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July 9th, 2022, 07:22 PM
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#1 |
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Major Player
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Cardiff, UK
Posts: 223
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It's been over 15 years... and I still want to scream!
This forum is understandably 'quiet' these days, so this is more of a vent than anything ha.
I just remember shooting video back in the mid 00s and always having a hard time when it came to the edit due to hard disk space, computer power etc as I was just a regular person that somehow ended up with a PD150 and a love of shooting. So I ended up with 100+ tapes full of footage, and only rarely ever cutting them for putting online, and most of the time it was small clips that YouTube would butcher. Still using the trusty PD a handful of years ago, I made better progress with my iMac that I'd switched to from a regular Windows PC and I remember it going... better, but not great. Boy, if only I had the good gear the pros have, I told myself. Now I'm sitting here with a slightly newer Mac Mini (I have a 2020 as my main machine now, but this 2012 is dedicated to this purpose) and a DSR 11 sitting next to it. Nothing can stop me now! Except it can. It's still night after night after night of new problems and banging my head against the desk. Whether it's Final Cut screwing up the audio after a glitch in a tape, or simply not ingesting 2/3 of what I thought was capturing flawlessly. So I move to Quicktime for ingest, as others say it's a great way to get around the Timecode tetchiness of FCP, and it feels like things have gone better (albeit it won't let me capture directly in DV25, and transcodes to ProRes. Fine. Whatever.) but noooo now I don't have access to the Anamoprhic Override setting for some reason, and a good chunk of my footage was shot with the Century Optics adapter. I'm nearly a week in, and I still haven't edited a damn frame!! Oh and all my footage is in PAL interlaced, while I sit here in the US. Luckily the DSR takes care of that aspect! I feel so, so envious of people jumping into video today with a universal resolution and aspect ratio, square pixels, native progressive scan, and files you can dump off fast cards in seconds. I'm pretty sure at one point this was supposed to be a fun project... |
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July 10th, 2022, 07:02 AM
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#2 |
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Wrangler
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Mays Landing, NJ
Posts: 11,802
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Re: It's been over 15 years... and I still want to scream!
I had a VX-2000, PDX-10, moved on to a Z-1 and finally an EX-1 which I still have. I shot live perfomance video for many years with those old tape-based cameras and about 10 years ago managed to get most of my original tapes back from my former employer.
Ingested well over 100 of them into Final Cut Pro - most of them with a 2012 quad-core Mini and Sony tape deck. I started the project using the old legacy version of Final Cut, then moved to Final Cut Pro X about halfway through. Yes, it can be a bit frustrating but I never really felt a need to vent. Did you re-use your tapes? I never did. Frankly, I was suprised that I had so few problems capturing all my old tapes. Are you still using the old legacy Final Cut Pro? It got very buggy with newer versions of MacOS. Seems like anamorphic aspect ratio problems could be easily fixed. I shot everything anamorphic starting around 2003 and really had no problems capturing/editing those. Are you still using your old tape-based cameras? I could never go back to that! I do very little video these days, but still enjoy using my EX-1 for personal projects, it's still good enough for me. Not very interested in going to 4k, the computer and storage requirements are too much for me. |
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July 10th, 2022, 10:06 AM
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#3 |
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Regular Crew
Join Date: Jan 2017
Location: New England USA
Posts: 80
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Re: It's been over 15 years... and I still want to scream!
James, like you my first camera was a Sony PD-150. I always used Sony DVCAM tapes and never had drop out or tape problems. I still have my 2010 i7 iMac that I use with a JVC-BR50 tape deck for ingesting legacy tapes shot with the PD-150. The problem is many of of the tapes were ingested in the FCP “Archive” format and the current version of FCPX running on my 2017 i7 iMac no longer recognizes the “archive” format.
https://www.southernadvantage.com/pr...video-recorder |
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July 10th, 2022, 10:31 AM
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#4 | |
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Trustee
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Sydney Australia
Posts: 1,572
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Re: It's been over 15 years... and I still want to scream!
Quote:
Chris Young |
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July 10th, 2022, 11:34 AM
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#5 |
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Wrangler
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Mays Landing, NJ
Posts: 11,802
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Re: It's been over 15 years... and I still want to scream!
