Final Cut Pro/GY-HD111E capture problems

Nigel Cooper · October 25th, 2006, 11:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carl Hicks

Nigel, I think you have it figured out. My belief is that with any long GOP format, you will need to allow a little more pre-roll and post roll.

You got that right, used to DVCAM. You live and learn.

Looking forward to moving into an XDCAM HD file-based workflow where I don't suffer these tape-based issues though.

Cheers

Carl Hicks · October 25th, 2006, 11:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nigel Cooper

You got that right, used to DVCAM. You live and learn.

Looking forward to moving into an XDCAM HD file-based workflow where I don't suffer these tape-based issues though.

Cheers

Nigel,

If you a re looking for a tapeless solution, we already have that. Just add a DR-HD100 HDD recorder to your GY-HD100 camera. It will give you several hours of tapeless HD recording.

Regards,

Brian Duke · October 25th, 2006, 12:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carl Hicks

Nigel,

If you a re looking for a tapeless solution, we already have that. Just add a DR-HD100 HDD recorder to your GY-HD100 camera. It will give you several hours of tapeless HD recording.

Regards,

How many hours? As advertised 7 hours? and does it allow the 24p native import in FCP yet?

Thanks

Carl Hicks · October 25th, 2006, 01:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brian Duke

How many hours? As advertised 7 hours? and does it allow the 24p native import in FCP yet?

Thanks

Hi Brian,

The 80 GB unit will record about 7.5 hours of HDV footage.

Quicktime is now available in HDV 30p, but not yet in 24p. This will come soon in a firmware upgrade. Hwever, you can shoot in 24p in the .m2t format, and "Capture" in FCP, in realtime. Although the time-savings benefit is lost, you still get huge capacity and the comfort of knowing you have 2 copies of everything you shoot.

Regards,

Burt Holland · October 25th, 2006, 02:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carl Hicks

Nigel, I think you have it figured out. My belief is that with any long GOP format, you will need to allow a little more pre-roll and post roll.

Carl,
I'm confused. I thought this was a problem with the camera that was supposedly fixed with the "A" upgrade. I thought my upgrade was just botched.

Does this mean ALL HD-100's cannot capture a full tape in FCP with start and stops straight through without dropping large amounts of footage? I shoot stuff that is impossible not to start and stop constantly. Is this type of shooting not possible with the HD-100? If so, how can I get my money back? How are other people dealing with such a MAJOR malfunction? This has been driving me nuts for a year now. I wish I knew it was just a lack of functionality from the beginning. No wonder my JVC rep will never call me back!

Nigel Cooper · October 25th, 2006, 02:38 PM

I understand your frustration Burt. If I could turn the clocks back I would not bother with JVC gear at all. I have a BR-HD50 deck with the very latest firmware as well as a GY-HD111 and the both screw up importing into FCP.

I'm now importing via timecode in/out points and batch capture, but I'm still losing anything up to 2 seconds on each end, average half to one second. GoP structure with JVC is every 6 frames, which is about quarter of a second so I don't know why it still loses up to 2 seconds via deck.

Somebody else mentioned I did not leave enough handle for this. I'm used to shooting on DSR570 and 390 in DVCAM mode and I never had this issue and my handles were always long enough for me. When people say I have to leave an extra 5-seconds of handle, on top of my handle due to a JVC/FCP screw up I just can't accept that.

Carl I know what you mean with the DR-HD100, but to me fitting a hard drive to a camcorder designed for tape is futile and a bit Frankenstein like; can't see the point. I'd rather just buy a camcorder that was built for that workflow to start with. Infinity with HD for example, or XDCAM HD to disc, but a tape camcorder with drive bolted on doesn't do it for me.

I'm not just buying XDCAM HD because of its amazing workflow, but the image quality. XDCAM HD is in a different ballpark altogether. There is about another 40 reasons why I'm going XDCAM HD. JVCs totally unreliable products, garbage GoP structure and import into FCP are just 3 of them.

