HVX to Powerbook Capture Results
 

Since many others are obviously considering this same setup for shooting instead of P2, I decided to start this thread is to compliment the one about optimizing setups for using a Powerbook for direct capture from the HVX.

I've been in testing mode for about 5 days on this combination and will report findings after I've had time to become more familiar with the performance characteristics and any unseen pit-falls I've run into.

Look for updates later this week.

Great, thanks!

Results, as Promised...
 

After 5 days of testing direct capture to the PB here's what I've learned - and the results were a bit surprising.

The capture method was done in 3 "modes" to test all configurations:

Mode 1 - Capture directly to the internal drive only - no external drive connected.

Mode 2 - Capture to an external drive using both on-board FW ports; HVX into FW400 port, External drive out from the FW800 port.

Mode 3 - Capture to an external drive on it's own FW bus using the LaCie PCMCIA FW800 card; HVX into FW400 port, External drive on the LaCie FW800 card port.

Since my project is going to be shot in 720p/30 that's the only camera mode we tested. We used a 10ft FW cable between camera and PB and both camera and PB were powered by their a/c connectors, not battery.

Of all the configurations, Mode 1 and 2 gave the most unexpected results.

In Mode 1 we had a 90% good capture with dropouts occurring mostly at the beginning of a clip. Once the internal drive stabilized the clip seemed to smooth out. It's certainly not a stable capture but it would work as a last resort if nothing else were available - but only for a short run and certainly nothing I'd attempt for a pro production. However, attempting to playback a clip from the timeline caused FCP to become unstable and it always stopped playback reporting dropped frames or worse, caused FCP to crash completely forcing a system reboot. Even with all the preferences set to "low" we could never get a stable playback - from the timeline. If we viewed the clip in the viewer instead it would play but often cause the system to lock-up.

Mode 2 was better - and worse. The capture had a few, really nasty dropouts where the viewer screen was full of bad data blocks, sound clicks and frame stutter. However the clip would play from the timeline, dropouts, clicks and all.

Mode 3 was perfect. No dropouts, no stutter and no sound clicks. Like tape, both the internal and external drives needed to stabilize during the first few seconds of capture, but after that it was smooth sailing.

NOTE: If you playback an HD clip from the timeline in a PB and hear sound clicks from the internal speakers even in "Mode 3" these clicks are not in the actual capture, it's a limitation of Core Audio's capability to handle HD content playback from the timeline in a PB. This is a known issue and Apple is working on a fix.

Is the capture directed towards a capture folder in the scratch disk?

And do the clips come as .mov files?

Rob
this is great News, thanks,

Hopefully the Final Cut Pro that is available next month will fix at least most of the issues.

Those aren't issues related to Final Cut Pro, they are issues related to the single firewire bus on a PB.

You'll note that once capture occurred in Bob's third configuration using the internal PB bus and a second firewire bus represented by the cardbus FW device, the issues disappear.

FCP 5 has a lot of overhead, and single firewire bus captures usually present a problem.

I have been trying to get this down myself... similar results. IMHO, it is still not stable enough for prime time.



ash =o)

David,

When using an external drive the capture was being directed to that external drive. All the other files, project, render, auto-save, etc were kept on the internal. However, "auto-render" and "auto-save" were turned off since we didn't want that to accidentally run in the background during a capture.

And you're absolutely right; the issues in Mode 2 are relative to forcing the same, single FW bus to do double work - both ingest and export HD footage simultaneously. Imagine trying to inhale and exhale at the same time - a human would simply pass out, a PB just gets a bad case of the hiccups! (laughs)

Ash,

We feel Mode 3 is absolutely ready for "prime time". In fact, it's a faster workflow than using P2 because the files have already been captured into FCP and don't require the MXF files being translated by FCP during import. You also get the added benefits of having shot, scene and clip naming conventions used for editing. This is a true DTE solution, just obviously not as portable as P2.

Great! Thanks Robert!

If you get a chance can you try 1 more thing? Just for the record...? Mode 3B, with the HVX on the Firewire PC card, and the drive on the built-in firewire? I know in the old days long ago there were some issues that indicated FCP preferred the camera to be on the built-in FW bus... but the built in bus provides bus-power for drives, while PC cards don't. So in some cases Mode 3B would be preferable...

Thanks again for very useful results!

Also, can you confirm whether FCP removes pulldown during capture?

-Barry

Real-Life Test
 

I just completed a day of interviews with Robert's setup ... mode 3, as it may have been called. I have a 17" PowerBook with 1 gig of RAM, a Lacie Firewire 800 PC card, a 500 GB OWC Firewire 800 RAID and, obviously, the HVX. I set up my system exactly how Robert suggested ...

