Economical way to copy DVCPRO HD?
 

I shoot with an HDX900 and need to find the most economical way to capture footage and allow me to select clips to pass onto a library. I need to send them uncompressed QT movies on a drive, starting out the process with DVCPRO HD tapes. Is my only way to get FCP or is there a more economical way?
The camera allows me to capture directly through firewire to the computer.

Thanks

David
www.lunaseafilms.com

Hmm- well you're kind of asking for two different things. Do you want to capture via Firewire to uncompressed- which I don't recommend because you're just adding huge file size to an already compressed in the camera image. Or do you just want to copy DVCPROHD clips to other hard drives? I'd suggest moving them around on fast RAID FW800 or ESATA hard drives in either case.

-Noah

Dear David,

The Flash XDR allows you to record Quicktime files, from the HD-SDI output of your camera, directly to CompactFlash cards.

The files on the CompactFlash cards are directly readable by FCP, if you use an appropriate CompactFlash card reader, such as the Lexar Filewire 800 Card Reader.

If you do not use the above reader, then you can just transfer the desired files from the card to your computer's hard disk, then play or edit them in Final Cut Pro.

Please note that you will need Final Cut Pro version 6.0.4 or higher.

If this is a one-time thing, you could just rent or borrow a Flash XDR. The Flash XDR just requires HD-SDI as its input signal.

However, I assume that you are looking for an even more economical solution.

Thanks for the input, my situation dictates the workflow that I am trying to figure out. As I mentioned I am shooting with a Panasonic HDX900 which allows me to connect straight to a laptop via firewire. I need to log the DVCPRO footage, add metadata and then output to a drive that is going to be sent to a stock footage library. They have requested that they receive the footage as uncompressed QT movies. I am hoping to find the most economical way to achieve this, FCP might be it?

I would love to be able to send the tapes to an editor to carry out the process or straight to the library, but the circumstances do not allow that. I also need to be able to carry out the process in remote field locations.

I think the new Panasonic P2 recorder that is coming out will be a good addition to my kit, but meanwhile don't want to go down the XDR path. I would rather wait on the Panasonic product.

Thanks

David,

Would you consider one of the P2-card based Panasonic cameras as an alternative to using tapes? HPX500 as an example? After you shoot, you remove the P2 cards from the camera, pop into your NLE using an appropriate card reader - and edit straight off (or better, copy the P2-cards contents to a hard-diisk, then edit the hard-disk version). No need to speed time ingesting the tapes.

Thanks, but I need to get more use out of the HDX900 before investing in a new camera. The new Varicam looks great but it will be a year or two before that is an option

Well then if you're capturing DVCPROHD to Firewire you're going to need to transcode the captures to Uncompressed QuickTime. Depending on how much you plan to edit out, you'll either do this as a file>Export using QuickTime conversion in FCP or you could set up a droplet in Compressor that does this automatically when you drop a DVCPROHD .MOV into a specified folder on your hard drive. Here's how that works:

Peachpit: Final Cut Pro Power Tip: Creating a Compressor Droplet > Final Cut Pro Power Tip: Creating a Compressor Droplet

Less manual intervention with the second but also less editorial control. Either way you'll need to spend some time actually making the outputs. I don't know of a way to make it more automated than that.

Noah