Shame really as the so-called ProHD range of camcorders could potentially be pretty good, but JVC Japan simply don't talk to software companies like Apple and they let the public be the beta-testers, Sony don't have this crass attitude.

Shooting on the GY-HD111 has been fun as it functions like a real camera, but I've since learned after shooting with it for 4 months that it is an acquisition tool only, don't expect to be able to edit a programme with the dailies, they will stay dailies.

I've never experienced such a bloody difficult workflow than I have with ProHD and their 720p/25p.

For me Sony's XDCAM HD is by far the best, easiest, most reliable, fastest and sweetest system to work with from acquisition to DVD. JVCs ProHD is at the other end of that spectrum, it is the most cumbersome, difficult, unreliable and unfriendly system to work with on the face of the planet.

Come new year it is going on eBay.

This is not sour grapes, when you've spent 4 months shooting daily to put together a programme only to find no Mac based edit system in the world wants to talk to it, you are kind of left with a sour taste in your mouth.

I will be able to complete this project, but it is going to take me about 200 times longer than it would if I had shot it on XDCAM HD to start with and I'm going to have to lug a ton of lighting gear back to a studio 100 miles from me to shoot a presenter again as 3 of my important auto-cue shots have drop-out on them which has killed vital words due to GoPs and FCP won't import them anyway as it doesn't like the drop-out. So it will be a pain in the butt to edit now, but I must struggle on with this to the bitter end.

It's like a prison sentence with my edit suite and it takes all the fun out of using FCP and Mac, I usually really enjoy the editing part, not with ProHD though ;(

William Hohauser · October 25th, 2006, 03:45 PM

Your problems are interesting but it seems that HDV wasn't such a good choice for you in the first place. But in your defense none of the capture issues were well known until recently.

I have been shooting with the camera since March and aside from some problems that I half-expected from adopting a very new technology, it's been a very good experience. My style is to always run the tape for 10 seconds before "action", even with DVCam. Your quick take shooting style is, unfortunately, not a happy mix with the format. As Mr Hicks suggests, a hard disk recorder would work great, I use one and the tape goes on the shelf as backup. A smart way to safeguard valuable footage.

What to do with your footage now? DVHSCap and MPEGStreamclip might work perfectly. AIC capture would probably work as well and save time.

I would also check the timecode setup on your camera to made sure it's not jumping frames on pauses, this always screws up Final Cut. Switch off "Stop capture on time code breaks" in FCPs preferences.

If I lived in England I would be happy to pick up the "garbage" when you toss it out.

Justin Ferar · October 25th, 2006, 04:06 PM

Nigel, I feel your pain.

I've been researching the HDV workflow using FCP for some time now as it has become obvious that for professional work one should invest in either of the Black Magic or AJA cards. Seems like if you just bought the AJA KonaLH ($1600 US) and digitize as DVCPro HD all you headaches would be gone.

Timecode comes in through RS422- no muss no fuss.

You'll need more storage but that's not to much to ask for a workflow that's the same as it was for good ol' DV.

As soon as the HD200 comes out I'm getting 2 of them plus the deck and the Kona LH card.

David Knaggs · October 25th, 2006, 04:36 PM

Hi Nigel.

I noticed on another thread that your question didn't get answered:
"Won't AIC drop quality over native HDV?"

I'm addressing it in this thread because it might help you make a decision on a workflow that could save you endless hours in editing your current project.

Tim Dashwood did research into AIC last year and gave some of the findings in this thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=56015

And I'll give a few excerpts here of what Tim said in that thread:

"Besides, I wouldn't consider HDV to be the "best" for any post workflow, but it works well for aquisition."
...
"If you want to edit for 35mm blowup, use the same workflow above transcoding to AIC codec. The AIC codec is compressed (not as much as HDV) but considered "lossless" because it doesn't seem to make the image any worse than it was before."
...
"For most purposes, the layman is not going to see the difference between AIC or uncompressed, but once in uncompressed there is no generation loss at all."

