XH-A1, Apple and 24F

[Heath McKnight]

ps-Apple will support it; Sony, who also makes great video cameras, also supports many flavors of codecs, etc., with Vegas. It just makes sense, financially.

hwm

[Tony Tibbetts]

Originally Posted by Heath McKnight

I disagree...AVCHD is a consumer format, so I think we'll see JVC and Canon 24p/f support soon. I'm frustrated, too, but it'll come. It took 2 years for native and even DI support in Apple (and not a third party version, though Lumiere HD is nice).

heath

MiniDV was and is still a consumer format. Obviously it has been supported since the first verison of FCP. HDV is a now consumer format (it sort of began that way) and it is supported (sort of). Why wouldn't AVCHD ever be supported?

[Heath McKnight]

Tony,

I never said that AVCHD wasn't going to be supported, I was answering the question posted. Also, in case you haven't noticed, both minidv and HDV are consumer and professional formats.

heath

[Bill Pryor]

Originally Posted by Tony Tibbetts

MiniDV was and is still a consumer format. Obviously it has been supported since the first verison of FCP. HDV is a now consumer format (it sort of began that way) and it is supported (sort of). Why wouldn't AVCHD ever be supported?

Well, darn, I didn't know when I switched from Betacam to DV with a DSR500 that made me a consumer. I guess I should refund the daily rates to our clients, and then the agency who produced a bunch of TV spots for a local film festival in HDV...well, I guess Time Warner may take back all that air time they gave us if they know the spots are only consumer format spots. I bet the guys who got an Academy Award presentation for "Spellbound" wouldn't have got to attend the ceremony if the Academy had known they did a consumer film. And that HDV coming out of the F-350 camera I saw in Chicago--nothing but consumer stuff. Now I'm all depressed.

[Heath McKnight]

Keep one thing in mind, too, everyone--minidv wasn't supported by NLEs in the earliest stages. By the time it was, Final Cut Pro 1.0 supported it. And it took nearly 2 years for Apple to support HDV, along with other NLEs, including AVID, who uses a DI when capturing and editing, like most NLEs recommend.

heath

[Nick Hiltgen]

Originally Posted by Tony Tibbetts

It does support 1080i mpeg-2 stream which 24f (and 30f for that matter) comes in. So yes it does support the 1080i stream coming from the firewire of the camera. The firestore does not convert it to a progressive HDV format, or any progressive HD format.

Technically FCP and the Apple Intermediate HDV Codec already supports 1080i. If you want to edit your 24f footage in 60i then FCP is already good to go. When you record 24f on tape it is in a 60i stream. The firestore is essentially just equivalent to a really long tape. The trick is being able to extract the progressive frames and edit in a 24p timeline. The firestore won't convert it to 24p for you.

Are we sure about this, For some time i could have sworn I heard people wailing that 24 frames are laid to tape, out of the composite and hd-sdi output it's all 60i but I thought that there was 24 distinct individual frames laid to tape. Does anyone care to clarify?

[Tony Tibbetts]

The images recorded on the tape are configured as follows:

* Under the "HDV1080i" (HDV) specifications, 1440 x 1080 (16:9) images in 60 fields (or 50 fields for PAL*) are recorded. (60i/50i recording)
* Under the "HDV1080i" (HDV) specifications, 1440 x 1080 (16:9) images in 30 frames (or 25 frames for PAL*) are recorded. (30F/25F recording)
* Under the "HDV1080i" (HDV) specifications, 1440 x 1080 (16:9) images in 24 frames are recorded. (24F recording)

This is from the official Canon site.
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/co...2152&pageno=17

"The Canon XL H1 CCD block is interlace, not progressive, therefore the 30fps and 24fps frame rates cannot be referred to technically as 30P and 24P. However, 30F and 24F from the XL H1 appear almost indistinguishable from 30P and 24P, as they are basically the same results as progressive scan, but produced by different means. When the XL H1 is set to Frame recording, the CCDs are actually clocked at 24 frames per second. The video signal remains at 24fps as it is passed from the CCD block to the baseband LSI, and through the HD Codec LSI. Only when it reaches the recording output stage is it resampled to 60i via a 3:2 pull-up method."

That is directly from the XL-H1 Watchdog site.
http://www.dvinfo.net/canonxlh1/articles/article06.php

The bottomline is that there is no HDV 24p editing solution currently for FCP. The firestore does not give you 24p footage to edit with. It merely dupilcates the same data that you get on tape and the same data that comes out of the firewire port. Which is a 60i stream. The frames are located within that stream. Exactly how that works is best left to asking the engineers at Canon.

My point was that you can edit the footage in 60i using basic HDV codecs included with most NLE's (to my understanding), but you cannot edit in 24p without a few workarounds (mpegstreamclip and what not).

[Heath McKnight]

Actually there is, it's for the Sony XDCAM HD which is 24p and based on HDV, though HDV is tape-only:

http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Broadcastan...mhd_info.shtml

FAQ:
http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Broadcastan...XDCAM_FAQs.pdf

Works well with Final Cut Pro:

http://seminars.apple.com/go/sonytou...6FCSSONY-DO7XZ

and

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/...tanything.html

With this in mind, I'm sure we'll see 24p/f support soon.

heath

[Tony Tibbetts]

Originally Posted by Heath McKnight

Tony,

I never said that AVCHD wasn't going to be supported, I was answering the question posted. Also, in case you haven't noticed, both minidv and HDV are consumer and professional formats.

heath

I never claimed that AVCHD would never be supported, nor did I say it would only be a consumer format, In fact I think it will go beyond consumer format very quickly. If you look at my previous posts you would see that I said AVCHD support would more than likely be forthcoming from Apple.

Originally Posted by Bill Pryor

Well, darn, I didn't know when I switched from Betacam to DV with a DSR500 that made me a consumer. I guess I should refund the daily rates to our clients, and then the agency who produced a bunch of TV spots for a local film festival in HDV...well, I guess TimeWarner may take back all that air time they gave us if they know the spots are only consumer format spots. I bet the guys who got an Academy Award presentation for "Spellbound" wouldn't have got to attend the ceremony if the Academy had known they did a consumer film. And that HDV coming out of the F-350 camera I saw in Chicago--nothing but consumer stuff. Now I'm all depressed.

Didn't mean to ruffle your feathers Bill, but I never once said it was stictly a consumer format. What I said was within the context of the discussion. If you're going to critique what I say, please take the time to read all of the posts. I shoot professionally,as a hobbie, and just for fun and I've used MiniDV for all of those occasions.

[Heath McKnight]

I have re-read through all the posts and I see some things that are potentially flame-incudcing, but I also see where some things have been taken out of context. We're here to learn, not fight. I recommend everyone relax, re-read our policy, and have a fun, educational time.

Thanks,

heath

[Michael Struthers]

If you are using FCP it's better at this point to just shoot 60i and use magic bullet or other similar program to get your 24p "look" ...saves you all the codec transforming...

[Paul Cypert]

I imagine they will support it...Apple is always pushing Canon cameras on their site...you know the Apple store is going to have these new sexy cameras in their store...it'd be stupid to push something in your store and not support it with software on a flagship product...like selling PC video games or something...they'll get to it...isn't FCP 6 going to be out soon? Wasn't this last update the last before 6 anyways?

Paul

[Tony Tibbetts]

This is true. I always see Canon products in Apple stores.

[Bill Pryor]

The last camera I saw at our Apple store was an FX1, and they're doing a tour with Sony all over the country now.

[Tony Tibbetts]

http://www.hdforindies.com/

Yep, it's coming sooner rather than later.