DVX100A 25P Problem With FCP5

[Aaron Huang]

I am to shoot a Short film With DVX100a, PAL, 25P(scene F6). Can Anyone suggest a proper Post Workflow? With Final cut pro 5/Premiere Pro2.0

I Set up the FCP5 using the standard PAL setup with No Field(progressive). After I captured the tape and view it with Quicktime, the Image was a real crab on Quicktime player.( but it was great at the capture Preview screen, after i press capture(now) the image turns bad).

Premiere pro 2.0 was doing no good neither. I also setup the standard PAL with no Field in the DESKTOP mode. and could not find a proper compressor for the review in the Desktop Mode.

Please Help! I search the whole Internet and find not a single piece of infomation about 25P editing. the FCP Pro website and premiere support website did not even mention about 25P.

Is 25P anygood at all? coz when I preview the captured file on my Mac with Quicktime player, the 25P footage couldn't even match my Panasonic NV-GS400(a consumer camera). It was grainy and the color and resolution seem so low.
Is anything I've done wrong during the capture and setup or it just the DVX100a's Nature?!

[Peter Jefferson]

" I search the whole Internet and find not a single piece of infomation about 25P editing"

u aint lookin hard enough bro...
seriously dude, theres PILEs of info out there. working 25p IS NOT a drama.. i work with it everyday... then again, Premiere DOES have some issues with progressive scan.. i dunno if these were rectified in PP2 though.. Also if ur uising a Hardware card likea matrox or Storm with Premier, u can forget al about progressive scan coz these units DONT support it..

as for FCP, i dont se e why it shoudl be a problem, then again i dont use a mac.

TO be truthful with u, ive NEVER had a problem with Vegas.. EVER... by the sound of it, it seems ur stil toing and froing with your NLEs and for 25p workflow, u should give Vegas a go if u cant get these other apps to do what u want them to do..

good luck..

as for is 25p any good.. well progressive scan is the only way your going to get ever get the highest possible resolution onto Standard def DVD...

Also luminance response is lower as your running twice the resolution, in Pal land, the major difference is about 2stops... so u lose light but when shooting progressive with Cinegamma configs, its best not to be too overly exposed ayway, and u SHOULD have your exposure about 2 stops down ayway...
This is where the Dynamic range of this camera REALLY shines...

[Chris Suzor]

I upgraded from consumer cameras (mvx3i, gs-400) to the dvx100b. At first, the video in 25p was not better than these other cams on my computer, and after processing into mpg it was aweful. I went back to 50i for my next video, and then I tried Vegas. I realised that the other software was screwing up the progressive (even if it claimed to handle progressive), because it somehow defaults internally into a deinterlacing mode (it was de-interlacing my progressive video!).

Now, with Vegas, the progressive video is awesome, the picture is so much cleaner than deinterlaced video.

As for the dvx100 vs gs-400, keep playing with the settings, you'll find it outperforms such consumer grade cameras. Tune the dvx to your liking, don't just stick to the Fn presets. And make sure you don't ruin your efforts with bad post-processing.

[Peter Jefferson]

Originally Posted by Chris Suzor

I upgraded from consumer cameras (mvx3i, gs-400) to the dvx100b. At first, the video in 25p was not better than these other cams on my computer, and after processing into mpg it was aweful. I went back to 50i for my next video, and then I tried Vegas. I realised that the other software was screwing up the progressive (even if it claimed to handle progressive), because it somehow defaults internally into a deinterlacing mode (it was de-interlacing my progressive video!).

Now, with Vegas, the progressive video is awesome, the picture is so much cleaner than deinterlaced video.

As for the dvx100 vs gs-400, keep playing with the settings, you'll find it outperforms such consumer grade cameras. Tune the dvx to your liking, don't just stick to the Fn presets. And make sure you don't ruin your efforts with bad post-processing.

dude, some of these programs see 25p as field doubling, what they try to do is remove one "field"... thing is the DVX100 ISNT doubling its fields to give u one progressie frame.. Barry wrote a post up about this in teh HVX forum and he goes into lots mroe detail than i can be bothered writing write now..

as for teh other, the other thing which retains performance on these systems is that they have a limited resolution. With PP2, i doubt this is an issue now, but back then, the SW was specifically designed to take advantage of the half field resolutions (ie, not 720x576, but 720x288. This lower resolution management streamlined ALOT of HW accelerator boards like the RTx100 and Storm cards. Throw progressive on there though... and u can forget it.. it wont work. ANother thing with the older prem 1.5, is that it had a template for 24p, but NOT 25p. None that i had found or installed to customers PC's anyway... So hat you may also be seeing is the conversion of 25p into 24p...
I know Edius had templates which worked well, and premiere (software mode only) could be configured before the project was started, i cant speak for FCP coz i could never be bothered dealing with it or macs in general.. not since apple bought out logic and screwed up the music production industry for alot of producers anyway...
Anywyas, Vegas itself lets me chop and change my project for wherever my purpose evovles.. if a client wants a web based vriation, i jsut go into my prject properties and change them on the fly as needed. save acopy of the project and voila, you have your DV version, and your web version...
(even while playing back in realtime... )
Now THIS is what i call performance..