About to purchase - What am I forgetting, what do I need to know?
 

I'm about to make a huge purchase of gear, jumping into the JVC world through the HD110U, the BR-HD50U, and AJA Kona LHe. This will be used on a Mac Pro Intel with FCP 5.1.4 for post-production. I've been reading these forums over the past several weeks and have been very impressed with the issues and responses, so I'm asking what should I know, do, or be prepared for? Is there something before purchase I should be aware of or that I might need to buy?

Some additional questions I can't seem to find answers of:
1. Does the 110U resolve all of the issues from the 100 that users had? (Issues listed in DV Magazines review of the 100)
2. The only monitoring of audio levels on the BR-HD50U is the LEDs in the front of the deck? How do you know things are a specific level? (I'm thinking of puchasing the AM-50 on-screen audio vu meter from Markertek, but still!)
3. Do you need the KA-551U tripod adaptor for the 110U to work with a Vinten 5 tripod?
4. In the BR-HD50U manual it talks about reading from DVCam, but also mentions (on page E-5) that you can record to DVCam tape, but not as DVCam (and that's okay). Would that be in HD or SD? Are the only tapes that master long-format in HD sold by JVC?
5. On the same item, can you use other small format DV tapes to record to other than Sony or JVCs ProHD. Granted, it may shorten the length of the tape because of the information rate, but is that possible?
6. What kind of deck control problems am I going to have between the BR-HD50U and the AJA Konda LHe card and how do I resolve them?

I should add that I've been talking with JVC and Apple. Apple is strongly hinting at an FCP6 coming out at NAB in April, but won't confirm anything (of course). Apple doesn't know why JVC hasn't courted them more or worked with them to get their more recent equipment on the certified equipment list (such as the BR-HD50U or 110U).

Thank you again in advance for you help in advice!

Doug Krejci

Two questions:
1-why are you going to FCP? It is very problemmatic with the JVC. I only hope Apple can fix their issues.

2-why are you getting a Kona card? Even with the kona card, you need terrabytes of fibre channel RAID to capture and store content.

Some users here make it sound like they can get it to work with FCP, even if its not approved. One of the support guys at Apple felt that it should work as well. I guess I assumed I could too. I really don't want to leave Mac or FCP.

As to the storage, I have a 1.5TB Firewire 800 Raid.

I've been using FCP with the HD100 for some time now without any problems. I wasn't even aware of a cerified equipment list. What's that all about?

I have been using FCP with my HD 100 without to many problems.

One thing that people need to get used to is that you have to leave handles on your clips when shooting.

I would consider the purchase of a Firestore as well for your use. This would eliminate any problems with capturing you may have with FCP. You would not have to capture into the Kona card then. You can always use the Kona to do realtime downconverts if needed.

If you do use the Kona card, what format do you want to edit in? I would guess DVCPro HD with the drive that you have.

Dan Weber

Yep, FCP works fine for editing HD100 footage, and the known capture problems (via firewire) might not be a problem the the Kona LHe, using component in, AFAIK. Someone might confirm this.

In fact when recording live, you'll increase your colour space to 4:2:2 from 4:2:0.

Andrew

FCP Certified Equipment List
 

I'm assuming you'd be better off to use RS-422 for deck control, but you can't use firewire when capturing through a Kona LHe? You have to go analog component in?

Doug,

You are correct in that you digitize analog component with the Kona LH. You can go all digital by using a Convergent Design Box to convert the firwire out of the deck to SDI, and then digitize with the Kona via SDI.

Even better- go with the Decklink HD Studio which will let you digitize the HDMI signal out of the JVC deck giving you an all digital workflow and all the benefits of the Kona LH. You would still use firwire for deck control or RS422.

This is the system that we are going with as JVC just came out with the firmware for the deck that allows it to play nicely with HDMI gear (regarding HDCP).

Hope this helps!

About to purchase
 

I have 3 HD110's and edit with FCP and have hade no issues since 5.1.3 was released. I also use the Vinten Vision 8 tripods and they do need the KA-551U adaptors, I believe the Vision series are all the same in that respect. I have also used Fuji tape and it works fine. I don't believe HD runs at a different speed than SD, it just encodes differently.

I would love to stay digital all the way through. The Decklink HD Studio looks great, but with only the HDMI out on the JVC deck and no firewire out of the Decklink HD Studio - do you stay digital by just a simple firewire cable from the Mac to the JVC Deck on the output back to the deck? I don't want to buy a Kona and a Decklink card. Those PCI slots are just to valuable!

Let me know
Thank you!

Doug

So, other than cost, is there any reason that any DV tape couldn't be used for recording HD signals in the JVC 50 or the 110U? I have alot of Sony DVCam large format tapes and Sony DVM-60PRL tapes that I'd like to be able to use in the HD format (mastering).

I would check to see if your firewire 800 is sufficient. Capture of component sdi needs a sustained 250 Mb/sec, I think. As for the firestore, I use firestore on my HD110 without any problems, capturing with Cineform, however, there are many reports in these forums of 4 secs of dropout between clips on the firestore system, when used with FCP.

Standard tapes work fine. That's why it's HDV - HD to standard DV tapes. Now they do have tapes out there that are geared toward HDV at a much higher cost, and although may be superior, I don't think you'll notice too big of a difference.

As someone else mentioned, a Firestore drive may be the way to go. We use em' and they work great - it will save you a ton of capturing time. We have always had firestore drives for our cameras - I couldn't imagine having to capture all those tapes all the time. But if you do get a firestore drive, make sure you purchase a bracket so it attaches to the camera, a power-tap to dc (firestore dc) adapter so you can run it off your IDX or A/B setup and a right angle firewire cable so you don't have that cable sticking too far out the side of the cam. Makes for a nice & fast sweet package.

You would conform your timeline to HDV and then output back to the deck via firewire. This woulld be the case for the Kona AND the Decklink.

I should say that our workflow does not include mastering back to the deck anymore because there is no more need to have a master unless you are handing something off to a network. We just rebuild the timeline if we need to go revisit the project.

I you do need to hand someting off to a network then they wouldn't accept an HDV master anyway. By having the Kona or the decklink one can hook up a more pro deck and master to that.

If you decide to shoot on firestore then you really don't need a Kona or Decklink. We don't use firestore because they don't have quicktime support for 720p60 yet. Yes you can capture the M2T file but the converters (to quicktime) are not good enough for us.