Hi all,

This is my first post, so go easy on me guys!!

I'm fairly new to the "video editing" world, I just bought an Intel iMac 20" and a Sony HC3 (HD). I used SD cameras and Windows based programs in the past, so I'm not entirely new to this world.
My problem is that because I am so lost and confused with this HDV format war I decided to capture everything in HD, edit in HD and then create a SD DVD. But while these formats kill each other I want to keep the HD master somehow.
The idea that came to my mind was to capture on the HC3 via the HDVin (firewire) the entire already edited HD project from fcp, but I've been having problems trying to make this work. I can't get this HDVin to work.
Am I trying to do something impossible here?? If that's the case, which way do you recommend me to follow to keep my HD master on a miniDV tape for future HD authoring?

I really hope somebody can help me out.

Thanks a lot guys!

Sergio

Welcome to DVinfo Sergio! Unfortunately you cannot get realtime previews of HDV over firewire like you can with regular DV. Your alternative would be a second computer monitor running in "Digital Cinema Desktop" mode in FCP. The Matrox MXO is a cool option, but I'm not sure if it would work with an iMac.

You might find these threads interesting:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=83917
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=84443
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=84129
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=82391

Thanks for the info Boyd!
My only question is if I go for the Matrox MXO, how can I then capture on tape the HD content? Do I connect the camera to this box?
Thanks again
Sergio

There's no problem *capturing* HDV over firewire, and you can use Print to Video to send your finished project back to the camera over firewire. But you cannot use firewire to monitor HDV as you edit.

That sounds great to me! So: Once I editied everything on fcp, I can play it back on the timeline and record it via firewire with my HD camera. Am I right?

If that's the case, I'm more than happy!

Hi again,

I tried to capture the edited video with my camera, but I cannot get an HD video output with my firewire.
Just to confirm: I may have made a mistake before saying that I wanted to preview HD. I DON'T. I just want to record on tape what's been edited in fcp.
In "video output" in fcp the output "NTSC firewire" goes missing, therefore I cannot see anything on my camera's LCD.

Any ideas?

Thanks a lot

Sergio

SpeedEdit allows for previewing hdv over firewire as you edit, so I guess it's not that it can't be done, but other nle developers have yet to implement the functionality on their systems.