Didn't have anything like this difficulty connecting my HD1 to my PowerBook 1.5 Ghz G4 15. At first iMovie HD didn't recognize my camera, but everything was fine when I quit and restarted iMovie with the camera already on and connected. Everything worked smoothly and iMovie HD unlike any other HDV capture I've seen, Mac or PC, shows you a preview on screen while importing. Once it had finished importing and transcoding (this happens in somewhat less than realtime, depending on your Mac) scrubbing and working with the resultant clips was as fast and responsive as working with DV. The way it ought to be! Even exporting back to tape is easy, though rendering the timeline is nowhere near realtime (2-3x at least, I'd say).
Obviously, I'm impressed. With iMovie doing HDV like this, I can't wait to see what Final Cut Pro 5 will add to the mix...

Did you capture at 1/2 time? I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong (and double posting, too, I might add).

heath

Besides capturing at 1/4 to 1/2 speed, I'm running into another problem: why did I just capture for 32 minutes, but only about 4 minutes ended up actually being captured?!

heath

"MPEG/DV switchability is temperamental"

This has nothing to do with the camera, I use the camera on 3 different PC under windows XP and this problem never existed. On one of the Pc I've 1 1394 port connected to a DVHS VCR and the other used for the HD1 all is working fine without a single glitch. I switch the two devices using the JVC SW as well as the freeware apps on the net. All is 100% fine.

Heath,

Either you has a timecode break and it split the clip or you only had this much HDV footage on the tape or you ran out of room?

Frederic

The first capture, when I hit stop, it still processed it. The second time, it didn't keep processing it after I hit stop...

heath

<<<-- Originally posted by Heath McKnight : The first capture, when I hit stop, it still processed it. The second time, it didn't keep processing it after I hit stop...
heath -->>>

By chance did you unplug the i.LINK cable the second time while the conversion was running?

No, actually, but I can say this. If the tape is 10 minutes in and the video is only 2 minutes on the screen (1/4 to 1/2 speed), it's not going to process it if I hit stop to the 10 minutes. It's where it's at, 2 minutes.

heath

That isn't how it has worked for me.
As long as I leave the camera on and connected (basically, leave it alone), iMovie continues to process/import the clips until it has caught up to where the camera was when I clicked the Stop button in iMovie.

Bob,

I wish it did that for me...

heath

Heath, have you tried deleting you preferences files for iMovie? Maybe delete all references to iLife and then re-install. Maybe your old iMovie settings are being used for some reason.

I am still in the middle of my dilemma on which version VX2100 to buy, but seeing as I have a NTSC PC series Sony already (I live in Europe....long story), IF I do get the PAL camera, can I edit (download and cut) both versions in the same project?

That is: for example 30 clips NTSC loaded, then load 30 PAL and work with both?

PAL makes sense for now - but ........NTSC has the flexibility to be used wherever I am....

no

I second that...

no.

I have imovieHD working with the sony fx1 it is woring well (only in the same chain of the hard drive trough the firewire 800 card bus).
one thing taht surprice me is that the cache for the files prior de-compression seems to be on the internal hard drive even when I have the imovie project on the external hard drive it seems to slow down the proccess.
any way of change imovie cache to other location?
i think it'll work much faster wihtout using the slow internal hd.
thanks
Martin

How fast is the internal? 5400 rpm?

heath

Heath,

There is also an iMovie HD 5.0.1 Update at Apple's Support Site (http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/imoviehd501update.html).

Maybe that will help out.

Yeah, I posted about that. No dice. iPhoto has a 5.0.1 update, too.

heath

I'm a big fan of imovie...is there anything interesting about imovie 5, if I don't care about HD...??
thanks for reviews.
jonathan

Rearranging clips IN the timeline and widescreen are now supported. You used to have to put clips back in the clips pane and then where you want them to change the order of the clips.

I a considering an upgrade to my current editing system. (I am only a hobbyist - but find I grow in the hobby quickly!)

I don't like to spend much money on software. The new iLife has a nice, simple iPhoto upgrade, and of course the latest iMovie.

I am better off dropping the iLife suite and going right for the latest Final Cut Express?

Lastly, is there any issue with buying FCE or iLife from the US and using it on my euro-iMac G4? (My current iLife was bundled and purchased in Europe)

I've been playing with it since it came out and I have been very impressed.

If you have been suffering with iMovie 3/4 then iMovie HD will make you really, really happy.

Most the speed issues(spinning beach ball of death) sluggishness and glitches have been addressed in this release

It run as nicely as iMovie 2 did--and it is like having a new Mac!(i have a 800 mhz eMac)

An of course the support of HDV editing...

But most importantly, 16:9 implementation is nice and you can finally do the titles correctly and go straight to iDVD and make anamophic DVD's also...