I know there's been a recommendation to work in DVCPRO HD and I did work with that codec late last year but abandoned it for AIC because the camera is capturing a full 1280 X 720, yet DVCPRO HD will squeeze it into 960 X 720 (per my understanding). AIC will keep it at the full 1280 X 720.

The only posts I've ever seen reporting problems with AIC have been from people working with interlaced footage (1080i). AIC works best with progressive footage and gives excellent results.

Burt Holland · October 25th, 2006, 04:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Justin Ferar

Nigel, I feel your pain.

I've been researching the HDV workflow using FCP for some time now as it has become obvious that for professional work one should invest in either of the Black Magic or AJA cards. Seems like if you just bought the AJA KonaLH ($1600 US) and digitize as DVCPro HD all you headaches would be gone.

Timecode comes in through RS422- no muss no fuss.

This was the solution that I figured could at least work in my studio with my desktop machines, but. The card I already had was a Decklink Extreme which according to the manufaturer doesn't support 720 30P.

So I invested in a KonaLHe card. Just got it in and the RS422 is completely screwed up with my BR-HD50. The control constantly flips between saying "VTR OK" and "VTR Local". By constantly, I mean every 2-3 seconds. After a few of these then it will bring up the "New tape has been inserted..." message. It cannot digitize anything!

My problem now is who is going to help me? The Kona RS422 works fine on by Beta deck (Sony UVW-1800) and on my DVCAM (Sony DSR-40) and even on my JVC DV600. So that would tend to make me think that the problem is in the BR-HD50 deck. BUT that deck works fine with by Decklink card's RS422. There's no way to trouble shoot this, and I'm sure each company will say it's the others problem.

To top off my troubles with all my JVC HD stuff, if I try to turn on the time code display to make a window dub for my clients, the deck displays not only the TC, but about 20 random numbers across the middle of the screen, plus it displays the status of the "repeat" function. The only thing turned on in the displa menu is TC, as these others (whatever they may be) aren't even an option.

I'm a 15 year loyal JVC fan, but I may be done.

Antony Michael Wilson · October 25th, 2006, 04:51 PM

So it's not just us poor forgotten Avid users that are feeling the pain!

Nigel Cooper · October 25th, 2006, 05:26 PM

David I don't think their is an AIC for 720p/25 PAL, this is where I keep running into a brick wall. If I lived in USA most of my issues would go away; I think. Although I love the USA and would entertain living there, for now it is easier for me to dump JVC in favor of Sony gear.

10 months back I shot a programme on my 2 Sony Z1s and edited natively with no problems at all, that was back then.

I have BM Decklink HD extreme, but don't like the sound of the Component way of doing it. Don't really see why I should have to figure out alternative workflows because JVC can't get it right. Maybe cutting off my nose to spite my face here, but...

I was thinking of going for HD-Connect box too, but then I'd be going from one lossy (HDV) codec into another (DVCPROHD). Can't see the point of this either as DVCPROHD only really works as a codec if you shot on that format to start with. Moving over from HDV shot footage into a DVCPRO workflow is just a workaround that people tend to do because it works better than the inferior format that was developed by JVC; or that's how I see it. I'd rather buy a DVCPRO camcorder to start with.

Trouble is that I've imported 3 tapes and edited them in native HDV 720p/25p PAL already. I could import these 3 tapes easy via FireWire as they were Auto-Cue to camera, which simply ran from beginning to end with no stops (64 minute clip with no start/stop etc). This was fine as missing first 5 seconds from the beginning was simply the presenter warming up anyway, that and bars of course. But 5 more tapes containing over a hundred cutaways on each is a major problem and I must stick with the native HDV workflow I've started.

I'm kind of sorted on this with my batch capture procedure, only losing up to a second or so, I can live with this as most cutaways are 10 seconds and I only need 5 or so at most.

It would have been too much to expect from a consumer to have to borrow a camcorder, buy an entire new edit suite just to do some tests to make sure it works. Besides, when I bought into ProHD I understood that FCP did not support it, but I also figured it would only be a few months before it would as there were talks from Apple that it was coming soon. So by the time my 4 month shoot would be over, FCP would be supporting it. I just didn't count on the first release of this support by Apple to be the way it is and I didn't expect the JVC cameras to have dodgy firmware that caused FireWire out issues in abundance.

