Capturing 720P30 with FCP5...
 

Anyone had trouble capturing 720p in FCP from the HD100? Mine stops capturing every time a new shot comes up, even when I deselect the "new clip on start/stop." BTW I'm posting this here as I haven't had any luck on the FCP forum.

In your prefs, make sure that the "abort capture upon timecode break" option is not selected.

Dan Weber

Yup, did that.

did you try trashing your prefs yet?

Dan Weber

Yep. And I've unhooked any firewire devices as well.

So when you say "stops capturing" do you mean it creates a new clip and continues to capture the next one, or the capturing process is stopped altogether?

If you didn't use REGEN TC, then each start/stop break will also be a TC break, therefore FCP will create a new clip.

If I do a "capture now" it just stops capturing after one shot. If I do a batch capture, it will capture each shot as a new clip. However, the latter option is bad for the camera transport so I don't want to do that. TC is set to Regen. Timecode is continuous.

Problems in post with FCP?
 

Hello,

I am considering going with the HD100's on a low budget feature project but am concerned about being able to use the footage with FCP.
I have FCP HD and am trying to figure out if I need another version of FCP or another third party software to make this work or another editing software all together to digitize and edit footage.



Thanks,
Scott

scott,

you will need FCP 5.0 or later and it will work the best with 720p30 footage right now. you will have to jump through some hoops to work with 720p24 footage. the next update of FCP should address this issue.

do a search for FCP workflow on this site. Tim Dashwood has good experience working with FCP and HDV.

Dan Weber

Hi Scott... welcome to dvinfo.net.

There is plenty of info on this board with regards to 720P24 HDV support in FCP and current workarounds as well as the update demoed at NAB06.
Try searching for "FCP" and "720P24."

When do you plan to be doing your post-production on your film? It is possible that full HDV 720P24 support will be implemented in FCP5.1 before you even start post-production. There is no official ETA.

Bill, it sounds like you have your "on timecode break" setting set to "Abort Capture" in the user settings. Set it to "Make New Clip" and you should be able to use the "Capture Now" method through the whole tape.
Remember that with HDV two conditions must be met at the start/stop to prevent a timecode break.
#1: There can't actually be a TC break (you said you were using REGEN mode so unless you have blank spots in the tape your TC should be continuous.)
#2: There can't be a break in the GOP pattern. This is very hard to accomplish in HDV, so many times a start/stop will still register as a TC break even though the TC was continuous.

Ultimately, breaking the clips at start/stop breaks IS A GOOD THING for media management because it will help you avoid loss of sync that many people encounter when attempting to capture whole tapes as a m2t.

Hey Bill,

FCP HDV 720p 30p does work, But if your up against a wall with your FCP capture issue, you could always try to capture using the AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec) for 720p 30p. It seems to be a little less buggy than FCP's HDV 720p 30p.

The capture window will look different, (there are no "Start, Stop" software buttons and no logging capture window).

AIC will keep recording the incoming footage until you tell it to stop.

It's a short term workaround until FCP gets updated.

Thanks for the advice. How much quality loss will I experience with the AIC?

I had that option "unchecked", so that's not the issue.
I tried that and it sort of worked... I wind up losing about 3-4 seconds off each shot, however, as FCP hurries to make a new clip out of each shot. I tried the same tapes on a friend's G5 and he was able to capture without issue. Maybe my G4's at fault? Or maybe I should reinstall FCP? Could it be that I'm running FCP 5.0.4 and not 5.1.1?
How can I avoid this? Will changing TC to non-drop frame help?

BTW, thanks for your help -- MUCH more considerate than what I'm getting on the useless FCP boards at Apple.

Hi there, Iv'e got the same issue with losing 3- 4 seconds at the head of every clip...... maddening when you lose the top of something you cant reshoot with enough rollup.....

So is it the camera or FCP?

Besides that, i love the fact that FCP makes a new clip at each button on/ button off. When shooting i take this into account and it makes logging and capturing much easier.....

Another good resource for FCP is www.lafcpug.org massive forums and lots of users means ,generally, a speedy reply......

However the forum users can be a bit impatient of FCP learners, of which i still am....

I wonder if these issues go away with the JVC HDV deck?

I think you've ruled-out the camera and tapes. V5.0.4 works perfectly even on a G3 iBook so I doubt it is 5.0.4.

So I would wonder about your G4. Can you tell us more about it.

I have a G5 2 GHz dual processor and i've been having the same problem. I've been using the AIC work around suggested by Corey to import footage.

Michael

AIC doesn't really lose any quality. It just converts the HDV stream to a different format that is more "editing friendly" w/ FCP. In fact it actually expands the file which uses up twice as much hard drive space. I don't think you are really losing any quality, it's just not in the original HDV format anymore.

I started using this method because like many people, I was losing the first 4 seconds of each clip when capturing with the HDV codec, so I started capturing with AIC to prevent the gaps.

Note quite so fast. Every IBP-frame MPEG-2 frame must be decoded to baseband video and then re-encoded to I-frame MPEG-2. (Which is why the file expands.) That is certainly not going to keep quality at an equal level. But, the loss may not be visible either. Depends on the bit-rate reduction ratio used by AIC.

Interlace HDV is degraded because there is a problem with how the AIC encoder handles interlace.

I think AIC is fine for iMovie and FCE.

Since I've never had a problem with native 30p in over 3 years -- I'm at a loss to explain why it works fine on someone's friend's G5 but not on their G4. This doesn't point to HDV or FCP.

Which also makes me wonder -- you are capturing a whole tape and using Scene Detect aren't you?

What about progressive video?
Ummm.... scene detect???