Sorry, you are way off on this one, Thunderbolt 3 didn't appear until the 2018 Mini. The 2012 Mini actually has one firewire 800 port, a Thunderbolt 1 port and an HDMI port. This is why it works well with legacy firewire DV gear. I have a 2012, 2014 and 2018 Mini myself. :-)
https://support.apple.com/kb/sp659?locale=en_US I have a Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter and have used it with my 2013 MacBook Air. It works fine but gets really hot while plugged into the Mac, even if you aren't using it and no Firewire device is connected. I found that a bit worrisome. |
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July 10th, 2022, 11:56 AM
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#6 |
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Trustee
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Sydney Australia
Posts: 1,572
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Re: It's been over 15 years... and I still want to scream!
Right! Understood. Wonder why it gets so hot?
Chris Young |
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July 10th, 2022, 12:19 PM
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#7 |
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Wrangler
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Mays Landing, NJ
Posts: 11,802
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Re: It's been over 15 years... and I still want to scream!
Good question... I assume there's a chip in there that converts the data and runs hot. But Apple is the only company to ever make that kind of adapter, so it is what it is. To use a firewire device with a new(er) Mac, you need a thunderbolt 3 to thunderbolt 1 adapter plugged into the thunderbolt 1 to firewire adaptor and probably a firewire800 to firewire 400 adapter for most cameras and decks.
Probably works, but seems pretty dicey to me. A computer like the 2012 Mini that actually has a firewire port seems like a more elegant solution (although I still need a FW 800 to FW 400 adapter). Support for the 2012 Mini ended with Catalina (which I am still using) so that might be problematic if you want to run the newest version of Final Cut Pro. But the 2012 Mini can also run Mountain Lion, which is a plus if you still want to use legacy Final Cut Pro or other 32-bit software. I used to have mine setup to dual boot into both systems, depending on the software I wanted to use. However, I retired the 2012 Mini from daily use when I got the 2018 Mini and now it's a headless file and time machine server with 20tb of storage. |
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July 10th, 2022, 12:32 PM
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#8 | ||||
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Major Player
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Cardiff, UK
Posts: 223
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Re: It's been over 15 years... and I still want to scream!
Oh wow, I was actually expecting to just be yelling into the void with this post... just a vent to clear my head then try another approach. Spoiler: the new approach has actually gone really well! I'll post about it at the end once I've replied to everyone who graciously responded to me.
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Like you, virtually all my tapes are live gigs. Lots of local and touring bands from punk and metal gigs, the PD really kicked ass in those situations because those clubs are not well lit and the TRV950 I had next to it couldn't hold a candle to its much praised low light capabilities. I don't shoot video at all anymore, the PD got left behind when I emigrated (the firewire port had broken so I left it with a friend to see if it could be repaired and we're not in contact anymore, I don't have much use for it anymore anyway) but I have the TRV with me for anything I might've shot in LP or just an alternate source if the DSR doesn't like something. I have my DSLR camera now, and for some reason haven't ever really given video on it much thought. Maybe one day! I only have the dual 2012 for this, but I have the i7 in the other room (it's just nice to finally have a dedicated machine for this stuff, even if it's not the latest and greatest. At least manipulating DV isn't an issue for a 2012 machine!) but sounds like a similar setup other than that. I'm on the latest MacOS which is Catalina, and the latest version of FCP that runs on this before they increased the minimum OS requirement. Yeah the aspect ratio stuff is a scratcher, it's definitely something to do with FCPs limitations on what it thinks it can apply it to, and the format that comes in from QT just not meeting those requirements. Luckily... that's been solved! Quote:
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---- ANYWAY! Not long after I posted, I got lucky with some Googling and found this guys page who basically was approaching a project with the same concerns and issues as me. Luckily, he did some good research and found a fantastic solution! https://leolabs.org/blog/capture-minidv-on-macos I tried installing LifeFlix like he mentioned just in case I had better results, but it didn't even see my deck for some reason. I wasn't convinced that suite would be for me anyway, it didn't look anything special. But below that, raw DV capture straight to a HD through the much trusted FFMPEG software? And with a fairly newly open sourced bit of software to do some processing afterwards? Gotta be worth a shot right? And it was. After a surprisingly long install, and a boneheaded move on my behalf (gotta press play on the deck, the software hadn't crashed!) I start getting some feedback that data was coming in, and lo and behold the same tapes that caused me issues were now captured exactly how I wanted them. The DVpackage suite fixes the issues and splits the files across timecode breaks perfectly (ie one tape that made *ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY* instances in FCP gave me just 4, and in places I would expect them). I'm super happy, the ability to set an override for the anamorphic tapes is intact and I'm not hearing any audio dropouts or missing files. I ran through a known bad tape that I've ever gotten more than a single frame out of before for 30 seconds or so, and for the first time ever in many years of trying saw actual video. Unusable, but shows the sheer difference this software has made for me. Here's a screenshot of the software in action for those intrigued. The top part shows the ingest - those red timecode issues are what trips FCP up but ffmpeg isn't bothered at all. You can see the speed rating has dropped badly though (a good capture comes in at 1x with no red lines) and the next section where I run the DVpackage software which then spends some time processing everything manages to fix those issues. If I try to open the single file before that, there's audio speed issues throughout the whole file. It's also nice that I can have the import window from FCP open while I do this to monitor video/audio coming in, rather than just seeing a command line. I'm sure there'll be more headaches, but I feel like good progress at last! |
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December 19th, 2024, 02:38 AM
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#9 | |
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Major Player
Join Date: Oct 2012
Location: Glasgow , Scotland
Posts: 252
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Re: It's been over 15 years... and I still want to scream!
