New program to capture Canon 24f into FCP

[A. J. deLange]

I sent $80 for the fully licensed HDVxDV only to find that it is not an unqualified success on the (or I suppose I should say my) dual G5 system. HDVxDV will not capture through the Firewire400 ports built into the machine. The system sees the camera and can control it but will not capture any data. A file with the appropriate .m2t extension is created but it is empty. Capture is possible through a Firewire800 expansion card but if anything else is on that card (i.e. scanner, disk drive, audio interface...) data is dropped. This manifests itself by the appearance of improperly encoded or decoded square blocks in the captured video. I guess the next step is to see if a separate firewire card dedicated to video capture is the answer.

[John Cordell]

Originally Posted by A. J. deLange

The system sees the camera and can control it but will not capture any data. A file with the appropriate .m2t extension is created but it is empty.

I have had the same problem a couple of times -- can control the camera but no data comes in. When my Mac was in this mode, both FCP and HDVxDV couldn't get video bits off the camera. Rebooting made the problem go away.

Being a recent PC to Mac switcher, I am, of course, quite comfortable with this workflow!

[A. J. deLange]

A bit more info on HDVxDV. The reason I couldn't convert on my laptop is because the CODEC is actually apparently part of Quicktime. When I upgraded QT on the laptop the conversion became available and works fine except that it takes forever. The only format I can go to which does not require rendering by DCP is DVC Pro HD.

[Cory James]

hey all,

i'm trying this DVHSCAP - MPEGSTREAMCLIP thing for getting 24f footage into FCP, and it's making me render everything.

Once captured with DVSCAP, I try exorting with Streamclip to a Quicktime file using the Apple Intermediate Codec and Apple DVCPRO HD 720p, 1080 (50i and 60i). The AIC and 1080 stuff comes up beatifully in FCP with time code, but it still needs rendering. My FCP sequence presets are 720p24 with 23.98. There is no 1080/24p option.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Also, I don't see any updates on the H1 to FCP problem. Anyone know when/if the patch is coming?

[John Cordell]

Originally Posted by Cory James

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Two ideas from things that have happened to me:

1. Actually check the properties of your sequence and the clip in FCP. For the sequence, right click on it and choose "Settings...". For the clip, right-click and choose "item properties -> format...".

I find that sometimes the clip doesn't have the properties that the exporting dialog claimed it would have. Most commonly, I think the clip is going to 1440x1080 when its actually 1280x1080. By changing the sequence settings to match, I no longer get the red line above the clip and no rendering is needed.

2. I have also had problems that were solved by using Cinema Tools to conform the clip to 23.98. This step has been needed even when the clip already appears to be at 23.98. Go figure. Anyway, consider conforming the clip while waving a dead chicken over your keyboard.

Hope this helps. It took me several tries to get matching clip and sequence, and the above two issues were the trickiest. If you're lucky one of them might be your issue.

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by John Cordell

Heads up: the DVCPRO HD path above looks better than the AIC path. Way less visible aliasing. Would appear to be completely a coded issue, because if I export from HDVxDV using AIC, I get the same aliasing problem I see via HDV AIC capture in FCP.

AIC has a well known "issue" with interlaced HDV which you have found. It works fine with progressive HDV, however.

[Dave Perry]

Originally Posted by A. J. deLange

I sent $80 for the fully licensed HDVxDV only to find that it is not an unqualified success on the (or I suppose I should say my) dual G5 system. HDVxDV will not capture through the Firewire400 ports built into the machine. The system sees the camera and can control it but will not capture any data. A file with the appropriate .m2t extension is created but it is empty. Capture is possible through a Firewire800 expansion card but if anything else is on that card (i.e. scanner, disk drive, audio interface...) data is dropped. This manifests itself by the appearance of improperly encoded or decoded square blocks in the captured video. I guess the next step is to see if a separate firewire card dedicated to video capture is the answer.

A.J.

I had the same problem on our G5 at work. However, I was using DVHSCap. The .m2t files were seemingly created but were 0kb in size with no data.

Doing a firwire capture into FCP 5 worked fine. I was able to log and batch capture but it broke the files into separate clips at scene breaks. The interesting thing is that on my Mac Mini at home, the DVHSCap work flow worked fine but not the FCP Capture. In FCP when trying to capture over FW, I was presented with a very basic and limited capture window. I could not log and batch capture. The only option even shown was the capture now option. It appears that FCP configures itself according tho the processor type.

[Barlow Elton]

Originally Posted by Steve Mullen

AIC has a well known "issue" with interlaced HDV which you have found. It works fine with progressive HDV, however.

Any reason that you might know of, Steve? I've heard speculation that AIC might actually just be 4.2.0 encoding and subsequently have some issues with interlace.

Is AIC a wavelet codec of sorts, or something completely different?

[Gary McClurg]

Boy do I stink at trying to find things through search...

I know that people are going out of the camera through the HD...SDI route... and taking the footage into FCP by way of DVCPROHD... going into Cinema Tools for the pulldown and then dropping it onto a 24p time line in FCP

But I was wondering I might have missed it... that's why the search... but how are you resyncing your audio and how would you put new time code or the original time code into FCP also...

Thanks Gary