Z5 Captures issues
 

Hi all,

Ok i have a sony HVR z5P and a i had a guy helping me shoot a wedding with a Sony Z7..

Now the issues is i put the tapes that the guy with the Sony Z7 recorded into my Z5 and i keep getting a

"No output image in the VCR" HDV/DV change format??"

When i press play the camera shoots from HDV in and when i press play DVin really quickly and then says the above error message??

So i kinda lost i tried to change the settings on the camera and i paid this guy $600 for the day... and he gave me 5 tapes that he took. The footage from the tapes can be seen on my z5 but i cant captures it?.... Im thinking that he had it recored in DV not HD....

If it doesnt work its $600 down the drain paying the guy.........


thanks
jason

ok it turns out the guy recorded in DV format!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! dammit i pay good money to record in HDV and he provides this shit!!!!!!

When i playing the footage on my Z5 is says DVin and DVout when playing... GRRRRRRRRRR

ok how do i capture the DV footage that this guy captured on his Z7?

OK.

The guy has captured in DV format. SHIT!!! what is the best way i can fix this? Im so annoyed right now....

I just finished capturing the DV format footage from what the other camerman shot. What are my options in regard to my HDV footage and the DV footage that the other guy supplied?

Jason,
Relax. Capturing with the Z5 in DV is not the end of the world. What you can do is to downconvert the HDV that you captured with the Z7 in DV while you importing it to your editing software and then you have the DV format of the Z5 the converted DV format of the Z7 and burn the combined edited result in DVD. The result is excellent!!! I have done this several times with my Z5 and FX7.

Stelios

I know i was starting to panic wondering what i was going to do. I checked out another thread that tells me what to do. Hmm i guess ill have to recapture my footage from my camera to DV....

hmmm more time waste... lol........ oh well atleast its not all lost

Stelios i can still render to 16:9 for dvd cant i when im done?

thanks

Jason

Jason,

Your frustration could have been avoided with some communication ahead of time. You know this now obviously. When I hire help, all of them get a shoot sheet on which production parameters are listed including:

Description of shoot, shoot title and shoot designator (this is what they'll invoice against)
Call date and time
Location of shoot including directions, map, and even parking suggestions and exact point to rally
What the contractor should bring and what I, as producer bring. (e.g., camera operator brings own camera and tripod, I bring lighting, etc.)
Type of camera and format used including resolution and frame rate.
Expected duration of shoot and whether craft services are provided or french hours.
Deliverable parameters including real and virtual product (tapes, disks, hardware, or .ftp)

There are always too many unknowns and chances for goof ups but at least the basics are not assumed, I've yet to run into a glitch operationally in this area. Good luck on the next shoot.

Dave Burckhard
PicturePoint On-line

Ofcourse you can. I always shoot in DV mode 16:9 and my DVDs look awesome!!!

Stelios

No, you can just downconvert it in your NLE... or depending on your editor, you may be able to just throw it into the timeline and tell it to "interpret footage" into the right format. No worries.

It's annoying I know, and you always want to maintain the best quality for as long as possible, but if you're only going out to DVD you'd have had to down convert it at some point anyway.

Hi Adam and friends thanks for the replies.

Adam, Do i output to 16:9 after my project is finished and ready to go to DVD? It seems the DV footage is 6:4 off the camera that I captured last night. As far as ive read this is normal for SD footage. Is this true?

Funny thing is Ive only done Blue ray stuff and not much DVD so no real need to downvonvert etc.

Plus ive never really done much SD 6:4 stuff so to get this stuf in widescreen should I do it once the final product is ready to render and burn to DVD?

thanks guys

Do you mean the DV stuff is 4:3? That will be a problem. I thought he shot DV 16:9. You might have to edge crop your 16:9 HDV footage to match, because if you letterbox his stuff it'll look really bad. You'll take a huge resolution hit.