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My filming history goes back to the early seventies when my dad started allowing me to borrow his Bolex standard 8 cine camera to film air shows and the like . There was never any editing but we ran them on the Eumig projector . Later I got a Minolta Autopak 8 Super 8 camera , and a dual gauge Eumig projector . I still have both cine cameras and various projectors but haven’t shot any film in years . More recently I picked up a Bolex H16 REX4 with zoom lens , but I have yet to try shooting 16mm . I do have two Elf NT1 16mm projectors though . My first involvement with early video was at school , where we had a JVC Nivico KV250 open reel VTR , monochrome only , and a monochrome tube camera , which I got to play with . Once I got a Saturday job in a local hifi shop , we started to get in early VHS and Betamax kit , domestic recorders and some of the early cameras and portable recorders ; I remember the Panasonic A2 and NV100 combination , then later the F10 and NV180 , and the AG 6400 portable recorder . Sony had the SL-F1 Betamax portable and a matching camera . The first video recording kit I actually bought was a Sony DXC-1800 camera and VO-4800 portable U-Matic recorder , and along with friends , some of whom still shot cine , we went to air shows , chased steam trains , went to motorsport and so on . Later , I upgraded to a DXC-M3A 3 tube camera , which was vastly better , and the VO-6800 portable , still lo band Umatic , I couldn’t afford hi band , but the older kit was cheap . The biggest problem with that kit was weight , and limited battery power ; the 4800 used big cuboid lead acid batteries , which were heavy and you were lucky to get 10 minutes out of ; the camera and the 6800 used NP1s , which were better , but still didn't give all that long . Eventually I was given a large PAG battery belt , which might as well have been a divers belt with lead weights around it , so heavy was it . Of course all the cells in it were shot , so I had to buy 10 or 12 of them ( can't remember ) from RS Components - these cells were the same diameter as D cells , but I think half as long again , and they weren't cheap , but once fitted , that belt was very useful . I still remember well trudging across Rannoch Moor to film a steam train ( a double-header pulled by two Stanier Black Fives ) , laden down with camera , recorder , shoulder bag full of batteries and tapes , wearing the PAG belt and carrying a tripod , to find myself slowly sinking into the mud , so went back up to the station and asked the stationmaster when the next train was due and was told nothing before the steam special , so I had an hour , also asked if anything else was due after it passed , and he said no , it was fine , so I , and my friend who was shooting stills , walked the railway line over the bridge , looking at the ground far below our feet through the gaps in the bridge ! Umatic footage was simply dubbed to VHS , one could hardly call it editing . Later I picked up a VO 5630 recorder and a Panasonic WJ-MX10 vision mixer , so between the two machines and the mixer , rudimentary editing became possible . My first camcorder was a Sony CCD-V8 , which was the first Video-8 camcorder , and I began to shoot weddings on it , just assembling footage onto VHS cassettes , and using the still frame grab on the MX-10 to create the most basic dissolves . Later I got an EV-S600 video 8 deck and a small edit controller so that I could make master edit tapes and offer multiple copies - early days then . Around that time , I had got an Amiga 500 computer and a Hama Genlock , which with various bits of software , Broadcast titler , Scala Multimedia and others , I could add titles and graphics , later got an Amiga 1200 . I upgraded the camera to the CCD-V100 Video-8 Pro , and later got a V200 , and finally a V5000 , which was Hi-8 . There were a few other camcorders along the way , can’t remember all of them , also had the EVS-800 deck and the EV-S1000 Hi-8 deck which I still have . This took me up to the late 90s and the introduction of DV . My first mini DV camcorder was a DCR-VX700 , and I got that along with an iMac G3 DV , which came bundled with iMovie . The camera was great , but on getting the iMac home , out of the box there was something wrong with the screen , so straight back to PC World . They didn’t have another one , but instead , the store manager let me have one of the new G4 towers , which was marginally more expensive, but he let me have it as a gesture of goodwill , it was the Friday before Christmas. I started out editing on iMovie , then got Final Cut Express which I used for a while . Even with what would be by todays standards very basic equipment , my wedding videos suddenly got a whole lot better , and I’d had the camera modified by the dealer so I could export back to DV tape , via FireWire , thus making an