New A1 owner has questions =O
 

Right, I've been borrowing DVX-100a's from university for long enough so I went crazy and got me an A1. I'm having so much fun playing around with it even though I haven't really shot anything yet. I'm planning to work on my fifteenth short in a bit and just needed to get it on HD so here I am.

Now, I've been reading up on the forums here and I have a few questions.

1) Do I need Aspect HD to edit my movie on HD since I'm using Premiere Pro 2.0 or is there some other way around that?

2) I live in the Middle East, so I'm stuck with 25F... is there any way of getting around that and into 24F?

3) Can I shoot in any random DV tape, or is that going to compress the footage? Must I keep on using the same Canon HD-ish brand that came with the camera?

Yes, I know that I should've looked those things up before making my purchase. I appreciate any help at all anyhow.

1) I'd suggest trying to edit the files as they come out of the camera. Then download the Cineform Aspect trial and edit with that. Then weigh the cost with the improvement.
(personally, I use aspect HD, it seems to be a whole lot better, but while trying the trial, make sure you begin by picking a Cineform Aspect 'preset' from your preset list, otherwise you won't notice the difference)

2) You can send your camera in and pay to have 24F capability unlocked. Go to canon support for details.

3) an random DV tape will give the same compression and quality. However, all DV tapes can have dropouts, higher quality tapes have fewer of them. In HDV, a dropout gliches .5 seconds of video. So I'd suggest quality tape, but you don't need HDV tape, I buy Panasonic AMQ master series and have not had any problems.

Good luck

Thanks, Brent. Looks like I'm gonna head off to have a chat with the Canon folk about getting that fixed. By the way, what does Aspect HD do? It just makes it "look" better?

Why would you want to pay for a 1 frame difference? Unless you're going to film out (and even then most of the time) it's unnessary.

Agree with Evan. Im using an NTSC cam on FCP, though I do need to output to 25p from time to time. So far havent had any issues just outputting on a 25fps setting.

So, no? Well, I dunno. I'm used to working in 24p... I was hoping that I would pick it up if it wasn't too costly.

...??

About your tape question--you can use any DV tape, but it's best to use a good quality tape. I'm using Panasonic AMQ (Advanced Master Quality), and so far it's good.

Farid,
Exactly what Cineform does, I don't know.Compression without image loss? All I knoew is that without it, we were unable to do anything in PPRO.It was like snails in super slo mo.
Bruce S. yarock
www.yarock.com

Cineform converts the HDV files into less-compressed (intermediary) files that are easier to play back on the editing computer. Because the intermediary files have less compression and greater colour space, there should be little or no visual loss due to the editing process. The drawback with Cineform is that you need to have enough hard drive space to cope with the huge files involved.

Another possible way to get a smoother editing experience is to use DV proxy files, but so far the only solution I've seen offering this (Gearshift) only works in Sony Vegas.

Richard