Newb Questions

[Jason McGovern]

Ok. I got my hands on a GY-HD110U for a shoot this past weekend. I've been reading this forum and others for about a week now trying to catch up on this camera. Great info here, but here's what I'm still unclear on:

1. I test captured 720p24fps on FCP v5.?. It segmented the thing into serveral files. I burnt those files to a DVD and then brought them into PremPro CS3 and PPro wouldn't accept them until I named them as .AVI. Isn't that freaky?

2. I then test captured 720p24fps on PremPro CS3. It goes OK if I capture small files, less than 10min - otherwise PPro chokes and crashes. Within the project settings (since in CS3 there's nothing specifically geared toward JVC) I do custom settings since the only ones avail are 720p25fps. Then in the capture settings the JVC GY-HD110 isn't listed - so I just set that to standard. The resulting file is a .mpeg in PPro. From what I've read isn't it supposed to be .m2t file?

3. From what I've been reading, in order to use PPro effectively for HDV, one would be well served by Cineform Aspect HD. What is the workflow for this? It looks as though it is a codec? that somehow compresses the HDV better than the standard stuff on PPro?

4. So yes, through various friends (none of whom capture with this camera), I have acess to FCP 5, PPro CS3, Sony Vegas 8pro (none of which have the cineform codec) - which one will capture the "best"? Is there a difference?

5. I was noticing that Adobe released HD110 specific settings for PPro 2. I'm wondering if I should capture on that since it doesn't appear that CS3 supports this camera.

6. If someone would be gracious enough to describe or point me to the best workflow for getting HD110 footage on to DVD that'd be great!

------------Questions below aren't as important, it's just that the manual is driving me crazy.

7. what is the best Time Code setting for just "regular" use. I'd like to put a new DV tape in there and have it set at Zero - but instead it's somehow remembering some other timecode from before.

8. Is there a way to run the JVC HD110 16x9 footage on the composite line into a 4x3 television and have it letterboxed? Looks like it's squeezing it. When it VTR mode there should be a menu setting to tell it what kind of tv the composite is going to.

Thanks so much, your advice is greatly appreciated.
Jason

[Marc Colemont]

My answers are PC & Cineform related only.

2. Difficult to answer if your PC details are not known. How much system memory do you have? 2Gbyte the the absolute minimum for Premiere. Also avoid Vista if you can.

3. Cineform is your best option on the PC. It captures into a format which gives you real-time performance and the least degrading of your footage while editing. The workflow is easy. Install the trial version, and capture through HD-link. These captured AVI files can be used directly into PPro and After Effects. With Cineform Prospect HD can can edit in 10bit, Aspect is 8 bit.

5. Personally I stay away a bit from CS3 until the first patch update. CS2 (PPro2) works fine for me at the moment. It could be all related to question 2.

6. All depends on what system, software you want to use? In case of the Cineform workflow:Through HD-link software convert the files to PAL or NTSC format with letterbox options or not. And load these files directly into your DVD software.

8. On the 100 series, I couldn't. On the HD251 I can now choose the desired settings.

[Jason McGovern]

Thanks Marc - so Cineform captures footage off the JVC using it's own compression algorithm? Am I understanding correctly that Cineform captures the JVC footage same as other stuff - it's just that Cineform mpeg files are easier for consumer desktop computers to handle? If you have Cineform installed, PPro sees that as it's own capture setting?

Oh and here's my specs:
Hp Pavillion, Athalon 5600+ 64X2, 3G Ram, Windows XP.SP2

[Marc Colemont]

These are more question to be answered by David & David from Cineform, who have a forum here as well.
Basicaly the incoming M2T stream from the camera is a compressed MPEG2. Using captured M2T files inside the editing software is possible, but you are consuming much more CPU resources as it has to decode the file while scrubbing the time-line. (David correct me if I'm wrong) The Cineform Codec uses a much less compressed format and in a higher resolution. So adjusting colors and other adjustments are giving much better end-results then staying into a compressed format and in 8-bit.
And saving edited footage back in the same M2T introduces compression artifacts. While saving the Cineform files does keep the quality of your editing. The Cineform website shows some nice examples. Only when the editing is finished it is advised to converted into the desired end-format preserving the best quality.