I did three 30-45 minute interviews yesterday morning recording at 720/30 P ...

... and it worked PERFECTLY!

No dropped frames, no strange shutodwns, no errors.

I would stop and save from time to time but I had some captures that went for 20 minutes straight (not what I wanted to do but I simply forgot as I was also the interviewer.)

The footage just looked awesome and I haven't detected any drops or glitches.

Good news! Anybody want 3 4 GB P2 cards?! Just kidding :o)

Is anyonw willing to speculate on whether or not the new Duo with its 7200 rpm drive and the new version of Final Cut will be able to perform without the external drive? This would be a far simpler setup and make Steadicam shots, of which I do many, a feasable option with a well ventilated backpack.

Jerry,
Since day one I have been thinking along these lines.
Yet to try it though with the HVX - I have an older 17"PB (that has a 7200 drive)
a few thoughts:
- It's a bit big lugging it around in a shoulder pack and being careful with balance
- Fan noise from time to time
- and some folks have told me their concerns about moving a spinning hard drive (esp with Apple's new motion sensors)

But I still am trying to do this.
I am even thinking about tryingg it with an older 12" PB - just putting in a 7200 drive in it -
and strapping it to the Vest of my rig - That way I could use it as a monitor as well/

Lets see what Apple is going to release in the near future -- smaller/faster

Perhaps someone could investigate a way to replace the optical drive with a second HDD for capture...

Perhaps the FS-100 will be the best of both worlds. Large capasity and small to strap it on.

Hans,

Glad it worked well for you!

In the coming weeks I'll be busy with my own production and won't be on the forum much, however if you ever need any help with your PB/FCP/HVX combo or any help Mac related, feel free to email me directly.

Thanks, Robert
 

Thanks for the helpful advice this past week. Good luck with your shoot! You may see an e-mail or two from me though!

PS - I put your name in to OWC as the referral ... maybe they'll buy you some ice cream or something! ;o)

Jerry,

Although the new MacBook Pro is noticeably faster than the current PB's even with 7200 rpm drives and lots of RAM, the MacBook "Pro" suffers from 3 things that would prevent it from being a stable capture-only platform:

1) It has only 1 FW400 port and until somebody makes an ExpressCard/34 FW adapter card you have no method for plugging in the camera AND sending out to an external drive at the same time. The MacBook Pro CPU is faster, but the FW bus has the same spec as either the PB or G5 and therefore comes with the same limitations and throughput. And if you were to put an adapter in the single port and split it into 2 or more and tried to connect camera and external drive your results would be far worse than "Mode 2" since you're not even using 2 different ports - the capture hiccup would be severe or worse just not work at all.

2) Even though the processing power is fast on the CPU you are still limited to the maximum throughput on the internal drive. Even at 7200rpm you're still asking one drive to handle the tasks of the OS and FCP plus the added headroom of capturing full DVCPRO-HD content all at the same time. It may happen less but I would expect you would still get dropouts and sound clicks. (I should have noted that in all MODE tests I had installed a 7200 rpm drive in the PB and those were the results we achieved). Not to mention that the largest 7200rpm drive I've seen (that still specs out well) is 100GB. After you install the OS, FCP and other software you'll end up with less than 80GB of usable space, not enough for a full-day of shooting, especially when the drive starts to fill up and performance drops off drastically.

3) Absolutely nobody except the Apple engineers have tested FCP in the Rosetta environment. Like any new hardware/software combination, expect the Universal version of FCP and the MacBook Pro to have some quirky bugs and maybe even some deal-killer issues initially. I wouldn't trust this combination to be stable and reliable for at least 4-6 months AFTER the Universal versions of software hit the streets and Apple has had ample time to release bug fixes and software updates. Or course you could be one of the few to try it out initially and be an unpaid beta-tester for Apple, but that's not an option if you need a stable platform to do paid gigs with.


Barry,

In theory you could put a HDD where the optical/Superdrive lives however the problem wouldn't be where or how to put the second HDD, it's that the CD/DVD drive is the 40-wire ATA-type, not the 80-wire EIDE, and ATA has a relatively small data pipleline compared to EIDE or even FW. So while you could custom rig a PB to fit a second drive there would be no place to physically plug it in and or take full advantage of the HDD throughput. It would require a completely redesigned motherboard with a second EIDE connector.

Interestingly enough IBM did make a laptop years ago that had 2 internal HDD's but that was before the days of ATA-2 or EIDE drives were around.

