XH-A1, Apple and 24F
 

I would like to upgrade to FCE-HD to save some money. I don't think it will edit 24F. Not sure if FCP will even do that. Does anyone know? Also what are the chances that Apple might put 24F editing into FCE-HD? Or should I not even worry about 24F and if I wanted to it all in post?

must be a tough question

Go ahead and shoot 24f. Use the Apple FireWire Developers Kit which has a program called VirtualDVHS with it to capture the raw .m2t clips from the camera. Get MPEGStreamClip to use to export the .m2t files to the Apple 1080p24 codec. Create a custom timeline in FCP using the attached image's settings.

I don't think you will be able to do this in FCE, however, I may be wrong.

A bit of a work around but it works. Eventually FCP will handle native Canon 24f.

You can do this to FCE with 30/25p by transcoding to AIC mov, which FCE uses for HD material. Not sure if FCE would has the option for a 24p.

My brain just crashed.

I hope at some point Apple will let you just capture 24F.

I imagine it will be sooner rather than later.

Of course we've all been imagining "sooner" for 7 months or so now.

well I was planning on some stuff in 60i anyway.

I've been banging the "Apple doesn't support Canon's 24F mode" for a long time now and have been beaten down by many of this board for being upset at Apple's lack of attention.

Apparently only Sony and Panasonic get preferrential treatment simply because they sell 90% of all camcorders. And asking Apple to support anyone else is foolhardy and unrealistic.

So I'm going to predict that Apple will never release 24F support for Canon or 24P support for JVC.

Back when DV Info Net was small, it was a lot easier to catch that kind of inappropriate activity. If you believe that you've been flamed or otherwise personally harrassed here, please use the "report bad post" button to the left and we'll look it over and act on it.

Not likely.

Apple's gonna throw it's support behind AVC-HD and implement 24p support there. They're gonna view HDV in general as a stop-gap format and therefore I doubt they'll support Canon's or JVC's flavors.

At NAB I attended the LAFCPUG Super Meet after the convention center had closed on Wed I think. Apple was there demoing 720p24 for the HD 100 and says it's coming soon.

I also had the opportunity to meet Chris there. Chris, am I mistaken about the 24p support for the HD 100?

I do find it funny that MPEG Streamclip, Apple's own product, has no problem with the inverse pulldown of Canon's 24F footage.

It's not an Apple product. Here's the web site.

I stand corrected.

It would be absolutely silly from a financial standpoint to not support those formats. First, they already support the basic HDV format. Second, they have been showing a demo of 720/24p capabilities. Third, what camera on the horizon does has 24p in the AVCHD codec? None. That's how many.

Ya know, I'm not happy about the lack of support regarding these formats either, but FCP will support these formats in the future, it's only a matter of time. When people start buying up those new Canons I bet there will be support for them fairly quickly.

If not, I believe Cineform is working on a version of their codec for Macs.

Apple will have a solution, thinking that they will "skip over" these formats is downright silly.

I agree Tony, it would seem kind of dumb not to put 24F in FCP or FCE. If Apple thought AVC was the last and greatest format, why even waste time with anything else? What are there two AVC-HD camera's announced?

I'm just going to buy the Firestore FS-C made pretty much for Canon 24F and the XL-H1. It supports 24F and will work perfectly with any system... read up about it here, http://www.focusinfo.com/solutions/catalog.asp?id=171

Eric Hansen
www.ehansenproductions.com

The problem is that all us FCP folks have been saying the same thing for almost EIGHT MONTHS NOW.

David Newman of Cineform has said that Quicktime support for Cineform will available this fall. BUT there will not be any FCP support in the foreseeable future.

I'm assuming it's because they're not getting much cooperation from Apple.

Yeah, but none that will do 24p, which was my point. It's 24p support we're talking about here correct?

Apple is probably just holding out for FCP6, which is right around the corner. Also, what would be the point of making a Cineform codec for the mac if you can't edit it in the mac's native NLE?

I don't believe thats true. Maybe I'm not reading something right, it does have the Canon logo plastered on the site, but here is the exact phrasing:

Where does it say it will support 24f? The closest option was Quicktime 24p, but it that set at DV resolution? The only other option is 1080i mpeg2 stream. Really it would be no different than streaming the footage from the original HDV tapes. It looks to me that it just does a 1080i firewire transfer. The problem is getting that stream into an 24p format that you can edit on FCP.

Tony, I may be wrong as well but I talked to a Canon dealer who did say that it will support the format, so we ordered one and should be in by Monday, We'll run some tests and let you know how it goes....

Eric Hansen

It does support 1080i mpeg-2 stream which 24f (and 30f for that matter) comes in. So yes it does support the 1080i stream coming from the firewire of the camera. The firestore does not convert it to a progressive HDV format, or any progressive HD format.

Technically FCP and the Apple Intermediate HDV Codec already supports 1080i. If you want to edit your 24f footage in 60i then FCP is already good to go. When you record 24f on tape it is in a 60i stream. The firestore is essentially just equivalent to a really long tape. The trick is being able to extract the progressive frames and edit in a 24p timeline. The firestore won't convert it to 24p for you.

