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Old September 15th, 2003, 01:21 PM   #1
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I Hate to Complain, But...

Geez, I realize I'm don't necessarily possess the quickest mind in the western world but trying to wrangle MPEG Edit Studio Pro LE, Ver. 1.0 (which came with my HD-1) is proving to be more difficult than is comfortable for my ego. I've read references on this thread to the fact that it's "clunky" (this is, in my opinion, an understatement) but how about downright "enigmatic"? I didn't expect Final Cut Pro but the only way I've been able to make any headway is via a torturous "hit or miss" method. The documentation is, to me, borderline worthless. The maddening thing is that I'm never certain whether or not I'm taking the right, most efficient path when, through experimentation, I finally find a way to perform a simple task. I've determined I can bracket via the "monitor" pieces of a clip I want, then drag those portions to the timeline. After stringing together a dozen or so of these pieces, I'm now attempting to add a few dissolves. But the several pararagraphs in the software's (har, har, snort, snort) "User's Manual" aren't exactly crystal clear. And once I seemingly am able to actually add a dissolveto two clips, I can't easily figure out how to preview just that section. The timeline isn't equippped - as far as I can tell - with a "play" button and I can't seem to drag this small piece somewhere else to see my work. Have any of you intrepid, much-smarter-than-me veterans managed to work all of this out so that you can easily perform simple trims, transitions, etc. without consulting the Oracle at Delphi? Or am I just hopelessly NLE challenged? At this point, I'm not looking to create a feature film. I just want to excise the bad stuff, add a couple of nice transitions and enjoy the footage. (Note to Steve Mullen: I haven't used your process for FCP because I'm still in agony over the sobering expense of getting edited material back out of my Mac and onto tape. Dang, early adoption can be such a curse.)
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Old September 15th, 2003, 02:12 PM   #2
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(Sorry about the typo in the first sentence of my previous post. Should read "Geez, I realize I don't...") Anyway, and for example, will someone point me to the "fade" feature? It's cited in the documentation which provides an illustration of a dialogue box for adjusting fade settings. Certainly one would expect it to be included as a fundamental effect. But I can't find it. And, regarding the transitions that are included, does anyone know the difference between the "front set" and the "back set"? As I continue to struggle with this software, I'm discovering ways to make it work but - whoa! - it ain't pleasant. Someone mentioned earlier that this is a stripped-down version of a much larger, expensive program and that perhaps some of the oddness I perceive is the result of paring it down.
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Old September 15th, 2003, 08:48 PM   #3
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David, I feel your pain too.

Studio Pro LE is crude but it does seem to work more or less, mostly less. Transitions are fairly easy but I have yet to figure out how you do much with audio. If the project gets too big it just starts to slow down to a crawl on a 3.0 Ghz P4 with 1 Gb Ram and 800 Mhz FSB.

I just wish there was a cheaper solution than AspectHD for Premier, not that isn't worth every penny of its cost, but for someone that just wants to edit high quality home movies it’s a very costly solution. Is anyone like Ulead working on a codex for this camera? With the announcement that this is the new standard format for HD camcorders it seems like there should be a beta program to get on board with.

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Old September 16th, 2003, 08:39 AM   #4
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Yep, I've edited material as best I can and successfully output the result back to the HD-1. I still haven't found the "fade" feature. The pictures, though, are fabulous. It's just a matter of time until there are affordable, robust NLE options.
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Old September 16th, 2003, 10:28 AM   #5
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David,
Glad you got the provided software to work. Out of curiosity, what Operating System and CPU are you using?
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Old September 16th, 2003, 11:12 AM   #6
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<<<-- Originally posted by Kevin Sturges : David,
Glad you got the provided software to work. Out of curiosity, what Operating System and CPU are you using? -->>>

My Machine is:
P4 3.0 Ghz 800 Mhz FSB
120Gb Serial ATA Hard Drive
w/ 1 Gb Dual Channel DDR 400 Ram
Saphire Radeon 9500 - Non Pro w/64 Mb Ram
WinXP Pro/ SP1

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Old September 16th, 2003, 11:21 AM   #7
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You guys should probably take a look at the Womble editor, www.womble.com it's only $120 and edits the MPEG2 TS from the JVC natively. I tried the demo of it on an 800mhz pc and it worked a treat, was MUCH faster than the MPEG studio pro software, and didn't crash. For simple home editing I think it's a much better solution than spending all that money on Premiere and Aspect.
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Old September 16th, 2003, 02:16 PM   #8
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Kevin - I'm Mac- based but maintain one PC - a Sony PCV-RX671, 2 GHz Pentium 4 running Windows XP. I guess my work would proceed a little faster if I upgraded the box to a faster one.
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Old September 16th, 2003, 02:18 PM   #9
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Paul - I'll go look at the Womble app but, in practice, what are its drawbacks? And, yes, all I'm really using the HD-1 for is personal stuff. I've got several XL1s whose output I process with FCP for more serious work.
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Old September 16th, 2003, 02:28 PM   #10
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I didn't get much time to really evaluate the womble editor fully, but from the little I tried, I saw enough that I've decided I'm going to buy it to do basic editing and cutting down large chunks of material into the shorter cuts I need, then take them over to FCP on the mac to edit uncompressed. I'm not using the JVC for any serious work though, I still do that in SD on the Mac.
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Old July 18th, 2004, 06:17 AM   #11
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how did that womble handle mpeg2-ts in the end?
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Old July 18th, 2004, 12:18 PM   #12
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I hate to break it to y'all, but I believe the FULL version of MPEG Edit... is several thousands of dollars.

For Apple, I've just started to test out Lumiere HD (for a review--sorry for the delay--I just moved!) and find it to be MUCH EASIER and friendlier than using these three or four shareware programs suggested right here in the HDV forums.

As for our good pal David Newman's Aspect HD, well...I need to try that out, too! I want to review that as well, but for now I will say that being able to cut HDV AND HD via Aspect HD is friggin' awesome! That's a great selling point, and I've heard a lot of good things about the software.

Thanks,

heath
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Old July 18th, 2004, 12:47 PM   #13
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Ditto on LumiereHD

My first-hand experience with LumiereHD has been solidly positive. As chronicled elsewhere on this forum, I managed to import some JVC HD-1 HD footage into FCP, perform edits and transitions, and output to DVHS tape, with absolutely no loss in HD quality. While one must take care to adjust various settings as per LumiereHD's QT movies and one's own system, it works and is a bargain at $179.
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Old July 19th, 2004, 03:05 PM   #14
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David,

Sometime back, I posted some helpful hints here.

[url]http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20015[url]

Don't know if I did that right or not!

To answer your question about previewing:
Notice the PLAY button (triangle) at the right end of the buttons at the top left in the TIMELINE window. That opens a window and starts a preview. The preview starts at the position of the yellow cursor line. You can drag the cursor, but you must first see it! The two ARROW buttons above the right side TRACK ONE label cause the cursor to jump to the previous or subsequent element on the timeline. These really help to keep the cursor in the area you are working. When you zoom the timeline, that zoom is centered around the cursor, so if you don't see the cursor, you can really get lost fast. After you have many clips on the timeline, previews get slower, and eventually crash the program. That's why I do programs in pieces - then put them together.

Hope this helps.
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