Final Cut Express HD is quite a bargain at $299. It's now bundled with Sound Track and Live Type, which up to this point were available separately or bundled with FCP HD. The nice thing is, the price did not go up for FCE HD.

Are there any audio improvements? does anyone know how to pull out stereo tracks?
thanks

Heath,

The actual problem is that you have stopped the capture process when your tape (on camera) reached 32 mins. but your display on computer was at 4 mins. With slow computers, Imovie displays slower and displays what as been transferred in AIC so if you hit stop capture by looking on your in cam footage you will get a wrong timing... My dual G5 does it in RT but my portable is much slower, thus I learned this the hard way...

Hi all, I have some HDV Footage that a friend needs for a project that she is on a deadline for. Is there a way to convert HDV via iMovie and FCPHD to DV tape so she can work with it ? Many Thanks in advance from both of us...

If you have a Z1, it is able to do the downconversion within the camera (I guess the FX1 should too) in the firewire cable. You could also connect via composite or S-video to a DV camera that can accept an analog signal and record it using this camera from your HDV camera (that does the down conversion) or through a capture card, I already did that for a project and it works fine. These are the easiest and less time-consuming ways.

I never thought a single processor G5 Power Mac would be considered slow with iMovie HD. I didn't have this problem with Lumiere Hd....

heath

<<<-- Originally posted by Jason Beaton : Hi all, I have some HDV Footage that a friend needs for a project that she is on a deadline for. Is there a way to convert HDV via iMovie and FCPHD to DV tape so she can work with it ? Many Thanks in advance from both of us... -->>>

iMovie should be able to convert to DV with under the "share" menu.

Another possibility is to use DVHScap or VirtualDVHS to capture and MPEG streamclip to convert to DV. I've used MPEG streampclip and it's glitchy sometimes and I can't speak at all for the reliability of DVHScap or VirtualDVHS. You should be able to import the final clips to FCP and output them to a DV cam.

MPEG streamclip has no batch convert facilities so you'd have to convert clips one by one.

Using the camera to convert the footage will be much faster than using a computer and I doubt anyone will see the difference. I would dub the HDV footage to DV by firewire. Just connect the FX1/Z1 to a DV cam or DV deck with firewire. Turn on HDV to DV conversion in the FX1/Z1 menu. Set the "TV type" to whatever you want. If you want letterboxed DV, choose 4:3, if you want anamorphic DV, choose 16:9. Press play on the FX1 and record on the DV cam/deck.

Original timecode will be lost, but then again, none of the different HDV capture methods on a mac preserve timecode right now.

Same problems, but the switching between DV and HD didn't work until I quit iMovie HD and re-opened it. Bing! (to kind of quote Ground Hog Day--don't ask.)

heath

Annnnnnnnnd now it's not working. Sigh...It's just not reading it--it should say the camera name, but it isn't. And I'm getting the snow. Did everything--switched between HD and DV, unplugged and plugged in the firewire cable, quit iMovie HD and re-launched with the camera already on.

Does the FX1 support my HD10-shot tapes?

heath

Heath, I believe it does support the HD10 tapes. But, it upconverts them to 1080i..so, it might look funky. I have to try it myself, also all my old DVCAM and mini-DV tapes shot on PD150's.

It uprezzes? iMovie HD uprezzes?!

heath

Oops, I think that I remember now. Its not the tapes...it's the file that can be converted. If I remember correctly - you can capture the file and convert it into 1080i. So, the tapes do not play in the FX1 or Z1...my bad.

However, I did find this quote which leads me to believe there is an option in the menu system of the HD10u? I don't have the camera anymore, so you'll need to check it. My memory tells me that it's an option though!

"JY-HD10U provides format-conversion while playing back through its analog component outputs, so it can upconvert or downconvert into virtually any format, including 1080i..."

Here is the link I found that has the quote:

http://www.cineform.com/press/JVCRelease1.htm

Yep, it's done through the component out, up to 1080i, or down to 480i and I think 480p.

the FX1 does it on the fly from 1080i to 480i via IEEE 1394 (Firewire/iLink), which my DP utilized while shooting my latest short film. He did a "live" digital downconvert to his DVX100A.

heath

Can anyone give me a hands-on report on editing HDV with just imovie? All discussions here seem to be about FCP and/or only using imovie as a means to another end. Specifically--could one edit a long-form documentary on it? How easy is insert editing? Can you do J,L edits easily? How many audio tracks are available? What does it not have that's considered almost indispensible these days? Bottom line--is it good enough for most documentary projects these days? Thanks

bottom line... no.
Well I guess you "could", but it would be quite the ordeal depending on your workflow. There is quite a difference between the FREE iMovie and the $1000 FCP. If there weren't, nobody would buy FCP.
The best thing to do is go visit the info pages for the products and see which one looks like it would fit the bill for you.
iMovie (http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/)
Final Cut Express (http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/specs.html)
Final Cut Pro (http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/specs.html)

Didn't someone enter a film at Sundance that was cut on iMovie?

