Has anyone heard about FCP 720P24 support?

[Steve Benner]

I just sent another (my third since NAB) feedback request to Apple for Final Cut Studio reguarding this. I told them how this issue has been discussed at nausium and many users have FLED to pc.

I suggest we all start sending them a request for this, EVERYDAY until it is released. I think we need to start getting people at Apple annoyed like we have been.

[Antony Michael Wilson]

I have also been editing in AXPro using DNx. I'm using Edius to capture and transcode HDV1 to DNx BUT neither this nor any other conversion utility allows you to preserve TC, which is vital if you're offlining! HDVxDV is supposed to batch convert to QT with TC but of course Avid apps will strip this metadata on import to OMFI or MXF from QT - even if you render to Avid QT codec (DNx or JFIF SD or DV). So, the solution suggested for AXPro is only useful if you do not need to conform in online or redigitise at any stage.

One possible solution is to use HDVxDV, bring into FCP and then export OMF via Auto Duck and then import the OMF composition into Avid. But that's a pretty convoluted and expensive work-around!!!

[Antony Michael Wilson]

By the way, I agree that Avid's lack of support for 720p/25/50 (and 24) for HDV1 and DVCProHD is nothing short of disgraceful. They are indeed the most established specialists in editing and have countless customers in territories that will increasingly NEED this support and who have spent a whole lot more than the equivalent cost of a desktop FCP set-up. All those European facility houses and broadcasters with MC Adrenaline and Symphony Nitris now have serious issues with 720p - and I don't mean just with HDV1 shot on the HD100!!!

[Paolo Ciccone]

Hey John.
Thank for the kind words.

Originally Posted by John Vincent

But reality is reality - Macs can't cut JVC 100 at 24p - PC's can.

I know what you mean and again I have to chime in not because I want to argue with you, I don't :), but because I found out that people can easily misunderstand what's written in these pages. There've been cases of people talking to me and assuming that they cannot cut 24fps sequences in FCP while that support has been there for a long time. Case in point, several feature films have been cut in FCP.
What we don't have right now is a way of directly capturing footage from the JVC. But there are workarounds. I had, in the last month, the opportunity and honor to talk with some well respected cinematographers and crew people in Hollywood. People used to operate with professional, very expensive gear (did you know that the rental for the Panavision Genesis is $20,000 per week?).
It has not been always this way. Many pros had to fight with the limitations of one system of the other. Many emerging technologies had their bumpy starts. There are people in this forum that used the HD100 at the very beginning, when support was even less.
Sure, a smooth workflow is a pleasure to experience and makes us work faster but I can tell you that if I needed to shoot "2nd Unit" today, with our 3 HD100, in 24p, I would not have any problem. In fact that's exactly how I shot "CruiserCast". It's a just a little more work in converting the footage into 24p AIC or 24p Uncompressed. It takes a little more time but you can organize that, often, in your schedule.

Paolo - keep up the good fight - Drinks on me if you ever come out this way-

And likewise if you come out this way (Los Angeles/Santa Cruz):)

[Stephen L. Noe]

As straightly as I can put it, I chose ProHD because it worked with Liquid from the beginning. I tested the camera with the existing workflow and it worked perfectly without changing a thing (in 30p). This was back on Liquid 6.1. I cut the filmout for the JVC Chicago show (Feb 15th '06) on Liquid 6.1 by using a workaround for 24p. I documented the Liquid 6.1 24p workflow back in January here on the forum.

After that I lobbied hard with Avid Beta to get full ProHD support end to end in the 7.0 release. Then NAB '06 rolled around and Liquid 7.1 came out. 24p worked as if it were 30p and as a nice little ancillary benefit (for future HD-200/250 users) the 60p workflow is already setup and ready to go in 7.1

I see fellows are struggling with FCP and and doing a dreaded transcode with Xpress and PPro. Why not try a free trial of Liquid which does work natively with ProHD? You can capture/edit/dump to tape your 24p projects easily and still maintain the timecode and audio sync as if it were DV.

Click here for Liquid Trial

I'm not sure if the download software is 7.0 or 7.1.

