Shane Ross
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[Bill Davis] “Now I understand the problem. You’re still thinking that “a capture card” in the old context of something that sits in a desktop computer. “
No…I’m not. I also said, in that above quote you pulled, “a capture device.” I have the Ultrastudio Extreme 4K…external box that sits on my desk. Before that, AJA IoXT…external box that sits on my desk. These are capture devices, I simply say “capture card” out of habit. I know what I’m talking about.
[Bill Davis] “The PCB board is simply in the body of the unit. Like everything about computers, the functions have miniaturized and it’s no longer REQUIRED that a card sit inside the computer.
Not for a long time now.
(I’d love to discuss this more, but I’ve got a boatload of deadline work heading my way this afternoon. I’ll try to pop in as things ease up.)”
Yeah…go ahead and be snippish and jerkish towards me as if I don’t know what I’m talking about. I know exactly what that is. And I know that the exact device you are using there was designed to capture and compress to H.264 any video signal fed to it. That’s it’s express purpose, capture and convert to H.264. So it doesn’t bring in an uncompressed SD signal.
But you have yet to answer my question…how do you directly capture video into FCP-X? What capture DEVICE can you use, within the FCP-X interface, to capture video? Does that device you post do that? That is what I have been asking for 2-3 posts now. HOW was the video signal captured directly into FCX?
Shane
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Thanks Oliver, I did forget to include actual figures when I talked about the footage being compressed.
Shane
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[Bill Davis] “Is there a white paper or properly curated test somewhere you can reference where SD off tape captured on one of these systems is compared to SD captured through a Terenex or something similar and can be objectively demonstrated to be visually distinct at a level a viewer can see?”
Again…the use of the Terranex isn’t to simply capture SD as SD…it’s to UPCONVERT it to HD. To capture SD as SD, the use of a capture card, any capture card…AJA, BMD, Matrox, etc…will do. They pass an uncompressed signal through to the computer, and the computer is what does the compression…to ProRes, or Uncompressed, or DV if you want. And ProRes and Uncompressed have higher data rates than DV, and preserve more of the image. DV compresses the image..converts it to the DV codec, which has a stairstep quality to it.
Would you trust me to provide examples? I can capture a tape via my AJA Kona 3…capture the same tape via BMD Ultrastudio 4K Extreme…and then routed thru my DV deck. And then also capture upconverted via the BMD, and AJA…and Terranex if you want (I can borrow one)…and then scale the image in FCX for comparison. Will you trust that?
Shane
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The number isn’t exactly 5000, but it hovers there. And yes, if you already have a “2” folder, it will start filling that. Which is why when I make numbered folders to keep media organized, I start at “10” or “20” or even higher.
Shane
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[Bill Davis] “I’ve done it VERY successfully with a $250 BlackMagic Video Recorder Dongle”
FCX captures from a capture card now? if so, this is new. i’m not trying to sound snippish at this, I’m truly curious. Because one of the BIG issues I had with FCX is the inability to capture from tape via a capture device…unless it was HDV or DV. So this isn’t trivial, this is a major thing.
[Bill Davis] “(my target was H-264 archiving and it had real-time encoding on-board – so it was just play and capture. “
Did you capture, with FCX, from tape…via a BMD device? Or did you capture with the BMD capture software, and bring that into FCX? THIS is what I’m asking…and this is a major thing.
[Bill Davis] “As I understand it, the 3.5 Mbps DV stream is MORE than enough to totally capture every detail of an analog SD NTSC signal without breaking a sweat with complete fidelity.”
But it converts it to a DV signal. In order to capture via firewire, which is the way that I understood FCX to only be able to do…to capture via Firewire, the signal it received had to be a DV signal, or HDV. And a DV signal isn’t a full SD, uncompressed signal. It’s compressed to DV. A DV signal and an SD uncompressed signal are very different. DV is compressed…yes it is. I guess I”m going to have to post a couple test images to explain this.
[Bill Davis] “That was why I came to see the idea of hauling out a Terrenex as significant overkill for these transfers. “
A Terranex is for UPCONVERTING that image to HD. Because it will convert the SD signal to an HD signal and produce better looking results than simply scaling the video in FCX. Again, if I need to test this for you to see, I will. But many broadcast engineers and online editors see the difference.
[Bill Davis] “You put a garden hose stream into a bucket, the amount of water remains the same whether that bucket is emptying into a sink or a storm drain. “
UH…not really. If you compress an SD signal to DV, that’s throwing out some data. That’s like using a soaker hose to transport water…some water is lost on the way. DV doesn’t compress the signal and then UNCOMPRESS it on the other end. It’s a DV signal…video is compressed to fit that stream.
Shane
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[Bill Davis] “and in the end – they rolled the SD stuff off DIRECTLY into FCP X via either S-Video or even Composite cables “
There is no way to do DIRECT into FCP X via either S-Video or even Composite cables. Connected to the computer how? You can’t plug those directly into the computer Via a capture card? FCX doesn’t work with capture cards for input….only output. The only way to capture directly into FCX would be to convert the signal to DV.