Well it seems as i have captured it off the tapes as 4:3 as the box looks squished... It sure is looks to be the way its coming off the tape....
hmmm i might check out my premiere pro settings and see if i can project it to widescreen............ hmmmmm

Then again maybe because its squished to 4:3 it may be the way im capturing it? im going to go home and test it...

Hi adam

Yeah i just got home and in the capture window it looks 4:3 i should say.... should it be showing widescreen in the capture window? Even my HDV footage down converted to DV is looking 4:3 in the capture window. When i play it with KM player it also it not showing widescreen but 4:3??

shit im confused now :)

If it's squished, it's 16:9 made to fit the 4:3 frame. No problem; you can easily un-squish it.

Thanks Adam,

Ok..

Its weird because when i run the AVI file on mt desktop KM player the quality seems quite poor yet the file is 12gb roughly for 1 hour worth of tape. Is this normal or will it be fine when i render it?

It just seems SD quality is shit or is it im doing something wrong? I dont know what i could be doing wrong because throw the tape in log it and capture it... what else is there?

When i play the file i seems to be getting horizontal lines especially when the subject moves suddenly or at all to be honest.... im lost here

Adam here is a picture off the footage loaded up in KM player and not resized. you can see the pixelation and it this 4:3?

Now it seems when i screen capture the video wont show up on the km player for illustration purposes. Well but looking at the photo you canget the idea that it looks like 4:3?

ok here is a better look at the capture screen... to me it looks like 4:3. Even when I down convert my footage to DV from HDV its still looke like 4:3...

My project is PAL DV 25 fps 16:9. Once the DV footage is captured it looks pretty ordinary when viewing through my player!!!

any hints on what to do?

Yeah, it looks like 4:3 to me too, but from that angle and without having your tapes in my hands, I can't really tell. Looks like you're using Premiere, so just select a clip in the Project Panel and look up; it'll say what the pixel dimensions and Pixel Aspect Ratio are.

Of course it looks bad on a PC screen; PC screens aren't meant to display interlaced footage. The horizontal lines are interlacing and your PC Monitor can't display this properly. Look at it on an HDTV.

Both DV and HDV are about 13 Gigs per hour.

thanks Adam,

I just hooked it up to my HD TV... the footage isnt to bad pretty good actually. I changed my video out settings to squeeze, edge crop, and letterbox..... all looked pretty good. Letterbox did have a little flickering at the top and bottom where it meets the letterbox.

So if my camera can video out to my HDTV then how do i capture the 16:9. Yes i am using premiere pro cs4.

hmmmm

maybe a test burn to dvd to check the footage might be needed.....

I would just capture normally with no downconverting. Set up a DV 16:9 project and import the HDV stuff into it and use the "Interpret Footage" (not sure about this, might work) or just scale the HDV stuff to fit.

Adam you are a ture champ and thanks for being patient.

This is what ive done so far.

1. Captured all HDV footage(that i filmed, approx 6 hours) from my Z5P
2. Started capturing the DV footage from the Z7 camera that the other camerman was using(approx 5 hours)

Now the problem is when i shift the camera settings on the Z5 to HDV then Premiere Pro says that the camera is offline so i cant capture using HDV seting for DV footage.

Now when i flick the settings to DV and open a PAL DV 16:9 project the capture format looks like its 4:3. The thing with that is my other HDV footage that im going to use is 16:9.

Its kinda weird that i can view it in widescreen and its looks good but then throw it on the computer and it sucks badly.

Ok this is what im going to do....

1. down Convert all my HDV footage that i took from my Z5 to DV 16:9
2. Create a new PAL project 16:9
3. Import some of the DV footage that the other cameraman took with his Z7
4. Render a small part of footage to test for qaulity

What would be a good render format to test my 16:9 PAL project with the DV footage that the other camerman took?

I just want to test it all before going ahead with the final editing as i dont want to do all this work to find out that it was all for nothing because the footage wasnt captured correctly OR in the right format or aspect ratio..

cheers adam, i might owe ya a beer one day when im back in the USA

Your plan sounds good. Don't worry about the footage looking squeezed while editing... it should render okay. But your test plan is a good idea.