Question for Tim D. on HDVxDV

[Brian Duke]

Hey Tim,

Can you post the procedure you use for capturing footage from HD100U to FCP using HDVxDV. Maybe a step by step guide so folks like myself can do it the right way.

I found that yu have to export the Mt2 files to quicktime in order to use it in FCP. I am probably wrong and doing it the incorrect way.
Please help. =0)

Also, maybe you can answer a stupid question. Obviosly whenI shoot on the HD100U I am capturing full resolution, but it seems that once that it is transferred to FCP it has lost a lot of resolution. How do I keep the full resolution or is there another way to have the final cut after editing be in full resolution when you go to either DVD, film transfer etc?

Thanks
Duke

[Tim Dashwood]

Hi Brian,

It is true that FCP won't let you actually work with m2t streams, even if you have purchased and installed the quicktime mpeg component plug-in.
I'm not sure exactly how FCP digitizes 720P30 HDV and maintains native "HDV" but it certainly isn't in a normal mpeg2 transport stream. It creates new I frames for editing.

So here's my current detailed workflow that you have probably already figured out.

1. Switch HD100 1394 switch to HDV
2. Connect HD100 to Mac firwire
3. Turn on HD100, switch to VTR mode
4. Launch the HDVxDV application
5. Cue tape to first shot
6. Click "Playback and Capture"
7. Name the first clip (for example "Scene01A-01")
8. If it is not already playing, hit the play button on the camera
9. Click the SAVE button or hit return to begin capturing
10. Press ESC when you want to finish the capture
11. Repeat steps 6 to 10 for additional clips
12. Select "Export - BATCH ENCODE MOVIES..." or hit CMD+"B"
13. Select "EXPERT SETTINGS" for formats
14. Click Export or hit the RETURN key
15. Select "APPLE INTERMEDIATE CODEC" as your compression type
16. Select "HDV 720P" for compressor preset
17. Click 'OK'
18. Select a folder to save your converted quicktimes to.
19. HDVxDV will now encode into AIC
20. Quit HDVxDV
21. Launch Cinema Tools
22. Hit "cancel" if it asks you for a database file
23. Select "Batch Conform" from the file menu
24. Find your folder with the .mov files and choose one of them.
25. Set frame rate to 23.98 (hopefully a future version of HDVxDV will export the files at 23.98 instead of 24 and then steps 21 to 25 won't be necessary)
26. Quit Cinema Tools
27. Launch FCP
28. Drag the folder of .mov files into FCP
29. Create a new sequence using the 720P30 HDV sequence preset
30. Select "Sequence - Settings"
31. Change the frame rate to 23.98
32. Change the compressor to Apple Intermediate Codec - and set the compression options to 720P
    

I made a new sequence preset for 720P24 AIC so that I can quickly create new sequences.

[Brian Duke]

Thanks Tim.

So how is anyone actually editing and then outputting High Definition Resolution if FCP5 doesn't allow the best resolution to be editing or imported? Maybe this is a stupid question. What if I want to transfer to film one day. How do I get the HD on to film without losing anything?

It seems to me after you're done editing you are left with watered down resolution, probably not close to what was actually caputred in the camera. Correct me if I am wrong.

[Tim Dashwood]

No that's not true. The resolution stays exactly the same.
Besides, I wouldn't consider HDV to be the "best" for any post workflow, but it works well for aquisition.
If you drop a CT "conformed" file into After Effects, it may show up as half the resolution, but this is because AE doesn't look at the true res, it just looks at the playback scaling. This can easily be fixed by opening in QT player, setting to "actual size" and re-saving. FCP doesn't have this problem, it always checks the true dimensions.

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.

When you have finished your offline, you can free up lots of space on your hard drive, re-convert the needed m2t files to new .mov files using an "uncompressed" 8-bit or 10-bit codec, upsample the colour to 4:2:2 or even 4:4:4 and then do your digital intermediate with those files, always rendering back to uncompressed.

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.

[Brian Duke]

2 more questions for the master.

1. It seems like wqhen i impoted audio into FCP5 to play with my 24p footage that it didn't play right. There were ton of little poos on the audio. Is there adifference with audio when you work in 24p? Should I import it at a different rate or some other way? Or is it a completely different problem?

2. What harddrive do you use to capture and edit your HDV footage? I am buying one now and I want to get an external hardrive that can handle HDV and a large quantity. Trying to stay under $1000 if possible. First I was gettinga Hitachi 500 GB Deskstar 7K500 ATA, but I was told it won't work for HDV.

Any suggestions?