[Bill Davis] “or maybe what I use to do – directly into a basic DV deck like a DSR-20. “
Exactly. But VHS captured as DV vs VHS captured via a capture card as ProRes or other higher end SD format would look VERY different. DV has a stair step quality to it that, when you blow it up to HD size, would be very apparent.
[Bill Davis] “So a Terranex wouldn’t have enough pixels to mathematically improve to do much good. “
Well, using that and capturing as a non-DV format would produce much better results than capturing as DV and blowing up. Again, it’s the DV format that is in question here. Not SD blown up vs capturing as HD via Terranex. Although sorry, I disagree with Adam here. Using hardware scalers DOES do something to the image to make it better. I know that AJA’s trick was to slightly soften the image to help mask the pixels as they got larger. A trick that the Terranex also does. Scaling directly in the apps doesn’t do that, so the pixels just get bigger and are more pronounced.
I can tell you that I definitely see a difference if I scale in the app vs using a Terranex or AJA. This is something you might need to see for yourself, Bill, in order to believe it. It’s not as Adam points out…just a scaling of a photo. Yes, if you did that it would look the same, but there is a plugin for Photoshop called GENUINE FRACTALS that also does some mojo to help mask the pixel scaling.
I’ll read the thread to see what was done.
Shane
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I might have to compare this to AE. Because I still think AE is the best software conversion, but it doesn’t retain the source TC, so I only use that when pressed. Resolve would retain the TC. I know I use Resolve to bump 1080p to 4K…and that looks pretty good.
Shane
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[Bill Davis] “they tested the beejesus out of the Terrenex verses just doing direct digitizations into FCP X”
The only formats you can capture into FCX are DV and HDV, correct? Or did that change with recent updates? If you capture DV into FCX, and then scale internally, vs capture via Terranex scaling…sorry, there is a BIG difference. Even if you compared DV and ProRes SD, you’d see a difference.
Where did they talk about these tests? Forum or in a presentation? I’d like do know how they captured directly into FCX.
[Bill Davis] ” without any intervening transcode boxes AT ALL – and came to the conclusion that the results were indistinguishable. “
And who determined this? Engineers? On the last doc we did (Tom/David and I) we did Resolve scaling vs AJA vs Terranex vs Alchemist tests (we had a standards conversion to deal with) and the network engineers, and even myself, noticed a difference between software upconvert and hardware…and AJA/Terranex vs Alchemist. Alchemist did the frame rate conversion better.
[Bill Davis] “Are you saying a Terrenex workflow is measurbly superior?”
I myself have done tests of software in-app upconversions vs hardware and note a big difference. We did tests recently with FCX and Resolve vs Hardware when we did THE LOST TAPES: PEARL HARBOR, because we had to also see how things held up in 4K, which we could only do via software scaling. Hardware won out, so I had to do a lot of machine to machine Terranex conversions.
[Bill Davis] “Can you check on that?”
Sure…what would you like me to do? Take an SD clip (digital file already captured) and scale it in FCX, and then Resolve, and then AJA Kona 3, and then Terranex and provide all of you with a few seconds of each for you to see for yourselves? What about tape? I can capture tape as SD ProRes, and as HD ProRes too, and POSSIBLY as DV…but I don’t have a Canopus box, I’d have to try to route it thru my DV deck…and use that to capture in FCX.
Shane
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[Brian Seegmiller] “I capture S/VHS tapes, digibeta, betacam, into FCP X using a Canopus 300.”
Yes, and that is very doable. But it captures all those formats as DV, which is a decent format for SD, but really not the best format of SD.
The projects I work on, the one that we are talking about that just won the Emmy, are in HD, and now have a 4K deliverable as well. So I need the ability to capture SD tapes, BetaSP, Digibeta, VHS, S-VHS and upconvert them to HD. For that I need a Terranex and capture cards. Hardware upconverts via the likes of Terranex and some AJA hardware produces a superior image to capturing SD as SD and letting the software scale the image…capturing SD as DV and then scaling to HD, or 4K…you’ll really notice the stair stepping of the DV resolution.
So when we onlined the Challenger film, if a tape was provided, I captured via the AJA KONA 3 into FCP 7, hardware upconverting the Image to Pillarboxed 1080 HD. If a digital file was given, I’d output from one machine to another and again hardware upconvert. I could have also captured with the AJA Media Center software.
Note, this is something FCX cannot do…capture and upconvert via hardware, even through a Terranex. It can be the player out, but it cannot be the capture. Avid, Adobe, Resolve, FCP 7…and software via the card makers allow this. FCX only does DV and HDV. So that right there is a limitation in FCX when it comes to cutting archival…again, you need to use third party options as solutions.
BUT, we did fine. David did the offline, using the amazing organizational and search tools within FCX to find footage and cut a VERY compelling story, and I used Resolve and other tools to make that footage pretty.
Shane
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Andy, NASA had archived this footage as data files, so when we got the footage, it was already captured. But I know we had to capture other footage…for that I had a Beta deck and AJA hardware, upconverting and capturing in, of all things, FCP 7.
Shane
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