the way the AJA engineers had in mind…which isn’t really in the manual. So, hint hint, why doesn’t someone write the “Idiot’s Guide to Working w/Hi-Def in FCP”? I could use another yellow refrence book on my shelf.
-Pierson
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This happened to me and a restart cured it.
-Pierson
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[gary adcock] “FCP allows for you to create capture and Seq settings that allows for any number of possibilities when capturing data as long as you stay within the
FCP timebase for editing content ( sorry no 15 or 12 FPS anymore.)”Yes, but not changing the field order in which it captures in the DV codec.
[gary adcock] “and you possibly did yourself a disservice by dubbing the HDV tape to HDCAM if you tried to stay at 24p on the HDCAm Master”
In our case, the dub to 29.97 was made to match the other 95% of the footage that is 1080i. The projects timebase is 29.97.
Thanks for all the help,
Pierson
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I use PNG with no compression. They’re smaller than TGA files and it carries an Alpha Channel.
Going from a YUV to RGB codec will cause color shifts and such, though. I’ve been trying to figure a way around this myself as I need to export HD plates to Shake to have comp work done on ’em…they always come back slightly brighter and shifted green/yellow. In this case, though, I will send an Uncompressed 8- or 10-bit Quicktime to Shake, and the Shake artist will send back an Uncompressed 8- or 10-bit Quicktime of the finished shot.
-Pierson
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Ok, after talking to Rudy at AJA I found out that what I was doing was half-wrong, half-right. Here’s what I was doing:
Use Easy Setup to set up for digitizing 10-Bit HD. Go to Capture Preset and change the compressor from Uncompressed 10 bit to DV-NTSC. Digitize… The result is what you see in my examples. Yes, it is DV from HD, but as I found out, the fields got a little messed up. Yuck. The thing that was really blowing my mind was that monitoring the realtime down-convert showed me a “correctly” interpolated picture. Hmmm…that should have been my cue!
Here’s how to do it correctly:
Use Easy Setup to set up for “525 8-Bit to DV”. Voila! What now happens is that upon detection of the 1080i SDI signal, the card Downconverts before it goes into the frame buffer/FCP. You can see the resulting AJA control panel setting here:
https://triggersqueeze.com/test/HD_to_DV_Input.tiff
Rudy had me set the Primary Format to 525i29.97 and the secondary format to 1080i29.97. Got it? Once again, “thank you” to the patient and friendly folks at AJA.
Final thoughts: you’ve got to upgrade the drivers to the latest version (1.1) and make sure you pay attention to the Conversion Mode (letterbox, anamorphic) so you get what you’re expecting.
Case closed!
-Pierson
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https://triggersqueeze.com/test/ThruDC.mov
…as you can see, there is a different type of motion “jutter” happening here. As it only happens when I’m choosing DV as my compressor (picture is clean in HD or Uncompressed SD) I really feel it’s because I’m compressing it with DV.
Ideas?
-Pierson
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[gary adcock] “On most windows versions of DV it renders upper field first, and even AE on the Mac renders DV files that way. and there is nothing that says you cannot make your offline files force to upper field first when doing the capture”
In Final Cut Pro, which we are using to digitize and edit, I don’t have any control of the field order when I dij. I can change the field order on the timeline, but even when I do, it doesn’t seem to affect the video output, i.e., I still get the same visual artifacting.
[gary adcock] “However if the content was shot at 24p you do not have to do that this way as progressive content does not have a filed order. “
True, although in our case, 95% of our field tapes are being shot at 30i. So our editing timebase for the project is 29.97. We had three HDV source tapes that were shot in some flavor of 24 and then transferred to HDCam at 29.97 so they could be incorporated into the show. When I look at the resulting HDCam dubs, I can see the 3:2 pulldown insertion pattern–and these tapes are particularly poor looking when digitized to DV.
-Pierson