Shooting 1080/24p and editing in FCPHD
 

A friend of mine is about to shoot a feature using the DVCPRO HD/P2. He plans to shoot at 1080i 24fps, and wants to edit it uncompressed in Final Cut Pro HD. What kind of workaround might be suggested for this combo, since FCP doesn't work with 24p. I'm not a Mac user and don't know if FCP can handle uncompressed 1080i either. What should I tell him?

A workaround is not necessary. FCP can handle all HVX200 footage.

Gee, I hope this isn't the only thing people are going to say about this, because they are already having trouble getting FCP to handle some sample footage they shot with the Panasonic. If it's completely compatible, then something is breaking down somewhere. What they really want is to hear from some kind of Panasonic and/or FCP guru about how to make it work. I hate being the middleman, since I don't have direct knowledge of what they are doing, but that's how it is.

At least I will try to get a better description of what has been going wrong.

But I must confess that it's a little hard to believe the Panasonic and FCP are so compatible that no glitches are to be expected.

I'm only speaking from experience. I run FCP 5.0.4, which isn't the latest version (5.1.1?)... and I've had zero trouble with any of my footage. Here's what it handles:

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...is/fcp_cap.jpg

FCP5 is quite well-equipped for mxf files. If your colleagues are having problems, they probably have something set incorrectly. I've had problems with ingest into Avid Adrenaline (which also has far fewer supported frame rates), but not with FCP. Make sure the FCP project settings match the footage, or they'll have to render everything before even playing it. If they try to mix formats/frame rates in the same timeline, some of them will need to be rendered.

Thanks folks, I'll pass the word along.

What drives are you using to work with this footage? Firewire 400 won't cut it, and at 1080i I don't think firewire 800 will either. You will need a SATA Raid or fibrechannel at this point. SATA Raids are cheaper.

Just get one of those big internal drives - that 750GB Seagate. If you're worried about a crash, get two and run them in RAID. Unless you're shooting a 3 hour feature and burning tape/P2, you should have plenty of room.

I wouldn't bother with editing HD on externals... unless you have the budget for XServes and such.

PLUS...shooting at 720p is really what the camera is designed for.

To Quote Gary Adcock:

"The best format to use with the P2 is 720p.

it is the native format for recording with the camera, and offers the most usability - the most amount of storage on the cards, and variable frame rates are only available in the 720 format; not to mention that your data rates for the 720p24 materials are low ( 5.75 MBs a second) enough that you will be able to edit from FW 400 drive. This is something you cannot do as simply using the 1080 format ( at 18+ MBs per second)"

At the risk of returning to the dreaded 'how many pixels can dance on the head of a pin' thread about the 540x960 imager... The signal that comes of the chips, after pixel shifting and before the DSP, is 1080x1920. (Please, no rants about whether it's "true" 1080x1920!) From there, it's downrezzed for 720p. So claiming the camera is "native" 720 isn't quite accurate.

will it ever handle 1080i 24p?? what are you supposed to do with that footage if you're using final cut?

There was supposedly a glitch when importing 24p 1080i footage in ALL FCP versions before 5.1.1. I believe this was resolved in the 5.1.1 version.

And, as Barry Green (the author of the HVX book bundled with the camera) said, the camera resolves better resolution in 1080p. And, while I have the Pal camera, I have to say that that is indeed the case. There's more resolution in the 1080 signal.

Nope. It wasn't fixed in 5.1.1 either. However there is a workaround.

http://www.235studios.com/tutorials/...0paWithFCP.pdf