shooting direct to hard drive without P2 cards!!
 

ok...i've thrown up a bunch of questions on other threads and realised that i should just put them all together in one posting. (note: i'm new to much of this so some of my notes might seem obvious or stupid!)

i don't have P2 cards (not ideal for what i'm trying to do, and been waiting for the FS-100) so i'm testing the hvx shooting direct to hard drive via a powerbook g4 running OS X 10.3.9 and using FCP 5.0.4 and QT 7.0.3. connected camera to lacie hard drive via firewire.

i set the camera to 720/24p, but could only find an option for DVCPro50, not DVCProHD, selected it anway. set camera to 'video' mode. recorded in both 'host' and 'device'.

set FCP to DVCProHD, and the device control to "uncontrollable device" (setting it to firewire dvcpro HD doesn't work).

was able to record perfectly well, though FCP crashed every time i tried to 'log and capture' again (ie. after recording (via log and capture) a clip and saving it as a clip in a project, then going: file/log and capture, FCP crashes). also interestingly, rather than create an FCP project in the FCP capture scratch folder, FCP would create a quicktime with the name of the capture in a folder with the same name that i'd saved the project under. no project files existed.

no matter. the quicktimes looked great - in both 'host' and 'device' modes.

so, my questions:

1. why do i not see DVCProHD option in the camera set up menu?

2. what is better? 'host' mode or 'device' mode? (i will test shooting 15 clips in a row to same harddrive in both settings to see if the same limitation as P2s exists for this method)

3. USB on the go: is this a viable alternative? i was under the impression that the USB port on the hvx is transfer only (not record). is this correct? if not, and it can actually be used to record, does anyone have a good option?

any other thoughts on my system would be greatly appreciated. and i know i really should just go and get the P2s!

forgot one! does recording straight to hard drive bring in TC? or do we have to send that seperately, and if so, how to send it without stamping it on image?

The DVCPRO 50 item is the SD P2 recording format selector and gives you the option of: DV, DVCPRO and DVCPRO 50. This item is only applicable when you select an SD format as the REC FORMAT. When you select a HD format in the Rec Format, the Rec mode option is disabled (turns blue) because HD formats will always be recorded in DVCPRO HD.

FCP cannot capture TC when you select uncontrollable device, allthogh it's included in the stream from the camera.

Device nd host mode only relates to offloading from P2 cards either to a harddrive or to a computer. It will not make a difference when capturin in an NLE.

Direct to harddrive (Without computer and NLE) recording is not possible, you can only copy from P2 to Harddrive.

Thanks so much anders. that's great. if i understand you correct, i can switch to HD mode from SD mode and will be able to record direct to hard drive w/ DVCProHD.

do you know of a way to record this way in FCP without setting device as uncontrollable device? would love to pick up the TC directly!

thanks again.

tim

No there is no way to capture tethered in FCP with timecode. You would need to capture to P2 first to controll it by FCP.

Also be aware that most people will misunderstand you if you say "Capture direct to harddrive", as this implies that you connect a harddrive directly to your camera. "Capture direct to laptop" is more correct...

thanks anders....especially for the lingo. i'm pretty new to this so am still learning the distinctions.

anders...i'm now really confused. i can't find anything in the menus that allows me to switch between SD and HD mode. in REC FORMAT the only options i get are the ones you mention above.

this is troubling as a friend of mine tested this very same camer a few weeks ago in a side by side with his sony, recording direct to laptop (this was before i had the time to do my own tests). i just called him and confirmed that he had shot DVCProHD not DVCPro50.

help?!

tim

Live capture to Macbook Pro external USB drive?
 

Last night we hooked my HVX to the 1394 port on my friends Powerbook and did 720 24P live capture to internal hard drive. Played back fine. I read somewhere of successful captures to external 1394 hard drives via 1394 cardbus. That way you keep the streams separate.

I'm wondering for those with the MacbookPro (no pcmcia cardbus slot) if you can capture to external USB drive instead of using a cardbus.

So cam on the MB Pro's 1394 port and external drive on USB port. That way you bypass the need for a cardbus. I'd try it but alas no FCP Universal yet.

Come on, try it...I know you want to.

