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Formats to Capture HD off of tape in FCP

DPA

DPA

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Dec 11, 2008
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trapped as a prisoner of a purple aurora and an al
What are my options for capturing HDV from my Sony HDV camcorder in FCP and what would you recommend? I normally shoot on a miniDV tape and when I capture I use the NTSC 8 bit uncompressed option in Easy Setup. Would anybody recommend anything different or am I doing something wrong? What should my capture settings in Log and Capture? I am using my dad's Sony tape deck and AJA IO LA board when capturing to my 500GB G-Drive hooked up to my 2.4 GHz MBP. Everything I have hooked up is through FireWire 800.
Help is greatly appreciated.

PS - Are NTSC and PAL available when working with HD? If not what replaced them and what is now different between North America and the rest of the world?
 
FCP.guru.guy said:
What are my options for capturing HDV from my Sony HDV camcorder in FCP and what would you recommend? I normally shoot on a miniDV tape and when I capture I use the NTSC 8 bit uncompressed option in Easy Setup. Would anybody recommend anything different or am I doing something wrong? What should my capture settings in Log and Capture? I am using my dad's Sony tape deck and AJA IO LA board when capturing to my 500GB G-Drive hooked up to my 2.4 GHz MBP. Everything I have hooked up is through FireWire 800.
Help is greatly appreciated.

PS - Are NTSC and PAL available when working with HD? If not what replaced them and what is now different between North America and the rest of the world?
Click to expand...

Maybe I'm not understanding you correctly here, but why are you using the AJA IO LA box? That's for analog video, right? ( I'm a hobbiest, not a pro so forgive me if I'm wrong here )

You can capture HDV natively in FCP, or convert to AIC... just hook the camera up directly via firewire, and skip the box.
 
I use the box, which is for analog component, composite and S-video, because it allows me to capture directly to my Mac (external HD). I have it connected to the tape deck because then I don't have to rewire everything each time I record something in-house. When I have to capture using the tape deck I can just plug the cords into the back of the AJA board (rewiring 4 cords) instead of rewiring like a trillion.
 
FCP.guru.guy said:
What are my options for capturing HDV from my Sony HDV camcorder in FCP and what would you recommend?
Click to expand...

I'd recommend capturing HDV as ProRes. You can do that via Firewire and have much better color sampling to work with (4:2:2 as opposed to HDV's 4:2:0).


FCP.guru.guy said:
Are NTSC and PAL available when working with HD? If not what replaced them and what is now different between North America and the rest of the world?
Click to expand...

The NTSC television system standard is being replaced by the ATSC standard. I don't really know what the PAL and SECAM countries plan to do as far as digital transmission (DTV) and HD goes.

The DTV changeover in the U.S. is mandated by the FCC so they can auction off much of the spectrum that's currently being used for analog transmission.

The U.S. and other countries on 60 cycle current will still have the same frame rates as they do now and the PAL and SECAM countries, most of which are on 50 cycle current, will still have their frame rates regardless of whether or not the programming is SD or HD.

It isn't just North America that uses NTSC. Currently there are about 36 countries using the NTSC TV system, 36 using SECAM and 71 using one of the three variations of PAL.

-DH
 
FCP.guru.guy said:
Will NTSC be universal with ATSC in FCP and FCE or will the NTSC standard stay in FCP with ATSC. I thought that 60i and 50i were the NTSC and PAL of HD or am I wrong?
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, but I do not understand your question. NTSC, ATSC, PAL and SECAM are television system standards. 60i and 50i are frames rates. 60i is 60 interlaced fields per second which is equal to 30 frames per second (29.97 if using drop frame timecode).

-DH
 
Sorry, just something I was trying to confirm from another thread. PAL is 24 fps, NTSC and ATSC are 30 and SECAM is fps. In FCP, are the NTSC, PAL and HD options in Easy Setup going to include ATSC. Something I've never understood is why television system standards are in the Easy Setup and FCP, do they have anything to do with recording video besides the aspect ratio and frame rate or is the aspect ratio and frame rate the reason that they are there?
 
FCP.guru.guy said:
Sorry, just something I was trying to confirm from another thread. PAL is 24 fps, NTSC and ATSC are 30 and SECAM is fps. In FCP, are the NTSC, PAL and HD options in Easy Setup going to include ATSC. Something I've never understood is why television system standards are in the Easy Setup and FCP, do they have anything to do with recording video besides the aspect ratio and frame rate or is the aspect ratio and frame rate the reason that they are there?
Click to expand...

It IS all very confusing and without getting into a lot of technical details (most of which I don't fully understand), the NTSC television system was/is rather restrictive. It defined the frame/refresh rate (29.97fps/59.94 cycle - aka: 30fps/60hz) and raster (525 scan lines vs. 625 scan lines in PAL) of television. When it became possible to digitize video footage, it was also used to establish the pixel dimension of the image.

Since camcorders can play out directly to a TV, camera manufacturers had to make models that were compatible with the TV systems in use in the countries where they sold them. NTSC camcorders for NTSC countries; PAL camcorders for PAL countries.

So in regard to NLEs, the NTSC or PAL designation really has more to do with the compatible frame rate and the way the video is delivered. They really didn't have to include the term "NTSC" or "PAL" in the descriptors of FCP's Easy Setups. They could have just called it "DV 29.97, 525" instead of "DV NTSC." But more people would understand the name "DV NTSC," so I assume that's why they use it.

On the other hand, the ATSC system standard is more of an open architecture (less restrictive) system. Whereas the old NTSC system standard only had one set frame rate, raster and refresh rate, the ATSC system has currently about 12 DTV schemes in use that encompass different pixel dimensions, aspect ratios, and frame rates.

