[Rj Miles]

Hi Kevin…

Thanks for this tip. I learned about the high quality option when I 1st saw problems with imported DV footage when viewed in QT.

The high quality is checked, and does not change the jump/dip artifact.

I tried recompressing the problem exports in cleaner, to my online 320×240 review size, and the jumps/dips were also in these files as well.

There definitely seems to be something bad happening when exporting with CURRENT SETTINGS and not recompressing all frames. 1st I thought maybe I had made a mistake in the alignment of lower layers and the higher layer dissolve transitions.

For now, I’ll just recompress. However, I have a long format HDV projec/edit comping up and recompressing will be a major time hog. 🙁

[Rj Miles]

Thanks for the reply.

The 11 sec in/out times are fine for a single drive at SATA 150. They would be even faster with a SATA 300 rated card, and still faster when you start to stack up drives in a RAID.

It’s the deadly slow write speeds I mentioned that need to be fixed.

[Rj Miles]

May I mention, for greater flexibility with your new SATA drives, you can use an exclosure which has FW800, USB and eSATA external connections. We just bought one from Other World Computing and they run $110.

This flexibility is nice because I can hook up this drive via SATA on my home rig and FW800 on a clients work station.

The only caveat I have found so far in some of these multi format enclosures with SATA, they only do external SATA when an SATA format drive is installed. This was the case with a CoolDrives exclosure we tried. An SATA drive would allow for USB, FW and eSATA, but an ATA drive only did USB and FW. We subsequently found the OWC case that did FW800 instead of just FW, and that works out better for us when connecting on our clienst workstation.

Also keep in mind, once you head down the SATA path, you have many options for building raids and running large numbers of drives off the PCI SATA card. When you start to explore the more powerful eSATA raid setups, that data rates compete with the scsi-320 systems costing more cabage.

Folks have reported success with many brands. We have chosen the Maxtor Maxline drives. Recently when we bought a new drive from a flakey seller on Ebay, Maxtor had a new HD in our hands within a couple days. 🙂

good luck.

[Rj Miles]

Uli…

Does the hard disc recording option also capture the higher quality signal?

[Rj Miles]

There is a HVR-V1U story on p.50 of the October/2006 issue of Millimeter.

Unfortunately, it does not go very far in answering your question, but it suggests the BlackMagic Design Intensity HDMI PCI-e capture card will be the connection of choice for getting at the “extra” data unavailable over FW/HDV. The HVR-DR60 hard disc recorder is also mentioned, but again there are no hints at the format or what specific software will be able access the files. 3X download times is mentioned, which would be a nice feature/upgrade over capturing realtime via DV or HDMI.

I plan to visit the NYC NAB show in a couple weeks, and I hope we see some more info on this camera as well as the whole HDMI based recording workflow.

[Rj Miles]

Please don’t take this as a wise crack.

My 1st recomendation when it comes to compositing HD in FCP or AE… get the fastest platform you can.

I have just recently started reworking some 720×540 comps in 1920×1080. It almost feels like I just went back to a 9500 and Cosa Effects. 🙂

Granted I’m only working on a G5 2.0ghz DP, but it i was still a rude awakening.

I am looking forward to a dual Quad core rig in the new year, just so I can get back to my SD rendering speeds.

Folks who are working 2k and higher …

[Rj Miles]

You might try…

Shoot the scene in color but don’t have anything else red in the scene but the blood.

Then you can create a comp with a couple of layers.

1) a B/W treatment of the total scene as the base layer.

2) then you can use a color key to create a matte of the RED, so you can overlay the red layer on top of the B/W layer.

There are a number of ways you could put together the “red only” matte layer, and probably doesn’t have to be perfect to have a nice effect. You may even be able to play around with quality of the key/matte to achieve what looks best when composited with the B/W layer.

The trick is making it easy to inverse key out everything that isn’t red. If this is not totally possible, you can use some masking to eliminate other red material you don’t want in the shot.

good luck

[Rj Miles]

I just finished importing HDV “native” from a Sony HC3 HDV camcorder.

I was able to choose the Easy setup for HDV-1080i60 and I was good to go. The project/sequence and settings for device/capture were all ready to roll.

You have the option of converting to Apple Intermediate Codec on capture, but you can not create a batch log, rather you end up with a wild “grab” of the HDV source.

I set FCP to split the capture into 2gb files sizes to make it easier to re-import portions of the HDV source if needed.

Make sure you you uncheck (Create new clip on start/stop) in the clip settings menu of the log/capture window. Otherwise you may end up with lots of little 50MB clips as you import from the camera.

I’m not sure how I’m gonna work with the HDV footage I captured. I may batch process it to uncompressed 8bit or p-jpeg to continue my edit, for near term use on DVD. Eventually I’ll be going back and conforming the HDV files for HD output to ?.

Make sure the camera is properly setup to HDV output, disable HDV -> DV conversion.

Figure about 12gb/hr of video, which is what I am seeing from the Sony camera.

I’m sure I’m missing something.

Grab some short clips and drop them into a sequence just to confirm you are good to go.

Good luck

RJ
…

PS… I had some “pre-roll” challanges with my clients source footage. I found I could capture with only 2 sec preroll, setting the tape start time at 00:00:02:20. On occassion the attempt to catpure took sever tries, but eventually made it. I could do anything shorter. In a pinch of you need somthing in those 1st couple of seconds, going to the Apple Intermediate Conversion route works. You simply roll the tape back to the head, and everything from 1st video is converted. 🙂 I did this on one tape when the talent started into his dialog just a tad before FCP could capture. 🙂

[Rj Miles]

Opps… forgot to mark the notication section. 🙂

[Rj Miles]

Whe were running a 107D and just upgraded to the 111D and have had no problems at all. We updated the firmware to 1.29 before installing the G5. We are also running a 111D in an external FW case. We bought (2) of the raw 111D drives for $85 shipped.

We are thinking of replacing the 107D drives in our 5:1 duplicator with the 111D drives as well but need to check out the hardware firmware capability 1st.