His position is that the media acquisition business has been funded and will carry on; another division was losing money. Curious if anyone else has any insight as to the long-term viability of the company or future product support?
My technical question is this: I keep reading things like Firestore "does much the same thing" (Adam Wilt review of HPX170) as 720/24pN acquisition on a P2 card. My understanding is that it removes "redundant" frames from the video that is streamed through firewire (at a higher frame rate). Is the resulting video data very close to P2 24pN capture? Identical? Close to identical? Are there any issues as far as the quality of the video or editing/timeline issues? Any insight as to the process and any trade-offs would be appreciated.
Re: FIrestore-bankruptcy and 24pN recording question by Christopher Wright on Sep 25, 2008 at 6:43:00 pm
Identical,
and much easier to edit with. You can just drag clips right into your bin versus having to go through the log and transfer step in FCP.
I do hope the FS series survives intact!
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Re: FIrestore-bankruptcy and 24pN recording question by Jeff Regan on Sep 26, 2008 at 5:16:10 am
I agree with Christopher. The 720/24PN workflow is great, especially Quick Time Native with Final Cut 6.03 and higher. Fast transfers, easy to deal with in FCP.
The other advantage, besides lots more record time(2.5 minutes per Gb vs.
1 min. per Gb for 60p), is that the much lower bit rate of 40Mbps(vs. 100Mbps) does not tax for the FS-100's error correction as much in recording.
I hope the FireStore part of Focus Enhancements can carry on as well.
Re: FIrestore-bankruptcy and 24pN recording question by Craig Mieritz on Oct 3, 2008 at 12:47:11 am
Thank you for all the updates.
Does anyone know whether the audio problem only turned up in the JVC compatible product?
I am a little confused about the Quicktime recording feature. Does it record discrete Quicktime files that can be imported, or does it record them into one reference movie? Is there any downside to recording directly to Quicktime, as opposed to MXF?
Re: FIrestore-bankruptcy and 24pN recording question by Ty Audronis on Oct 3, 2008 at 4:34:14 pm
When we ran the drive with our Sony 1080-i camera, the problem wasn't AS severe, but it was still there. Now, let me qualify that... it was a different shoot altogether, and a bit quieter primary audio with more background noise. So it's entirely possible that it was as severe, but just not as noticeable because of the difference in ambient sound and the level of primary audio.
If you are using AVID Media Composer, MXF is definitely a good way to do. A lot less of loss when importing into Avid. It really depends on your timeline in editing software. If you are using a Mac with FCP, then you are most likely useing 422 or HDV as your timeline, and on 422 it's a tossup. But if you have HDV, then there's no conversion necessary, so Quicktime is the best way (As the quicktime is an HDV quicktime). However, if you're using Adobe Premiere Pro, then M2T is the way to go (it's the native format for HDV in Premiere).
So, long answer short... it depends on what you are using.
We're on all 3, but prefer Avid. Unfortunately, until our firestore's firmware allows MXF in HD resolutions... we're stuck with Quicktime (as Avid won't import M2Ts).
Ty Audronis
Supervising Editor, California Academy of Sciences/Morrison Planetarium
Re: FIrestore-bankruptcy and 24pN recording question by Craig Mieritz on Oct 3, 2008 at 6:28:24 pm
Hey Ty, thanks for the thorough answer. The answer is that I don't know what the timeline will be. The producer wants to shoot and see if there's a story there. Ouch. So, I wanted to go with the Pansonic and an intraframe compression to give some flexibility as far as uprezzing while minimizing cost. I am talking about the FS-100 which may have gotten lost somewhere in the thread, given it's breadth. Is that correct that the FS-100 with a Pansonic camera will give you an HDV Quicktime file? My hope was to frankly avoid HDV. Can someone please confirm that?
Re: FIrestore-bankruptcy and 24pN recording question by Christopher Wright on Oct 4, 2008 at 5:19:33 pm
Panasonic records in the DVCPROHD format. The HDV format is a huge step backward, so don't even try editing it that way (in an HDV timeline). You want a DVCPROHD timeline. I have also never had the audio problems Ty mentions with the FS-100.
