[Sterling Noren]

I have a Kona 2 card. What do I need to do in terms of FCP setups to enable me to capture as DVCPROHD via firewire input?

Sterling Noren
WideWorld HD Productions

[Sterling Noren]

Walter,

Correct me if I am wrong here but Im led to believe from your post that it is possible to capture HDV material as DVCPROHD, on the fly, via firewire only. I did not know that this was possible and believe I misinterpreted what you are saying. If it is possible (with a Kona 3 card) can you let me know?

Right now Im assuming that you need to use some kind of a convertor like the one from Convergent Design to turn the HDV signal into an HDSDI signal first.

Thank You.

Sterling Noren
WideWorld HD Productions

[Sterling Noren]

Thanks for your input which has been insightful.

I also work this way with the free material that Motion provides which can be imported from the MacHD as well. There are a bunch of elements (stills, movies…) like smoke and fire, clouds, lightstreaks,etc that can be used within many FCP projects.

I havent found a way to do this with Live Type textures yet and dont think it is possible. Right now I create my textural backgrounds in LiveType and export them seperately which is okay.

Anyways, none of this is really how it is all intended to work but it does…and can save time when you’re feverishly cutting something in FCP and want quick results/ideas/inspiration without reaching for another app. (like adding a simple “whoosh” sound effect or some kind of moving image file to composite with. Of course if you are going to get sophistacted then you might as well load the actual app, be it Soundtrack or Motion… but these free elements are there and can be used quickly from within FCP if you take a few steps to set it up. Try it and see.

Sterling Noren
WideWorld HD Productions

[Sterling Noren]

I think FCP actually handles HDV pretty darn good (at least straight-up 60i which is what i use). I am currently editing HDV on my system at home with an out of the box Apple G5/Final Cut Pro setup. I have almost 80 hours of footage stored on two FireWire drives that I have been working on w/o problem for several months.

I use the Dell 24″ for monitoring and dont get too fussy when it comes to color correction other than making sure my levels are broadcast safe. it works great for my needs.

Perhaps it does not compare with the system I use at work (Kona 2, Apple RAID, expensive CRT monitor, etc) but for about 12k (camera package AND edit system) I was able to get myself into HD production on my own. And I can always bring my project into work on a FireWire drive and look at it in that context too, if I need to.

Used wisely it can stand up fairly well and even in my *normal* job we regularly intercut HDV with DVCProHD originated material. That said, there ARE reasons to get an expensive capture card but not having it wont stop you from being able to edit HDV in a not-too-painful way either.

Sterling

[Sterling Noren]

I use the Dell 24″ all the time with HDV footage in my home editing system. Since I only have one monitor I use the desktop cinema mode and switch to full screen for viewing. When i am done with an edit I take everything into another studio with a proper broadcast monitor to finish up.

But I am curious, since the HD Link supposedly gives pixel for pixel representation of the true HD resolution….what exactly am I seeing, and missing, on the LCD in desktop cinema mode in terms of resolution (not color or interlacing issues, just resolution itself)?

Thx

Sterling

[Sterling Noren]

I had a sililar case where I could not get anything to render. I had created a custom sequence with H264 selected as the compressor. Any clips (HDV) that were on the timeline would not render. I tried it on another computer with the same result. Has anyone else seen this?

Of course I was not planning to actual edit anything in the timeline using H264, but curious nonetheless.

-Sterling

[Sterling Noren]

I have found that it IS possible to export a QT with an alpha channel from FCP. The way i did it was…

Change your sequence settings on the timeline to Compressor>Animation
Then go into the “Advanced” settings and turn on Millions of Colors+

Now, export a QuickTime movie (not a QT conversion) and it will have an alpha channel.

I could not export using QT conversion using the above settings (and leave the sequence settings as they were). I had to actually change the sequence settings first…

Sterling

[Sterling Noren]

I find that things take incrementally longer to finish the closer I get to the end. in other words, the rough cut comes together pretty qickly…its the tweaking and finishing that takes up more time..

I edit a 50minute high-def broadcast documentary every three weeks (Discoveries…America) seen on INHD2. Thats about one week to log and capture approx 20-25 hrs of footage, one week for the rough cut and one week to finish including all of the associated wrap up tasks…mastering tapes, archiving material, making DVD, etc. BUT…I have done this on 36 episodes so far…so i have a pretty tight grasp of the product and process.

If I was editing a completely different program it would take much longer without any kind of “template” to follow.

just my opinions…

Sterling Noren

[Sterling Noren]

Just a thought…if youre not getting any signal at all suddenly…

I had a firewire board go bad in my deck. You might want to verify that the deck is indeed sending FireWire out by connecting it to another deck or firewire camera and seeing if it is working properly (ie can you make a firewire deck to deck or camera dub?).

– Sterling

[Sterling Noren]

Depends on what you want to do. HDV does not have to be limited to offline use only…nor do you have to recapture HDV as SDI using a Miranda box…I capture HDV as HDV via FireWire and use this media all the way through my online. I never have to recapture anything or suffer the huge filesizes of uncompressed. Although capturing the SDI flow as DVCProHD is an option but I have not done this and dont know if audio/timecode follows.

Our shows are based on the DVCProHD codec. Most of our material originates in this format but the occasional HDV stuff gets captured via firewire as HDV and dropped into a DVCProHD timeline with everything else. If there is a lot of HDV to cut I will make an HDV sequence first for the editing, to avoid having to render the footage while editing, and then copy the finished edit into the DVCProHD timeline.

At home I get by using a Dell 24″ monitor for my offline and probably online too since my shows are documentaries that dont rely on a lot of color correction or effects. But for my normal work I have a Kona2 card and a true broadcast monitor.

A lot of it really depends on the type of footage you are editng, the style or look you are going for, how much color correction/treatment you will be doing, etc. and what your final product will be. In my case, the above scenario works quite painlessly and is good enough for broadcast.

Sterling