[Uli Plank]

I’ve seen something less than 20 minutes for a one hour project on that machine, even your rendering times can be longer if you are doing lots of FX. Remember, it’s no recompression, just arringing, if you are editing native HDV.

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Uli Plank]

May I offer some speculation?

I suppose Apple is just discouraging use of FCS on a MacBook since a future version of FCP will probably make more use of Core Video (i.e. the GPU power, just like Motion is doing now) than the current version, and they don’t want disappointed customers yelling at them by that time. Currently, FCP is running just fine on a MacBook, while Motion is severely limited by the graphics card as soon as it comes to HD (SD is not so bad).

I was very surprised when I found that there wasn’t any difference in performance of FCP 5 under 10.3.9 (no Core Video) and 10.4.x (with Core Video).

You will be fine with DV and even HDV (editing, no SFX) on a MacBook. But for anything more demading than that, you’re stuck: No card slot, no FW 800, nothing. Where would you connect a P2 card or a faster drive? So, if you don’t care for that, go ahead, it’s a nice little machine and Apple had good reason to drop the 12″ PB.

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Uli Plank]

You can use your HDV files directly in DVDSP 4, but only edited files from FCP, not fresh from the camcorder. It does some kind of re-arrangement of the GOPs, but there’s no recompression.

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Uli Plank]

There is a tool for temporal noise filtering. It was once called “Grain Surgery”, but it has been bought by Adobe and was a part of After Effects starting from version 6.5. Does a pretty good job, but it’s slooooow.

Hope this helps,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Uli Plank]

But you have installed the driver from Panasonic, right?

regards,

uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Uli Plank]

That’s what a camera is meant for: storytelling!

Don’t get me wrong, this camera is a fine instrument. And someone else here gave this wise advice: if you need it now, buy it now! There’s always a better camera, computer or software around the corner.

With the very high degree of flexibility the HVX 200 offers, you can start working right now. Things can only improve when Apple is finally supporting 25p or 50p. Just be prepared that 1080i50 will be eating more space for the time being.

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Uli Plank]

I can confirm their responsiveness.
I’m currently working on a review as well, and they fixed a problem with 1080i50 in just two days.

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Uli Plank]

Our main use would be for film transfer, so I’d be better off with 24p anyway. But even for video the only way I could use a European model right now with FCP would be 1080i50, which is quite a waste of space on the P2 card. The resolution of the HVX 200 is best in 720p, you don’t gain much (if anything) from 1080i.

I would edit the whole project in 720p24 and speed up the final version to 25p (or PSF) for video, as it has been done for many years with film in Europe.

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Uli Plank]

Are you sure you want that right now? In case you are editing with Final Cut Pro, it won’t be able to handle 25p or 50p yet. Plus, the camera lacks the 24p for film transfer. I’m sitting in Europe and I’d rather buy a US model 😉

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Uli Plank]

Licensing is the same over here in Europe: you can have two copies sitting on the laptop and the desktop, as long as they are not running at the same time.

And, even if I’m a convert who switched from Premiere to Final Cut Pro (without ever regretting), with Raylight you can work pretty smooth on a PC with Premiere Pro.

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.