Clear as mud, ain't it.

-DH
 
So, PAL TVs can only play PAL and not NTSC and NTSC TVs can only play NTSC because of the way they are built? And when recording with a PAL or NTSC camera, the difference is only frame rate and aspects ratio? Broadcasting is when NTSC, ATSC, PAL, and SECAM are really important, not recording?
 
FCP.guru.guy said:
So, PAL TVs can only play PAL and not NTSC and NTSC TVs can only play NTSC because of the way they are built? And when recording with a PAL or NTSC camera, the difference is only frame rate and aspects ratio? Broadcasting is when NTSC, ATSC, PAL, and SECAM are really important, not recording?
Click to expand...

Not exactly. The television system defines the raster and how the video signal is built. What voltage levels correlate to what brightness levels, the sync signal/horizontal phase, the vertical blanking interval, the chroma subcarrier, the chroma amplitude and phase limitations and a TON of other things. I was just going over the highlights. There's a lot more to it ... too much to try to explain on a forum. The television system IS important when editing, I merely stated that it didn't actually have to be referred to in an NLE; they could have used the specs instead of the name.

If you really want to know more, you'll need to to study television and broadcast engineering.

-DH
 
Why would you shoot HD only to capture SD?

Skip the IO LA and capture your HDV via FW and set your sequence render settings to ProRes. You won't need to batch convert everything to ProRes, so you'll still get the rendering benefits without the larger source files.
 
I wouldn't. I want a suggestion on what my settings (Easy Setup and capture settings) should be to capture the HDV from the Sony Digital Videocassette Recorder DSR-40 tape deck. So I should skip the AJA box because it isn't beneficial? And use Apple ProRes 422? What rendering benefits and no larger source files? What do you mean?
 
That AJA box only supports SD material. To capture HDV, you have to hook it up via FW and use the appropriate HDV Easy Setup.

With HDV, you want to do 1 of 2 things (because HDV is a pain to edit)...

a)Convert all footage to ProRes.

b)Capture HDV, but set your sequence to only render in ProRes.

I like option b because you get the benefits of option a, but without the time/space wasted for converting all of your footage.
 
The difficulties of cutting HDV isn't so much the cutting, but the application of effects and rendering. It requires "conforming" (because of the long GOP)which takes time and is considered the biggest annoyance (along with generation loss due to the high compression). So setting the sequence to render in ProRes avoids both of these pitfalls.
 
FCP.guru.guy,
What is your "final destination" for the footage? If you are going to record your final edit back to HDV then you should edit in HDV.

bigbossbmb said:
The difficulties of cutting HDV isn't so much the cutting, but the application of effects and rendering. It requires "conforming" (because of the long GOP)which takes time and is considered the biggest annoyance (along with generation loss due to the high compression). So setting the sequence to render in ProRes avoids both of these pitfalls.
Click to expand...
Conforming an HDV timeline only needs to happen if you are recording back to HDV so the 'conform' step will happen no matter what codec you are editing with.

-DH said:
As I said in my first response to this post (yesterday), you should capture DHV footage as ProRes. Here's how: http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/capture_hdv_prores_fw_balis.html

-DH
Click to expand...
Capturing HDV as ProRes isn't always the best choice and has some downsides that need to be considered. The biggest, IMO, is that the timecode from the master tape is lost which means there is no way to easily rebuild your project. I'm very big on having sound workflow management and losing the TC from the master tape is pretty much a deal breaker, IMO.


Lethal
 
Thanks Lethal,
i will be posting the videos on YT and making DVDs. I care about the quality of the DVDs and would like it to be 720p like movie DVDs. The quality is going to be at most HD on YT and I don't really care how it looks there. I also will be posting it on my website through a QT movie. I will have to compress it a lot though. My main concern is the DVDs though. I want it to be easily editable and renderable. I will also be doing a lot of animation in Motion and effects in After Effects so I want that to be easily addable. My camera records 1080i so I will be deinterlacing it. Any suggestions on the best way to go about that?

Thanks,
David
 
Sorry, I thought they were 720p. I think I read that on some other forum. Do you by any chance know how much a blu-ray burner is for my MBP? And can it play blu-ray discs in HD too? I have The Dark Knight via Digital Copy from iTunes and it looks HD to me. But that was from a Digital Copy not HandBrake.

Thanks,
David
 
FCP.guru.guy said:
Thanks Lethal,
i will be posting the videos on YT and making DVDs. I care about the quality of the DVDs and would like it to be 720p like movie DVDs. The quality is going to be at most HD on YT and I don't really care how it looks there. I also will be posting it on my website through a QT movie. I will have to compress it a lot though. My main concern is the DVDs though. I want it to be easily editable and renderable. I will also be doing a lot of animation in Motion and effects in After Effects so I want that to be easily addable. My camera records 1080i so I will be deinterlacing it. Any suggestions on the best way to go about that?
Click to expand...
Since the camera records 1080i60 there doesn't seem to be a reason to de-interlace for DVD because all that will do is start whacking away at your image quality. For the elements made in Motion and AE you could export those as ProRes and drop them into the HDV timeline. Native HDV will take longer to export out compared to, let's say, ProRes, but how much long will depend on your machine. You could try doing a test (one w/native HDV editing and one w/capturing HDV as ProRes via FW) and see which one works out better for you. There's not really a right or wrong answer, just which ever way works better for a given workflow.

You can buy third party BR burners but I don't think there is any third party software that will play BR movies back on a Mac (I could be wrong though).


Lethal
 
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