edit master I could dub to VHS for my customers . After about a year , I’d saved enough to get a VX-1000 , and these cameras were the mainstay of my weekend wedding video business for a number of years . Before I got the VX1000 , I shot on the VX700 , but always had a Hi-8 camera in the car as an emergency backup , which was never needed . Eventually, I’d had enough of shooting weddings and just stopped doing it . For a while I did the odd one for family and friends , or people who came to me from word of mouth , but I stopped looking for jobs and let it fade away . By this time I was working for an AV hire and presentation company , and anytime events needed to be filmed or just live video projected onto screen , I did it either working for the company , or sometimes they’d pass jobs to me . I started doing more of this kind of work and bought one of the ex hire DSR500’s when they were updating , and through contacts I’d made in venues etc , started to pick up work on my own . Somewhere along the line I got a couple of Firestore FS4 recorders , and these allowed me to film full days without needing to change tapes . I’d also updated the G4 to a PowerMac G5 dual 2.5GHz machine , and then later to a quad core MacPro ( still have both of these ) . By this time , mid to late noughties , HD had arrived , but it came in various flavours , so I held off for a while before eventually getting my HVR-V1E . By this time I had a new day job doing photography and video production for a large organisation, so I didn’t need to look for outside work anymore . To go with the V1 , I got a Firestore FS4 HD , and also got the dealer to do the firmware update to turn my earlier ones into HD as well . Later I updated the internal drives to 80 and 120Gb for increased record time . My employers , with me being involved in the decision , went from shooting on DV and MII , to XDCAM HD and got the PDW-F350 along with a new HD edit suite . I was at that point given the JVC DV500 camera , they kept the DV5000 . I eventually passed the 500 onto a friend ; I could never sell equipment I’d been given , that would have been frowned on , but it was OK to give things away , as long as I didn’t take money . A bit further on , watching eBay , I picked up a new old stock JVC GY HD 251 for a bargain price . I had no lens for it so got an adaptor to use the lens from my DSR 500 , then later picked up another Canon 3/4” lens , with IF , for the JVC , and sold the DSR . Later I picked up a 1/3” Fujinon lens for the JVC . For a while I used the JVC and the V1 together , finding that I could drop 720p 50i footage from the JVC into a 1080i timeline created for the Sony , and it looked ok . By this time I’d bought FCS3 and was editing in FCP7 , still am . A couple of years ago now , at work we went to 4K and got a FS9 . I had already bought a PDW-F350 for a bargain price and with a lens adaptor used it with my Canon B4 lens , I also got a PDW-F70 deck to ingest from . Then , at work , we were moving premises and stuff was being cleared out , so I was offered anything I wanted before it was thrown in a skip ! I asked if I could have the PDW-F350 and the F70 ( I remembered when we bought it new it was 28 grand with the lens , but I’d just paid £500 for my used one , so it certainly wasn’t worth anything like that ) . There was also a load of Bowens studio lighting , on a high glide kit , but I already had my own Elinchrome studio flash kit , which fits into two small suitcase sized flight cases , and my Arri redheads and blondes , so I just took two Bowens dimmable fluorescent video lights , big things , but they run cool , so handy for shooting interviews , and with the barn doors closed they are flat , so don’t take too much storage space , I also got a couple of APC UPSs , which I put new batteries in , for my edit suite .. There was a store full of stuff , but I couldn’t reasonably take any more , various others also got their pick before so much went in a skip . Having relocated , the department now has a couple of offices in a building , and no studio , where before we had a whole outbuilding to ourselves . So , that brings me more or less up to date , just bought the HVR-Z7 the other week , it is very good in low light , more suited to shooting the wedding I have to do in April than the PDW-F350s , will match my V1E nicely , and I’ve just done a swap for the PDW-F70 deck ( the one I bought ) for an HVR-A1E , which is one of several a friend has . I guess like many , my journey has been a slow evolution from one technology to another . I’m now 67 and while still working, don’t plan to work beyond 70 , so I don’t think I’ll be doing much more upgrading, what I have will be more than good enough for my hobby interests , shooting motorsport , steam trains and the like . Last edited by Derek Heeps; December 19th, 2024 at 06:16 AM. |
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