[Sandust]

CF plug-in works fine with external monitors in AE with the Decklink card. You just have to turn of preview to external monitor in AE. If AE is using the external monitor it won’t let CF use it. If AE is not using the external monitor CF should use it just fine. I don’t know about Bluefish cards though.

Mahalo,
Dusty

Dual 2.5Ghz G5 w/ 2.5GB ram, Decklink HD, Decklink Multibridge, MOTU 896HD
JVC DV5000, 2 Sony HDR-FX1, JVC BR-DV3000U, JVC 19″ HD monitor

[Sandust]

Kevin,

I did a lot of testing with my Sony FX1s and capturing native HDV vs component to HD-SDI conversion and capture to 10bit uncompressed HD. I used Decklink products for the component to HD-SDI, but the AJA stuff should work just fine too.

What I noticed was the 10bit uncompressed footage captured from component was a little softer than the native HDV footage. The HDV actually looked a little better.

I would go with the Convergent box to convert HDV from firewire to HD-SDI. The footage I have seen captured that way looked great, but I haven’t done any real testing to very it is as good or better than the native HDV.

As for editing HDV, I use FCP and have shot close to 1000 hours of HDV that we have used to cut TV shows and movies and HDV was very easy to work with. The only problem we have found is FCP HDV footage in After Effects doesn’t look at nice as it does in Apple products. It is a little blocky in AE, but you have to zoom in 400% to really see it.

Mahalo,
Dusty

Dual 2.5Ghz G5 w/ 2.5GB ram, Decklink HD, Decklink Multibridge, MOTU 896HD
JVC DV5000, 2 Sony HDR-FX1, JVC BR-DV3000U, JVC 19″ HD monitor

[Sandust]

Spencer,

You would be wise to consider the HVX200 vaporware and not plan on using it for a production that starts in November. We are really interested in the JVC HD100, but that one is also vaporware at this time. Although I have played with one of those at NAB, the HVX200 was just a mock-up at NAB.

I have shot three features with the Sony HDR-FX1. One Horror, one Action Movie, and one Comedy. The 24P mode is a waste of time. We shot two of them with the 30P mode and really like that. The Action movie we shot in 60i and though we haven’t finished it, 3:2 pull-down looks really nice. We would have shot in 25P but we started our production before the European version was released.

Now for post, we use FCP with Decklink and Multibridge, because it seems like the best solution for the money to us. As far as I know there aren’t any PC based edit systems that support the DVCProHD codec. I think high end Avid systems might, but it is out of our budget to consider. There must be similar codecs on the PC.

A good choice for you might be to use Premiere Pro to edit and then finish in After Effects. This is basically what we do. Edit everything in FCP, then use Automatic Duck to send the project to After Effects for VFX and color correction using Color Finesse and we do our final render from After Effects in 16bit. The biggest problem with most NLEs is they only render in 8bit and when you start doing color correction and more advanced effects it shows. We organize everything in FCP with nested timelines and break the projects down into roughly 10 minute reels.

Good luck and have fun.

Mahalo,
Dusty

Dual 2.5Ghz G5 w/ 2.5GB ram, Decklink HD, Decklink Multibridge, MOTU 896HD
JVC DV5000, 2 Sony HDR-FX1, JVC BR-DV3000U, JVC 19″ HD monitor

[Sandust]

I just experienced this. We Automatic Ducked an FCP 5.0.2 HDV timeline to AE 6.5.1 Pro as a 16bit comp. Everything looked fine. We color corrected using Color Finesse. We then rendered the HD comp to Blackmagic 10bit DV10 SD. We brought the Black magic 10bit DV10 SD footGE back into FCP 5.0.2 and synced it with the audio from sound track pro. We then rendered out an MPEG-2 and AIFF with Compressor to make DVDs of the project. When we looked at the MPEG-2 footage we noticed it was dark. It seems the render from AE darkened the footage.

We broke our 90 minute project up into 9 reels so we could render on two different systems. The systems are the same with two exceptions. Only one of them has a Decklink card and Automatic Duck AE Pro. When we watch through the 90 minutes of footage not all of it looks too dark. We are going back to do some tests and see if one system rendered ok or if we didn’t color correct as evenly as we thought. We had a deadline and the render took about 50 hours. We will test this and reply.

We had done a test a couple days ago with the Apple 10bit codec and noticed that it made things a little bright and more saturated. This seemed like it added gamma.

If there is a proper workflow it would be nice to know it.

Mahalo,
Dusty

Dual 2.5Ghz G5 w/ 2.5GB ram, Decklink HD, Decklink Multibridge, MOTU 896HD
JVC DV5000, 2 Sony HDR-FX1, JVC BR-DV3000U, JVC 19″ HD monitor

[Sandust]

Aloha,

If anyone knows how to disable this, PLEASE let me know. I offlined a 90 minute project using HDV captured to DV and now I need to online in HDV, but can’t!!!!! I can’t recapture the enitre tape because of the new clip thing. I have tried media managing the project, but even with only 10 frame handles we get extra clips that mess things up.

[Sandust]

adam f,

I have the BM HD and a Multibridge that I use with FCP 4.5 on a dual 2.5 G5 and it is great. I went with this solution because I needed to be able to capture and view component HD and wanted the least expensive solution. I am now thinking about getting the Kona 2 to replace my Decklink HD, because every now and then I wish I had SD to HD upconvert and the Kona 2 will give me that. HD upconvert is the only advantage I have found the Kona 2 to have over BM. Everything else seems to be a wash. They are both great solutions. Heads or tails?

Mahalo,
Dusty

Dual 2.5Ghz G5 w/ 2.5GB ram, Decklink HD, Decklink Multibridge, MOTU 896HD
JVC DV5000, 2 Sony HDR-FX1, JVC BR-DV3000U, JVC 19″ HD monitor

[Sandust]

Pete,

That was the only place I saw it referenced on the Re:Vision FX website. I found reference to output framerate on other websites talking about older version of Twixtor.

Mahalo,
Dusty

Dual 2.5Ghz G5 w/ 2.5GB ram, Decklink HD, Decklink Multibridge, MOTU 896HD
JVC DV5000, 2 Sony HDR-FX1, JVC BR-DV3000U, JVC 19″ HD monitor

[Sandust]

Pete,

That was the only place I saw it referenced on the Re:Vision FX website. I found reference to output framerate on other websites talking about older version of Twixtor.

Mahalo,
Dusty

Dual 2.5Ghz G5 w/ 2.5GB ram, Decklink HD, Decklink Multibridge, MOTU 896HD
JVC DV5000, 2 Sony HDR-FX1, JVC BR-DV3000U, JVC 19″ HD monitor

[Sandust]

Shin,

I just went through the 217MB tutorial and it talks about changing frame rates and what frame rates are, but never mentions how to do it.

Mahalo,
Dusty

Dual 2.5Ghz G5 w/ 2.5GB ram, Decklink HD, Decklink Multibridge, MOTU 896HD
JVC DV5000, 2 Sony HDR-FX1, JVC BR-DV3000U, JVC 19″ HD monitor

[Sandust]

Shin,

I just went through the 217MB tutorial and it talks about changing frame rates and what frame rates are, but never mentions how to do it.

Mahalo,
Dusty

Dual 2.5Ghz G5 w/ 2.5GB ram, Decklink HD, Decklink Multibridge, MOTU 896HD
JVC DV5000, 2 Sony HDR-FX1, JVC BR-DV3000U, JVC 19″ HD monitor