S. L.,

Don't know why you're not getting good playback! I edit on a P3 900 MHz - but its too slow for smooth playback. Took my edited stuff to a friend with a 2.6GHz P4 and it played fine(with both Elecard and VLC player). I can lay back my stuff onto tape and it plays fine in the camcorder.

BEWARE! There is no "snap to" when you drop a clip in the timeline, and it is easy to leave a black frame or two. My solution is to set the scale to "one frame" on the timeline, and I can see if there's a hole. I have to go back to "one second" to see what I'm doing with a dissolve, however - good luck

I never thought I'd hear a 900 mhz PC being slow... :-)

heath

Re: Audio editing w/ HD cam
 

<<<-- There are a lot of questions regarding how to record audio separate from a HDCam camera and be able to sync it up later. -->>>

I'm always puzzled by why there is this sense that audio can't be recorded on videotape.

Has anyone really MEASURED a difference between DAT and HDACAM/DVCPRO100/DV/HDV?

Has anyone tried to record audio using Mini-Disk recorders?

It seems like it might be an attractive option for portability.

Brian

It seems to me that the reason people are not excited about audio on the HD10 stems from the fact that it does not have balanced inputs. It has nothing to do with opposition to recording on the camera tape, but opposition to the crappy inputs on the HD10.

As far as mini disc recorders go, all the mini discs I have seen (including the one I own) also use this form of unbalanced inputs.

From what I understand, pretty much any device that uses a mini jack instead of XLR will have this unbalanced form of audio. And even though our HD10s have the option of recording sound through XLR, the XLR is converted to mini jack when you connect it to the camera.

Brad

[Question ported over from another thread]

Is there anything good (besides the price) that can be said about the bundled NLE?

Besides the obvious speed problems, and the fact that its not FCP 4, just what CAN it do?

Assuming you will not be compositing graphics, or making a music video/ special effect, but are only planning to edit an old fashioned style black and white drama, how close does this get you?

Are basic fades and dissolves possible?

Can Audio be mixed from an external source?

Thanks for any advice,

Brian

so much for my friend's theory of going mini-disc. nuts...

I'm guessing the XL-1 and XL-1s with an XLR adaptor plugged in will also be unbalanced?

heath

It's true the XLR becomes unbalanced before entering the camera, but this causes...?

Or, what is/are the reason(s) for using unbalanced?

I'm playing a game here. :)

Steve

Wouldn't "unbalanced" be bad?

Is the XL-1 unbalanced? Is this why I always heard a bad hiss under my recordings?

heath

<<<-- Originally posted by Heath McKnight : Wouldn't "unbalanced" be bad?

Is the XL-1 unbalanced? Is this why I always heard a bad hiss under my recordings?

heath -->>>

Yes, the XL! is also unbalanced. Hiss is not related to balanced/unbalanced.

So what/when is unbalanced bad? :)

Or, when is balanced bad? :)

In regards to the bundled NLE
 

Brian,

I’ve only done a couple of short DVD’s just as an experiment. First one was only 8 minutes long and the second 12 minutes.

No problem with the capture utility. It does have scene recognition creating separate files. With the editing utility I did some simple edits, cuts, cross fades, etc. Rendering seemed to be real time or the program renders on the fly. The DVD utility is entry level and my only comment is that I may have been doing something wrong but I couldn’t get chapter markers to work like chapter markers. They ended up acting more like separate movie buttons. When starting play, the DVD would stop playing at the end of the first clip represented by a button. If I stated with any clip, play would stop at the end of that clip. This may have been pilot error on my part in understanding the structure of the utility. All my previous experience with DVD writing programs, which is limited, has been with entry level bundled software (My DVD etc). This DVD writing utility seems very much the same in features.

I’m using a 3Ghz P4 with 1gig ram. I capture to and edit on a separate physical drive D:. I export to drive C: and write to the DVD recorder from there. No lockups, no crashes. Transcoding from Mpeg2 TS to Mpeg2 DVD seemed pretty fast. But the content was too short to really make a judgment.

The actual video playback quality from the DVD is very good. I believe there is a benefit due to the over sampling aspects. I say this with reservation because my previous DV to DVD efforts were with an entry level camera. The DVD playback in that scenario was actually quite bad.

Although it seems to work, I think I’ll pursue purchasing Aspect HD when I get a little more financially healed. I’ve been working with Premiere 6.5 and am excited about what I’ve been reading about Premiere Pro and Encore.

Steve,

No clue when unbalanced could be good and balanced could be bad.

heath

Balanced means only one thing....the mic cable doesn't have the third wire used for protecting from electromagnetic interference. Which doesn't become an issue unless you're running mic cabling longer than 6 feet. Shorter than that and there should be NO difference between balanced and unbalanced sound.

Lynne is right. The thing with balanced-unbalanced sound is simple: the two are as susceptible to electomagnetic interference because of the weak signal level of audio but one of them has a ground witch acts as an indicator. The three wires will be affected in the very same way by interference, as the ground provides no signal other than the interference, the balanced system uses this interference indication to rid the other two channels of this noise. A simple and quite logical solution. As Lynne pointed out, with short cabling, unbalanced audio is less susceptible to that but not entirely shielded.

The other good thing about balanced is that the XLR plug and jack are very secure and shielded.

The problem comes if the transformer in the converter is not super high quality or perefectly shielded.

It can be sensitive to microphonics and/or pick-up hum.

With almost everyone using wireless mics, the reciever only needs a foot or so cable to the camcorder. My view is that JVC wasted money adding an XLR box.