New program to capture Canon 24f into FCP
 

This is a program which captures HDV 24f into FCP, so they say.

http://www.hdvxdv.com

I can't manage to get it to capture, but apparently other people have had success with it on the Canon, JVC and other HDV cameras.

Please try it and report your successes and failures. I don't want to wait for Apple to cough up their codec for the Canon.

best

Harry

I shot 24F footage today, plugged a firewire into a G5 and used the FCP Apple Intermediate Codec to bring it in. I set the frame rate to 23.98 in the AV settings, and it captured my clips without a problem.

So what am I missing? Is it corrupted?

I know what you mean. I can digitize 24f - or so it seems, because I can see the material while capturing ...

However -- can you create an FCP sequence and edit it in FCP? If you can, you are a better man than me.

Cracking out the Prozac here .... sharpening the razorblades ---

best

Harry

Cory: I haven't been able to get a 24F capture that looks exactly right. If I choose HDV - Apple Intermediate Codec, I can capture but there's something wrong with what I get. If I compare it to what I get by capturing in HDVxDV, the FCP captured stuff is aliased like crazy, esp. on any edge involving the color red.

Can you give a full report on what settings exactly you're choosing for sequence and capture presets?

Ok, thought I'd summarize my current results:

1. Can't capture in FCP with capture preset "HDV". Stuff is visible, choppy, doesn't actually capture.

2. Can indeed capture in FCP when capture preset is "HDV - Apple Intermediate Codec". If dropped onto a sequence with settings: res 1440x1080, par 1440x1080, and timebase of 29.97, then it'll edit without rendering.

3. I can capture in HDVxDV, export to DVCPRO HD 1080, use Cinema Tools to conform to 23.98. (Note that the clip claims to *be* in 23.98 already, but doing the conform does something, and it's something good.) After that, that clip can be dropped onto a sequence configured for DVCPRO HD 1080 ( res 1280x1080, par 1280x1080, editing timebase 24). And that'll edit without rendering as well.

4. 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.

5. I still feel certain that the actual correct technique for extracting 24fps from the Canon simply doesn't exist yet for FCP. I am getting strange sound sync problems when using the files that come via HDVxDV. Sound plays out of sync sometimes in FCP, but pausing and using arrow keys to bump back or forward a bit fixes the sync problem.

6. The HDVxDV people asked me for an .m2t file from the Canon in 24f mode which I supplied them. Hopefully someone like them, with the tools to crack into the data and understand what Canon has done, will shed light on what's really happening.

Finally, for me, for now, the DVCPRO HD path is giving me the best results, so I ponied up the $80 for HDVxDV. But that was before I realized (thank you Cory) that I could capture using the HDV AIC preset. Had I known that, I probably would've limped along on that until Apple delivers true Canon 24f support.

I've had no sound problems with this workflow:

--Playback HDV tape and capture SDI output into DVCPRO HD w/KonaLH card
--Capture audio from the H1 analog outputs into Kona

Works great and saves the extra step of software conversion.

btw, DVCPRO HD is my favored post format for H1 HDV too. Just works better.

I wish Cineform codec was part of FCP.

HDVxDV has 2 components. The first captures an m2t file and the second converts it to a Quicktime format. I have two Macs (dual G5 and laptop). HDVxDV will not capture on the G5 but will convert. The laptop captures but will not convert.

I have been able to have HDVxDV both capture and convert on my quad Mac.

Which reminds be of an alternative to HDVxDV I heard about (but have not used myself):

DVHSCap (a free Apple utility) can capture into .m2t files and MPEG Streamclip (another free utility on the Apple website) can convert the file into DVCPRO HD or any other codec of your choosing.

So, it would appear that as a stop-gap measure one could use the two free utilities from Apple instead of HDVxDV.

You may have heard that alternative from me :)

Yes, indeed capture your 24F HDV footage using DVHSCap. Then convert that .m2t file using MPEGStreamclip into a DVCProHD 1080 codec (make sure to keep the 23.976 frmerate) and then drop it into a 1080/24p DVCProHD timeline in FCP (you'll know it works if you don't have to render). It works flawlessly, with exact 24P motion rendition. Its great ... and it is a lot easier codec for Final Cut to work with than native HDV as it is less processor intensive. Just realize though, that the files become 4x the size because of the codec.

I definitely heard that alternative from you! If had been able to easily find your original post, I would have pointed people at it.

By the way, I was a little put off about installing DVHSCap because the only download I found had it wrapped up in a firewire dev kit and I feared installing it would somehow mess up my Mac in some subtle and hard to undo way. How did you go about getting DVHSCap?

I had no problem finding and installing MPEG Streamclip, which by the way works on .m2t files that HDVxDV captured.

Just to be sure, I presume you loose your timecode information if you do the capture/re-encode thing via both the HDxDV and DVHSCap way?

With HDVxDV for both capture and converting, the timecode information survives.

When I used MPEG Streamclip on a HDVxDV .m2t file, the timecode info was lost.

Allright! Good to know! So in the future when FCP is natively supporting the 24f thing you can just do a batch capture to get the footage in the HDV format.

Thought I'd try HDVxDV one more time and now both parts work on the dual G5. New OSX version? Who knows? Guess I'll give them their $80.

Thanks for the word guys. On location, needing to get it set up fast, and didn't go beyond capturing before I thought I'd figured it out. Apologies. Team in the next hotel room trying to figure it out now and giving me shit because I'm getting information from a chat room, but it doesn't appear to be getting figured out. Looks like I'll be getting some software. Regards.