Here are some facts regarding Canon and JVC HD 24P:

-Currently the best workaround for FCP is using the MPEG Streamclip process as told about above.

-The next release of FCP will have support for the frame rates, but no one knows when that will be...Apple just released the Mac Pro and everyone was expecting it to be acompanied by an update to Final Cut Studio. That didn't happen.

-Canopus is the only editing software that can directly injest both the Canon and JVC frame rates Natively.

-FCE CANNOT edit 24 Frames...go with FCP.

-The Firestores record the 24 frame material in a 60i (Canon) or 60p (JVC) frame rate. Repeat flags are inbedded. The Firestore cannot remove the pulldown yet. On a side note, Focus is releasing a HDV.Mov wrapper for JVC 30P. They said they will persue this for 24P once FCP releases the update. I assume they will also do this for the Canon.

You think Apple's lack of support on this issue is strange--I attended the Apple/Sony XDCAM HD seminar last week in Chicago. Apple is touring the U.S. with Sony promoting their interactivity...BUT...FCP will not handle XDCAM HD at 35mbs yet, and you can not edit the XDCAM HD proxy files yet.

One would think they would get FCP up to speed before doing the tour.

I would be willing to bet money that Canon 24f, JVC 24p, Sony's XDCAM will all be supported by FCP when the new version comes out. Possibly AVCHD will be supported also.

Yeah but now their are 3x as many 24f camcorders, they essentially have no choice but to support it because these cameras will obviously sell.

If there's a user base they have to give them what they want or other companies will.

I disagree...AVCHD is a consumer format, so I think we'll see JVC and Canon 24p/f support soon. I'm frustrated, too, but it'll come. It took 2 years for native and even DI support in Apple (and not a third party version, though Lumiere HD is nice).

heath

ps-Apple will support it; Sony, who also makes great video cameras, also supports many flavors of codecs, etc., with Vegas. It just makes sense, financially.

hwm

MiniDV was and is still a consumer format. Obviously it has been supported since the first verison of FCP. HDV is a now consumer format (it sort of began that way) and it is supported (sort of). Why wouldn't AVCHD ever be supported?

Tony,

I never said that AVCHD wasn't going to be supported, I was answering the question posted. Also, in case you haven't noticed, both minidv and HDV are consumer and professional formats.

heath

Well, darn, I didn't know when I switched from Betacam to DV with a DSR500 that made me a consumer. I guess I should refund the daily rates to our clients, and then the agency who produced a bunch of TV spots for a local film festival in HDV...well, I guess Time Warner may take back all that air time they gave us if they know the spots are only consumer format spots. I bet the guys who got an Academy Award presentation for "Spellbound" wouldn't have got to attend the ceremony if the Academy had known they did a consumer film. And that HDV coming out of the F-350 camera I saw in Chicago--nothing but consumer stuff. Now I'm all depressed.

Keep one thing in mind, too, everyone--minidv wasn't supported by NLEs in the earliest stages. By the time it was, Final Cut Pro 1.0 supported it. And it took nearly 2 years for Apple to support HDV, along with other NLEs, including AVID, who uses a DI when capturing and editing, like most NLEs recommend.

heath

Are we sure about this, For some time i could have sworn I heard people wailing that 24 frames are laid to tape, out of the composite and hd-sdi output it's all 60i but I thought that there was 24 distinct individual frames laid to tape. Does anyone care to clarify?

This is from the official Canon site.
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/co...2152&pageno=17


That is directly from the XL-H1 Watchdog site.
http://www.dvinfo.net/canonxlh1/articles/article06.php

The bottomline is that there is no HDV 24p editing solution currently for FCP. The firestore does not give you 24p footage to edit with. It merely dupilcates the same data that you get on tape and the same data that comes out of the firewire port. Which is a 60i stream. The frames are located within that stream. Exactly how that works is best left to asking the engineers at Canon.

My point was that you can edit the footage in 60i using basic HDV codecs included with most NLE's (to my understanding), but you cannot edit in 24p without a few workarounds (mpegstreamclip and what not).

Actually there is, it's for the Sony XDCAM HD which is 24p and based on HDV, though HDV is tape-only:

http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Broadcastan...mhd_info.shtml

FAQ:
http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Broadcastan...XDCAM_FAQs.pdf

Works well with Final Cut Pro:

http://seminars.apple.com/go/sonytou...6FCSSONY-DO7XZ

and

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/...tanything.html

With this in mind, I'm sure we'll see 24p/f support soon.

heath

I never claimed that AVCHD would never be supported, nor did I say it would only be a consumer format, In fact I think it will go beyond consumer format very quickly. If you look at my previous posts you would see that I said AVCHD support would more than likely be forthcoming from Apple.


Didn't mean to ruffle your feathers Bill, but I never once said it was stictly a consumer format. What I said was within the context of the discussion. If you're going to critique what I say, please take the time to read all of the posts. I shoot professionally,as a hobbie, and just for fun and I've used MiniDV for all of those occasions.

I have re-read through all the posts and I see some things that are potentially flame-incudcing, but I also see where some things have been taken out of context. We're here to learn, not fight. I recommend everyone relax, re-read our policy, and have a fun, educational time.

Thanks,

heath