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Paolo Ciccone

They have a bug in handling anything that is bigger than 4GB and that makes the app unsuitable for anything but commercials and short videos.

So that's why you switched. But are you sure about this bug? Premire Pro has been out and used for several years and this is the first post I've seen on such a limitation. A 4GB limit sounds like a 24-bit problem -- which seems like something Adobe would have caught. That's a huge boo boo in 2006!

I also would not be so positive about Apple hardware. I just bought a new MacBook. But last night I just got my second unit. The first was DOA. The second had a bad logic board and so it would not charge the battery. Thank god I spent the extra money and bought at the Apple store and they have been wonderful! And this is happening to a huge number of MacBook buyers as it did to those who bought the MBP until the fourth version of the logic board shipped.

Lastly, while I suspect that JVC pushed Apple hard -- it was Apple who made the presentation. Given that no company is more careful than Apple about what it says -- they are responsible for the words they used. So I suspect JVC believed Apple just as 99% of the folks listening.

It was at the JVC lunch -- where as a member of the press I can get away with pushing for a "quote" -- that I got an Apple exec to admit "nothing was coming soon." No JVC folks heard this exhange. It was the fact I was so pissed at Apple that led me to sit down and cool-off at the Liquid demo. Pure chance I saw V7.

Now, after editing with Liquid -- which would have cost you under $500 :) -- I will not use FCP again until FCP 6.1 SHIPS. And, it's not simply 24p -- the ability to do everything including music creation, 5.1, WM9 HD, iPod video, and DVDs in one app is great. Simply boot the app and do everything I need to do.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by Steve Mullen

But are you sure about this bug?

Yes, I got an email from Adobe tech support. And yes, it is what I call a "stop ship bug" and no, they didn't catch it :) I have a few clips for "2nd Unit" that are way bigger than 4GB. And we shoot with 3 cameras, 2 full tapes per camera per episode...

I also would not be so positive about Apple hardware.

I had nothing but great experiences with their machines. I bought two Powerbooks, an eMac for the office, another MacMini for data entry and now we added the MacBookPro and 30" CinemaDisplay for "2nd Unit". Apple makes a lot of machines and they are entering a new field with the Intel CPUs. It's inevitable to a have a few bumps in the road. The important thing is that, as you mentioned, their service is wonderful and that's exactly what makes the difference in the professional field. No product is perfect but it's the service behind it that makes the difference. To this date I can't find any other company in the computer business that can touch the service and quality of Apple. Call me biased but that's just how I feeld about it :)
Jonathan was so impressed about the stores that he keeps going back there :) It was a lot of fun to see the reaction of a long time PC user to the "Apple experience".

Having said so, I'm glad you found a suitable alternative. At the end of the day what's important is to be able to work in the best "compromise" that we can approach. Initially I was pissed at Apple for the lack of 24p HDV capture, like anybody else, but now that I have a comparison with another application I like Final Cut even more. It fits like a glove and I can work back and forth between all the components of the Studio suite so easily and I'm still amazed that it runs so smoothly on my old Powerbook. Now that Shake is available at a reasonable price I'm in heaven. Shake is one amazing compositer that I just started learning but the possibilities are mind blowing. I love the node-based wrokflow and I'm very excited that it integrates in FCP just fine. 24p? I can do a batch conversion with MPEG Streamclip, no problem. As a matter of fact, you can start the batch conversion, keep an eye on the progress, start loading a clip in FCP while the others are converting. You don't even need to wait until it's finished.

Live long and prosper :)

[Steve Benner]

Well said Paolo...I agree, and I am going to get my hands on Shake as well. I can't wait to try it out.

[John Vincent]

Thanks Paolo! Could you describe more fully the Pro2/Adobe bug? Is it that it won't 'print to tape' any timeline that has more than 4 gb of footage in it? Or just that the possibility of a crash exists?

Just as a side note, what does Liquid retail for? Oh man, I miss my Media 100 right now.

john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

[Steve Benner]

Originally Posted by John Vincent

Thanks Paolo! Could you describe more fully the Pro2/Adobe bug? Is it that it won't 'print to tape' any timeline that has more than 4 gb of footage in it? Or just that the possibility of a crash exists?