Lastly as I mentioned in another thread, I still consider it a risky proposition to use any device - not specifically dampened for vibration or mild hits - for any kind of motion work. All it would take is to miss a step, fall or even hit something hard enough and you'd lose everything on the internal drive. And yes, there are methods of forensic data recovery that could reclaim the data from the damaged drive, but unless you're willing to spend $2-8k for the job, it's not worth the risk.

To date, the only HDD device that I'm aware of designed for in-the-field motion video work is the Cineporter. They specifically talk about motion dampening on the website - how well it works is another story since it too, like the Universal versions of Apple software, is still untested by consumers or third parties.

Yeah, I may need to borrow that pitching wedge of yours when I need to smash something! (laughs)

Robert, Hans,
have you guys not tried higher resolutions in this setup because you just didn't need them or because you consider them impossible to begin with?
thanks.

Federico,

Follow my guide on how to properly setup your PowerBook and you shouldn't have any problems capturing the higher res rates:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=59680

Thank you.
And another question arises, did you think of trying to this same thing with a Canon H1 and it's SDI out?

No. Our workflow is specifically designed around DVCPRO-HD, not HDV.

The other unmentioned factor at work here is that by putting both devices on the same firewire bus, the bus operates at the speed of the slowest device. So in essence, you had two devices operating at FW400.

As you noticed, putting in another FW bus via card adapter yielded better because then that device could operate independently of the other at FW800.

-gb-

Greg,

Actually that characteristic was covered in my previous post about setting up the PowerBook.

And in actuality, having the camera and drive connected to the same FW bus means that the drive is being brought down to FW100 speeds since the camera is a FW100 device, not FW400.

Yes, but since the Canon has SDI uncompressed out, if a PCMCIA card of some sort could take it in and then FCP could write it down in DVCPRO-HD or better codec, wouldn't it become a considerable option?

Federico,

We didn't and wouldn't consider the H1 because:

- The H1 color output regardless of output format is not nearly as gorgeous as the HVX.

- The H1 doesn't have the P2 workflow options.

- What you're proposing to do would require lugging at the minimum, a G5 Tower, KONA I/O breakout/converter box and a KONA 2/LH card in the G5 to handle uncompressed video via FW, PLUS the added SDI interface into the G5 such as the Miranda, which by itself is not a low-cost piece of equipment. Why bother with the added expense and required additional hardware to down-convert H1 uncompressed clips to any DVCPRO codec when you can natively shoot in that codec to begin with using the HVX?

If you're sold on the H1 SDI out idea as a workflow then you'd better be prepared for a huge investment of mobile hardware, far above what would be required for any workflow using the HVX. And in the end, you won't end up with footage that looks better, you'll just have a very expensive and hardware-intensive workflow.

These seem like pretty good reasons. I totally agree with them, it's just hard to let go of the Canon lens, having used Canon for many years. First time I hear about the better color output by the HVX. Thanks Robert, very informative.

I understand your reluctance to stop using the XL series; I shot my first DV demo using the XL2-s but after my first direct comparison between the DVX100A/B and XL2 footage I was convinced of what I always felt about Canon color output: it's weak and bland, at best.

Check out www.adamwilt.com; there are direct comparisons between the DV/HDV/DVCPRO color. You'll see firsthand why HDV is inferior to the DVCPRO color space. Additionally, there is a 3 camera shootout (I can't find the web-link anymore) between the DVX100B, XL2 and the FX1(?) - that too will show you how drastically different Canon color is from others.

As I always say, color is far more important than resolution whether it's digi-stills or video and the closer you can get to chrome/film-like chroma out of the camera, the more gorgeous your footage will be.

So far, the HVX is holding true to the DVX reputation with respect to color output: It's flat-out amazing and from our controlled (and non-controlled) testing it's superior to the Z1, HD100 and H1 by far.

The SDI out from the H1 is a cool feature, but the reality of actually using it isn't either cost effective or easy to deal with. And if you have a project that demands your out-of-the-camera footage be uncompressed then you'd need to have a budget that would allow for a Grass Valley Viper or FW900 and REALLY have an output that would truly benefit from an uncompressed workflow.

Actually, I highly doubt the HVX is a FW100 device, since its HD bitrate is 100Mbps without audio...


P.S., any news on mode 3B?

Have you seen the color out of an F900? Very flat and pastel looking. Color can also cause NOISE and loss of resolution. I can make an XL2 pop just like a DVX, you can tweak color and saturation in post, you cannot add resolution. With an XL2 all the color info is there for you to play with later. Like the F900 it comes very flat out of the box. If you need help with the Canon setting I will glady share any settings but your conclusions are simply incorrect.


ash =o)

Yes, even 35mm or 16mm that isn't color corrected can look VERY ugly.

