DR-HD100 and FCP
 

I’m thinking of purchasing a GY-HD100U camera with the DR-HD100 hard drive attachment. I use FCP for editing and I was wondering about the workflow. Anyone using the hard drive attachment with FCP? What is your workflow. Any problems?

Thanks ;-)

In short, the DR-HD100 works fine in DV modes. In HDV modes there's some gotchas.

The DR-HD100, when recording in HDV mode, only writes a m2t file to disk. This file is not importable by FCP directly. You can use MPEGSTREAMCLIP to process the m2t to a QT file, which of course then works in FCP. Kinda defeats the purpose though, for some people.

Focus Enhancements and JVC have been talking about releasing new firmware for the DR that will allow the unit to write 720p30 quicktime files, but there's problems with that and I can only assume they're still working on it.

When processing through MPEG Streamclip do you need to re-compress or is it just putting the file in a QuickTime wrapper?

Unfortunately, it's recompressing it too.

If somebody made a piece of shareware to take m2ts and re-wrap them without compression to quicktime, I bet they could make some money right now.

At the JVC booth at NAB a DR-HD100 was running firmware that wrapped 720P30 into a QT file, but it didn't work with 720P24.
I just received a new DR-HD100 and it only has the option for m2t in any HDV mode.
I'd like to find out where to download DR-HD100 firmware updates when they become available. The instruction manual says http://www.focusinfo.com but I'm not sure if Focus is technically supporting the product or JVC?

I think it's Focus.

The Focus Website will have it and Matt McEwen said by the beginning of August. He also said that last month about the beginning of July, but is should be very soon. Once the 720/24P update for Final Cut comes out, they will provide a wrapper for that as well.

I agree, if someone can just make a program to WRAP the files in .MOV, they will indeed make money. Maybe Final Cut can provide this technology in the next update so we don't have to wait for Focus to provide the new 24 wrapper.

In SD, the 24PA to Quicktime 24P works great, and imports direct 23.98 files in FCP.

Don't hold your breath. Not worth purchase for HDV
 

I was told "In a month we''ll have a firmware update" in April. So I don't take any of these promises seriously. Our DR-HD100 has been sitting on the shelf since then. I'm thinking of selling it. We tried the recompression method. It's faster to import tapes. If we shot DV we'd use it for sure.

Dave

Guys it's Awesome
 

Hi Gang,

We just finished a feature using the DR-HD100 and it is the only way to go.

After you move the files to another hard drive, you convert to a quicktime with MPEG Streamclip. I use Tim Dashwood's settings, and away you go. You can batch import the files and let it convert all night.

As Tim pointed out earlier, the QT files are pretty dog gone close to the original M2Ts in quality. I personally can't see a difference.

I highly advise this option for shooting with this camera.

Tom

www.tomchaney.com

Dave,

How is it faster to import tapes, and don't you deal with timecode breaks?

I also use the DR-HD100, and I love it.

Tom,

Do you have a link to Tim's settings?

What CODEC are you transcoding to? (Hmmm... maybe that's the same question and the answer is in the settings.)

I think Tim uses the AIC Codec. Now though, if you want to save space, you can select the HDV 30 Compressor, and enter 23.976 Frame Rate. Once loaded in FCP, change the timebase of the HDV 30 Timeline to 23.98 and you should be good to go with editing 24P HDV in FCP.

Tim is the man
 

Guys,

Here is a link to the discussion where Tim has posted a screengrab of his settings in MPEG Streamclip.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...peg+streamclip

Search for him on this forum and he shares all kinds of great information.

He has totally helped me setup the workflow for our film.

Good Luck,

Tom

www.tomchaney.com

We've held off shooting much 24p until the FCP upgrade, so shooting 30p and importing via firewire from our BRHD50's is faster than the time it take to recompress after importing m2t from the DR-HD100 and MPEG Streamclip path. Plus I can alway import 24p tape in realtime via our Kona LH.

For a few scenes it wouldn't take that long to run everything through Streamclip. I wonder if the recompression would be faster than realtime for a 30 minute clip vs capture from tape.

OTOH, if I could directly import every shot from the DR-HD100 directly into FCPro, I would use it all the time.

I guess this is a FCPro issue, don't some of the other systems allow .m2t clips natively?

Dave B