Paul, I was able to export to both the camera and a D-VHS deck using the ffmpegX/VLC combination. Have you tried this again? Maybe it was because you didn't have an audio track?

I did try it again yesterday Paul, but with no luck. I used a file with an audio track, using the settings I posted before but with a bitrate of 18300 and a VBV setting of 732, all else was the same, but the camera and DVHS deck seem to record nothing, the resulting m2t files play back fine in VLC.
Can you post your exact settings and anything special you're doing in DVHScap or VirtualDVHS?, and I'll try again. Also, is mpeg2enc reporting 9 to 15 as the GOP limits in your case? For some reason I thought a GOP of 6 was necessary.

Thanks

p.s. the ffmpeg problem was that the full pathname was needed.

I'm having a general problem with recording and playing back anything to the camera right now I've discovered, so this may not be a problem with your mpeg2enc at all. Dvhscap and VirtualDVHS are recognizing and controlling the camera but nothing is coming through in either direction for some reason, not sure why at the moment.

Ok, but I noticed that although 30Mps stream show fine on the monitor when it is being recorded to DVHS the recording is garbled when played back. Apparently the DVHS is more particular about bitrates than I had originally thought.

Finally it all works! It was just some sort of weird firewire glitch on this end, I changed to the front port on my G5 (I was using my G4 previously) and now all is fine. The 18300 encoded file with audio I mentioned before recorded perfectly to both the camera and the DVHS deck and seem to play back perfectly as well. I felt sure that the variable bit rate or the GOP size were the problem but that appears not to be the case. I think you can finally announce to the world that this solution actually works. Congratulations!
I guess just documenting the process from installation to usage for people would be a final stage, if you want me to help at all please let me know...but this is just great, it's now a very simple process to encode footage from any Quicktime HD codec, using Ffmpegx and VLC.
I think I will continue to use the DC30 codec for editing myself, as it seems the most reliable and artifact free to me, I was noticing some problems with Black and White using Pixlet.
By the way, do you know if you can save settings as a preset in Ffmpegx? I took a quick look but couldn't see a way to do it.

All the best, and thank you again for getting this together, you've done a great service for people with this camera.

Great to hear Paul! I'll put a thread together based largely on your ffmegX instructions and post it here in the near future. Did you download the latest version of http://www.celt.sunysb.edu/paul/mpeg2enc_HDTV.zip?
It contains a package installer for the library file and a readme with the ffmpegX workflow, it would be great if you can go over it and post any revisions that you see as needed.

I tried to see if there was an easy way to create presets within ffmpegX today, I didn't see anything right off the bat. I can disect ffmpegX a little by control clicking on the ffmpegX icon and using "view package contents". I dislike that the author went out of his way to obscure the program, by protecting the applescripts for example and not showing the commands that are used for conversion.

There is a program, Mediapipe for the mac which is similar to ffmpegx (except it is free and harder to use). Mediapipe is a GUI for UNIX tools but it also shows the entire list of commands that it generates so you can tweek them on your own. FfmpegX is limiting because it deliberately hides these commands.

FfmpegX isn't all bad, it is easy to use and we got it to do what we needed, still I am going to continue working on the droplet which will work without FfmpegX

You can create custom presets in ffmpegX using "file, save preset" menu item.

Can you post those instructions up here as well? That's the link to Apple HDV solutions.

heath

Success!!!!

Using Paul's excellent "how-to" I was able to record an edited clp back to my HD1 using my Mac and the results were great, if not excellent...

Thanks Paul!!!!

II did notice a few minor quirks but I am sure that I can work around them now that I found them...

1) I set the bit rate on ffMpegX to 17000 and I noticed that the transfer bit rate jumped from 13000 to 17500...I guess I can go as high as 19000 so I may try that on the next one...

2)there was a slight delay from the time that DVHSCap started the transfer to the time the HD1 began recording...about 2 seconds...so I will adjust and give it a bit of headway on the begining...

Things that i will work on next...

I used Motion Jpeg A when I did my export to Quicktime...i may use a different codec next time (Pixlet, or Dc30 lossless) to see if I get better results...

All of this for the awesome price of $15 for the shareware fee...too cool...

I am a happy Mac FCP/HD1 user right now...

Cool, Carlos, sounds great!

heath

That is great to hear Carlos! You could try higher bitrates than 19000, there should be some sweet spot between 19000 and 30000 that the camera will accept.

That's what I was going to try Paul...I figured that it would choke up somewhere...I will do some tests and see where that is...

Thanks again for your efforts...Now I can really have a good workflow with this camera...

Now all I need is a HD capable DVD recorder and player...

Carlos