720p/50p (PAL land) workaround in Final Cut Pro?
by Nigel Cooper
on
Dec 19, 2006 at 9:30:10 pm
720p/50p (PAL land) workaround in Final Cut Pro?
With JVCs new GY-HD250 series camcorders in 720p/50p does anyone know of a workaround in Final Cut Pro.
With the GY-HD111E that shot in 720p/25p it took Apple 18 months before they supported it.
I'm going to assume it will take Apple 18 months again. So in preparation for that, can anyone advise any workarounds for us PAL users shooting with the latest JVC cameras in 720p/50p mode in Final Cut Pro?
Perhaps creating a custom sequence setting, or exporting, rendering etc?
Re: 720p/50p (PAL land) workaround in Final Cut Pro? by David Issko on Dec 20, 2006 at 3:57:41 am
I take it you do not yet have FC or SCSI or 3Gb SATA raid HDD solutions so you may be able to capture the footage in an uncompressed format. Of course having an AJA Kona 3 is required as well because it can cross convert for you. The camcorder has HDSDI and component out and it too can cross convert to 1080i.
I am about to launch into HD myself and have spent many months researching the pros and cons, what I need and what I don't need and I too am just as confused a you!!!!
Actually I have settled with the Sony V1P (yep, I'm in PAL land as well) but I will be buying a 3G SATA RAID storage array for the HD material together with so much other stuff, I don't know where to start.
Could FCP convert the material to say DVCPRO HD (for instance) to assist you with the editing? I'm not at all sure but you have my sympathy and more importantly, my support and although I cannot help you I hope you sort out your problem soon.
Nigel, I stumbled upon this piece of info by David Issko on Dec 20, 2006 at 5:00:55 am
which may help you.
Convergent Designs' converter box may be your simple, cost effective answer.
HD-Connect MI users can enjoy significant cost savings, not only in the initial purchase of the box, but also by eliminating the need to purchase additional decks and converters. For example, when connected to the Sony M25U deck, users can play back DV tapes as well as 1080i and 720p tapes (except 1080i24F and 720p24). Conversely, using Firewire capture methods (Native HDV editing), users are forced to purchase a second deck (to support JVC tapes), as 720p HDV will not stream out the Firewire port of a 1080i deck. Users that need both 1080i and 720p support can potentially save 3x the cost of the HD-Connect MI box.
Re: Nigel, I stumbled upon this piece of info by Nigel Cooper on Dec 20, 2006 at 9:52:11 am
David, this is way off track. No hardware is needed. It is only HDV footage, not a Viper.
Raids and cards are not needed for HDV.
Here is an example of an early workaround from when Apple did not support 720p/25p, this is a post I put up over a year ago:
I have just verified this is true with the Apple Product Manager for FCP (someone asked about doing 720p/25p although there's no Easy Setup for it)
Create a new Sequence, open it in the Timeline. Go to Sequence > Sequence Settings. Change your Edit Time Base to 25 (all else set to 720p). When you export via QT Conversion, you can again set the fps to be 25.
It's not what is called "Native", as you won't have any RT at all, but it can be done. You'll have to render a lot, but, it "can" be done and you will have to render for HDV when Apple put an 'Easy Setup' setting in for this anyway due to the way HDV uses GoP's to there won't be any real time native workflow anyway, not even when Apple support it, not unless you use HD-Connect LE with Black Magic card and a Raid hard drive set up.
What the preset Sequence settings in the Easy Setup are, are templates that have been "profiled" for FCP's RT engine. You can get other set-ups, but they'll be custom and no RT is for sure, as they are not "profiled" for the RT engine, so to speak.
If you have a third party board that supports it you can get RT out of custom Sequence Setups.
Same applies for 1080p formats that are so-called "unsupported" in FCP."
I am now using a 720p25 sequence in FCP and all works just fine. I used the 1080i 50 sequence preset then I set the frame to 1280x720 and then I put the sequence field dominance to none and that did it for me.
I can't understand why folk can't figure this out; perhaps they are too bloody lazy to set up a custom preset, if it is not in the so-called 'easy setup' menu, they look blankly at the screen and assume it won't work. Why the hell are fools buying Lumiere when FCP has worked perfectly with 720p/25p for years now.
