Thanks for your time on this Tim. Not quite getting how you setting up your Genlock. Are you saying that the signal from my BB generator should be split, with one end going to the Genlock in, and the other to the Y out of the Decklink?

Somebody on another forum pointed this out yesterday.
Said they have never had this issue with the Sony Cameras.

Tim what issues does fcp 5.1.2 have with the HD100?

I would have to disagree that not being able to capture the first few seconds of a clip is not a major malfunction. Perhaps malfunction is not the right word, but calling it anything other than a serious lack in performance capability would be incorrect. If the camera can not do this, as every other camera I've ever worked with or heard of can, than this is a red flag that needs to be noted somewhere,i.e. "unless you are using a Kona card, the first 2-3 seconds of your footage will be unusable in the HDV mode."

Rolling extra pre-roll in a controlled environment may be the "professional" way to do things, but in a ENG type of environment it can't always be done. I am shooting stuff that you have to react to the situation at hand. You cannot ask people to wait for your pre-roll. It also requires 80-100 shots per 60 minutes of tape which I may divide into 200 seperate clips. Since the advent of cheap drives I've been able to do this once the tape is digitized, which speeds up the process by over 100%. This is not using "Capture Now", I am setting an in point at the begining of the tape, and an out point at the end.

I now understand that perhaps the only way to use this camera in such a setting is to buy the DR-HD100 HDD recorder. It just doesn't seem to me that you should have to do this for a very common shooting style.

Burt Holland
Encyclomedia
Atlanta, GA

Just to reinforce my complaints with the ProHD equipment. Up until recently I owned two Sony Z1 camcorders and shot a number of projects on them. Sold them as I now prefer Progressive for certain things. The Z1s performed flawlessly from an editing point of view with Final Cut Pro. Both capture now and the batch capture methods worked to perfection. Scene breaks were detected and I never lost a single frame. Using log/capture method the clips that came in were accurate to the exact frame I'd marked in timecode. So it is not a HDV thing as all Sony cams I've used in 1080i have been perfect with no such hitch.

I've shot with loads of different formats over the years and edited mainly on FCP (since version 1.2, Media Studio Pro and Premiere before that) and I've simply never encountered the trouble I've had with JVC. I don't have anything against JVC equipment, after all I bought a load of it. But by my experience it is just too much trouble and just too twitchy. Hopefully in 6 to 10 months Apple and JVC will have sorted it between them. But I can't wait, I'll have moved over to Sony by then.

Somebody else mentioned that Apple give Sony more attention, I think they are right. Sony and Apple do talk a lot, I've even seen Sony CEO on stage with Steve Jobs during keynotes. No doubt they are in bed together and have a good relationship.

Boy, I'm looking forward to this!

And thanks (as always) for the great post, Tim.

That's not the only way but it's a safe way. I went with a disc recorder when a couple of tapes suffered severe drop-outs. Believe me, drop outs on MPEG2 recorded tape can be terrible.

Working with MPEG2, HD or SD, has always been problematic and was predicted to be problematic when it was announced as the compression format of HDV. All of the issues Tim mentioned have always been known drawbacks to working with MPEG2 outside of transmission and simple video playback. In a way it's like how NTSC went from a black and white format to a color format. The conversion was essentially successful but we have been saddled with the drawbacks of cramming color information onto a format that was never formulated with color in mind. MPEG2 was never developed for editing , it was created to compress video information into small spaces with high quality. The only way to cram HD level quality onto economical tape formats with present technology is to use MPEG. That's it. Everyone has been trying to convert the MPEG signal into something with the flexibilty of frame-based video formats. That they (JVC, Apple & everyone else) have got it to work this well is remarkable. Otherwise we would all be editing at 6 or 15 frame intervals, OK for home movies and 1960's style high school science films.

I have found that I have to approach the camera and the editing process more like 16mm film (which I haven't touched in twenty years). The area around the camera stops and starts are liable to have problems (light leakage in 16mm, time code issues on the HD100). The viewfinder isn't very accurate in terms of image quality, that becomes a matter of experience with the cameras. And getting your edit started takes a little work but this seems to be improving with HDV.

JVC has created a very, very good camera for the price, nothing really comes close. Apple has created a very, very good production system for the price. The fact is the price difference for the next step up in HD quality shows we are in compromised territory. That we can produce such quality at this price level is worth working thru the hardships.

Or I'm just crazy.

No in my book that is 100% dead on and I agree with it.

In our post house we never do capture now (though it would be nice if it did work, but its not a deal breaker as we log and capture on all projects....its just the way we do it)

Now Tim, how bout that compatability info you talked about for fcp 5.1.2 and the "A" cameras needing a further update?

And can you explain again about genlocking a br-hd50u?
I've got one coming in tommorow and I need the picture locked properly.