You do learn from your mistakes, but I think it is unfair for major companies like this to make the consumer pay though the nose to be a beta-tester. Next time I'll research a bit more. May be "junk" was a bit strong, but I've worked hard on this project and have come too far to simply shelve it.

Anyway, I've sort of got a solution and it is working okay, though somewhat twitchy and I have to sit there and watch it every frame of the way.

Thanks again guys for advise and input on this one.

Jemore Santos · October 25th, 2006, 07:11 PM

Nigel I'm sorry about your situation, I would be more than happy to take the HD100 of your hands, name me the price and we can talk, I have the HD100u but I'm living in Australia now so I need a PAL camera, tell me, is your camera the 100e or the 101e?

William Hohauser · October 25th, 2006, 08:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burt Holland

To top off my troubles with all my JVC HD stuff, if I try to turn on the time code display to make a window dub for my clients, the deck displays not only the TC, but about 20 random numbers across the middle of the screen, plus it displays the status of the "repeat" function. The only thing turned on in the displa menu is TC, as these others (whatever they may be) aren't even an option.

That's a broken deck. Send it back to JVC or your dealer.

Carl Hicks · October 25th, 2006, 09:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burt Holland

Carl,
I'm confused. I thought this was a problem with the camera that was supposedly fixed with the "A" upgrade. I thought my upgrade was just botched.

Does this mean ALL HD-100's cannot capture a full tape in FCP with start and stops straight through without dropping large amounts of footage? I shoot stuff that is impossible not to start and stop constantly. Is this type of shooting not possible with the HD-100? If so, how can I get my money back? How are other people dealing with such a MAJOR malfunction? This has been driving me nuts for a year now. I wish I knew it was just a lack of functionality from the beginning. No wonder my JVC rep will never call me back!

Hi Burt,

With over 15,000 of the GY-HD100 / 110 cameras in use, and a large number of those cameras being successfully used with FCP, I don't think we have a "MAJOR" malfunction on our hands as you suggest. Isolated cases, yes, but not an epidemic situation.

We have people and resources available to solve problems. Have you talked to our Customer Support team, your District Sales Manager, or your Regional Sales Engineer about this? Since your profile does not show your location, I'm not sure who to refer you to.

Also, I know all of the other District Sales Managers in the U.S., and I'd be surprised if any of them would just flat not call a customer back. Please send me a private e-mail with your location, the dealer name that you bought from, and their location, so I can figure out who your manager is, and I'll ask them directly to call you. My e-mail address is carlh@jvc.com

Regards,

October 25th, 2006, 03:45 PM	#22
William Hohauser Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: New York City Posts: 2,650	Your problems are interesting but it seems that HDV wasn't such a good choice for you in the first place. But in your defense none of the capture issues were well known until recently. I have been shooting with the camera since March and aside from some problems that I half-expected from adopting a very new technology, it's been a very good experience. My style is to always run the tape for 10 seconds before "action", even with DVCam. Your quick take shooting style is, unfortunately, not a happy mix with the format. As Mr Hicks suggests, a hard disk recorder would work great, I use one and the tape goes on the shelf as backup. A smart way to safeguard valuable footage. What to do with your footage now? DVHSCap and MPEGStreamclip might work perfectly. AIC capture would probably work as well and save time. I would also check the timecode setup on your camera to made sure it's not jumping frames on pauses, this always screws up Final Cut. Switch off "Stop capture on time code breaks" in FCPs preferences. If I lived in England I would be happy to pick up the "garbage" when you toss it out. __________________ William Hohauser - New York City Producer/Edit/Camera/Animation Last edited by William Hohauser; October 25th, 2006 at 08:16 PM.

