Uli Plank
Forum Replies Created
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No. An EDL is a relatively limited form of interchange between different editing systems, transferring information about edits and a few standardized effects.
The project file holds all the information about your project, i.e. all edits, all effects and all the links to your media sources. If you used logging and batch capture (and still have the originals), you can reconstruct your whole project from this file. But it’s strictly FCP and version specific (not backward-compatible), but hardware agnostic.
Regards,
Uli
Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.
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Well, if you want to shoot HD progressive, you can make it compatible to some degree.
There’s a little hack to the scene files from Barry Green (I think you can find it here on the list) which makes a European model run at a speed very close 24 fps. We use it all the time, but for film-out. Be sure to test the whole workflow before buying, since there might be sound-sync issues.
Apart from that: no NTSC modes on the camera.
You might have to buy Sonys Z1 and Panasonic will loose a client for this otherwise fantastic camera…
Regards,
Uli
Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.
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In my experience Compressor is not doing a better job than FCP, but it’s far slower, since it’ll activate it’s so-called “frame controls”. The one thing you need to understand: Any scaling that is not 2:1 (and 1080 : 480 isn’t) needs de-interlacing, then scaling, then re-interlacing if you don’t wont to stay progressive.
Both programs are respecting this, but FCP doesn’t know adaptive de-interlacing and the one in Compressor is slow and not perfect. But with regular de-interlacing you are throwing away vertical detail even where it wouldn’t be necessary, like on background objects when shot from a tripod. The best de-interlacer I know for a decent price is FieldsKit from http://www.revisionfx.com. We were able to prove in our tests that using this you’ll get detail separated after conversion that didn’t separate any more using other methods. BTW, it only works in AfterEffects, FCP can’t handle changes in duration or speed from a third-party plug-in. Plus the whole method is pretty slow too, but yields the best quality we could achieve in down-conversion.
Regarding intermediate codecs: sure, it’s best to go referenced (or uncompressed). But if you use Photo-JPEG at 75% quality as an intermediate codec, you won’t notice any difference after MPEG-2 compression. Just in case you want to move those files to naother machine or anything. Those with MacPros might want this, since AfterEffects is much faster on the PC side 😉
Hope this helps,
Uli
Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.
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What do you want to run in from: computer, DVD, harddisk device?
Regards,
Uli
Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.
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1. No, the quality is identical. You’ll just waste some space, since the 24 images you shoot will be filled up to 60 for FireWire transfer. The ‘dummy’ images will later be thrown away by the FRC.
2. If you want the “film look”, shoot 24p. There is a 24p format for DVDs, to which the player is automatically adding 3:2 pulldown for conventional TVs – no space wasted. But the film look is critical with the small chips in all of these camcorders since you don’t have much control over depth of field.
Regards,
Uli
Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.
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I don’t know of anything for FireWire, but one company has announced an adaptor from PCMCIA to the Express-Card slot to be out soon: https://www.duel-systems.com/products/adapters.aspx
Regards,
Uli
Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.
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As soon as you need anything uncompressed, the only way to go is the MacPro. You’ll need a Kona or Decklink, and that simply doesn’t fit into any laptop 😉
Apart from that, you’ll need a really fast RAID for uncompressed HD. There’s simply no onnector on the MacBook Pro for that, neither FW 800 nor the express-card slot is going to cut it (the latter one is faster, though).
There’s only one possible exception: if you want to stay in HDV or DVCPro HD native ALL the time and only play out to something uncompressed in the very end, you might use the Matrox MXO, which is an external box connected to DVI.
Regards,
Uli
Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.
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Did you choose an uncompressed format, like TIFF or Targa, or do you use JPEG?
Well, anyway, you are coming from a highly compressed format: HDV, and even uncompressed your resolution would be just 2 megapixels. Most modern still-video cameras have much more.
There is a great program to prepare lo-res stills for printing, called Photo Zoom Pro, give the demo a try.
Regards,
Uli
Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.
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By all means the HVX200 is a true progressive camera: other than the current Sonys or the Canon it has true progressive CCDs.
What it actually does is interpolate and scale everything internally to 1080p50 or 60 (European or American model). From that format, everything else is derived. While it does not have the same resolution off the chip as the Canon H1 (more like the Sony), it is a very well-balanced camera with a very cinematic image.
In 1080 you have two options: get your images re-interlaced from 50/60p to 50/60i or have every other frame thrown away and the remaining one distributed over two fields, which makes it 25 or 30 psf (progressive segmented frames). The European version is very much like film on video, the two fields come from the same moment in time. We all know that things are more complicated in America or Japan, where you have 2:3 pulldown for film.
But the HVX200 is definitely a progressive camera. It’s a very different question if it makes sense to record in 1080. IMHO, you get only about 10-20 % more perceived resolution but need much more space on your media. I tend to use it in 720p, which feels more like the format this camera was made for.
Regards,
Uli
Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.
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Just tear the first viewer off by it’s tab and drag it somewhere else. The next clip will generate a new tab, and you can tear it off again. You can have viewers all over the place 😉
Regards,
Uli
Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.