Vince....

You picked up an HVX? Great!

I'm considering upgrading near the end of this year and am looking at all the options and requirements.

For example, we just did a shoot for our show in New Zealand and the amount of time I put on tape would be about 600 gigabytes if it were shot with an HVX. And there's three of us shooting!

In a year's time we use about 500 40-minute tapes. Not all of them full, but figure on 3/4 of capacity used on each. So it's still a toss-up of whether to archive on hard drives or to consider getting a deck and archiving to tape.

I'll probably get a better handle on things after NAB.

Hope things are going well for you.

Hi Tim,

When you choose the 1080 signals or the 720P signals those are all DVCPRO HD.

The menus only have so much room to be descriptive so the factory went with a naming convention that calls out which of the two HD formats and then the frame rate within them, and as that stands there are 10 to choose from. So look again at the rec Formats again and see that you have lots of HD choices.

Welcome to the club. ;-)

Hope that helps,

Jan

OT: It's good to see you posting, Jan. Hope you have recovered fully from your 'incident' at Sundance. Looking forward to seeing you at NAB.

-gb-

...Now back to your regular thread topic.

Dean,

Yeah man. I love the DVX so after much deliberation and hearing about noise I did it. I did notice some noise during our capture session. We had it hooked up to Lon's 52" HD Sony via RGB. You could see noise in the dark areas. But we had no lights and when you do it looks killer. Even the SD stuff looks better then the DVX.

Wow. You guys shoot tons! Great show btw. I would think about tape backup. I think exabyte has a 1394 6mb/sec 80/100gb tape drive for $1700? Might be worth it if you do a lot of backup. Tapes are like $30?

Also found what that cool lcd detail button does. I was wondering why it made the picture look crappy, like photoshop detail edging. Cool feature to get good focus.

So anyone tried HD Macbook Pro capture via USB hard drive yet?

Vince...

Glad you enjoy seeing the show. We try to keep it upbeat and interesting. Mostly it's the interaction with the guests -- after all, if you've seen one papio being pulled in, then it's not much different from the other 237 ones being brought in.

Thanks for the info. Yes, we do shoot a heck of a lot but I'm hoping to keep that under control somewhat with more judicious shooting. Unfortunately it's a reality show of sorts, and it's hard to get spontaneous commentary unless the camera is running. Also, we create 26 1-hour shows a year, and that requires a lot of source material.

The HVX-200 has a record-ahead buffer and that would help greatly. Don't commit it until it starts to happen. A pretty cool feature. Wish still cameras had that when I was a news photog at the Star-Bulletin.

I'd love to check out the material you're shooting with the HVX sometime. Perhaps after the May sweeps when we get a chance to breathe a bit.

Not a good idea especially with the real world data rates for USB2.

Stick with firewire.

An ExpressCard/34 firewire card is now available from SIIG.

I thought USB2 beats 1394 480 to 400 respectively?

Okay scratch that. Just found some info:

usb: sustained read 33mb/s, write 27mb/s
1394: sustained read 38mb/s, write 35mb/s

Independent benchmark tests between
USB 2.0 and IEEE-1394a show that
IEEE-1394a is the performance winner,
even though the published rates tell a
different story. IEEE-1394a lends itself to
real-time video transfer due to higher
sustained data rates. It is also very useful
because of its peer-to-peer topology
and ability to independently power
CCD cameras from a host controller.
USB 2.0, meanwhile, has evolved
into a convenient interconnect for
external hard drives, fl ash drives, and
consumer-grade digital cameras, owing
to the availability of these ports on just
about every computer now sold. As
previously mentioned, overall sustained
data rates are reduced by the master-slav
topology of USB 2.0 (due to overhead
and increased CPU load). The inability
to provide substantial power is another
downside, creating the need for an
additional connection to the high-
performance camera.
Both USB 2.0 and IEEE-1394a have
advantages and disadvantages. If
performance is critical, then IEEE-1394a
is the clear choice. If performance is not
as important, then USB 2.0 represents
a ready option.


hahaha. Printed data rate is faster but benchmarks prove differently. Marketing? Still, would USB2 be adequate? Whats the sustained data rate needed for HD streaming?