October 25th, 2006, 07:11 PM	#28
Jemore Santos Major Player Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: Tokyo/Sydney Posts: 297	Nigel I'm sorry about your situation, I would be more than happy to take the HD100 of your hands, name me the price and we can talk, I have the HD100u but I'm living in Australia now so I need a PAL camera, tell me, is your camera the 100e or the 101e? __________________ "eyes through a digital world"

October 25th, 2006, 02:38 PM	#21
Nigel Cooper Major Player Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Cambridgeshire, UK Posts: 112	I understand your frustration Burt. If I could turn the clocks back I would not bother with JVC gear at all. I have a BR-HD50 deck with the very latest firmware as well as a GY-HD111 and the both screw up importing into FCP. I'm now importing via timecode in/out points and batch capture, but I'm still losing anything up to 2 seconds on each end, average half to one second. GoP structure with JVC is every 6 frames, which is about quarter of a second so I don't know why it still loses up to 2 seconds via deck. Somebody else mentioned I did not leave enough handle for this. I'm used to shooting on DSR570 and 390 in DVCAM mode and I never had this issue and my handles were always long enough for me. When people say I have to leave an extra 5-seconds of handle, on top of my handle due to a JVC/FCP screw up I just can't accept that. Carl I know what you mean with the DR-HD100, but to me fitting a hard drive to a camcorder designed for tape is futile and a bit Frankenstein like; can't see the point. I'd rather just buy a camcorder that was built for that workflow to start with. Infinity with HD for example, or XDCAM HD to disc, but a tape camcorder with drive bolted on doesn't do it for me. I'm not just buying XDCAM HD because of its amazing workflow, but the image quality. XDCAM HD is in a different ballpark altogether. There is about another 40 reasons why I'm going XDCAM HD. JVCs totally unreliable products, garbage GoP structure and import into FCP are just 3 of them. Shame really as the so-called ProHD range of camcorders could potentially be pretty good, but JVC Japan simply don't talk to software companies like Apple and they let the public be the beta-testers, Sony don't have this crass attitude. Shooting on the GY-HD111 has been fun as it functions like a real camera, but I've since learned after shooting with it for 4 months that it is an acquisition tool only, don't expect to be able to edit a programme with the dailies, they will stay dailies. I've never experienced such a bloody difficult workflow than I have with ProHD and their 720p/25p. For me Sony's XDCAM HD is by far the best, easiest, most reliable, fastest and sweetest system to work with from acquisition to DVD. JVCs ProHD is at the other end of that spectrum, it is the most cumbersome, difficult, unreliable and unfriendly system to work with on the face of the planet. Come new year it is going on eBay. This is not sour grapes, when you've spent 4 months shooting daily to put together a programme only to find no Mac based edit system in the world wants to talk to it, you are kind of left with a sour taste in your mouth. I will be able to complete this project, but it is going to take me about 200 times longer than it would if I had shot it on XDCAM HD to start with and I'm going to have to lug a ton of lighting gear back to a studio 100 miles from me to shoot a presenter again as 3 of my important auto-cue shots have drop-out on them which has killed vital words due to GoPs and FCP won't import them anyway as it doesn't like the drop-out. So it will be a pain in the butt to edit now, but I must struggle on with this to the bitter end. It's like a prison sentence with my edit suite and it takes all the fun out of using FCP and Mac, I usually really enjoy the editing part, not with ProHD though ;(

October 25th, 2006, 04:06 PM	#23
Justin Ferar Major Player Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Larkspur, CA Posts: 378	Nigel, I feel your pain. I've been researching the HDV workflow using FCP for some time now as it has become obvious that for professional work one should invest in either of the Black Magic or AJA cards. Seems like if you just bought the AJA KonaLH ($1600 US) and digitize as DVCPro HD all you headaches would be gone. Timecode comes in through RS422- no muss no fuss. You'll need more storage but that's not to much to ask for a workflow that's the same as it was for good ol' DV. As soon as the HD200 comes out I'm getting 2 of them plus the deck and the Kona LH card.

