An open source method for exporting back to the JY-HD10 or DVHS

[Christopher C. Murphy]

Hey Paul,

May I suggest something? How about putting this all together (HDV editing on the Mac) together into a nice and tidy program and selling it for a reasonable price? I'll buy it.

I think we're all looking for the same thing - an easy way to edit footage on a Mac and get it back out in various ways needed.

Just my 2 cents! My budget for a solution is $100-400 depending on what exactly it does...my specfic needs are editing in FCP4 on a G4 1ghz machine. My output is mainly DVD. (I just need something easier than HDcinema and less expensive then the $1000+ stuff offered out there.)

Thanks for all your hard work Paul.

Murph

[Paul St. Denis]

<<<-- Originally posted by Christopher C. Murphy : Hey Paul,

May I suggest something? How about putting this all together (HDV editing on the Mac) together into a nice and tidy program and selling it for a reasonable price? I'll buy it.
Murph -->>>

It is tempting Murph, but I plan on making the program freely available in the spirit of the creators of mjpeg tools and ffmpeg (and this forum).
I hope that in the near future we will be able to describe a workflow on this forum that will allow anyone to easily export back to the camera/D-VHS from Final Cut.
I think we are nearly there now, it is a bit difficult to install the modified version of mpeg2enc, you need to place a file in /usr/local/lib, a folder not readily available from the desktop
(how did you do it Paul? I used "cp" from the command line).

Once we have the workflow down, Darren Kelly expressed interest in including it in the next version of his educational DVD.

[Paul Mogg]

I think that's very noble of you Paul, not to want to charge, I actually agree that that's how it should be in this case, as the solution is based on a group of shareware utilities it seems the "right" thing to do.

I just tested the VLC conversion to Transport stream and it works flawlessly as well. With using ffmpegx we've eliminated two stages in the process, having to convert to MJPEG first, and then having to multiplex with Mplex, which makes the whole process much more user-friendly. It really is quite simple now.
Installation of your version of Mpeg2enc within the FFmpegx GUI is quite simple, you just browse to the file during the installation process.

Here are some fairly idiot-proof instructions I wrote for myself as an easy way to install the library files to the /usr/local/lib folder using a terminal window.



How to copy files from within an OSX terminal window:

For Mpeg2enc installation, Paul is recommending that Library files need to be copied into the /usr/local/lib directory and program files need to be copied into the /usr/local/bin directory.

Open a Terminal window, ( found in your "Applications/Utilities" folder)
To be able to copy files into the /usr/local/bin directory, I've found you need to be logged on as "root" to have permissions to do so. To do this type:
"sudo -s" at the prompt and hit enter. Enter your password if you have one.
The prompt will change to read "root$"

Type "cd /usr/local/bin" and hit enter, to go to that directory
Type "cp " (with a space after cp) at the prompt.
Go out of the terminal window, click and highlight the actual file you want to copy, drag that file to the terminal window prompt, at the prompt will now appear the full pathname to the file you want to copy, (this saves you a lot of typing and headache), now type a space and the name of the file you're copying (again) but this time without the full path in front of it. This is the destination filename for the Unix "cp" copy command.
The format of what is now typed at the prompt should look something like this (but with your filenames etc. of course):

MoggysG5:/usr/local/bin root# cp /Applications/MPEG\ Utilities/mpeg2enc_HDTV/mpeg2enc_HDTV/lib/libmpeg2encpp-1.6.0.dylib libmpeg2encpp-1.6.0.dylib

Notice that the filename is written twice at the end with a space between. Now hit enter to copy the file to your current location.

Type "exit" and hit enter to change back from being "root" to your normal logon name.

[Paul St. Denis]

I created a package to install the lib file in /usr/local/lib
It is now available together with the revised mpeg2enc at
http://www.celt.sunysb.edu/paul/mpeg2enc_HDTV.zip
I tested it on my machine and it worked, if anyone has a problem please let me know.

[Paul Mogg]

Hi Paul,
I'm having problems outputting to a DVHS deck or the Camera. I tried your bitrate setting of 18300 and a VBV setting of 732 in Ffpegx, but although these files play and look fine, I can't get the DVHS deck or camera to recognise them. I notice that on plaback through DVHScap the bitrate is constantly changing. Any ideas?

Thanks

Paul

[Darren Kelly]

Paul St. Denis,

can you email me privately at darren@hdvtraining.com with your telephone number. I would like to chat with you about your solution.

