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capture two tapes same time?

matteusclement

matteusclement

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 26, 2008
1,144
0
victoria
if you have two fire wire ports (FW400) and have two camcorders that you want to capture tapes from (canon hv30), can you do it at the same time as long as you are capturing to different disks?

I have FCP7 & imovie.
snow leopard
two raid 0 arrays
 
but HOW might have been a better question

but then I think to myself...
how would I do it? FCP will only recognize one deck at a time.
would i have to run imovie and FCP at the same time?
 
I suppose you could give it a try...

But if you're talking about using two FW ports from the Mac's built-in bus, those are all sharing the same FW controller. In that case, you'd want a FW expansion card to add an additional bus (assuming you have a Mac Pro).
 
Keep in mind that FC and iMovie create different DV files. I can't think of the tech terms right now, but I believe the audio is separated via FC while iMovie embeds the audio in with video. You'll have to render the audio copied from your iMovie import when using that in FCP.
 
so then I guess I would have to try and capture two instances in FC?

yes, I have a mac pro with two seperate FW buses.
 
not yet

haven't tried it yet, the only problem I have is the running of two "instances" of FW capture. I do have a firewire card AND a firewire that came with the mac pro.

so far, the software is the issue. i.e- if I capture in FC, I get HDV codec and my only other option is iMovie, so that would be captured in AIC. I have to do a prores422 pulldown to get the 24p afterwards (a con of the HV30). That AIC is SO BLOATED. I guess I could capture in AIC for both. Shouldn't be a problem since I am capturing onto 2 separate drives.

Side note: would my conversion to prores422 be faster if I was capturing in AIC. I use a software raid 0 for two sets (4 drives) that I can convert to.
 
Is there a reason why you're trying to do this?

It doesn't seem like much of a time saver for the effort or work involved.
 
it will save time

actually, it will save tonnes of time.

When I shoot a wedding, I usually wind up with about 6 tapes (3 tapes x 2 angles) and if I could capture in a "dual mode", this would have my capture time, which gets me working faster. I.E- I would save 3 hours.
 
matteusclement said:
actually, it will save tonnes of time.

When I shoot a wedding, I usually wind up with about 6 tapes (3 tapes x 2 angles) and if I could capture in a "dual mode", this would have my capture time, which gets me working faster. I.E- I would save 3 hours.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, but from my experience 3 hours is nothing in this business unless you're attempting a same day edit. It seems like the extra work required to do this would negate much of the time you would expect to save (Media managing, transcoding files, etc.).

But to each his own.
 
I kinda get what you mean

yeah, fair deuce, but this just isn't one project.
I have several on the go at any given time, often shooting at the same time in different locations. If i can half my time on the 50 tapes I shoot in a month... that seems worth while.

But still haven't done it.... LOL.
I will keep this thread in mind when I do.
 
maybe you could get Final Cut Express. I once had Final Cut Express installed on my sisters macbook, but I couldn't change the speed. So then I installed Final Cut Studio (with Final Cut Pro).

The programs run at the same time. I guess the only problem is that FCE also records AIC (or am I wrong).

Or you could try premiere pro.
 
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