Just as a side note, what does Liquid retail for? Oh man, I miss my Media 100 right now.

john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

Liquid 7:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...ughType=search

Liquid Pro:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...ughType=search

Even though I am only 21, I "grew up" on Media 100. I took three years of Video Production in my high school, and we cut on Media 100 running on G4's. It was my first entry into the Video Editing field.

Media 100 is releasing a DV/HDV Software Only Edition in the coming months that captures across firewire and should retail in the $600 range. I can't wait for it!

[Tom Chaney]

Hey John,

You need to come over to my small home and check out what we are doing.

I'm cutting 24fps HiDef stuff in FCP right now, and it's awesome.

We just finished Principal Photography and I'm cutting everyday.

Yes, there are some work arounds, but they work, and I'm sure that is Apple's POV (that you can do it now).

We also used the DR-HD100-40 and it is the only way to go. No TC breaks, no data problems, every take its own file.

You slide those to an external Firewire drive, convert in Streamclip (I really don't care that FCP doesn't do this "on the fly." It gives me another level of control) and away you go.

We brought in a second camera and the difference in dealing with tape, other than a backup, is an unbelievable nightmare.

FCP works now, and in a few weeks, I'm sure they will prove themselves the leader again. Get your credit cards out boys.

Tom

www.tomchaney.com

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by John Vincent

Thanks Paolo! Could you describe more fully the Pro2/Adobe bug? Is it that it won't 'print to tape' any timeline that has more than 4 gb of footage in it?

After I cut 30 minutes of footage, captured with the HD100 and imported in PPro 2 with the HDV30 codec, I tried to export it both with the Media encoder or just the Export/Movie option. Any export failed at the very end. I tried pretty much any codec: JPEG, JPEG2000, Uncompressed, TIFF, H264. The process goes on for 15-20 hours (not a typo) and at the very end it stops with a "Generic error" dialog box and you end up with no file. I'm now exporting frame by frame using Targa and it takes about 35 hours. After that I'll export the soundtrack, which I testes to be working, re-compose that in FCP and export it to any QT codec in about 1.5 hours on my "clunky" PowerBook :)

[Daniel Weber]

Tom,

This is off topic, but could you start a thread going through your steps and experiences using the HDR-100 recorder? Also talk about your use of MPEG Streamclip if possible, what codec do you encode to? Does your audio transfer as well?

Thanks,

Dan Weber

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Tom Chaney

We brought in a second camera and the difference in dealing with tape, other than a backup, is an unbelievable nightmare.

FCP works now, and in a few weeks, I'm sure they will prove themselves the leader again. Get your credit cards out boys.

Amazing after decades of working with tape -- it is suddenly a "unbelievable nightmare." I'm reviewing the Focus and -- if you want to lug another box along -- it works fine. But, really, unless you leave it attached to your computer the whole time you edit -- which some can do -- it's certainly nothing to write home about. (And DTE isn't supported yet.) So you still have to copy the data to a HD. So it's faster than realtime. This isn't new. Faster than RT has been available with tape and could be applied to HDV.

And, how many cassettes can you buy for the price of on Focus? And, what are you going to archieve on? Who's going to do it? How much will it cost? How much time will it take? How long will it take to verify the copy? How long will it last?

Frankly, a tiny Bluray drive would be far more useful. Bottom line -- unless it both stores AND archieves it doesn't really replace tape. Sony clearly understands this which is why XDCAM HD is a winner and HD-based systems and P2 are not. (Although tiny, cheap, removeable HDs would be very nice -- which is the way I hope JVC goes as they already have done this with DV camcorders.)

Also you might want to make clear -- given the topic of this thread -- what we should keep our money ready for.

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by Steve Mullen

Amazing after decades of working with tape -- it is suddenly a "unbelievable nightmare."

HDV, as an MPEG-2 stream to tape is problematic. Tape is fine. How NLEs are dealing with it *IS* a nightmare for some people.