[Edwin Beeler]

Trying to work with HDVxDV, it always crashes. No way. Tried all settings. But Export to Quicktime in different formats: crashes. There is no way mailing to HDVxDV's site.
Thank you.
Edwin

[Brian Duke]

Originally Posted by Edwin Beeler

Trying to work with HDVxDV, it always crashes. No way. Tried all settings. But Export to Quicktime in different formats: crashes. There is no way mailing to HDVxDV's site.
Thank you.
Edwin

But there is a email: support@dvdxdv.com

I have not had any problems with them as of yet, but I didn't download the full version. You should probably have downloaded the trial version first. And if you did, then I woudln't buy it.

[Tim Dashwood]

Originally Posted by Edwin Beeler

Trying to work with HDVxDV, it always crashes. No way. Tried all settings. But Export to Quicktime in different formats: crashes. There is no way mailing to HDVxDV's site.
Thank you.
Edwin

What's your system configuration? OS version? RAM? HDD space? Are you using version 1.024?

I'm surprised because HDVxDV seems very solid to me for a small
I've never had a crash with HDVxDV, but LumiereHD constantly "unexpectedly quits" or has some other buggy things happen like "grayed out" buttons that require me to reboot it.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by Tim Dashwood

When you have finished your offline, you can free up lots of space on your hard drive, re-convert the needed m2t files to new .mov files using an "uncompressed" 8-bit or 10-bit codec, upsample the colour to 4:2:2 or even 4:4:4 and then do your digital intermediate with those files, always rendering back to uncompressed.

Tim, assuming that HD space is not a concern, wouldn't be easier to export from HDVxDV directly to uncompressed and edit the clips in FCP using that encoding?
Would it be too heavy for editing? I did some testing and FCP barfed on the uncompressed clips while it worked just fine with the same files exported to AIC.
Don't know if it was just my system or a general issue...

TIA.

[Brian Duke]

Originally Posted by Tim Dashwood

What's your system configuration? OS version? RAM? HDD space? Are you using version 1.024?

I'm surprised because HDVxDV seems very solid to me for a small
I've never had a crash with HDVxDV, but LumiereHD constantly "unexpectedly quits" or has some other buggy things happen like "grayed out" buttons that require me to reboot it.

Hi Tim,

What external harddrive do you use to edit and store HDV? A Raid? Any recommendations.

Thanks Duke

[Brian Duke]

Originally Posted by Tim Dashwood

Hi Brian,

It is true that FCP won't let you actually work with m2t streams, even if you have purchased and installed the quicktime mpeg component plug-in.
I'm not sure exactly how FCP digitizes 720P30 HDV and maintains native "HDV" but it certainly isn't in an mpeg transport stream.

Tim, this seems more complicated than using Lumiere. I tried it, but there seems to be so many steps that has to be done. Maybe I am just not good at this =)

[Stephen L. Noe]

Originally Posted by Tim Dashwood

I'm not sure exactly how FCP digitizes 720P30 HDV and maintains native "HDV" but it certainly isn't in an mpeg transport stream.

It probably strips the transport header and makes it a program stream instead (ie m2v) and then handles it as MPEG2.

[Edwin Beeler]

My system: G5 2DP, 2.5GB RAM, several SATA-HD's, OS 10.4.3, HDVxDV 1.024. - I made some mistake - it didn't capture at all - there are the named files, but no content - although the clips have been played out through the JVC's firewire using HDVxDV's deck controller and playback/capture button...
I try again after this weekend. Thank you all
Edwin

[Tim Dashwood]

Originally Posted by Paolo Ciccone

Tim, assuming that HD space is not a concern, wouldn't be easier to export from HDVxDV directly to uncompressed and edit the clips in FCP using that encoding?
Would it be too heavy for editing? I did some testing and FCP barfed on the uncompressed clips while it worked just fine with the same files exported to AIC.
Don't know if it was just my system or a general issue...

Uncompressed playback requires a fast system, but more importantly a fast RAID array for the data transfer. The transfer rate is 20Mb/sec minimum. AIC is only 7Mb/sec - similar in size to DVCPRO50 codec.

[Tim Dashwood]

Originally Posted by Brian Duke

2 more questions for the master.

1. It seems like wqhen i impoted audio into FCP5 to play with my 24p footage that it didn't play right. There were ton of little poos on the audio. Is there adifference with audio when you work in 24p? Should I import it at a different rate or some other way? Or is it a completely different problem?

2. What harddrive do you use to capture and edit your HDV footage? I am buying one now and I want to get an external hardrive that can handle HDV and a large quantity. Trying to stay under $1000 if possible. First I was gettinga Hitachi 500 GB Deskstar 7K500 ATA, but I was told it won't work for HDV.

I'm not sure what the audio problems are other than maybe dropping frames on playback. Try encoding out to DV and see if the audio glitches are still there. If they are, then something else is going on like 44Khz being played in 48Khz with realtime transcoding and your system can't handle it.

I've been using firewire harddrives just the way I did with DV. DV is 25Mbits/sec and HDV 720P is only 19.2mbits/sec so it is actually easier on the drive.