The "sweet spot" with the HVX 200 is 720P/24PN mode.
Which Panasonic camera are you using?
Also always capture to the FS-100 in Quicktime mode. There is no quality difference and you can drag the native Quicktimes right into a bin in FCP and start editing right away without having to use the arcane, convoluted P2 log and transfer process.
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Re: FIrestore-bankruptcy and 24pN recording question by Craig Mieritz on Oct 4, 2008 at 5:38:47 pm
Hi Christopher, and thanks for the reply. This has gotten a little convoluted due to the circuitous tree of responses. I understand the DVCPRO HD just enough to get myself in trouble. I was very fortunate to be able to spend time with Shane Ross and Jim Lindsay this summer and got a good education in it. Shane beat into my head 720/24pN, especially if there is the possibility of uprezzing. The specific reason I selected DVCPRO HD is because of it's higher image quality (compared to HDV) and the fact that there are good, economical cameras out there for acquiring it. HDV got into the conversation because of a reply by Ty saying that the Firestore recorded to that format, but he did not understand that we were talking specifically about the FS-100.
My outstanding question at this point is: when you record with the Firestore directly to a Quicktime wrapper are you getting individual .mov files for each clip or are they combined into one file?
Re: FIrestore-bankruptcy and 24pN recording question by Michael Sacci on Oct 4, 2008 at 5:51:01 pm
On the newest software version there is now a Make Ref movie, which gives you a NON-self contained QT movie, meaning that you can import that one movie into FCP and it points to all the small clips. This is fine but you have to be very careful with all the small clips, first and foremost you have to make sure you keep them and that you keep them is the same place and file structure or the ref movie will have trouble linking to them.
I would recommending that you open this reference movie in QT Pro and save it as Self Contained. This way you can give it a better name, it becomes an independent movie and now you have a backup made of your footage.
Re: FIrestore-bankruptcy and 24pN recording question by Craig Mieritz on Oct 4, 2008 at 6:42:36 pm
Thanks, Michael. The ref movie is what I'd like to avoid. If you save it in QT Pro as you discussed, does it save the individual clips as self-contained movies or just as the one movie as one self contained clip?
Re: FIrestore-bankruptcy and 24pN recording question by Michael Sacci on Oct 4, 2008 at 6:59:08 pm
When you do a make Ref Movie on the Firestore it combines all the short clips within a start and stop record. Remember is makes a new movie file every 2 GBs so long recorded clip can have several 2 GB movies, these are what would be combined but if you start and stop recording several times these would not be combined. Sorry to be confusing on the use of the word clip.
Re: FIrestore-bankruptcy and 24pN recording question by Christopher Wright on Oct 8, 2008 at 6:45:44 pm
I still prefer working with the separate 2 gig clips, as I can put them in the timeline one at a time, adjust volume levels etc., and about the time I am ready to place the next clip on the timeline, FCP has finally finished writing out the waveform display! I can also more easily cull bad takes and unusuable clips faster this way.
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Re: FIrestore-bankruptcy and 24pN recording question by Michael Sacci on Oct 8, 2008 at 7:02:21 pm
I think this has to come down to a workflow plan, there is no way you can deal easily with 2-5 minute clips if you are editing a 60 minutes multi-cam project. You have to have one single clip. Plus one of the benefits of recording to media (P2 or Firestore) is you hit stop after every take and you end at least getting close to actual In's and Out's of your take were we use to try to keep the tape rolling. But there is no right or wrong answer here, how ever you like to work the options are there.
Re: FIrestore-bankruptcy and 24pN recording question by Christopher Wright on Oct 8, 2008 at 7:45:46 pm
Since the original poster wasn't talking about multicam, I still stand by leaving the clips separate. And 720P24Pn is 5:36 per clip. If you do have multicam continuous running clips/cameras, it is still easier just importing the clips from the FS-100 (in Quicktime, not P2 mode), selecting all clips and dragging into a timeline, then just rendering out one long QT clip per camera. You also have more control this way if the camera operators "stopped rolling" versus having truly continuous coverage. But as you say, different strokes....
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Octocore 8 GB Ram, Radeon card, MBP, MXO
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