Is it possible to capture HDV using a different codec? Such as DVCPro HD? Probably not with firewire, but perhaps with component? Just thinking off the top of my head...

See Eric's post mid-way through on this thread:http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=70326

That's very cool. It addresses 24p as opposed to 30p, but I"m guessing that doesn't matter (?).

Yes - it shouldn't. I'm sure this method was developed to deal with the lack of native 24P suppport in FCP and the compression limitations of HDV.

Would capturing HDV via component be any less "qualitative" than capturing via firewire?

I'm sure any loss would be imperceptible and would be largely outweighed by the gains of transcoding to 4:2:2, but I haven't tried it yet. I should stop yakking and test it out. I haven't had much time as of late, but should in the next week or so. I'll give it a test and let you know what I find.

Tim

If you could post image stills comparing the two, that would be even better...

It's been done. Try searching the FCP forum for "AIC." We've discussed this a million times.

Here's a thread that has some comparison frames between AIC and native HDV.
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=61472

AIC works very well for 720P. I've always been impressed by the fact that results are visually indistinguishable from the original. The biggest problem at the moment is that the auto AIC capture utility built into FCP does not record the source TC. Too bad.

There is nothing abnormal here. A G5 will simply be able to cache and write the data to disk quicker than a G4, and therefore you will not lose as much preroll off the top of each break.
The thing is, the first 3 or 4 seconds of camera rollup should be of absolutely no concern to you. Every professional editing system has always required at least 3 seconds of clean TC for pre-roll sync. Some require 7 seconds!
The reason professional cameramen have always provided preroll is to avoid losing any important footage during ingest.

If you are shooting material that requires rolling at a moment's notice (like a fishing show,) then I suggest the DR-HD100. It has a cache record function that will cache up to 10 seconds BEFORE you actually hit the record button! I've tested it and it works.

It won't make a difference.

Now that we've gotten to the bottom of your "issues" with FCP (and since FCP doesn't hate your HD100,) I think the title of the thread should be changed to something more accurate. Suggestions anyone?

Hey Tim,

My intent was to compare HDV to uncompressed 720p, not to AIC. Has a comparison been made yet between full 140mb/s uncompressed and 25mb/s HDV?

Makes sense to me. And that is the answer I've been looking for the whole time. I'll either get a KONA card or use the AIC and that should solve everything.
Are you talking about every single shot, or the first shot after camera startup? Because if the former, it is literally impossible in event shooting to always "preroll" for 3-4 seconds ahead of time for every shot. For controlled shooting, it's a piece of cake.
That's fine. I never literally meant that FCP hated my HD100. I merely used that line to get people to read the thread. And it worked.

Now that we've gotten to the bottom of your "issues" with FCP (and since FCP doesn't hate your HD100,) I think the title of the thread should be changed to something more accurate. Suggestions anyone?


"FCP 4 HD-100..... an unstable relationship continues...."

FCP 5, actually.

Progressive video is not interlaced.


Are you trying to capture each shot by marking its IN and OUT points?

Simply mark the end of the last scene as OUT, rewind and mark the beginning of the tape as IN and Capture IN to OUT. Scene Detect automatically will then cut the video into subclips. (Have you read your FCP manual?)

With MPEG-2, you need to START shooting at least 5 seconds -- 7 seconds is best -- before anything you want to see. It takes about 5 seconds of rolling before MPEG-2 becomes stable.

This problem is eliminated if you capture a whole tape because the transport never stops playing. Of course, you have to PAUSE the camcorder between each shot -- which you likely do anyway.

Lord no. I'm trying to capture a bunch of shots by setting one in point and one out point.
Haha. I don't like the idea of scene detect (which, BTW, isn't even listed in the index for some reason). I like to divide all of my shots/clips myself, not have the NLE do it for me. Just a preference. At any rate, this won't work on my G4. I will however go back and reread the chapter on capturing.
That I did not know, I confess.
Again, it won't work. FCP capture stops once a new shot comes up. And, yes, I do have the 'stop/start' box unchecked in the logging window.

I think for my um… Fishing Shows I might need to get the DR-HD100 if the new FCP update doesn’t solve this pre-roll issue. Call me unprofessional if you will, but sometimes something starts happening right in front of you and you should have been rolling for 2 seconds already when you put the viewfinder to your eye. Like when Wilber snags a giant bass… and you need every second of it you can get.

It’s also how I’ve learned to work as a video professional. I shoot, import, and edit expecting every second of footage to be there. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by MiniDV and firewire or something, but it just makes sense to me. If anything engineering should be moving forward to where no footage NEEDS to be lost.

I don't mean to point fingers at the HD100 (because it's awesome), but my Sony FX1 15GOP HDV captures tapes beginning to end just like regular DV. –it creates a new clip only if I check “Make new clip on start/stop.” And then it doesn’t loose any footage either. Steve, I know you wrote the book on HDV so maybe you could shed some light on what’s going on here.

My guess is that FCP 6 is going to fix this issue. Has anyone else wondered why they put that “Make new clip on start/stop” check box there if it makes no difference?

Okay, I'll call you unprofessional. I've shot fishing, you roll every second you're in the boat except when you're switching tapes and batteries. Yes, you end up with a lot of tape. That's why you log the TC whenever anything interesting happens.

You can use DVRack. You can set it to record for a number of seconds _before_ you push the record button.

However, a rubberized laptop might be advised in case it gets dropped overboard.

Sorry Stephan. I meant no disrespect to shooting fishing. It just sounded like a strange example at the time. Your method sounds like the best way to go for the subject. For my wedding work I don't want to roll on the whole day for a variety of reasons. I was just expressing the need to keep all the footage one shoots.