About to purchase - What am I forgetting, what do I need to know?

[Doug Krejci]

Originally Posted by Justin Ferar

You would conform your timeline to HDV and then output back to the deck via firewire. This woulld be the case for the Kona AND the Decklink.

I should say that our workflow does not include mastering back to the deck anymore because there is no more need to have a master unless you are handing something off to a network. We just rebuild the timeline if we need to go revisit the project.

I you do need to hand someting off to a network then they wouldn't accept an HDV master anyway. By having the Kona or the decklink one can hook up a more pro deck and master to that.

If you decide to shoot on firestore then you really don't need a Kona or Decklink. We don't use firestore because they don't have quicktime support for 720p60 yet. Yes you can capture the M2T file but the converters (to quicktime) are not good enough for us.

As much as I like the firestore, I've got to have a card to hook up to older decks (UVW-1800 among others). That's where all of my component analog hook-ups are going and why I'd want to keep the JVC BR-HD50U digital all the way.

Has anyone ever had a problem with a firestore from a hard drive perspective? If your data is corrupt, then what happens? I can deal with a bad spot on a tape, but a corrupt hard drive . . .

I hoping to do a firestore down the road a little later and maybe a HD200 when the prices start to come down to earth.

Thanks for the tips - keep them coming,

Doug

[Justin Ferar]

You can roll tape and record to the firestore at the same time. Confirm the files when you get back to the studio. If all is good then one can recycle the tape for the next shoot or just keep it for archiving. From what I have read the TC should be mirrored on the firstore.

[Doug Krejci]

1. Does the 110U resolve all of the issues from the 100 that users had? (Issues listed in DV Magazines review of the 100)
2. The only monitoring of audio levels on the BR-HD50U is the LEDs in the front of the deck? How do you know things are a specific level? (I'm thinking of puchasing the AM-50 on-screen audio vu meter from Markertek, but still!)
3. In the BR-HD50U manual it talks about reading from DVCam, but also mentions (on page E-5) that you can record to DVCam tape, but not as DVCam (and that's okay). Would that be in HD or SD? Are the only tapes that master long-format in HD sold by JVC?

Thanks,
Doug

[Kit Hannah]

The biggest "issues" with the 100 that I read about were probably the split screen, not being able to use the lcd and viewfinder at the same time, and the weight of the camera (being front heavy). I have never experienced the split screen on the 110, JVC added dual use of LCD and Viewfinder while using a pro (IDX or A/B) battery system, which also helps balance it out nicely. Throw the firestore on the back and you've really got a nicely weighted package.

I don't know anything about the HD50's, but we do have 6 of the 110's and we have had no issues with the cameras at all. Not even one that I can recall. It's a good solid package, one I think you'll be happy with.

[Dustin Cross]

Doug,

I use the HD100 and FCP and capturing from tape is a NIGHTMARE! Everything else is great. I stopped using my HD100 for a few months until Firestore started supporting 720p24 Quicktime. With the Firestore and 720p24 Quicktime support, this camera is AWESOME!!

I haven't tried capturing from the JVC deck, but if it has similar problems to the camera through firewire I would aviod it.

Capturing component is kind of pointless, unless you are coming straight off the camera without ever going to tape so you get the 4:2:2. Otherwise you already have all the HDV compression and you are just converting it to a larger file size with 4:2:0 color and HDV compression.

I have used my Decklink to capture analog with and the conversion softened the footage slightly. I used DVCProHD codec and it was nice because it is faster for rendering, but that was the only advantage I saw.

My recommendation is get the Firestore and avoid tape with this camera at all cost!!!

I have also tried all the different software for capturing the mpeg stream and converting to a usable codec. They all capture the mpeg great, but none of them convert to a usable codec very well.

The only useable way to capture tapes from this camera is to play them and manually record Quicktime HDV files on the Firestore. This works great! It does create a new file every 11 min, but there is no loss of video. You do lose the last frame of audio for each clip if you go over 11 minutes.

These are great cameras that take beautiful pictures and FCP is great, but capturing is a pain.

[Doug Krejci]

Even better- go with the Decklink HD Studio which will let you digitize the HDMI signal out of the JVC deck giving you an all digital workflow and all the benefits of the Kona LH. You would still use firwire for deck control or RS422.

This is the system that we are going with as JVC just came out with the firmware for the deck that allows it to play nicely with HDMI gear (regarding HDCP).

Hope this helps![/QUOTE]


Thanks Justin! I really appreciate this tip. Obviously it would be firewire from the computer back to the JVC 50. What do you do about feeding a monitor? In my case, a PVM-20M2U that would really want a composite signal? From the card? Through the 50? Somewhere else? Do I need a conversion scaling box.

It would be great if there was something that would hookup to that 4:2:2 HDMI output on the decklink HD Studio card to downconvert it.

I look forward to the responses!

Thanks,
Doug

[Justin Ferar]

Doug- PVM20 was the last monitor I worked on...

The Decklink HD studio has analog component i/o for hookups.

We use the new JVC DT series monitor which has a DVI-D connection for monitoring. An HDMI to DVI-D cable is used btween the card and the monitor. HDMI and DVI-D are compatible.