importing HDV into FCP7

[Keebler]

Hi folks,

So my client gave me his camcorder considering I don't have an HDV model yet (1st time i've come across the HDV format).

It's the Canon HV20 (1080i). To date, I've only had SD footage so bear with me - what settings do I use to import? Final output will be a 16:9 DVD (and possible some files for AppleTV). They're not interested in BR at all.

I was looking at the Apple ProRes 422 DV NTSC 48 khz?

He has approximately 15-18 HDV tapes - I know the capture size can be different, but I have a few TBs so not worried about that. Plus, I'll probably organize them first and do a few at at time so I can fit 2 tapes/DVD.

I want to output the best quality.

I use a Canopus ADVC300 so I can connect the camera to that or try a USB cable (he didn't provide one, but I believe I have an extra). No issues there right?

Thanks and sorry for my lack of understanding - haven't come across this until now

Cheers,
Keebler

 

[spinnerlys]

To transfer DV and HDV footage from tape deck (in your case the HV20) you need a 4-pin to 6-pin Firewire (FW) cable if you have a Mac with a FW 400 port, or a 4-pin to 9-pin FW cable if you have a Mac with a FW 800 port.

The camera has a 4-pin FW port on the back. Look here on page 75 and the following ones: http://www.camcorderanswers.com/manuals/Canon_hv20.pdf
.


I used the ProRes 422 HQ 1440x1080 50i setting for my PAL 50i footage and it worked fine.

You might also use the DV NTSC setting, but that will down-convert your HD footage to SD footage. But as your final product is a DVD that might work okay.
But (three butts already) if you use the DV NTSC settings, you can also use the DV codec, as ProRes might be too much, especially the 4:2:2 (422) sub-sampling.

DV footage takes up 12GB/hour, HDV footage takes up 1GB/minute (in my experience, I have seen others saying one hour of HDV footage takes only 30-40GB - depending on the codec of course, which might have been the Apple Intermediate Codec in their case - AIC).

So 18 tapes in DV will take up 216GiB, in HDV ProRes 1.05TiB, with AIC 630GiB, assuming every tape is one hour long.



Example of connecting a camera via FW to an iMac with a FW 800 port:

The 4-pin end goes into your camera, the 9-pin end into your iMac.

4-pin on camera

9-pin on iMac (FW 800 port)

 

[LethalWolfe]

IMO import and edit as native HDV. File sizes will be the same as DV so no worries about HDD space or speed. I also suggest editing as HDV because that will keep the quality up vs compressing to DV then compressing to DVD.


Lethal

 

[thesmall]

thats really difficult to do.. i need a week to learn this....

 

[Keebler]

IMO import and edit as native HDV. File sizes will be the same as DV so no worries about HDD space or speed. I also suggest editing as HDV because that will keep the quality up vs compressing to DV then compressing to DVD.


Lethal

spinner - thank you for the detailed response and links! awesome. I don't have a 4 pin to FW800, but I do have a 4 pin to to 4 pin so I successfully imported part of one tape via my canopus advc300 which is attached to my macpro 09 with a FW800 to FW400.

I'll play with the settings that you and Lethal suggested. thanks guys!

thesmall - just try importing as Lethal said with a short clip and play with some settings before you try a full tape. that's what I plan to do.

 

[lesreaper2009]

HDV Easy Setup

I do a lot of HDV V-logs and working on an HDV doc currently (maybe RED with a little funding!) but basically I just use the easy setup, HDV- 1080p"x" where X is the frame-rate of the footage. Quality has always been good and haven't had any problems pulling keys or anything.

 

[Keebler]

I do a lot of HDV V-logs and working on an HDV doc currently (maybe RED with a little funding!) but basically I just use the easy setup, HDV- 1080p"x" where X is the frame-rate of the footage. Quality has always been good and haven't had any problems pulling keys or anything.

thanks Les.

there must be an easy way for me to figure out what framerate they used?

 

[hsilver]

Native HDV is hell to work with

I would follow Spinnerly's advice. Going through the Canopus degrades the image, staying in HDV makes rendering and compression later on a nightmare of waiting. And I have never been able to output back to tape in native HDV though that may be my equipment set-up.

 

[Keebler]

I would follow Spinnerly's advice. Going through the Canopus degrades the image, staying in HDV makes rendering and compression later on a nightmare of waiting. And I have never been able to output back to tape in native HDV though that may be my equipment set-up.

thanks. I wondered about going through the canopus, but would it degrade the image b/c it's going FW to FW? As long as I kept all the settings to 0 on the canopus? hope that doesn't sound like a smarta$$ b/c i'm asking an honest question

That said, I desperately need a new battery for my mbp so I'm visiting a computer store today and will see if they have a 4 pin to FW800 cable.

Cheers,
Keebler

 

[Gymnut]

thanks Les.

there must be an easy way for me to figure out what framerate they used?

You should be able to just open the .mov file in QT and under Windows> Show Movie Inspector

That will the show you the frame rate.

 

[spinnerlys]

As far as I can see the Canopus has only analogue video inputs, maybe a DV input, the homepage of that product does not load.

Direct connection between camera and Mac is better in almost any way, as there is no signal than can be corrupted by another device.

Also a transfer of HDV footage via Firewire is the best signal you can get, as it transfers all the 1s and 0s. HDV is an MPEG-2 stream anyway, so no signal degradation.


To Gymnut: I think the OP meant the frame rate of the original footage, not the one that is digitized, as you can capture 60i footage with 25p, how bad it might look is another question.