Thanks

DBK

[Paul Mogg]

Paul,
I'm thinking that maybe the reason the mpeg2 files I'm producing through ffmpegx aren't exportable to the camera is that there is no way that I can see in ffmpegx to force the GOP size to 6 as you seem to be doing in your command line parameters for Mpeg2enc. Perhaps you would need to compile a custon version that overrides the command line parameters and forces this to happen. I'm just making an idiots guess here, also the source movie files I used didn't have any audio in them which I guess might cause a problem. Please let me know if you get this to work through ffmpegx, as it's a very exciting development, and the quality of the mpeg2 files this produces is amazingly good.

Thanks again for all your work.

[Christopher C. Murphy]

Well, I must say...after spending $100 on HDcinema and not getting what I call good support - this is great.

I'd still like to make a cash "donation" to anyone here that's giving away this new and constantly improving solution. Is there a way to setup a Paypal account that we can dontate funds? I'm sure a few of us would give a few bucks...hey, it's beer and pizza money for you! Right?

If that isn't what you'd like see happen then we could all donate to a charity of your choice....

Murph

[Paul Mogg]

Hmm, yes I see that through ffmpegx, mpeg2enc is reporting the GOP limits to be a minimum of 9 and a maximum of 15. I see that David Newman stated earlier that the camera can accept a 15 GOP setting, but is ffmpegx allowing a variable GOP rate here that the camera doesn't like? Just thinking out loud.
One other strange thing, I can't get ffmpeg (not ffmpegx) to work from a terminal window at all, I always get "command not found" even though mpeg2enc works fine in the same directory. Even more strangely ffmeg DOES seem to execute when I click on it's icon outside of the Terminal window, can't figure that one out!

Cheers

[Paul St. Denis]

Paul it could be that ffmpeg does not have its execute permissions set, while in the directory containing ffmpeg type:
ls -la
if you don't see the x's before ffmpeg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 1476160 16 Dec 11:31 ffmpeg
type:
chmod a+x ffmpeg

It's that or the search path problem, in which case typing the full path to ffmpeg, like "/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg" should work

Murph, I'll think about the "PayPaul" :) or charity options once (if?) we get these wrinkles ironed out.

[Paul St. Denis]

Paul, I was able to export to both the camera and a D-VHS deck using the ffmpegX/VLC combination. Have you tried this again? Maybe it was because you didn't have an audio track?

[Paul Mogg]

I did try it again yesterday Paul, but with no luck. I used a file with an audio track, using the settings I posted before but with a bitrate of 18300 and a VBV setting of 732, all else was the same, but the camera and DVHS deck seem to record nothing, the resulting m2t files play back fine in VLC.
Can you post your exact settings and anything special you're doing in DVHScap or VirtualDVHS?, and I'll try again. Also, is mpeg2enc reporting 9 to 15 as the GOP limits in your case? For some reason I thought a GOP of 6 was necessary.

Thanks

p.s. the ffmpeg problem was that the full pathname was needed.

[Paul Mogg]

I'm having a general problem with recording and playing back anything to the camera right now I've discovered, so this may not be a problem with your mpeg2enc at all. Dvhscap and VirtualDVHS are recognizing and controlling the camera but nothing is coming through in either direction for some reason, not sure why at the moment.

[Paul St. Denis]

Ok, but I noticed that although 30Mps stream show fine on the monitor when it is being recorded to DVHS the recording is garbled when played back. Apparently the DVHS is more particular about bitrates than I had originally thought.

[Paul Mogg]

Finally it all works! It was just some sort of weird firewire glitch on this end, I changed to the front port on my G5 (I was using my G4 previously) and now all is fine. The 18300 encoded file with audio I mentioned before recorded perfectly to both the camera and the DVHS deck and seem to play back perfectly as well. I felt sure that the variable bit rate or the GOP size were the problem but that appears not to be the case. I think you can finally announce to the world that this solution actually works. Congratulations!
I guess just documenting the process from installation to usage for people would be a final stage, if you want me to help at all please let me know...but this is just great, it's now a very simple process to encode footage from any Quicktime HD codec, using Ffmpegx and VLC.
I think I will continue to use the DC30 codec for editing myself, as it seems the most reliable and artifact free to me, I was noticing some problems with Black and White using Pixlet.
By the way, do you know if you can save settings as a preset in Ffmpegx? I took a quick look but couldn't see a way to do it.

All the best, and thank you again for getting this together, you've done a great service for people with this camera.