[Jason McGovern]

Very interesting. I'm going to try that Cineform later today. I'm capturing right now with the JVC HD110 and PPro CS3 and the resulting files are .mpeg. PPro has a hard time on my machine when I bootup and open a PPro project with lots of these .mepgs. Also, on my machine, PPro does a good job of capturing, but always runs about 1-3min past the out marker (capture In/Out) when capturing 24fps - wonder if I did something wrong on the time code when I shot. It will be interesting to compare the captured footage from CS3 and Cineform. Thanks again for the info.

[Jason McGovern]

Marc, this is good stuff. I'm trying the Cineform HDLINK ... I was able to capture fine in CS3 (although I'm not exactly sure what compression method CS3 is using) but HDLINK crashes on me for some reason. It controls the camera fine, but as soon as I hit "capture" it crashes. Weird no?

[Clayton Zook]

Originally Posted by Jason McGovern

7. what is the best Time Code setting for just "regular" use. I'd like to put a new DV tape in there and have it set at Zero - but instead it's somehow remembering some other timecode from before.
Jason

Since most of your other questions seem to be answered as well or better than I can answer I'll stick with this one...

As far as best for regular use, it depends on what you want...you say you want it to reset to zero on new tape, then I believe what you want is to make sure your "gene" switch (behind the viewfinder) is set to "REGEN" (note that on a blank tape it starts at zero, if a tape already has TC it'll pick up where that tape leaves off or regenerate whatever TC it finds).

If its on "REC" it will continue any new recording on any tape where it last left (ex. you record to xx:xx:01 pop a new tape in, or even rewind current tape for that matter, the first new frame recorded will be xx:xx:02).

"FREE" will continually count even if you aren't recording (as I understand it, if you stop recording at xx:05:00, wait 5 sec and start recoding again your new clip's TC will start at xx:10:00 creating a TC jump).

see p13 if you have access to the user manual for more info here.

There are also a couple of TC related items in the menu "TC/UB/Clock" under the main menu that might be of use for you. I've not ever messed with those, I can only point you to p77 in the user manual.

Hope this is a help on that less important question.

[Jason McGovern]

Awesome, thanks Clayton, that's exactly what I wanted to know. The manual seems to have been written by Martians. No wonder you have to buy a separate book just to understand this camera.

[Clayton Zook]

yeah I agree, a lot of things aren't very well explained in it. I was looking in it just to make sure I had my info correct and it ended up confusing me more...so I finally looked what i had my 110s set to, to figure out what each setting was about!

Glad to help! Happy shooting!

PS. for some really good reading look through a fujinon lens manual sometime...reads about as well as some fortune cookies!! ex. a WARNING "Dropping any parts from a height may cause severe accidents." :)

[Marc Colemont]

Originally Posted by Jason McGovern

Marc, this is good stuff. I'm trying the Cineform HDLINK ... I was able to capture fine in CS3 (although I'm not exactly sure what compression method CS3 is using) but HDLINK crashes on me for some reason. It controls the camera fine, but as soon as I hit "capture" it crashes. Weird no?

What does the logging window say of HD-link? Your general crashes in capturing look to me somewhat hardware related to the firewire-port.
Connect your camera and turn it on before you start any capture software.
Make sure to disable any software which can interrupt the capture process.
One of the resident programs I struggled big time with, was Norton software, who sometimes just took any available CPU at random moments.

[Jason McGovern]

Marc

The logging window says everything is good to go. What's interesting to me is that my new box seems really fast. When capturing through premiere, I can actually run a bunch of other programs and copy files here and there and not drop a frame. I have full Device control through the PremPro capture interface. I also have device control through HDLINK except for capturing.

It's also puzzling that I can't see my camera in device manager. I'm wondering if PremPro is allowing me to somehow capture in spite of this fact but HDLINK really wants the camera to be there.

The HDLINK window also is mis-recognizing the camera - at the top of the window it says JVC HD101 instead of 110.

Thanks!

[Marc Colemont]

[It's also puzzling that I can't see my camera in device manager.]
That is normal, windows has no direct support for HDV devices yet as on DV mode. If you turn your camera in a normal DV device, windows will recognise it through the FireWire.

[Jason McGovern]

Well after running some tests - it appears initially as though Sony Vegas may be the way to go as far as 720p24fps HDV to SD/WidescreenDVD only because you can directly edit the m2t files on the timeline with fast box. I haven't tested as thoroughly as I'd like, but if you can edit the m2t's without an intermediate - then that's going to give you the best quality I'd imagine.

[Jason McGovern]

Oh yeah, I got HDLINK to work once I selected the option for just capturing m2t files. Thanks!