 

[Gymnut]

Sorry, it was very early in the morning and for lack of sleep didn't elaborate. To the OP, you can connect the camera via firewire and open up QT Pro or QT X and select File>New Movie Recording; Just capture a few seconds or frames and then do a Window>Show Movie Inspector. In fact, if I don't need to log anything, I just use QT Pro to capture tapes from. If anything, it's a quick way of checking what the metadata of the source tape prior to starting if you don't know the frame rate, etc.

One thing though, if you use QT Pro, under the QT Preferences>Recording, be sure the quality is set to "Device Native" and the video and audio recording input is set to the camera. As for QuickTime X, they've hidden the quality setting under the down arrow on the floating control display. I would hope "Maximum" would mean device native but don't quote me on that, and it might just mean some higher quality variant of H.264.

Edit: I no longer have a tape based camera so I tested QT X with my POS Logitech camera and the High setting resulted with an H.264 file and the Maximum setting as a PhotoJPEG so it would lead me to believe that Maximum is indeed the Device Native equivalent.

 

[Keebler]

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to check back in and say a huge THANKS! to everyone for their feedback/advice/suggestions and directions!

I've got the 1st hour logged - captured and edited in HDV, output a small section into pan scan 16:9 and into DVD SP and it looks great!

SO THANK YOU!

I might have a slight a/v sync ..barely noticeable - in fact, I'm going nuts wondering if it is. I can't find a section of footage that has face to face footage to really test it.

That said, I did run this through my canopus via 4 pin to 6 pin to the canopus then 6 to 9 pin to my mac pro.

I did this to run a test as the local computer companies don't have any 4 to 9 pin cables! The one store can order it, but for $49...I think i'll keep searching. I know of monoprice, but I'm not going to place an order for 1 cable. Another store may have some in for Friday.

I did notice that the 5 minute compressor file took about 11 minutes - does that make sense b/c I have the quad core 09 mp and a 1 hour DVD file only takes about 25 minutes. Maybe more data is being crunched from the larger file?

Thanks again!
Cheers,
Keebler

 

[Keebler]

omg. is this right - I transferred 2 x 1 hour tapes of HDV 1080i60 (actually 1 hour 53 minutes in total); edited it natively adding chapter markers.

Then output to a 120 hour DVD although I changed the bitrate slightly b/c I find compressor is usually lower in its final output size; changed it to 16:9 then submitted.

This isn't on a cluster, but it's been running for just under one hour and it's saying that it will finish in another 6.5 hours?!

Is that right? is there that much compression going on from the larger format to SD 16:9?

Cheers,
Keebler

 

[spinnerlys]

omg. is this right - I transferred 2 x 1 hour tapes of HDV 1080i60 (actually 1 hour 53 minutes in total); edited it natively adding chapter markers.

Then output to a 120 hour DVD although I changed the bitrate slightly b/c I find compressor is usually lower in its final output size; changed it to 16:9 then submitted.

This isn't on a cluster, but it's been running for just under one hour and it's saying that it will finish in another 6.5 hours?!

Is that right? is there that much compression going on from the larger format to SD 16:9?

Cheers,
Keebler

Is your CPU maxed out? What is the speed of the CPU?

It sounds about right though, depending on the settings it takes 20-48 minutes to encode 16:9 SD footage on my work MacPro with 4 cores of 2.x GHz using Compressor. The CPU seems maxed out though.

 

[Keebler]

Is your CPU maxed out? What is the speed of the CPU?

It sounds about right though, depending on the settings it takes 20-48 minutes to encode 16:9 SD footage on my work MacPro with 4 cores of 2.x GHz using Compressor. The CPU seems maxed out though.

No...unfortunately the processors aren't maxed out. I have a quad and it shows half of them at about 60% and the other half at maybe 30%.

There must be a tool for me to redirect the processors? Nothing else is running.

I know when I've used the cluster with my mac pro 2006, the processors seem to be more maxed out.

I'm still learning how to make this machine run at full speed.
Still, I started this around 9:45 EST and it's still saying 4 hours 47 minutes.

 

[Keebler]

just wanted to report back that everything is transferring fine.

I bought a 4 pin to FW800 cable and am using that, capturing it to HDV. I checked the first file in QT as suggested (thanks!) and found it to be 1080i60 so I'm using that sequence present then will output to 16:9 DVD.

I've yet to run 1 file, but i tried one and it said it was going to be 7 hours! doh!
that wasn't with a cluster set up, which i've hopefully resolved.

The only question I had was with the camera data. I'm using my client's Canon HV20 b/c this is the 1st time i've come across HDV. How do I get the recording date on screen when capturing? I was in the menu and I can see it on the LCD screen, but I'm not sure of the setting to put it on screen when I'm capturing? I've tried different settings, but no luck. There was one setting to output to TV, but it captures all data - HDV/DV Out; running time etc.., but not the date!

Cheers,
Keebler

 

[lesreaper2009]

Compressor Slowdown

I'm not sure if this helps, but to speed up your output, you don't want to send the movie from FCP to Compressor directly. Export it to quicktime and then add the quicktime file to compressor. You'll usually notice significant speed increases for some reason. Some else might know the technical details, I just know it works.

 

[Keebler]

I'm not sure if this helps, but to speed up your output, you don't want to send the movie from FCP to Compressor directly. Export it to quicktime and then add the quicktime file to compressor. You'll usually notice significant speed increases for some reason. Some else might know the technical details, I just know it works.

thanks les. I plan to do that. there's a whole process of setting your system up as a quickcluster by itself or with another mac to maximize the processor usage. I was running into issues so I've reinstalled everything. Will keep this thread posted when I start trying that procedure.