Sean Oneil
Forum Replies Created
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There’s a program from a company called Focus Enchancements that makes popular Firewire products for post production. It’s called “Firestore DV File Converter”. It lets you convert any type of DV file to another type. So you can convert an AVI DV file to a Quicktime DV file that should work on Final Cut. I’d email them for more specific info since I’m not 100% sure if there are any limitations.
As for SDI capture, if you have a Blackmagic Design Decklink in a PC you can use the Decklink Capture Utility to grab uncompressed Quicktime files. These will work fine on Final Cut Pro provided you have the Blackmagic codec installed.
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No it probably won’t work. If you have SDI out of your DV deck, you might be able to do this using the Decklink Deck Control which is a capture utility seperate from Final Cut. It lets you choose any Quicktime codec you want to capture to. AJA might have a similar utility. However, it usually crashes and locks up if you stray from the Final Cut supported codecs. For example, I’ve tried to capture straight to Animation, as well as H264. And neither of them worked.
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I hate to be a jerk and lecture you, but as someone who edited on Media 100 for 10 years, you’ve only scratched the surface as far as how far they go to put restrictions on what users can achieve. Switching to Final Cut has been the smartest move our studio has ever made.
Now that’s out of the way, two ways to solve your problem.
1. Forget Media 100 and start using FCP. You’ll never look back :).
2. Download the Media 100 software codec for Quicktime. Capture the DV in Final Cut and export a QT file with the Media 100 codec that you just downloaded. M100 used to not provide a software codec as this would have conflicted with their Draconian business model. They only had a transcoder which lets you read media but not create it. About 5 years too late (and too little) I believe they have one now.
Use the opition “Export to Quicktime Movie” in Final Cut. Then copy it over and it should import very quickly. You’ll have to manually add what the timecode is supposed to be. You can do this with M100 but I don’t remember exactly how. I think you just have to change the name of the media to a starting timecode number. Look at your other media files to figure out what the naming format is.
Sean
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[Lars Bunch] “I spent months dealing with this stupid problem and what I finally discovered is that Compressor defaults to GUESSING the field dominence. And sometimes it doesn’t guess right.”
I’ve found this to be true if you use a QT file in Compressor. However, if you “Export to Compressor” directly from FCP, the field dominance will be correct.
I use P-JPEG for a lot of stuff. If I export a self-contained QT and open it in Compressor, it assume’s the wrong field dominance for some strange reason. But if I export it directly from FCP, it works fine.
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[slim] “I took some std def footage in FCP, and added the Nattress Film effect. Very basic 3:2 pulldown. I played it back on a regular NTSC monitor, and it looked fine. Footage was played back on digibeta, and DVD. When I walked it down the hall to show the boss, we watched on his new Sharp Aquos 45in. LCD HDTV, and it looked horrible. Lots of aliasing, and visible interlacing.”
If “jaggies” are the problem, the problem has nothing to do with scaling. Whether it’s on an SD or HD LCD makes no difference. In fact, there’s no such thing as a SD LCD. Standard def is interlaced, non-square pixels. LCDs are always progressive scan, square pixels. If this is film based footage, what’s possiby happening is that your cadence is off, so the monitor can’t figure out how to deinterlace it.
But if this is video-based 30fps footage, and you’re trying to make it look like film, I think what you want to do after you apply the Natress effect is to place it on a 24p timeline. Then export the sequence as a self-contained 24p Quicktime file. Then import that file, place it on a 60i NTSC timeline, render it, and output to digibeta.
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The way I understand it, you’re having it transferred directly to disk. So the cost of a deck rental isn’t an issue. In that case, I go with the best format possible (assuming this is going to be a film-out or a video master). Disk drives are very cheap nowadays.
Your concern was that DVCPro comes with FCP. While that’s true it comes with it, it implies that better formats do not come with it. That is incorrect. You can edit uncompressed in Final Cut without having to purchase anything else (other than the disk drives).
Sean
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Rare indeed :).
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AFAIK, Panasonic and/or Apple won’t release DV50 and DV100 codecs for Quicktime for Windows.
There is a company called Firestor (Google it). They sell software products that may be able to convert it to DV50 AVI without any loss.
Sean
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Dave, you’re actually 100% incorrect about everything you said. The Blackmagic codec is full-functioning and completely unrestricted. Furthermore, the Decklink cards do are not meant to do any RT processing anymore. Decklink users are advised to stick with the Apple Uncompressed codecs and use RTExtreme, which is exactly how the Blackmagic Easy Setups are configured. People buy their cards so they can connect to VTRs and broadcast monitors. It has little to do with effects.
jaclynvt, you would have to create your own Easy Setup. I would refer to the Final Cut Pro manual. However, as I just mentioned, there is rarely a need to ever use the Blackmagic codec, and the Blackmagic Easy Setups actually use Apple codecs, not their own.
If you like, you can try installing the drivers if it lets you do so w/o a card present. If it works, you’ll have everything.
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Works fine for me. You’d have better luck asking this in the Decklink forum though.
Sean