There's no way I'd mess with it. Final Cut Express is a pretty good deal at $300. I'd go that route for serious editing.

Lynne,

Since AIC is the major bug in the process, cutting directly to imovie will not solve anything. Even the first generation (the capture conversion to AIC) shows artefacting compared to the original file !

I talked to Chris and I will soon post examples of that compression on this forum.

Apparently (according to Apple) the new version of iMovie is HDV compatible and lists the FX-1 as a device it can capture from and edit in HD - does anyone have experience with this? If so does the print to video/timeline playback work in real time to get the material back to the camera via the firewire?

If it works it could be an interesting (and affordable! because I don't really want to waste money on FC Express) stop gap for me me until Apple get their act together and release another version of FCP with full HDV compatibility.

It's frustrating to have all this nice HD footage and not be able to do some basic editing until June or July when FCP5 appears so iMovie could save the day if it works.

Sylvain just posted a brief report here: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=40426

Thanks Boyd - Actually I don't understand the weird French English (then again I can't speak French) and the stuff he is talking about taking a long time for 'conversion'.

It either captures from and prints to HDV or it dosent, and to be honest I can't figure out what he is on about - does anyone else have experience with it other than the French dude?

Thanks!

Well I don't work with HDV, but I think he's saying that after you capture from the camera the software has to convert the footage to an editable format, and that takes some time. Then when you export a finished movie back to the camera it has to convert back again which also takes awhile.

Or at least that what this "American Dude" thinks... ;-)

<<<-- Originally posted by Simon Harris It either captures from and prints to HDV or it dosent, and to be honest I can't figure out what he is on about - does anyone else have experience with it other than the French dude?

Thanks! -->>>

iMovie captures and prints HDV, but does not edit HDV.

It captures HDV over firewire, and converts to another codec, properly known as the AppleIntermediateCodec, often abbreviated to AIC.

AIC is 4 times HDV's datarate (1m=1GB) but much easier to edit. Conversion starts as you capture, but you have to wait, depending on your computer's speed, for the conversion to catch up. Only a dual 2.5 G5 seems capable of simultaneous realtime conversion. With trivial hacking, the AIC files can be taken from iMovie and loaded into FCP-HD.

The process is reversed when recording to the camera/deck, though conversion has to complete before recording to tape begins. Going from AIC to HDV takes MUCH longer (say, x5 realtime on a Dual 2.5). if editing in FCP-HD, then the file must be output to an AIC clip and re-imported to iMovie to record to the camera.

Some have complained about bad compression artefacts in AIC footage, it appears to be an inefficient codec given the quality/datarate ratio, given that cineformHD claims much higher quality at similar datarates.

To be fair to Sylvain, the above is fairly common knowledge around here, and his review was aimed at people familiar with iMovie's workflow and interested specifically in how a cheap MacMini would cope with HDV.

I recommend reading this thread. Smooth iMovie/FCP HD HDV Workflow (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=38145)

Thanks for the highly useful info - I think really because of potential artifacts, currently the only real option (with the highly complicated workflow) is Lumiere, until of course Apple bring out a version of FCP (and they may not even do this in even the next version or the one after!) that offers an artifact free solution with workflow that is no more complicated than standard definition. I have been workin with FCP since 1.0 was released and in my experience Apple should not be trusted one little bit.

Yes, we've been discussing this at length since January.

As a side note, I've been using FCP for 5.5 years now, since 1.0 as well, and I have no issues with it. With the exception of the VERY SHORT LIVED FCP 2.0 which, in my humble opinion, was a complete disaster.

Anyway, I like iMovie HD, but when I made a digital still from my FX1 footage, I saw the artifacts and that p'd me off.

heath

Simon, if you want to see the artefacting, I posted an example on this thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39017

Eric

I'm about to buy the Sony FX-1.

I own a PowerMac G4 933 Mhz with 768 Megs of RAM.

If I buy iMovie HD:

1) Will I be able to edit HDV footage captured from the FX-1 with this system (seems to exceed the minimum specs) using iMovie HD? If not, what upgrades are recommended?

2) Will I absolutely need to import the AIC files from iMovie HD to FCP HD to edit?

3) Can I use Final Cut Express HD to both capture and edit FX-1 HDV video?

4) Is anyone using DVFilmmaker to convert 1080i 60i FX-1 footage to 24p footage and editing it in FCP HD?

Can someone who is actually editing HDV using similar equipment and software answer my questions?

Thanks very much in advance!

Read this thread. (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=38145)

heath