FCP codecs for HDV clips.

For the FCP users out there.

OK, so I'm back from the trip. Now I'm capturing all the footage and will then be archiving the good bits as self contained movies / clips to a LaCie hard drive.

For once and for all I wanna get this right. So I've got the capturing project set up on a HDV 60i timeline. I then plan to cut each sequence / clip into its destination Folder (I've got folders dedicated to Pygmy Seahorse, Frogfish etc, by species). My question to all is what codec are you finding works best when exporting those final clips? Yesterday I took one small section of a clip, about 8 seconds length. I sourced a couple of filters to it, CC and Gamma and rendered that on the timeline. When it was finished I played that and lo and behold corrupted pixels. I had a nice big green 'scratch' across the width of the clip for about 1 second, half way through the sequence. I seem to get this a lot when editing, or trying to edit, in HDV.

Is this just down to the format or am I doing something wrong??

My scratch disc is set to the main Hard Drive of my G5. The file was taken directly from that location. I have two LaCie HDD's the main one a 500Gb is connectred to the second fire wire outlet of the system and the smaller 320Gb is hooked up to the 500. I've not taken any of the footage from either of the HDD's.

This system is not connected to the Internet and is used solely for editing so no possibilities of viruses etc.

Any ideas?

Cheers,

Mark.

A taster of the trip !!

Mark great tease pic....I'm jealous....

The only time I can get problems like that is when it's coming in and getting converted on the fly to another avi codec and the computer cannot keep up. But since changing to Canopus HQ plus making sure the computer is only running that program and nothing else it can keep up in real time on my old 3 GIG PC.

Mark,

First off, you should not be seeing anything like a big green scratch across the clips. This sounds like a system memory or render issue and not a Codec issue. Even really weak codecs like HDV (MPeg2) should not do this. This aside, i have a couple of recommendations:

1. Get FCS2 and use ProRes422 codec if you really care about the quality of your material and have broadcast intentions.

2. If you are not ready for FCS2, capture in HDV, sort out and rough cut your clips, then use Media Manager to convert them to AIC60i. Open the new project (with AIC 60i) timeline and apply your CC filters. IMO, HDV is very bad for any serious CC and transitions. You will see artifacting, color bleading/loss, banding of blue water and overall a disappointing image. AIC is not the be-all, end-all, but it is better than native HDV IMO. In addition, AIC is less CPU intensive but more memory intensive than HDV. For someone with ample hard drive space but only a G5, this makes more sense.

Note: Do not capture directly to AIC b/c direct capture to AIC does not store any "Reel" (tape) source information. This makes future recapture impossible. In addition, Media Manager requires Reel info to apply any trimming upon export to another format.

Hey thanks Shawn,

Weird that the corruption now only shows itself in the viewer! On the timeline things are fine and in the AIC60i file no problems??

Cheers,

Mark.

Good to hear it Mark. Look forward to more of you recent material.

working on it all at the mo.

thanks,

Mark.