Is it true that there is no way to capture HD straight through firewire without going to tape first? In FCP the only setting that works at all for me is AIC from the tape. Nothing else is recognized.
I can do it this way, I suppose - but wouldn't the signal be better if I captued the footage straight through? A lot of what I do is right at the computer.

thanks
GRF

Canon Console and the "old" DV Rack application (Adobe bought them and is renaming it to something else) will do just that... in PC land, anyways. I do believe there's similar software for Macs that someone will mention.

BTW, the signal captured is the same to tape vs. live, assuming the same HDV codec is used on the computer side. Tapes are recording digitally... assuming there's no dropouts, its all the same 1s and 0s either way.

I would record to both tape and live, given the choice. Tape is a great archival medium. And cheap!

Brian Brown

That would be Adobe OnLocation ( http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/onlocation/?xNav=twPPOL )

It's included in Premiere Pro CS3. Now if Adobe could just buy the Aspect HD guys and maybe MainConcept, they'd really be swingin' .. :-)

Is it true that there is no way to capture HD straight through firewire without going to tape first?

It's easy to capture HDV through firewire. It is impossible to capture uncompressed HD through firewire, though.


Wouldn't the signal be better if I captued the footage straight through?


No. HDV live through firewire is the exact same as HDV from a tape. The signal would be better if you captured live from the component output, but that takes much more expensive equipment.

The free, simple program "HDVSplit" works great to capture live HDV. You may decode and view it live as you capture as well in full-screen or reduced size. It's Windows only, but I'm sure there are a plethora of HDV capture programs for OS X, too.

Thanks for the answers - I guess I'll just tape and capture. It looks fine to me - I just wanted to make sure I wasn't losing anything

GRF

That would be Adobe OnLocation ( http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/onlocation/?xNav=twPPOL )

It's included in Premiere Pro CS3. Now if Adobe could just buy the Aspect HD guys and maybe MainConcept, they'd really be swingin' .. :-)

oh gawd... dont say that dude...