Off topic
 

Guys, this is getting way off topic. We've had plenty of measurbator threads about color/quality/noise.

This thread is about PowerBook capture results. If anybody has anything else to add, let's continue. If not, let's call it a day and close this thread.

Chris?

Well, you cant really bash a company or a camera, especially with incorrect conjectures and not expect a retort...

Back to the subject at hand.... tried out a P2 store today. Very solid device but with verify on (you would be SILLY to turn it off) it takes 2 minutes per gig. When shooting in 1080i that means 8 minutes to store 4 minutes of footage. Makes no real sense. I am going to try and keep testing direct capture to an external HDD...

As predicted by me early on, almost everyone is recommending a tape storage back-up, one came out this week that holds 300GB per $100 tape and will allow restoration of partial files...



ash =o)

Robert... sniff... please try mode 3B?

Vas Is Das?

Most the middle-men who deal with manufactures direct are recommending that you back-up your P2 to HDD and your HDD to tape. There is a new tape drive (by Quantum I think) that has 300GB tapes that can access partial data, not just restore full P2 files (ie you can get 30 seconds off it if need be). I think it is around $8k street with $100 tapes. The point of P2 is that while it is convenient, it is destructive, therefore must be backed up to TAPE, not platters. At the end of the day the P2 workflow requires a large investment and a net ZERO in time saved. The difference is that much of the work is on the back end which means your clients get to see progess and even delivery quicker.

Ultimately, I think P2 will find its place but not in the consumer realm...



ash =o)

About "3B"
 

Oh, stop sniveling Barry, it's so not like you... (laughs)

Just for you I did try a very quick test of the "3B" config; no problems were noticed. The OWC drive we use has both FW800 and 400 ports so it was an easy switch to try this config.

The Panasonic manual - and most FW experts will tell you - that any FW cable is stable up to 4.5 meters for full DV transmission (any compressed format, not uncompressed). If you use a cable longer than that you risk signal degradation from several factors: RFI; natural distance-resistance loss; and standing wave harmonics - the ability for the cable to act as if it were the ground-plane of an antenna.

The LaCie PCMCIA FW card comes with it's own external power supply for just such issues. If a cable longer than 4.5 meters is used to connect either a camera or drive it's highly recommended you use the power supply. AFAIK, the LaCie card is the only one that comes with this power supply - without paying extra.

In our studio setup we are using 2 long cables and have a FW repeater in between to boost the signal. Many FW repeaters also come with their own independent power supply, should you need it.

However, connecting a power supply does not negate the need for using Ferrite Cores. In fact, using another power supply means you're introducing yet another device that can create RFI, so it's cable must also have Cores on it. We have them on each end of every cable that touches either the camera, PB or external drive.

Cores are important in helping keep the signal path as clean as possible to not only prevent dropouts but also keep any unwanted, stray signals from entering into your capture data.

*Simple* data transfers between drives are not as susceptible to corruption as full video and audio captures are. There is some built-in error correction in bit checking that goes on during data transfer since both drives actually talk to each other and *handshake* throughout the process just like a modem or fax machine does.

However, that handshaking between devices does not include a drive talking to the camera, in fact when a camera is outputting it's signal to any device through FW it's a one-way conversation and the bit-stream of data *is-what-it-is* to the receiving drive. The drive cannot say, "hey..slow down a bit, I don't recognize this blitter crap you're sending me". If the camera sends out a dropout or any other unwanted artifact all the drive can do is record what it's getting. The only way we know of dropouts or other capture issues is when we preview the capture - a human process, not an automated computer-driven algorithm.

So, it's a long-winded rant but if you are using long cables and want to keep your interface clean, look into using Ferrites as part of the data-transmission solution.

Shows how well you know me... ;-)

Anyway, THANKS! Just wanted to make sure.

I don't anticipate using such long cables for the time being... but will follow your advice anyway. However, I do have a PC card FW interface (argh, can't remember the name right now) that has a nice feature... it steals power form a USB port, and passes it as bus power to a firewire device for a simple laptop solution (it also can be powered externally).

However, I'm not clear why the power would affect long-cable transmission as you say - does power even flow at all through a 6->4 FW cable? What's the intuition here?

Thanks again,
Barry

Barry,

4-pin does not carry power, only 9 or 6-pin connections.

The FW bus is designed for up to 45 watts, with a maximum of 1.5 amps and 30 volts of power. However, most laptops and cardbus adapters do not supply power which is why the LaCie PCMCIA card comes with it's own power supply.