Need help with a capture job...
 

Ok here's the deal...

I am capturing off a JVC GY HD100 captured at 24P

I am running it through an Intensity Pro

I am capturing in Final Cut

How do i set the sequence and capture settings? Every time i try something it plays fine in quicktime but when i drop it in FCP the video plays in double speed or half speed. SEEMS like a sequence problem but i just dont know. Can someone throw out some recommendations? I looked all over the board and couldnt find someone with my combination of stuff. Oh and i have FCP 6, the new one right?

Jon

I don't have an Intensity Pro card but, as no-one has given you an answer to date, I'll give my thoughts after looking over the Intensity Pro specs on the Blackmagic website.

The HD format support for the card is 720p50 and 720p59.94.

So I'd say that if you have first recorded your footage on tape as HDV 720p24 and then you capture it through Intensity Pro as 720p59.94 (which I suppose would mean that it would add duplicate frames to bring the 24 frames up to 60 [59.94]) and then place it into an FCP 720p24 sequence you would likely get these speed problems.

I would suggest setting up a 720p60 sequence in whatever codec you wish to edit in. Blackmagic (on their web pages for this card) suggest Uncompressed or ProRes or DVCPro HD. I reckon that ProResHQ (if you have the disc space) would give a great result. I would stay away from DVCPro HD because it squeezes your native 1280 X 720 frames into 960 X 720, so you'll lose resolution, even if it gives you 4:2:2 color sampling. ProRes will keep your frame size at its original 1280 X 720 and also give you 4:2:2 color sampling.

To set up your new sequence, you could (for example) select HDV720p60 in the Easy Setup and create a new sequence. Then go to the sequence settings and change the Compressor from HDV to ProRes422HQ (or Uncompressed or whatever you prefer).

I'm not sure if this will solve things for you as I don't have the card to test it, but an alternative (if you've already recorded to tape as HDV 720p24) would be to do an Easy Setup for HDV 720p24 and just capture over the FireWire with FCP. It won't add further compression to capture this way and then you can convert your captured files into ProRes (or whatever) and work with your footage from there. In fact I think (going from memory, but I could be wrong) that the latest FCP update (6.0.2) might even let you capture over the FireWire as ProRes - without a capture card. But, as I said, I could be way off on this one.

So these are a few options which might help get you working smoothly with your footage - at least until someone who actually uses the card chimes in.

Thanks so much for taking the time to think this through. Capturing through firewire is not a viable option. On tape 2 it actually made 400 individual clips during the capture. So much for that being fixed!

I am actually in Oklahoma but as soon as i get back i will test this out. Thanks again!

jon

another solution might be to capture the footage using dvhscap (i believe it's called) it captures the raw mpeg footage of the tape. After capturing you have to transcode the footage using a program like mpegstreamclip, to your desired codec, for instance Apple Intermediat codec 720p24. It takes a bit more time, but it will do the trick. (this is how i do it, after reading it somewhere on this forum)

Both programs are freeware