October 25th, 2006, 04:36 PM	#24
David Knaggs Major Player Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 826	Hi Nigel. I noticed on another thread that your question didn't get answered: "Won't AIC drop quality over native HDV?" I'm addressing it in this thread because it might help you make a decision on a workflow that could save you endless hours in editing your current project. Tim Dashwood did research into AIC last year and gave some of the findings in this thread: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=56015 And I'll give a few excerpts here of what Tim said in that thread: "Besides, I wouldn't consider HDV to be the "best" for any post workflow, but it works well for aquisition." ... "If you want to edit for 35mm blowup, use the same workflow above transcoding to AIC codec. The AIC codec is compressed (not as much as HDV) but considered "lossless" because it doesn't seem to make the image any worse than it was before." ... "For most purposes, the layman is not going to see the difference between AIC or uncompressed, but once in uncompressed there is no generation loss at all." I know there's been a recommendation to work in DVCPRO HD and I did work with that codec late last year but abandoned it for AIC because the camera is capturing a full 1280 X 720, yet DVCPRO HD will squeeze it into 960 X 720 (per my understanding). AIC will keep it at the full 1280 X 720. The only posts I've ever seen reporting problems with AIC have been from people working with interlaced footage (1080i). AIC works best with progressive footage and gives excellent results.

October 25th, 2006, 04:51 PM	#26
Antony Michael Wilson Major Player Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: London, UK Posts: 343	So it's not just us poor forgotten Avid users that are feeling the pain!

October 25th, 2006, 05:26 PM	#27
Nigel Cooper Major Player Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Cambridgeshire, UK Posts: 112	David I don't think their is an AIC for 720p/25 PAL, this is where I keep running into a brick wall. If I lived in USA most of my issues would go away; I think. Although I love the USA and would entertain living there, for now it is easier for me to dump JVC in favor of Sony gear. 10 months back I shot a programme on my 2 Sony Z1s and edited natively with no problems at all, that was back then. I have BM Decklink HD extreme, but don't like the sound of the Component way of doing it. Don't really see why I should have to figure out alternative workflows because JVC can't get it right. Maybe cutting off my nose to spite my face here, but... I was thinking of going for HD-Connect box too, but then I'd be going from one lossy (HDV) codec into another (DVCPROHD). Can't see the point of this either as DVCPROHD only really works as a codec if you shot on that format to start with. Moving over from HDV shot footage into a DVCPRO workflow is just a workaround that people tend to do because it works better than the inferior format that was developed by JVC; or that's how I see it. I'd rather buy a DVCPRO camcorder to start with. Trouble is that I've imported 3 tapes and edited them in native HDV 720p/25p PAL already. I could import these 3 tapes easy via FireWire as they were Auto-Cue to camera, which simply ran from beginning to end with no stops (64 minute clip with no start/stop etc). This was fine as missing first 5 seconds from the beginning was simply the presenter warming up anyway, that and bars of course. But 5 more tapes containing over a hundred cutaways on each is a major problem and I must stick with the native HDV workflow I've started. I'm kind of sorted on this with my batch capture procedure, only losing up to a second or so, I can live with this as most cutaways are 10 seconds and I only need 5 or so at most. It would have been too much to expect from a consumer to have to borrow a camcorder, buy an entire new edit suite just to do some tests to make sure it works. Besides, when I bought into ProHD I understood that FCP did not support it, but I also figured it would only be a few months before it would as there were talks from Apple that it was coming soon. So by the time my 4 month shoot would be over, FCP would be supporting it. I just didn't count on the first release of this support by Apple to be the way it is and I didn't expect the JVC cameras to have dodgy firmware that caused FireWire out issues in abundance. You do learn from your mistakes, but I think it is unfair for major companies like this to make the consumer pay though the nose to be a beta-tester. Next time I'll research a bit more. May be "junk" was a bit strong, but I've worked hard on this project and have come too far to simply shelve it. Anyway, I've sort of got a solution and it is working okay, though somewhat twitchy and I have to sit there and watch it every frame of the way. Thanks again guys for advise and input on this one.