Some mistakes I made while editing my first HD project
 

Here is a fairly long overview of my editing experience with the JY-HD10, warts and all.

My original workflow involved going from the camera to DVHScap
which creates an .mt2 file, I took the m2t into Project X which created a mpv and a wav file, I took these into Final Cut, which accepted them rather begrudgingly, I usually had to wait about 5 minutes for an hour's worth of HD to load during which time Final Cut inelegantly "beach balled" and the finder showed the program not responding. Every time I reopened the project, it would also pause for 5 minutes.

I am fairly certain that I can only import MPEG elementary stream files (such as these are) directly because I have Quicktime's MPEG 2 component.
Also the duration of the m2v was always a little longer than the wav file. So I changed the speed of the audio to compensate. I am not sure how this discrepancy is introduced.

I was at first underwhelmed at the quality of the video, and then I realized I was still working in a NTSC sequence and needed to change to 1280x720, Final Cut was just rescaling the video otherwise. After changing the resolution and after rendering some sequences they would just come out as this weird green interference pattern. I determined it was because the sequence was still using DV compression and went away if I changed to 10 bit uncompressed.

At first I attempted to edit like this, then after much frustration I looked for other options, I saw that Steve Mullen's solution used some sort of proxy method.
Too cheap to buy Dr. Mullen's software I figured that I could do the same thing using OfflineRT, so I exported the sequence containing the unedited mt2 and wav files as a OfflineRT file. reimported the file, removed the m2ts from tbe project figuring I would swap them out later.

Never having used OfflineRt before, the first thing I noticed about the OfflineRT files is that they required rendering, also that they looked terrible compared to the HD I was just working on, next the nearly new 250 gig drive on the G5 started filing up, I later realized that all of these things happened because I was rendering OfflineRT using that same 10 bit uncompressed sequence! This was a really obvious mistake that I wish I had been warned about, make the compression of your sequence the same as the compression of your video files for RT to work properly.

Because the video looked terrible and because I had just installed Panther... and because I couldn't figure what was going on at the time, I decided to abandon that OfflineRT method, and tried exporting the mpeg files as Pixlet from FCP.
I then brought these files into FCP thinking I could actually edit the project in HD now, but the rendering was taking forever. at this time I had thought about the sequence/video codec mismatch but discounted it as the cause when changing the sequence to Pixlet did not change the rendering state of the Pixlet files in the timeline.

The extra rendering was caused by what I am convinced is a bug in Final Cut, whenever I bring a HD Pixlet Video into the timeline it changes the aspect ratio for 16/9 to something else. I needed to go into the motion tab for that video and change the aspect to have the video look normal and not require rendering in Pixlet sequences.

I think for my next project I will still bring the mpeg into FCP and then export it to Pixlet (or perhaps DC30+) and then import that file into the project again, using a sequence with a matching codec.
I might try the offilneRT HD again if it is a larger project, I think I figured out how to do it now.

I'll probably still use Final Cut for mpeg2 conversion instead of mt2-=>Diva->Quicktime, partially because I am used to this method, also because even though FCP acts sluggish, you can trim the mpegs down before exporting them to the much larger Pixlet files (If I recall you can't trim MPEG in Quicktime Pro?)

Most of what I mention above (the parts that work), I learned from this forum and others like it and from Arick Chan, a student who I work with.

Re: Some mistakes I made while editing my first HD project
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Paul St. Denis : I took the m2t into Project X which created a mpv and a wav file, I took these into Final Cut -->>>

Project X is fast and the mpv file is about the same size as the m2t file. That has to be the fastest way to get the information into FCP. Although it is cumbersome to work with in FCP. My mpv files always came out as 30 fps, wheras all my earlier HDV work has used 29.97 fps. I didn't see simple user setting to force 29.97.

<<<-- Also the duration of the m2v was always a little longer than the wav file. So I changed the speed of the audio to compensate. I am not sure how this discrepancy in introduced. -->>>

I often use QT to combine video files (like m2v) and audio files (like wav). QT has an 'Add' and an 'Add Scaled' feature. 'Add Scaled' adjusts the lengths so they are the same. I usually use 'Add' and then use the QT 'Trim' feature to delete the extra audio. QT help has good explanations on how to 'add an audio track' to a QT movie.

<<<-- I think for my next project I will still bring the mpeg into FCP and then export it to Pixlet (or perhaps DC30+) and then import that file into the project again, using a sequence with a matching codec. -->>>

Pixlet and DC30+ are my favorite codecs. To avoid rendering, make sure that the clip-parameters and the destination sequence-parameters are identical in the Browser.

<<<-- I'll probably still use Final Cut for mpeg2 conversion instead of mt2-=>Diva->Quicktime, partially because I am used to this method, also because even though FCP acts sluggish, you can trim the mpegs down before exporting them to the much larger Pixlet files (If I recall you can't trim MPEG in Quicktime Pro)? -->>>

The work flow that currently looks best, for my purposes, is:

1) ProjectX: m2t -> .wav (not writing the .mpv file).
2) DiVA: m2t -> QT(V).mov using the DV30+ codec. Whenever 100GB/hr of video is excessive, then use the Pixlet codec.
3) QTpro: QT(V).mov+.wav -> QT(AV).mov. 'Save As' QT(AV).mov as 'Make movie self-contained'.
4) Drop QT(AV).mov into FCP.

Good luck with your methods!