Tape Format compatablility (Canon/Sony)
 

I shot a wedding 2nd camera with my A1 and gave the tapes to the primary videographer. He shoots Sony HDV and it didn't even occur that he would not be able to read the tapes in his camera. I shot in HDV 30P. Now I need to find a way to 'transport the footage' to him (three tapes worth).

I could use my TMPGEnc 4.0 to convert the captured footage to M2T but how to get him the files? It would fill a bunch of DVD's when footage is about 4 minutes per Gigabyte.

External hard drive.

Can you not just give him your camera along with the tapes and get him to download to his computer?

I assume he can read m2t flies?

It depends on what editing system he is using. If he is using FCP then he can work with 30F no problem, but FCP can't import .m2ts files without doing a recompression using a 3rd-party program, so you'd probably want to lend him your camera to capture from. OTOH, there may be some NLEs that can import .m2ts natively but can't deal with Canon's 30F, so you'd have to recompress the files as 60i using an NLE or other processing program that understands 30F.

Was he shooting 30P or something else on his Sony? If he shot 60i then it isn't a big deal to convert your 30P to 60i, but if he shot 24P then you've got a bigger problem.

Yeah, he won't be able to play your tapes. Canon's HDV 30p mode can only be played back with other Canon HDV camcorders. Best route for you to go in my opinion is for you to capture the tapes yourself and hand him a hard drive.

I thought about the camera lending and I might have to do that but he lives in an adjacent county - not real close. The external hard drive is an interesting idea. They are cheap enough that I could buy one put the files on it and ship it to him. He can download the files and ship it back.

I am using Cineform with Premiere 1.5.1 right now so I can either make MPEG2 or QT files for him to use.